Because Of The Rain

Vivek Chandran (VeeCee) was in class eight in 1985. He was fourteen years old; attentive and enthusiastic, though not brilliant, in academic and extracurricular activities; rather mature and reasonable for his age; pleasant with a disarming dimple-cheeked smile; and, popular amongst students and acceptable to teachers, at least, most of them. If he had been a precocious teen, his actions on that rainy day in July would not have shocked and surprised as much as it did.

He got caught in the library during the games period, an hour before the end of that school-day. It had rained incessantly for a week and the grounds were flooded. Unable to play outside, his class had split into three groups. The lucky few managed to grab the limited facilities for indoor games in that boys’ school. The majority remained in class, glad to have three quarters of an hour, unsupervised and free. The remaining half a dozen or so, including VeeCee, chose to spend that period in the library.

They were the sole occupants of the library at that hour, barring the ghostlike presence of the thin, silent, ubiquitous Librarian. Amongst the students, she had gained the sobriquet Caspar. She was helpful to the students who frequented the library. The students had grown accustomed to her discomfiting presence as she wafted between the well-lit areas around the tables, hers and the students’, to the shady confines of the shelves. The young visitors expected to see her kindly face looking over their shoulder with guileless curiosity.

Many days after the incident, the Librarian recounted to her close companions that VeeCee had chosen his usual seat that day. It was near the window with an enviable view of the endless fields of paddy, tapioca and coconut trees that surrounded the school campus. The blue-green distant hills on the right and the shimmering blue sea to the far left added to the grandeur. The Librarian remembered that VeeCee had sat gazing through the window for nearly ten minutes, as in a trance. She admitted that she too had looked at the scenery and found it sublime. The rain-soaked lush green fertile fields; trees and plants swaying; grey clouds that looked comforting rather than threatening, pregnant, sturdy and seemingly permanent; and, a strange late afternoon mist settling like a diaphanous veil over the face of those hills – she listed all that to convince her listeners that it was truly sublime. Some of her listeners had wondered if she was trying to connect the sublime with that which involved VeeCee. She said that VeeCee sat like a statue, inert except for a tiny, beatific smile and that his face had looked peaceful or ecstatic or suffused with some inner pleasure. She could not be sure which and then added that VeeCee had seemed weird.

‘It got weirder,’ she further remarked.

VeeCee woke up from his reverie. He abruptly turned away from the window and shifted his undivided attention to his notebook. A tone of disappointment and accusation entered her mild voice then. She explained how she had felt irrationally disturbed as she watched his concentrated efforts for nearly fifteen minutes. Curiosity or some sense of duty made her go to his table to check on his activity.

‘How I wish I had not…’ she confessed.

What she saw on the page of VeeCee’s notebook made her totter, feeling faint, and she barely managed to stifle the retching brought on by repugnance.

The Librarian recovered quickly. When she snatched the notebook, VeeCee politely rose from his seat, with a puzzled look on his face but without a word of apology or explanation or protest. The Librarian ordered the other students to return to their class. Then, after locking up the library, she took the silent VeeCee and his notebook to the Principal’s office. There, she told VeeCee to wait in the outer chamber where the Principal’s peon had his seat. She knocked at the door of the Principal’s inner office and entered.

She placed the notebook in front of the Principal and then stepped back, half-way towards the exit. She pointed at the book, her eyes averted from it fearing that a look might implicate her in the sordid affair. The pointed accusing finger shook as her nervousness increased. Later, she admitted with shame that she had thought that that simple act of pointing at the book would release some poltergeist from within.

‘I know it is irrational… but… in those circumstances, it felt so plausible…’

The Principal took in her state and then his eyes followed that pointed finger. On the desk, the closed notebook appeared acceptable, innocent and harmless, and on the cover the name and class of the owner, printed in bold, black letters, stared back defiantly.

‘He’s outside,’ the Librarian whispered to the Principal. Then, without another word or gesture, she slipped out of the room. The Principal wondered for a while if she had been an apparition, gliding in and out of his room.

The Principal was a stout, middle-aged man with a clean, expressionless face and an immaculate coiffure of jet black hair and silvery white sideburns. He had viewed the goings-on as if it was ordinary and commonplace. When the school management had chosen him for the post, they had been clearly impressed with his imperturbable demeanour and measured way of speech. In the staff room, many likened that selection with a politician’s choice of a bureaucrat-cum-majordomo. The students referred to him as the Hangman.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the notebook without touching it. His fingers drummed noiselessly on his taut pot-belly. He let out a sigh. Just two weeks had passed since he had resolved the last crisis. A student of class nine had complained that a teacher had made inappropriate advances towards the student during an excursion. It had taken all his skills in diplomacy and tact to deal with that affair secretly, fairly and, of course, conclusively. The student was dismissed from the school, his parents coaxed to accept the transfer certificate without any protest, and the errant teacher reprimanded privately and barred from all excursions for two years.

