Translated from the original Tamil short story tiṭṭu (தீட்டு) from the 1992 collection of short stories titled makkattuc cālvai (மக்கத்துச் சால்வை) by S.L.M. Hanifa. The original collection is available at noolaham.org. Translated by eḻuttukkiṉiyavaṉ and Pasmila Raviraj. If you have any questions, please contact ez.iniyavan@gmail.com.

The boy was sweating from head to toe. His mother dabbed the sweat away and helped him sit up. Every joint in his withered body protruded like skin-covered knots of rope. He was a living skeleton, barely succeeding in trying to keep his life force within. He was thoroughly emaciated, looking like a piece of firewood wrapped up in cloth. A whimper emerging from within the depths of his throat signaled that he was still alive.

It didn’t start just today or yesterday! He has been suffering for two full months. He carried the burden of a heavy amulet hung like a mortar around his shriveled neck, and a talisman wrapped around his arm like a pestle.

Khhrrk... Ughhk... Hmmm.”

Each retching cough doubled his chest over, then let it sag back into place.

The brief relief he felt after ejecting thick phlegm from the depths of his chest was merely a harbinger of the next wave of torturous suffering, only moments away.

Poṉṉammāḷ eased her son away from her chest and propped him up against the wall, tucking pillows behind his back and head. She shook the mat vigorously and draped it over the bed again. Camphor pots and bunches of neem leaves stood guard around the bed. A piece of white cloth hung from the rafter right across from the bed, holding a coin meant as an offering to Kantaṉ, the deity at the Katirkāmam temple.

A choice rooster and a white hen were foraging for food by the front door. They looked hale and hearty. Earlier, they had been twirled around the boy’s head to signify their status as votive offerings. Poṉṉammāḷ covered her son with a blanket. Noticing the teardrops forming at the corners of her son’s eyes, she asked, “What is it, dear?” — a mother’s anguish bubbling forth.

“It feels like a thorn is being scraped inside my chest, ammā!” The boy was exhausted after forcing out those words with herculean effort. He moaned and turned over on the bed. His suffering made Poṉṉammāḷ’s stomach writhe like a worm dropped into fire.

That day, as usual, Krishṇaṉ went to school. On the way back, he was caught in a summer downpour.

“My whole body aches, ammā!” he dropped on to the reed mat, complaining. The next morning, he woke up sneezing. Thereafter, they mentioned all sorts of names for his illness: flu, catarrh, cough. Even though the names of illnesses changed, his recovery remained stubbornly absent. Three full months wasted away, just like his body.

Poṉṉammāḷ tried all the folk remedies she could think of, without success. Eventually she took him around to Vāḻaichēṉai hospital. The doctor who had supposedly learnt absolutely everything there was to learn about western medicine examined him carefully, and made some chicken scratches on a white sheet of paper. Orderly Muttaiā made a concoction by mixing many different colors in water and stirring it vigorously.

After the course of eight servings came to an end, Poṉṉammāḷ fully intended to go back to see the same doctor. But next-door neighbor Vaḷḷiakkā’s unsolicited advice held her back like a thorny fence.

“Hey! He is not going to get better if you keep feeding him colored water from those quacks at the hospital. The poor child is probably terrified. Get our shaman Kāḷiappu to consult the spirits and tie a magic string on the boy’s arm and he will be fine in no time, girl!”

Valliakkai could speak with flair.

Poṉṉammāḷ took Valliakkai’s counsel to heart: she consulted the spirits, tied a magic string around his wrist, and made vows, promising chickens to God Almighty. But the promised recovery never materialized.

Kāḷiappar was no ordinary shaman. He promised results within seven days and performed elaborate rituals. But his seven days stretched into another seven, only for nearly three months to pass while the spell remained unbroken, and the boy still didn’t improve.

He visited every evening, bossing Poṉṉammāḷ around, “Hey! Poṉṉammā, bring some water in a copper pitcher, lady!” as he sat down by Krisnan’s head. Without a word, Poṉṉammā would obediently fetch the water and a bunch of neem leaves.

Kāḷiappar would pierce the nutcracker into the water, making waves in the process.

Ōm Saravaṇa Shaṇmuka, vanquisher of enemies,
Come near, Murukā! Fiery Murukā! Burn, burn—shatter, shatter!
Drive out all the evil spirits and demons cast upon him—
Expel them, crush them, send them fleeing!
Leave him—be gone, never return!

A grace of his mantra chanting is that each time he recites a mantra and blows into the air, the wind he creates, mingled with betel leaf juice and fine droplets of spit, settles on the water in the copper pitcher like a gentle drizzle.

Once he finished chanting, he will dip the bunch of neem leaves in water and smack the boy with it. Krishṇaṉ, whose body had become so frail that even a fly landing on him felt like being pierced with a sharp lancet. Kāḷiappar’s beating will set off a bout of coughing. When the boy spits out phlegm, no one noticed the streaks of blood in them.

As the magical treatment proceeded on a daily basis, one day, Krishṇaṉ’s homeroom teacher dropped in for a visit. He saw what was happening.