He let out another sigh before reaching for the notebook. He flipped through the pages of rough notes, doodles and innocuous sketches of nature and buildings. He reached the page with the matter of interest and after a brief glance he closed the book but continued to hold it. He let out another sigh before pressing a bell on the desk summoning the peon. The latter appeared instantly as if he had been waiting at the door anticipating the bell. His shifty gleaming eyes and eager rabbity face, which still bore traces of his recent snack of tea and some powdery biscuit, seemed to indicate that he had already gleaned much of the recent developments.

The Principal told him, ‘Find the Head Teacher and ask him if he could meet me… immediately…’

The Head Teacher was the Principal’s man Friday in most matters and also his point-of-contact with the staff. The Principal believed in the efficacy of keeping a layer or buffer between him and the general populace.

He decided not to contact any of the management committee regarding the current problem.

‘This affair should trouble as few people as possible.’ He thought to himself.  He then dismissed the peon with a final order,

‘Get hold of the boy’s parents too and tell them that I want to meet them.’ He did not have to spell out the name of the boy. Meanwhile, the concerned boy waited outside, ignored and ignorant of the machinations within.

The Principal opened the book again at the relevant page. He studied the pencil sketch on that page. It showed the lower half of a nude woman lying on a bed with crumpled sheets. The perspective was that of a viewer who knelt on the floor between the splayed legs, staring straight ahead. The buttocks were just a little away from the edge of the bed. The right leg was bent and that knee and thigh rested on the bed. The other leg, straight and taut, stretched. That foot barely touched the floor, like that of a ballerina ready to rise on the toes to twirl or take off on some ecstatic moves. Every detail was explicit and eerily lifelike. The muscles, softness, hair, creases and folds made it seem as if one could touch and taste the real. The sweat, wetness and state of arousal seemed palpable.

He closed the notebook and placed it on his desk, right at the center. He then poured himself a glass of water from a beaker and took careful, measured sips. He heard a knock, looked up and stared into the perpetually grim and unsmiling face of the Head Teacher. Without invitation, the visitor took the seat to the right of the Principal, away from the glare of the afternoon sun, looking at the man seated opposite straight in the eye. The Head Teacher was a trim figure, a few years senior to the Principal. He sat on the chair symmetrically, without tilt or stoop. His visage and attire aligned well with a complete soldierly appearance.

Reaching forward, with his elbows resting on the desk, the Principal moved the notebook slowly towards the other.

‘The Librarian saw him with this.’ When he said ‘him’, he tilted his head towards the door and the Head Teacher gave a brief nod in reply.

The Head Teacher turned the book towards himself and flipped through the pages, clicking his tongue in an irritated way when he saw the doodles and sketches along with the rough notes. He then reached the relevant page. The unflappable ‘military’ man gave a strangled cry and quickly pushed the notebook away from him, spluttering,

‘Good God! How… Why… Where… Who? O God!’

The Principal raised his right index finger to his lips, signaling to his aide that he should hush himself. The other tried hard to regain his composure, sweat appeared on his brow and also darkened his shirt at the armpits. The Principal poured a glass of water for the felled soldier and allowed a minute or two of contemplation and silence.

Then, the Principal asked, ‘Do you know if there is any material in the library… like this…?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Correct me if I am wrong… we have not had any of those new sex education programmes, have we?’

‘Here? Of course not!’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’

‘This has to be something external.’

‘Yes, it must be… do you know if such stuff is going around here?’

‘Definitely not! Is it available even outside?’

‘I hope not. I know I might sound crude… forgive me… nobody you know here, is it?’

‘Oh my God! Definitely not!’

Then, the two remained silent, each one waiting for the other to raise the next obvious question. The Principal finally yielded,

‘Anything in the Biology class…?’

‘Definitely not in the texts… we can be quite sure about the teacher… still…’

‘Ah yes, we should check. We should make sure that this has nothing to do with us.’

‘Hmm…’

‘Yes?’

‘Will you check with the Biology teacher?’ the Head Teacher asked, eager to relinquish that responsibility.

‘I think it would be best if you deal with the teacher,’ the equally evasive attack.

‘Yes, I agree… of course… but… given the gravity of the issue, shouldn’t we both be present when we deal with her?’ the careful parry.

The two men stared at each other unblinking, each refusing to yield any ground, waiting and thinking about the next move. They knew that they would never ‘deal’ with the Biology teacher, singly or together. She, a thirty six year old martinet, was the unofficial guardian of the school’s spirit and soul. She made the boys (and the rest of the staff) feel the need to pray well (to save themselves from her wrath). The old boys of the school still talk of how the days under her guardianship helped in their later life outside the school - no crisis or hardship ever seemed strange to them. In fact, she was the only one who could affect the equanimity of the Principal and make the Head Teacher seem saintly rather than martial.

‘We could try to approach the matter through her husband,’ the Principal suggested.

‘Of course yes!’ The Head Teacher agreed immediately though with equal measures of relief and anxiety. He knew that that was the only way to deal with the difficult matter. If there was any other solution, the two men there would have tried to avoid the husband, too.