“Ammā! You shouldn’t continue to subject Krishṇaṉ to this treatment. Take him to the general hospital. They will take x-rays and will give him the treatment he needs. Take him there, please,” he pleaded.

But the pulverizing fear of the devil karaiyākkaṉ that had already taken root in Poṉṉammāḷ’s mind chased away the teacher’s sensible advice.

Unusually, Krishṇaṉ ate a mouthful of rice that day. A hint of his old customary smile also appeared on his face. Poṉṉammāḷ’s face blossomed into joy. Although she had begun to doubt Kāḷiappar’s promises, she secretly reassured herself, “The purge today will fix everything.”

Over at the tamarind tree by the water, dawn had already begun to break. Poṉṉammāḷ busied herself gathering all the stuff she needed for the forthcoming purge.

She spread out the white reed mat and began placing all the appurtenances she had gathered with Valliakkai’s help: plantains, betel leaves and arecanuts, pumpkin, karaiyākkaṉ flowers…

Surveying the preparations, she couldn’t help but feel a tinge of optimism.

‘My child will be fine within four days and go back to school,’ she thought, and the reassurance calmed her heart as her worries began to retreat.

“Poṉṉammā, the ten o’clock whistle from the farm already went off. Finish all the preparations. I will go fetch Kāḷiappar and his girl,” Valliakkā called out.

Even as she hurried, Kāḷiappar’s booming voice crossed the threshold.

“Is everything ready Poṉṉammā? Get the boy and get going.”

Kāḷiappar had “consumed” a little more than his usual dose. That gave him the courage that he could take on the devil, karaiyākkaṉ. As he barked orders, everyone got busy.

The giant banyan tree stood majestically. A medley rang out from its branches: the “kyukiik” of bats and the “mrr hmph” of crow pheasants.

The ribbits of rainy-season frogs blended into this chorus, adding a faint undertone of menace to the scene.

Kāḷiappar focused on his task. He picked up the tray of camphor from among the neatly arranged paraphernalia. His hands instinctively moved in a practiced circular motion around Krishṇaṉ’s head, as his lips began to string together the familiar utterances of the mantras. As his voice grew louder, his body and tone started to tremble. Perhaps the substance he “consumed” earlier helped him in his fervor.

Everyone was mesmerized by the magic of his performance and the rhythm of his chants. The focus drifted away from Krishṇaṉ the patient; Kāḷiappar had become the center of attention.

Suddenly, Krishṇaṉ launched into a bout of uncontrollable coughs. Panicking, Poṉṉammāḷ scooped him up towards her chest.

Blood clots spurted from his mouth. The horror lit a fire in the mother’s guts.

Krishṇaṉ’s suffering only invigorated Kāḷiappar. He brought the chanting to a crescendo.

Krishṇaṉ’s eyes, drained from all the coughing, rested on his mother’s face and continued to stare blankly at her.

Poṉṉammāḷ let out a piercing wail like someone who had just lost all the wealth of their life.

“Aiyō! Someone impure has come here. That is what made karaiyākkaṉ’s angry glance to take my son away!!

Valliakkā joined the chorus.

- 1968 -

“Walk faster”

The Muezzin’s voice rang out above the salawat chanting.

The crowd following the coffin quickened their steps.

The coffin seemed to float in the air.

Majid was among the pallbearers.

His wife Zeinab, fondly called Zeinambu, lay lifeless inside the coffin.

Just yesterday, despite being very pregnant, she had cooked lunch for him.

‘White rice and a spicy gravy with raw mangoes and sardines,’ Majid recalled. Her cooking always tasted divine.

Earlier this morning, she had stood in the twilight as dawn broke, her full belly shining like a copper pot. That memory seemed to swell, clouding his entire field of vision.

But now.

She was a corpse on his shoulder.

But her memories stayed with him.

The house was abuzz.

“Lord Muhaideen! Only you can relieve the burden in my child’s belly.”

“Child! That is enough lamenting — go get some oil for this lamp, the house is buried in darkness.”

“There is stuff littered all over the floor. Someone’s gotta tidy them up…”

“This darned door can’t be opened and can’t be closed. It is not for nothing that people say stray dogs will wander into houses with open doors.”

Someone noisily shut the errant door.

Out in the front yard, water was boiling in a cauldron placed on top of an open fire. Steam was rising up like smoke. Coconut husks lay strewn around the fire in a circle, some burning, some not.

From time to time, a moan or a sob escaped the house.

Majid’s stomach churned.

“Dear God, Please relieve my wife’s burden…”

“Gazza is here,” someone announced the arrival of the village midwife.

“Do you know how much trouble we had, trying to locate you?”

“What to do, thampi — we can’t go to the hospital these days, can we? If our fate is to die, we will die at home.”

“They might again inject us with poison over there! No one should even talk about going to the hospital.”

“Since the troubles started, no one’s been going to the hospital. That’s why the midewife’s doing a roaring business!”

“The going rate is three hundred rupees for delivering a baby. What am I supposed to sell, to find that kind of money!”

The women gathered on the veranda to gossip.

Inside —

“Make way, let’s see,” Gazza ignored all the chatter and walked towards the pregnant woman. She felt the woman’s belly and appeared to have made a decision.

“Go fetch Mansur. The baby will arrive only if we give her an injection.”

“Thampi! Get going,” Majid’s mother-in-law pleaded.

Majid’s bicycle rolled forward like a ball on the so-called “gravel road,” which hadn’t seen any gravel for over a decade.

Mansur’s clinic was gradually morphing into a real hospital. Each neighboring village had turned into a sort of a ward for a different kind of disease.

Competition was fierce.

“Look here! Mansur, the guy who has built a hospital in your village, was just an errand boy in Abdul Rahman’s hospital in our village. He went to school only till the eighth grade. Now look at him playing doctor!”

But people from Mansur’s neighborhood who visited the village were stunned with amazement.

“Mansur is even in the tooth-extraction business now. He has brought a large dentist’s chair and a big pair of pliers from Colombo. He has also learned to perform minor operations.”

People began singing Mansur’s praises.

But they looked past the fact that Mustafa’s wife went blind in her right eye after Mansur’s eye treatment. They ignored that the co-operative store manager was left permanently disabled after Mansur stitched it up. No one whispered about how Mr. Hussain developed cancer in his mouth after Mansur tried to extract his tooth, and died in Maharagama Cancer Hospital.

Majid decided that he could trust Mansur.

As if he was a waiter at a restaurant, one of the hospital attendants came up to Majid to announce, “There are just four people ahead of you. So just wait.”. He was holding a spoon used to mix medical concoctions, stained with multiple colors.

Majid sat on one corner of the bench.

“Ah.. oooh.. My God!”

“Be quiet and hold tightly to the chair. I am going to pull your tooth out.”

That was followed by the sound of a tooth dropping into an enamelled metal kidney tray.

“Thampi! Take these pills for two days. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, come by for an injection. That would be a hundred and fifty rupees, altogether.”

The boy handed two yellowed notes, and received his change.

Majid went in next.

“Ah.. come on in. How is it going with your wife?”

“Her water broke in the morning, but the baby hasn’t come yet.”

“Who is the midwife? Is it our Gazza?”

“Yes.. yes!”

Mansur handed his medical bag to Majid.

“People inside the house, come outside. The doctor is on his way.”

A bevy of women pushed themselves out of the house.

The stink of the kerosene lamp and the human body odour probably added to the suffering of the patient within.

Gazza the midwife was urging the pregnant woman to push.

“Get me the hot water,” the doctor yelled at the people standing around the patient. Moments later, the medicine in the syringe descended on its way into the patient’s body.

“The blood pressure is at 260, and her fever has reached 104. She needs a saline drip.”

These were his usual words to reassure his patients.

He placed a pestle across the roof beam and hung the saline container from it.

Everything went like clockwork.

Within thirty minutes, a pint of saline had made its way into Zeynambu’s body.

A sense of calm descended on the midwife and those crowding around her.

But Zeynambu was still suffering in pain.

“The baby will soon arrive.”

Majid’s heart imagined a baby boy.

Dusk fell.

“What kind of baby?”

“A baby boy. But the umbilical cord hasn’t dropped down yet.”

“It seems the mother has now caught a severe cold, too!”

The house of childbirth felt like a house of funerals. The crowd would not disperse.

Majid brought the other doctor in town.

“Thampi! Don’t worry yourself. Hurry and take her to the hospital. It is good if the Medical Officer on duty can see her right away.

This doctor had a kind heart.

“Who is going to go there? That is a hospital for Tamils. It is full of Tamil Tiger militants. He doesn’t know anything. You go get Mansur, and let’s try another injection.” Gazza chased Majid out onto the street.

“Thampi! Listen to me. The baby was born four hours ago, but the umbilical cord has not broken apart yet. The mother’s body might get poisoned. You must get her to the hospital right away!”

“Half-a-day has passed since the baby was born. The baby is being fed just sugar water. The mother cannot yet breastfeed her.”

Majid felt like his head was going to explode.

He went to the three-way junction to hail a taxi, loaded the mother and baby into it, and rushed towards the hospital. He mumbled something to the guard at the entrance in his half-baked Sinhala. The car sped into the hospital.

“What the heck! Why have you brought a corpse here? Muslims have no sense..”

Majid shrank into himself in shame.

When the woman at the reception finished cursing him, she went over to the Medical Officer to tell him about the new patient. The MO rushed to the patient, concern and anxiety dripping from his face.

“Who brought this patient?”

“It is me, sir!” said Majid.

“Is it your wife? Why didn’t you bring her earlier? Her body has already been poisoned. What can I do now!”

The doctor’s face betrayed his helplessness.

“The Red Cross jeep left for Polonnaruwa just two hours ago. If you had come earlier, I could have sent her in that Jeep.”

His voice trailed off.

Majid carried his wife back to the taxi. His mother-in-law Sulaiha rātā assisted him.

“This is why I didn’t want to come here,” she mumbled.

“Shut up! I shouldn’t have listened to you ignorant folks.”

The car sped back home. As it crossed the army camp at the six-mile post, Majid’s wife Zeynambu’s arms and legs started to flail.

Her wound started to bleed again.