The Biology teacher’s husband was the Physical Training (PT) instructor. He was a man who rarely went along with the views of the management or that of the two men in that room or even that of his wife. It was also known that he owed his place in that school to his wife. Nobody dared to go against him fearing her.

The Headmaster rang the bell for the peon and once again, the peon appeared at the door instantly. The Principal barely managed to complete his summons for the PT instructor before the peon was on his way out, leaving the message

‘The parents are on their way… twenty minutes…’

The two men in the office looked at each other, acknowledging silently that they had very little time.

It took eight frantic minutes for the peon to find the PT instructor. The latter was enjoying a clandestine smoke in the shed behind the school garage. That was one of his many hideouts on campus, conveniently far from the Principal and his wife in the staff room. It took another minute for him to find a mouth-freshener and still another to find his dilapidated umbrella. He resisted the peon’s efforts to rush him. He arrived at the Principal’s office, looking as unhappy as a pup left out in the rain, with disheveled hair and his customary comfortable costume, a frayed and faded colourless tracksuit. The two senior men in the office viewed his state of dishabille with distaste.

‘What has VeeCee done?’ the PT instructor asked. He was rather fond of the boy in whom he saw a younger version of himself, a version long forsaken – lazy at practice, enthusiastic and skilled, preference for individual rather than team events, a maverick and, worst of all, a dreamer.

The Principal picked up the notebook, opened it at the offending page and handed it over to the new entrant on the scene. The PT instructor studied it carefully. He scratched his brow, ran his hand through his uncombed hair, thinking.

‘It is very good,’ he said finally.

‘What… do you mean… it is very good?’ the Head Teacher immediately protested.

‘That… it is quite perfect… isn’t that obvious?’ the PT instructor responded.

The Head Teacher’s face showed signs of convulsive anger. He poured himself another glass of water, gulped it down and then confronted the other,

‘Do not forget that you are a teacher and that there are kids of an impressionable age here…’

‘There are no kids in this office, right?’ the PT instructor challenged.

‘Yes, yes…’ The Principal intervened, trying to calm the two.

‘Quite perfect he says…’ the Head Teacher muttered angrily, ‘All my life… as a teacher… as a father of four… I have never seen anything like that… that…’ he exploded, nearly choking on his own words.

‘Ah! I thought so…’ the PT instructor remarked with a wry smile.

‘Enough!’ The Principal silenced the other two.

Then, after the three had calmed down and acknowledged the actual arduous task that lay ahead,

‘We have to be sure, you see… and I think you are the best man…’ the Principal cajoled.

The PT instructor remained still and silent, feeling uncomfortable.

‘First… since you are the one who sees the students outside class… and on much friendlier circumstances than most…’

‘I am not partying with them… I am also teaching…’

‘Of course, of course… I just wondered… only because sports give a more conducive air… and… you do take them for Meets outside school and such… do you know… if the students distribute stuff of this sort…’

‘Are you referring to porn?’

‘Oh… hmm… you know…’

‘I have not seen any student, or teacher, with it.’

‘Wonderful…’ the Principal let out a sigh. He still had the crucial topic to broach.

‘But… this… is not porn…’ the PT instructor remarked.

‘That is a moot point…’

‘Isn’t it obvious… the art involved is amazing…’ the PT instructor continued.

‘Whatever…’

The PT instructor knew that he would be wasting time and effort if he tried any further, the non-argumentative ‘moot’ and the disinterested ‘whatever’ effectively signaled the closure of that discussion.

‘Second… and more importantly…’ the Principal paused to make sure he had the other’s attention, ‘could you ask your wife if she taught anything related to this in the Biology class?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘Yes, of course… only vaguely related, I know… but we have to be sure, you know… maybe, when she taught the class about reproduction?’

‘She doesn’t teach reproduction.’

‘She doesn’t?’

‘She leaves that topic for self-study.’

‘Ah, really… how appropriate… but then… maybe, she gives references...’

‘References…? She…? Nothing beyond the texts, I am sure.’

‘Of course, of course…’ The two senior men were nearly beaming with approval. ‘So, from what you say, we can safely conclude that she has nothing to do with this…’

‘If only that was not true… that would be the day...’ The Biology teacher’s husband replied.

‘Anyway, just to be on the safe side… just to be doubly sure, you know… please ask her, will you?’

‘I will try.’

‘Good, good… that’s settled then.’

The Principal then thanked and dismissed the two teachers. In the outer chamber, the Head Teacher walked past VeeCee giving him a glare reserved for the condemned and despicable. The PT instructor patted the boy on the shoulder and left, without a word to the boy, sad and resigned to seeing such again and again.

While the Principal waited for the parents, he looked at the sketch again and wondered about the source. He had heard of creative inspiration but believed in it as much as he did in voodoo. A week or two later, when he heard about the Librarian’s description of that which happened before the sketch, he did wonder if the sketch was some type of vision.