As the taxi approached the sentry post at Punanai, Zeynambu’s eyeballs rolled up behind her eyelids.

She fell down onto her mother’s lap like the decapitated head.

“My daughter! Did you go away, leaving all of us behind…” the old woman’s wail was shrill.

1991

Hmm! These are supposed to be great men!

But their deeds are not that of great men. Otherwise, they would not do as they please… evidently, they are big thugs. But who do they show their thuggery to. To the poor who have nothing.

She was a young woman.

My blood boils when I think of what she has to put up with this in this world from the day she was born to this day.

She grew up with no one to lend a hand. Now they take exception to her morality.

Whether she ekes out a living or not, once these bigwigs pass judgement, there is no appeal.

If four blind men cast an accusation, another ten ignorant men believe what they hear.

After all, what sin did she commit?

These bigwigs resort to all sorts of trickery to gain their wealth. But they cannot stand what she had to do to quell her hunger.

They talk about equality. What is the point of talking about something that will not put food on the plate?

No… no.

They turned everything to suit their needs.

At the end, equality bears the brunt. They said she was a young, unmarried girl.

They bend over backwards to serve the whims of the big wigs and the faso. But they have no patience with her.

What could she do?

Is she the only young, unmarried woman in the village?
 
 The chairman’s daughter is also young and unmarried!

But they are blind to all that.

They have the entire range of honorary titles to give the cover — the hājiyār, the justice of the piece, the maraikkār.

Yes, she is young and unmarried. But don’t the young and unmarried get hunger pangs?

The first thing they should have done is to remove her hunger before deigning to pass judgement on her behavior. How is this justice?

What petty crime did she commit to induce these bigwigs into throwing their weight around?

Do they know what justice is? If they knew, would they do what they did?

Every evening, the chairman’s daughter also parades through this street.

That was a sight to behold. Subhanallah! Her back is bare like the stem of a banana tree. From the front, her nipples are struggling to break free. She struts around exposing her bare belly that looks like a cucumber. These lords and masters are blind to all this.

Yet, they are thought to be mumin, true believers. But —

They could not tolerate the fact that she was struggling to put food on her plate without begging anyone else for support.

Scoundrels!

Apparently, she committed the sin of wearing a tunṭuppuṭavai, a short shawl worn on top of a blouse.

Vatti Moosa hājiyār’s wife complained yesterday.

Just last week, I saw her going to the carnival, wearing a nylon saree, advertising all her wares.

This is all a show of hoor al-Ayn — the heavenly virgins — for the pious bigwigs!

But when this girl went out wearing only a tunṭuppuṭavai in order to earn a living to support herself and her poor mother, they complain about harām.

A fine job with harām and halāl! It was the injustice meted out yesterday by Mustafa hājiyār.

But did you know that last month, his own son was caught with a Sinhala girl in Colombo. They beat him and broke his hand.

But people in the village were told that the hājiyār’s son broke his hand playing ball.

In a way, that is true. He did play ball.

Yesterday, the devout hājiyār who had made a pilgrimage to Mecca, the right-hand man of the member of parliament, saw it fit to break up all the pots and pans the girl was carrying on her head.

He grabbed her by the hair and twisted it until she screamed in pain.

Chī! What a disgrace!

You woman! In the guise of selling clay pots and pans, you are going to corrupt all our innocent young men. Let us smash your pots and pans!

This is heresy! That too, from the mouth of that fatso, a hājiyār who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. It is embarrassing even to talk about it. But for all this, during the last election campaign, his elder sister’s sons were gallivanting around with girls in short skirts.

How they cover up their own stink!

The poor have no justice. Today, she did not even come to the market.

Yes, two souls will go hungry today.

The bigwigs do not care about this tragedy.

May they rot in hell!

1968

Māntarāṟu river rampaged with full ferocity, like a stampede of elephants in musth.

Manikkam’s eyes were fixated on the treacherous maelstroms appearing here and there on the river’s surface, only to disappear again. He shook himself from his reverie, securely tied the basket of betel leaves onto his head and waded into the river.

Summoning all his strength to his forearms, he swam forward, pushing the river water behind with his arms. A giant maelstrom suddenly materialized beside him, throwing him off balance.

“Murukā!” he gasped, calling out to his favorite deity. The exclamation must have given him a new impetus; he reached the far shore of the river in just four strokes.

He panted, his collarbones straining with effort. Collapsing onto the sandy beach, he removed the towel from around his waist, wrung out the water, and dabbed his face and head with it.

Carefully, he removed the basket of betel leaves from his head. The leaves in the basket had become moist, along with the tobacco and lime. Although he found the mixture disgusting, he helped himself to a mouthful and began chewing.

After a brief respite, he stood up, wrung the towel once more, and draped it around his shoulders. The roads, drenched in the torrential rain, lay listlessly like a leather belt chewed up by a dog.

As if that were not enough, the roads were scarred with ruts left behind by bullock-cart wheels.

Rough stones and gravel pricked his bare soles.

‘My Lord! When do I get to go home?’ he thought, as images of his wife and tiny tots flashed across his mindscape.

As he climbed up onto the road at Mookkar-stone junction and started walking downhill, he could hear the goods train rumbling along at a distance.

He quickened his stride.

The rice-paddy field lay shrouded in the embrace of the dark night’s monster.

“Dēy! Who’s there?” he mumbled as he bumped into the figure that emerged from the darkness.

“Aaa! Is that our Mustafa kākkā? Where are you off to at this ungodly hour, kākkā?” he asked, his voice drawling, betraying his exhaustion.

“Māṇikkan! I am heading to Mylavettuvan. Yesterday, I forgot my umbrella at Abdul Hameed’s store. But leave that aside, how is the water situation on the river? Is it hectic?”

“Don’t ask. Looks like this storm is intent on destroying us. The river’s running riot. I don’t think the weather is going to let up soon.”

“No kidding. It has been coming down for three months. The blasted sky. This week, we’re planning to hold a kantūri ceremony in the name of the Uchchivadakkal avuliyā saint.”

A blinding bolt of lightning flashed on the horizon as if to put a full stop to their conversation, It made Māṇikkam blink involuntarily. Moments later the noise from that corner of the sky sounded as if the sky was collapsing over there.

The thunder drowned out Mustafa kākkā’s words. Māṇikkam resumed his brisk walk.

Like a bewildered damsel, the moon submitted itself to the menacing dark nimbus clouds.

A rooster crowed in the distance, immediately joined by a few more.

‘It will be dawn by the time I get home,’ thought Māṇikkam as he stood at the gates of the pōdiyār, his landowner boss.

“Who’s there? Is that you, Māṇikkam?” the pōdiyār called out. Even in the grogginess of the rainy season morning, his ears recognized Māṇikkam by his voice. He retrieved a bunch of keys from under his pillows and opened the portico door. The flashlight in his hands lit up the ground around Māṇikkam’s feet.

“How is it going, Māṇikkan? What’s the river like? Has the threshing yard been flooded?” The pōdiyār got right to the point.

In the shade of the faint light, Māṇikkam gaped at the pōdiyār’s face displaying an eagerness to get the threshing started forthwith.

Māṇikkam felt a certain sultriness tinged with a nameless pain sprout within him.

After all, he was the one who planted the seeds!

“The field is under ankle-deep water. No one is going to get any threshing done any time soon,” his voice dripped with frustration and resentment.

“That’s true. Where is the gun?”

Māṇikkam felt as if he had been bitten by a cobra. His tongue refused to move off the roof of his mouth.

“I left it on the shed.”

The pōdiyār’s hand slapped his cheek hard.

“You stupid mongrel, don’t you have any sense? You son of a bitch!” The pōdiyār’s screams roused his wife from her slumber.

Through the slightly ajar portico door, she gaped at her husband and Māṇikkam and turned her gaze towards the kitchen. For some reason, she did not like that at that moment her husband was fuming at Māṇikkam.

Māṇikkam was more than just the forester for Mookkan pōdiyār. He was privy to every aspect of the pōdiyār’s life. The pōdiyār’s dear son was a mere tot when Māṇikkam came to work as a forester. Very soon, the boy was going to be a father himself. The intervening twenty-two years seemed like just twenty-two days as far as Māṇikkam was concerned.

Whenever the pōdiyār exploded with anger, he would grab the nearest farm implement to vent his anger on Māṇikkam’s body.

He lost track of the various weapons that he had had to face — -yokes, garden poles, spade handles. But he would forget the beatings before the wounds even healed.

Māṇikkam had such a big heart. But no matter how hard he worked, the pōdiyār’s nature never let him be satisfied with Māṇikkam’s work. Thinking about Māṇikkam and the gun made the pōdiyār even more incensed, his face red, ready to explode.

“Let’s grab an umbrella and head to the market. Last night’s downpour may have washed away the harvest.”

Mookkan pōdiyār walked ahead, trying to position his body within the cover of his umbrella. Just as he set foot on the street, his right-hand man, Avakkan pōdiyār suddenly materialized beside him.

“Pōdiyār. Let’s trundle over to Port Puliyadi to see what the floods look like.” Mookkan pōdiyār’s nostrils flared in response.

“So, what are we to do after seeing what the floods look like? Are we going to erect a canopy to cover the sky?”

Avakkan pōdiyār lifted the bottom hem of his sarong and ticked it around his waist so that the sarong hugged his knees. Then he took the towel hanging on his shoulder and wrapped it around his head.

As they turned a corner, they saw the river foaming and bubbling, as bundles of rice-paddy sheaves floated away on the fast-moving water.

“Chē! This darned rain! Each of those bundles is carrying away four liters of rice paddy. This rainy season, each liter would’ve fetched at least fifteen rupees!” The anguished voice betrayed the deep frustration.

For the rest of the day, dark clouds held the area in their tight embrace, blurring the line between day and night.

From the nooks and crannies of the village, tears and moans slowly rose as worries about stranded husbands and sons took hold.

Little cloth bundles filled with spare coins and raw rice began to hang from roof trusses, as offerings pleading for the safe return of loved ones.

The incessant rain continued for two whole days.