‘After all, people do get divine visions, right?’ he asked himself then.

Drumming his belly, he made his final decision on the matter. It was not right, period. Vision or inspiration or whatever it might be, it was just not right. It went against the guiding principles of the school and probably against the ethos of the society. He decided that such acts and thoughts had no place in that school, within that world of young, innocent minds with a bright and prosperous future ahead.

The Principal was standing near the window, reflecting on the matter, when the peon escorted the parents to the office. The parents looked nervous. They had seen their son standing in the outer chamber but they had not stopped to talk to him. Even if they had wanted to, the peon would have blocked them.

‘The Principal should not be made to wait,’ the peon had warned them.

The Principal asked them to sit. He remained standing near the window, with the afternoon sun behind giving him a halo. He knew that his chosen position made visitors, looking up at him with the sun in their eyes, more nervous.  

He explained to the parents, slowly and clearly, that their son had been caught sketching objectionable stuff. He opened the notebook and passed the sketch to the father, trying to keep it away from the mother’s sight. The stunned father could not close the book before the mother peeped over his shoulder. The mother collapsed back into her chair, keeping her eyes averted from the men. The father placed the book on the desk and sat with his head bowed.

The Principal let the matter stew in its own juice for a while. During that pause, he studied the couple sitting in front of him. He was familiar with them but only as much as most of the other parents he had chance to meet during school functions. He vaguely remembered that they were well-educated professionals, the father an engineer and the mother a doctor or lecturer or whatever. Like most parents there, they were middle-class, progressive, well-traveled and rather ambitious with their kids. The father was in his late thirties and the wife a few years younger. But, like old couples who tend to resemble each other and behave similarly, the two dressed in neat, formal and well-used clothes; both had allowed flab, a slouching posture and careless eating with minimal exercise; and, even their hair and face gave the same mousy, anxious but distant look.

While observing them, the Principal wondered about his own classification of parents, especially those that came to meet him in such circumstances, under three main types and how most fitted in with just minor variations. The largest category, according to him, was quite willing to accept his decisions and rather glad to have him take that responsibility. Then, there were the defiant lot, too sure about themselves and, worse, too sure about their children too. The last lot had the reasoning and doubting type, searching for explanations and uncomfortable with authority. Fortunately, their skepticism usually extended to their kids most often. The Principal decided that this couple in front of him belonged to that third group. He was confident that, whichever the type, they would eventually adopt his thinking. They would probably conclude that it is justifiably right or merely convenient. Or, they would just accept the fact that any fight could not go any further.

Much to his credit, the Principal never viewed his position as that of power. It was obvious to him that bureaucracy and such unquestionable hierarchy provided both the foundation and scaffolding for a good, uniform and well-functioning society. But, in private moments, he did wonder about how he would behave if he had to put on the parents’ shoes and sit in their seat looking up at someone like him. Once or twice, he saw himself discarding his unflappable nature, reaching across the desk, grabbing the Principal and slapping him loud and hard. One such thought brought an end to his musing.

The parents listened to the Principal’s decision, agreeing silently, nodding their heads already burdened with shame. The Principal took hardly ten minutes with the parents and then rang the bell for the peon. The peon escorted the parents and the boy to their car, making sure that the group met none on the school campus. The notebook remained with the Principal.

The small family did not talk to each other in the car. The father left the mother and son at a relative’s place. He then raced home and searched his son’s room and the rest of the house for any material that could explain that sketch. The tiring clueless search threw no new light on the matter. He then went and collected his wife and son.

Later that night, after a hurried and silent dinner, the parents and son retired to their respective rooms. The parents talked to each other for the first time after leaving the Principal’s office.

The mother could barely hold it in any further.

‘Do you still have that magazine?’ she asked.

‘What magazine?’

‘The magazine I found under our mattress when I returned after delivery.’

‘That was… what… 14 years back!’

‘Do you still have it? Or other such stuff?’

‘Of course not… anyway, that was not mine… I was just safe-keeping for a friend…’

‘Oh… really…?’

‘Don’t start…’ the husband threatened.

‘Whatever…’

‘By the way… you have not been walking around the house… you know… like that… have you?’ the husband asked.

‘What? How could you even suggest that?’

The husband remained silent.

‘It is not me… you noticed the difference… didn’t you?’ the wife's voice was shrill.

‘Hmm…’ the near-silent reply.

Then, there was silence. They did not sleep. They did not check if their son had slept. Sometime during the night, the father or the mother or maybe both cried,

‘Oh, what will we do with him?’

The details of the story came out soon into the public domain. The peon told his version to his mates and to some eager ears amongst the teachers and students. The Librarian confided to her close companions and they confided to others. The PT instructor never asked his wife, the Biology teacher. He did not have to. The Head Teacher talked to his wife about it, after censoring the inappropriate, and narrated a version of the affair as a parable to his four well-disciplined children. Thankfully, it never reached the papers. The Principal had taken care of that. Vulva Chandran (VeeCee) turned into a story that climaxed then on that rainy day in July.