On the third day, a motorboat tore through the floodwaters toward the fields, carrying some village bigwigs.

Mookkan pōdiyār sat in the boat enveloped by a deep sorrow.

For two whole days, his heart writhed in agony, like a fish out of water.

“Where did Māṇikkan go? Lord, save him!” Like him, every pōdiyār on the boat was silently praying to their own gods. A sudden maelstrom appeared, dragging the boat toward a massive terminalia tree and bringing it to a halt beneath its tangled foliage. The boat shuddered as it came to a stop.

Overhead, just within reach, was a sight that transfixed their eyes.

Māṇikkam’s body swayed gently, hanging upside down from a branch.

His skin was mottled with white sores. The eye sockets were empty — fish must have gotten to them already.

Above the corpse, a two-barreled gun, secured to a branch with a towel, pointed toward them as if targeting them.

1976

“Katheeja!”

“Hmm.”

She paused from chopping striped eel catfish and turned toward him under the pretext of sharpening her knife.

Even the other night, yearning for a life to take hold within her belly, she submitted her naked body and soul to him. The memory singed his heart like the sparks that flew from the knife as it made contact with the whetstone.

“Look here. This time, as soon as the rice paddy threshing at Madhurangundu is finished, let’s make a pilgrimage to Hayat Nabi’s holy mausoleum at Kataragama.”

The anguish in his words blended with their rhythm.

The thin saree that separated joy from suffering had a tear. Having seen his masculinity through that tear made her resolute. Sparks flew from her gaze.

“Why are you glowering?”

“No, after all those five-prayers-every-day and entire Friday nights at the mosque, it seems we are going to Kataragama now!”

Her words were punctuated by derisive laughter.

Anger blinded Ahmed’s eyes.

“Bitch! How dare you! Where did you learn to talk like that?” Katheeja finished cutting the fish and stood up to wash her hands. Only when she was drying her hands using the top of her saree did she realize that her husband was waiting for a response.

“From you,” a derisive smile accompanied this feisty response to hit him with its full force.

His slap across her cheek jolted her, sharp and sudden, like an electric shock. Her eyes welled up.

Ahmad stared blankly into the silent void before him.

Clouds of morning mist hung motionless as though lost in meditation. His glance roamed across the sky and searched for the moon…

On the edge of the western horizon the reflection of the crescent moon was searching for its shine.

An ancient tamarind tree stood to the west of the farmer’s shed, enveloped by the humming of its resident crow pheasants.

He was focused on the task of irrigating the bed of saplings.

He gathered up the thick semi-cylindrical barks hanging from the sapling guard pole and made his way towards the well.

The satisfaction of having irrigated twenty-thousand saplings, before dawn crept up to swallow the retreating darkness, made him crave for a cup of tea.

Despite blowing on the wood-burning stove with all his might, he could not get the fire to catch. Smoke crept into his eyes, making them smart and igniting a fire of memory in his heart. The rope of memories, soaked with his emotions, stiffened, its frayed strands jutting out like rigid spikes.

Her image appeared in his heart, shimmering like a bouquet of flowers adorned with morning dew.

In the very next moment, his heart hardened and turned bitter.

Her eyelids batted furiously, her lips quavered, and her eyes turned red.

She always obediently acquiesced to him. But that day, the elegance of her newfound independence gave her a certain ferocity.

“Why don’t you abandon this infertile woman and find another?”

Her words were tinged with frustration. Ahmad barged into the house and yanked open the wooden cabinet with unusual force. Sarees and property deeds scattered in all directions.

“Here you go, all the riches your parents gave us. Goodbye.” He got onto a train right away. That was almost three months ago. He got a job with a Sinhala farmer in his chili plantation. The farmer grew fond of Ahmad’s hard work. Occasionally he would offer Ahmad a drink to show his appreciation. But Ahmad always stepped back. “Boss, it is enough that you give me the wages my work deserves.In my religion, it is a sin to even touch what is forbidden.”

“Oh come on Ahmad,” the farmer would say, “all your Muslim bigwigs eat and drink everything nowadays! We are all the same, aren’t we?” as he gulped down his glass of coconut arrack.

Ahmad felt queasy. But his consistent refusal only made his Boss respect him even more. Ahmad quickly became one of his trusted employees.

Ahmad’s thoughts dwell on how the trust he placed on the prospect of parenthood was shattered.

Katheeja’s captivating beauty filled his imagination. He could never take his eyes off her exquisitely sculpted breasts and her voluptuous body. She, in turn, would melt in his gaze and give herself unto him, as they would become one.

But fate had different ideas. Their marital bliss had a flaw. Her beautiful belly never enjoyed the pride of being pregnant. In their decade of wedded life,he spent every waking moment appealing to God. He sought a remedy for his impotence by devoting himself to the mausoleums of saints and their teachings.

He made pledge after pledge. As a result, his herd of calves and his flock of chickens dwindled rapidly. Although he continued his efforts relentlessly, they bore no fruit.

But he did not lose faith in the power of pledges.

After sipping his tea slowly and taking tiny bites of a sweet between sips, he loosened the long underwear around his waist and waded into the river.

The river surged forward with force, roaring like a stampede of disoriented buffalos. The infant sun slowly rose in the east, its gentle rays eager to stretch across the emerald carpet of the land, growing stronger and harsher as the day unfolded.

He held his nose to dip into the cold water. When he raised his head again, his body could feel the memory of Katheeja. For three months, he was in the iron grip of those memories, his mind throbbed like the dismembered tail of a gecko caught in a trap.

He hastened to finish his bath and return to the farmer’s shed. With his right hand, he kneaded the old rice, softened overnight in water, with buffalo curd, shaping it into small balls that he popped into his mouth. They slipped down his throat as smoothly as river water.

“How is it going, thampi! Aren’t you going back home? The festival is tomorrow. I hear that Bulamir Sahibu is going to stage a play by the stream.” Ahmad raised his eyes from his plate when he heard Vilāvadi Yunus kākkā’s question.

“For people like us, money in the pocket is what counts as a festival,” replied Ahmad and without waiting for a response, pushed a footstool towards Yunus kākkā.

He picked up another plate for Yunus kākkā, ladled some rice onto it, and heaped yogurt on top. The yogurt sat like a little white mountain atop the rice.

“You are right, Ahmad. Your wife came by the house yesterday. She must have come to inquire after you. But she didn’t broach the subject.”

“I couldn’t care less! Women who don’t obey their husbands deserve to be treated like that,” bristled Ahmad.

“What can the poor child do to cope with our anger?”

“Stop talking about her and talk about something else.”

“Ahmad, there is a little too much yogurt here,” continued Yunus kākkā. “My wife told me that your wife plucked all the tender mangoes from our tree. Apparently she hasn’t menstruated for three months.”

Yunus kākkā was oblivious to Ahmad. He kept on talking as he tilted his plate to drink the runny yogurt remaining on his plate.

Ahmad felt that the rice ball descending down his throat gave him a strange tingling sensation.

His thoughts flowed like a river. After a long time, his wife appeared in his mind, radiant with the glow of motherhood. She laughed joyfully. The sound seized him, gripping his thoughts. Tears welled up and splashed onto his body.

His boss, Dias, the Sinhala farmer, waddled towards him, breaking his reverie.

“How are you? Aren’t you going home for your festival? Here, take this fifty rupees — go home, and come back soon.”

Ahmad stuffed the money into his pocket. He attached a sickle to the pole and headed towards the tamarind tree at the head of the plantation.

The tamarind fruits tinkled in the wind. He imagined the tinkle of the triumphant laughter of his wife joining in.

As he filled the palmyrah leaf basket with tamarind fruit, he made a mental note to look for wood-apples as well.

Determined to catch the ten o’clock train, his legs found the vigor and pride of a twenty-year-old.

1970

Milky white light burst forth from the full moon. The light reflected off her face.

She was sitting on the coconut tree stump in the front yard, her hands hugging her knees, eyes fixated on the moon,

Was she crying?

Tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down, like a string of pearls rolling down her cheeks. She lifted the edge of her saree to wipe them away.

That coconut tree stump was the throne of her domain. She came out to sit on it as the sun descended behind Kaṇṇākkāṭu and the moon leapt up to take its place. Since then, she did not take her eyes off of the majestic moon, the velvety blue sky it was swimming in, and stars that twinkled on it.

She did not seem to notice the gentle breeze that hugged her body or the beauty of the coconut leaves that swayed in the breeze like giant flabella.

She couldn’t care less about them.

When the full moon ascends the sky, she would forget the world around her. It had become second nature to her.

She became one with the moon. It became her life, they fused together.

Moonless days were lost days.

The neighbors said she was possessed. Some gossiped that she had gone mad or that mōhini ghost had taken her over.

But she was the only child of the village muezzin.

He had raised her lovingly, lavishing her with everything he could from all the money he earned at the takiya, chanting mawlid birthday prayers or the khatm fatiha prayers for the deceased.

At twelve, her body had taken on the radiant glow of a sixteen-year old. Her breasts were like ripe pomegranates which her blouse struggled to contain. Her legs, and arms shimmered with a vibrant, lively glow.

Her round eyes were wide like those of a frightened doe, but quickly lowered themselves when another gaze confronted those eyes.

There was an exquisite beauty even in that fear.

She was God’s precious gift to the muezzin.

The gift had turned into a burden.

Whenever he looked at his daughter, the muezzin felt as if his chest was going to explode.

Her hair was matted, her ankles were ringed with dirt.

From ayat al-kursi, the throne verse of the Holy Quran to manzil dua, the night prayer, he had exhausted every prayer he could think of, pleading on her behalf.

But could a parent’s heart ever rest?

Even Dr. Kugathasan, doctor-in-chief at Vāḻaichēṉai hospital had shrugged to indicate his inability to do anything about her case. That was as if even God had given up on her.

No one could diagnose her illness.

In the end, the muezzin and his wife surrendered their worries to their Maker and learned to live with them.

Her heart would revel in a nameless bliss as her eyes stared blankly at a distance. Her eyeballs would roll around like black plums in a silver pot.

In all this time, she had not ventured to answer anyone’s questions. She herself had become a question.