Notes:  Because of some reason…

1. I have not fled India, said MF Husain in his last interview, The Times of India, June 9, 2011. ‘There are more than 900 cases on me and for the last 12 years I have been paying my lawyer 60-70,000 rupees per month because I have not fled from Indian legal system.‘(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/I-have-not-fled-India-said-MF-Husain-in-his-last-interview/articleshow/8791202.cms)
2. Icons of grace, Frontline, Vol. 29, Issue 11, June 02-15, 2012. ‘Folk goddesses in pre-Aryan days, yakshis went on to become protective deities in Indian religions ‘ (http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120615291106400.htm) 
3. Chorus of unreason, Frontline, Vol. 29, Issue 11, June 02-15, 2012. ‘Political parties across the spectrum get into a tangle over an innocuous cartoon in a school textbook’(http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120615291103600.htm) 
4. Salman Rushdie has found peace – but the Satanic Verses 'affair' won't go away, The Observer, January 29, 2012. ‘The terror of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa has faded but the challenge it posed to artistic freedom has not, as a brush with the Indian authorities has shown‘ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/29/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses-censorship) 
5. Vatican Scolds Nun for Book on Sexuality, The New York Times, June 4, 2012. ’“I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”‘ (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/us/sister-margaret-farley-denounced-by-vatican.html?_r=1&ref=opinion) 
6. EMS shouldn't mind the small things in GOST: Das, Express News Service, November 18, 1997. ‘The noted Malayalam novelist and critic Kamala Das, in an interview in a regional magazine, has said that while she was of the opinion that Namboodiripad should not have made such a hue and cry over the alleged references to him in The God of Small Things, she was personally not in favour of writing a book about those who were alive.' (http://www.financialexpress.com/old/ie/daily/19971118/32250333.html) 
7. Harvard Faculty Debates Free Speech, Harvard Magazine, December 8, 2011. ‘In the end, the faculty decided overwhelmingly that Swamy had crossed the line between free speech and hate speech—that the actions he advocated (restricting Muslims’ right to vote, razing mosques, and more) rose to the level of inciting violence and deprivation of others’ rights—and his courses were stricken from the catalog of offerings for this coming summer.‘(http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/12/occupy-harvard-subramanian-swamy-teaching-debated) 
8. Internet censorship listed: how does each country compare?, The Guardian, April 16, 2012. ‘Where is the internet the most open? Where is it the most restricted?’(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/datablog/2012/apr/16/internet-censorship-country-list)

 

Torture

‘Have you ever been tortured?’

‘Beaten black and blue…hating it more when the tormentors pause, preferring the certainty of pain rather than the wait for the next assault…at first, you try to look at them in the eye, try to show defiance or beg for mercy, for some virtue learned by rote, glory or love or life…and then you realize it is nothing personal, a ritual, a pastime, you lose focus…you expect the punches, the cuts, the burns...you feel the nails being pulled out, you squirm when they insert stuff into your penis or anus…sleep-deprived, starved, solitary confinement, chilly wet or scalding hot, light or dark without idea of day or night or even season…you wonder if there is anything left for them…maybe, internal injuries, bleeding organs, ravaged mind…but they will not allow you to go brain dead…not that…’

‘You try to pray…if you are lucky, you get time to curse…you know it will continue…each second, minute, hour, day, year…no savior, no miracle…’

Each time I have heard my uncle Hosappan tell that story, it always started that way. The story never changed, only the setting.

When I heard it as a child, it was based in the jungles of south-east Asia where communists were shot at first sight. As I trudged past adolescence, youth and adulthood, he kept shifting to a new locale and background each time…Naxals in my backyard, in the city or our village, moving north past our borders to the Middle-east and Balkans, pimping in the cities of Western Europe and North America, caught unawares in unheard places of Central and South America, within drug cartels, back in Africa or Japan or China, surviving apartheid or racial purification, exterminating unwanted cultures, amongst tribes committing genocides protecting fiefdoms.

The story always remained the same. He was like a virtuoso playing the same piece or an artist painting the same landscape, over and over again, perfecting, or unraveling. As he moved the story to places further away from home, I wondered if he was trying to get to some truth within him. At times, while he told the tale and his light grey eyes looked at me intently, I had this unsettling feeling that he was trying to see if I recognized it as my own story.

‘The torture went on for days before they talked to him for the first time. Or maybe they were just improvising with their torture?’

‘They told him that they were going to start with his lover…the lover they had carefully preserved unblemished…they told him what they would do to her…unless…’

‘Unless…he retched then, quite amazed that it was the first time he retched till then…he coughed, vomited, spluttered, brought up the bile within him, soiled himself…when he heard that  from his torturers…unless…’

‘They took him to a big room. At the far end, he saw his lover seated on a chair, her legs and hands bound…she was gagged but not blindfolded…how he wished that she would be blindfolded…he saw her looking at him…saw relief in her eyes…his torturers had not lied…she seemed preserved unblemished…

There was an open door behind her leading to a balcony…light pouring in, the promise of the outside world paining him more than all that they had done to him…making him want to cry out…though he was voiceless, speechless…nearly deaf, dumb, mute…they had done that to him…but not blinded…still able to see her eyes on him…her tears, her love…’

‘They brought in the other prisoners then…old, young, men, women, kids…some untouched like his lover, some in the state that he was…they had told him what he had to do…’

‘He did it…followed their orders…one by one…tortured, maimed, killed…he could not look at her when he had to do all that…for her…but he knew what he would see in her eyes…he did not want to see love leave her eyes…’

‘Even that got over…he saw them going to her…he cried out…he begged…silently…’

‘But they had not lied…they had kept to their words…they untied her…they made her stand up…preserved unblemished…free…’

‘Even then, he could not look at her face…he knew that she must have been looking at him…with dead eyes…with him dead to her…he kept his eyes on the floor near her legs…’

‘He watched her move slowly…unsteadily…towards the door, the light, the promised outside world, the balcony…’

‘He watched her climb over the rails and jump from the balcony…she did not even cry when she fell to her death…they did not move…he did not move…they watched…he watched…’

‘Then…they released him…you are free, they said…to live…’

‘Free…to live…’

My uncle always ends with that death-chant, that dirge…

An Answer

Sreekumar was glad that she could not see his face in the dark even though he had turned towards her. It must have been close to two when she woke him. He could feel her lying close, her hand lying still on his chest for a while before tracing memories, her cool naked body touching.

After waking him, she had said, ‘I fell in love with you on that day you caught me crying. You looked so uncomfortable. You had joked, ‘Stop crying…what if someone comes…they will think I am the cause…’ I had laughed, or at least tried to laugh. I guess I fell in love because you made me laugh then.’

For a moment, he did wonder if that was a sufficient cause or reason but he could not ponder long about that or about what he would have preferred.

He directed his attention towards his own answer. It is not that she had asked him a question, not even a rhetorical one. The simple statement could have been accepted with silence in return but that did not seem right to him. She would not have complained. He liked to think that she was not that type. He believed that she might not need a reply or an answer, even though he felt the need to give one.

Was it Italy that made him fall in love with her? She had helped with his shopping for the trip, enjoyable but tough with his meager savings. She was there to send him off. Then, in all those beautiful places in Italy, he had felt a vacuum within, needing her with him more than ever. It could have been because of the discomfort and awe he felt in the foreign land or the beauty or just the atmosphere built up around centuries of stories or the inability to fit in and act the right way. Those six weeks away from her, with a single brief phone-call, seemed to be the answer he was looking for. So, was it just loneliness and isolation that made him love her? He wondered if she would find that comforting.

Was it on that stormy day with an extended power outage? They had walked together in the dark, moving slowly to the outside along that secluded path lit up by flashes of lightning. He touched her for the first time then. They clenched each other’s hands, feigning fright and probably copying familiar movie scenes of such a dark stormy romantic night. They held each other tightly, awkwardly hugging. He had let his hands stray on her body. He remember thinking if she would protest. A calculated risk or an assured reward, he must have decided. She had responded with equal fervor. Was it then that he realized that he loved her? Was it a result of passion or a prolonged need? That did not seem suitable even though it could be the right answer.

He went through the days and scanned each encounter. He tried to sort and make sense of the jumbled and the scattered. He reached that day when she was lying unresponsive before him, still warm to the touch, but with death’s chilly fingers near. He had touched her for the last time then. Was it then?

She still wakes him often, most often under a different guise, hardly recognizable. She avoids the special days, she likes to surprise, like then. He can make out that it is her when he feels her touch or her hand in his. Each time, he faces her ready to give an answer but the answer escapes each time.  

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Sheila and Kris (Krishna, Christopher…?) woke up chirpy and eager at the break of dawn on the day of the advertisement shooting. At six, Sheila sat up on the bed, parted the curtains, peeked at the brightening spring sky and then fell back against her husband, snuggling and cuddling, burying her face against his neck, unable to smother her giggles. Kris loved her like that, all excited, nervous and full of life. He hugged her tight.

That they were full of life that morning is amazing and strange. For nearly four days, since they heard of their selection, they had hardly slept. Adrenalin-charged, they had rushed around, both trying out and buying a set of new clothes for their day in front of the camera. They washed the new clothes and ironed till the creases stood out like a knife’s edge. They had scrubbed and cleaned each other, shaved, oiled, shampooed. Sheila had gone to a salon for pedicure, manicure and a ‘special-facial’. The advertisement people had told them not to cut their hair. Kris had a ‘head n shoulder’ massage at his local barber. On those four days, they talked excitedly about the audition, the unsuccessful fellow-competitors and their surprise on being selected and, of course, about how it would be like on the main day. Every night, at least twice or thrice, she asked him if her giggles would pose a problem. Each time, he assured her that she would do just fine. The tension and excitement invariably led to intense sessions of love-making, tender, demanding, repeated and inexhaustible. They had never felt so young.

On the day of the shooting, they took an auto-rickshaw to the studio. They walked from the gate to the studio, nervous but taking in the hustle and bustle of the professionals, the glamorous and the wannabes. At the studio, they were given the clothes for the shoot. He got a rumpled pair of kurta-pyjamas and she got a shapeless nightdress. They changed into those clothes that resembled the ones they wore at home and then sat still in front of the make-up artistes who gave them a harried and disheveled appearance. On the way to the set, Sheila held Kris’s hand. She giggled and received Kris’ stare in return, though his smiling eyes comforted her. She let out another giggle and then maintained her composure till the end of the shot. The director was appreciative of their efforts and also thanked them briefly for doing it in just two takes. Their act lasted for twenty seconds before editing and eleven after. Sheila and Kris could make out that it was for some financial firm’s product or plan. They were supposed to be the couple that didn’t follow the right financial route. The couple that planned well had professional models in that role and they looked really good. Kris and Sheila were allowed to hang around and watch the show, away from the lights and well within the shadows. They held onto each other’s hands, taking in the amazing bodies and looks, never bored with the repeated takes.

Around half past eleven, after receiving their pay they left the studio. They took an auto-rickshaw back home. They were hungry and excited. Kris asked her if he could have a beer and she gave her consent on the condition that he would get her meat kebabs. He dropped her at home before going out to get the beer, the kebabs and something for lunch, maybe butter-naan and gravy. She wanted to eat at home, she said, and he knew why.

At home, she switched on their old cranky PC and typed a short story based on their experiences in the last few days. In the story, the couple that played their part in the advertisement felt the deep gulf between them and the other successful couple. She wrote about how that divide affected the lives of that poor couple, subtle changes to each one’s character finally manifesting into seemingly irreconcilable marital problems. She ended that story with that marriage facing disaster. She thought of adding a happy twist, like a meeting with the other couple and the comforting realization that lives on the other side of divide need not be as great as they thought. But she decided against that twist and stuck to the tragic ending. She quickly edited and posted the story on her blog. By the time Kris returned, she had already received a few of the usual appreciative comments. She switched off the PC and went to her husband.

She got the plates and a bottle of cold water. She unpacked the kebabs and the lunch. Kris poured out a glass of beer and took a long drink, the froth lining his upper lip. He watched her take a piece of kebab, dip it in the mint sauce and then biting one end of the kebab, teasing him with it, offering the other end and herself. He snarled playfully, leaned forward, took the offered end of the kebab, mixing the mint sauce on her lips and his beer froth and kissed her passionately. She burst into giggles.

Her Smile

My life has revolved around her smile.

That sounds false but grand, quite like a smart-ass opening line of a story and so obviously fictitious. Let it be so.

That life started in the late eighties. The daily commute by train to work in the city used to take a few hours then. I can’t remember if it was a hot or rainy day but I know that I was sitting at the window, as usual, sleeping or lazily staring out at the countryside. I could list the stations, even those where the express do not stop, the time between stations, the crossings and the trains that went by, the houses that would show first sign of life as I pass by and those that would be lit up on my way back. I rarely talked to the other passengers and most often, paid no attention to those who sat nearby. But I did notice on that day.

At the first stop after mine, she entered and sat next to me. I gave her a casual glance. She was a young mother, at least five or six years younger than me, with a baby few months old. She kept the baby bag and her handbag, between us, on the seat. I resumed my purposeless stare out of the window. But that day, probably because I had glanced at her, I broke my routine and looked at the others too.

On the opposite berth, facing me, there was a lady at the window and her husband sat next to her. The lady read a book studiously, pointedly ignoring the young mother and the baby. She must have thought that the young mother would cling on for help if she paid the slightest attention. While the lady was awake and reading, her husband read a book and frequently went near the compartment door for a smoke. When his wife was dozing, I saw the husband looking at the young mother. Once or twice, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his fingers close to the young woman’s legs, his smoky breath reaching us on the other berth. He saw me observing him and then stopped leaning forward. Two college-boys sat next to that man. They kept chattering to a set of college-girls across the aisle.

On our berth, it was me at the window, this young mother and her bags next and then a man at the indeterminate crossover between middle-age and old-age. I heard him talking to the young mother, calling her ‘Moley’ (daughter) quite often, asking the usual details about home, her husband and so on. I hardly heard her replies or maybe, she evaded. Once when I turned to that side, I saw him caress the baby’s cheeks with his gnarled fingers, making some gargling sound for the sake of the baby, and his wrinkled hand slid slowly to the mother’s hands that held the baby. He saw me looking at him, at his disgusting drooling lips. He nearly winked at me. I gave him a cold stare that seemed to do the trick. He moved away and tried to converse with the college-kids.

After that, I returned to my pointless stare out of the window. I did not even turn my head towards the young mother when she shifted her bags to the space between her and the geriatric. Once or twice, when she had to feed the baby, I could hear move around on the seat such that she was seated cross-legged, facing the window and me, her knees near my right thigh and hip, a shawl or her dupatta covering her partly from the view of the opposite berth. I could hear the rustling of her clothes, the shifting and opening of her top and bra, the baby suckling at the right breast and then being shifted to the left. In those moments, I sat with my right leg crossed over the left knee, my right hand on the right knee, providing an ineffective shield, staring outside all the time. I must have looked like a sentry guard, as comical as those stony-eyed impassive guards at historical monuments. All I needed was a big tall hat and some funny uniform.

She got off at a station before mine. I saw her struggling to get out of the compartment with her bags and the baby. I looked at her only when she stepped out onto the platform. I saw her turn her head to the left and then to the right, probably searching for the father of her child or husband or porter. She was still waiting there when the train started to move. When my seat passed her, she looked at me and smiled. The train left the station before I could smile back at her.

For months after that, that smile kept haunting me. I knew that I was too old for infatuations but still too young not to be haunted by such. It might sound vacuous or presumptuous if I say now that I knew then that the smile would not just go away like that.

Nearly six months after that journey, on a busy recruitment day for clerical staff, I saw her again. She was a nervous candidate, too nervous for a smile, even looking quite haggard and troubled. During the interview, she showed herself to be the most eager candidate though not really the most capable. I threw my weight in the selection process and she got one of the available posts. Since she was not assigned to my department, our paths hardly crossed. On her kid’s second birthday, she distributed ladoo in office. When I took the offered sweet, I must have thanked her. She smiled at me, I remember. We did see each other in office, of course; even talked casually during office get-togethers or outings; and once, during the Monsoon, I had given lift in my office car to a group of office colleagues including her. But we never talked to each other, one-to-one, till the kid was about three or four. She requested me for help in getting her son admission to a good boys’ school. By chance, I could help her because the Rector there and I were well-acquainted with each other since my school days.

The next meeting I can remember is when she asked me if I could help her son with Math. He was failing in the subject, she said. I think I laughed at her request or maybe I didn’t.  I asked her to bring her son to the office on a Saturday, when we have half-day. I talked to the boy. It was not difficult to see that he had little interest in Math and also, had a bad set of teachers in that subject. But I sensed a more deep-rooted problem. The boy must have been entering his teens and it could have been growing up pains or a lack of authority and supervision at home. I also sensed that his mother was doing all that she could. I could offer little other than the name of a tuition teacher. I told her that my nephew found that teacher useful. She thanked me for talking to the boy. I do not know if the boy went for tuition or if he ever improved in Math.

Again, a few years went by before we had another such meeting. That time, the situation was quite grave. Her son, then in Plus 2 and in his late teens, and a group of friends had assaulted another student over some girl or some other silly issue. His mother made an appointment to see me. I met her during the lunch-hour. She told me that her son was facing expulsion from school. I felt like telling her that she should take such stuff to her husband, the boy’s father. From me, that would have seemed petulant and definitely quite inappropriate. Instead, I promised her that I would look into the matter, if I could. I remember talking to my old acquaintance, the Rector. I met the boy in the priest’s office. I do not know why I exploded. If I could have thrashed the boy, I would have. But I gave a verbal thrashing that surprised the boy and maybe even the priest. In brief, I told the boy to get his act together, to stop troubling his mother and to start caring for her instead. The priest reluctantly allowed the boy to continue with his studies in that school. Some years later, the priest told me that the boy had finally turned out well. The priest and I knew that it had nothing to do with me or my outburst that day. Good old time and self-interest must have changed the boy.

Three weeks back, the mother and I met once again. She came to my office to invite me for her son’s wedding. In our society, wedding invitations are considered seriously only if the parents together invite the guest. According to custom, the father should invite the men and the mother should invite the ladies. For a day or two, I wondered if I should go but then curiosity along with a sense of duty made me go for the wedding.

The wedding was quite grand and it seemed as if the boy had ‘caught’ a rich bride. There were at least fifteen hundred guests in that exclusive Hall. I was not the only guest who was not received by the hosts. Since that is common here, nobody felt slighted, I assumed. Most often, the parents of the bride and groom feel that their hospitality can end with the wedding invitation. During the wedding ceremony, the hosts were busy getting photographed with important guests and it was up to the guests to find their way around.

I made my way through the crowd to wish the boy and his bride. I don’t think he recognized me. His mother was not around then to remind him. During the ceremony, I had seen her on the stage standing next to a man who seemed to officiate as the father of the boy. The mother had maintained a low profile during the ceremony while that man and others hogged the limelight.

I thought of skipping the meal but I was dragged along by the rush of the crowd. I hurried through the meal. From the dining hall, I rushed to the car park and was on my way out when I saw the mother. She was standing outside, looking around, searching amongst the guests. She saw me and smiled. My car had already exited the premises before I could smile back at her.