She was content to merely exist, along with the moon.

She and the moon had a profound relationship, a deep bond.

Within the past year, the muezzin seemed to have aged a decade.

He could no longer constrict his stomach muscles, fill his chest with air, and make the veins on his neck bulge and throb, as he belted out the adhan, the call for prayers.

His wife had chosen to live a life free of attachments. She whiled away her time in the kitchen, becoming one with the smoke and the fire, as if she had become a cooking vessel herself.

The once close-knit family of three had now become like distant poles, far apart from one another.

After the isha prayer was completed, the muezzin locked up the takiya and trudged home. As he stepped into his front yard, his gaze came to rest upon his daughter perched on the coconut tree stump.

His eyes darted back and forth between his daughter and the moon above. Her blooming lips trembled as if they were grieving, an emptiness clouded her eyes, an emptiness that turned everything into a nothingness.

His wife stood on the front steps. He turned his gaze from his daughter towards his wife.

The same confusion and anguish pervaded her eyes, too.

He went into the house and washed his hands, getting ready to eat. Nowadays, he ate only to keep body and soul together. Enjoyment of food had become a vague distant memory for him.

No one spoke. After the meal, he prepared to return to the mosque. Despite his old age and infirmity, perhaps he yearned to lay his unbearable sorrows at the doorstep of the Almighty God.

His wife saw her husband off and approached her daughter. ‘Get up dear, come and eat,’ she said.

Her maternal instincts were anguished.

Her daughter ignored the entreaty and continued staring at the moon.

Perhaps her hunger would be satiated by that sight.

Seeing her motionless daughter, she gulped down whatever food left behind by her husband and spread her bedding by her daughter’s side.

The weariness brought on by the weight of her sorrow made her fall asleep right away.

But Ameena merely sighed and continued to stare blankly at the moon.

That day was no different. As usual, Ameena was taking coffee and hoppers for her father.

The moon was shining on the western horizon.

Maiyaththupiddy lay sprawled between their house and the takiya. The landscape was filled with neem, fig, and cashew trees, along with enormous banyan trees whose countless aerial roots had driven into the ground to form natural hypostyle halls.

Ameena loved to walk through that landscape at dusk or dawn

When ummā shook her awake, she would wipe her eyes and take off, without even going by the well to do her morning chores. She would cross the jungle landscape, half walking and half running. Ismail, who lived next door, had noticed that Ameena was venturing out all alone at dawn and dusk. He was an older student at Ameena’s school.

Sometimes he followed her — but when his conscience pricked him after he had taken a few steps, he would return home and bury his face into his pillow on his mat. His feet would pounce the ground.

His mind was caught up in the tumult of his emotions running amok.

From behind the fence, his eyes would spy on that beautiful bud, overcome with the sight of her at that moment, in that situation….

Some unknown urge would raise its head within him and sharpen its claws.

She would skip and jump as she went on her way. His heart would flutter, something would fume within his chest cavity, butterflies would flutter in his stomach… He could not help panting.

He wanted to grab her, hug her, bury his face in her cheeks and neck…

His legs would give way beneath him.

That day, he resolved to follow her.

The giant cashew tree standing in the sandy clearing hugged the ground with branches spread all around it.

It was the season for cashew trees to fruit. As dawn broke, parrots and bats noisily circled the tree. As she watched a pandemonium of parrots jump from branch to branch, Ameena lost herself in a state of bliss.

She parted the low-lying branches with her feet and entered the sagging canopy of the cashew tree that looked like a tent.

She put the plate of hoppers and the flask of coffee on the ground. In the moonlight, she stood on tiptoes to pluck cashew fruits. It was then that another pair of arms emerged from the darkness to press her tender arms.

The shock rendered her immobile. He hugged her tightly, and with uncontrollable fervor, he planted kisses on her forehead and neck.

At the peak of his emotional tumult, he did not comprehend his environment or his actions.

The flock of bats slurping on cashew fruits flew away noisily.

The crows that hang around Puḷiyadithuṟrai cawed as they flew overhead.

It was like a mesmerizing dream…

The dream…. the moment… the bliss made her eyes water and her cheeks blush…

Her body swayed. The very next moment, fear was followed by a feeling of bliss….

A novel experience unfolded from within her.

He was satiated… but she felt as if she had found something she’d been searching for so long, only to have it snatched away the next moment.

As the battle of emotions bewitched her —

“Allahu akbar!” her father’s morning adhan boomed in her ears like a cannon going off.

Ismail disappeared after the adhan was heard. As Ameena emerged from within the prison of the cashew tree canopy, the moon was descending on the western horizon.

Someone heading for the morning prayers was coming that way.

A faceless terror grabbed hold of her. Her hair in disarray, she dropped everything and ran home.

When his daughter did not show up as expected, the muezzin fretted and rushed home.

There, sitting on the front porch, Ameena stared blankly at him.

She said nothing.

After that incident, her entire life took a bizarre turn.

Sometimes she would cry out loud. The next moment she would clap her hands and laugh out loud. On full moon days, she would make herself look pretty. But then for days on end, she would be an unwashed walking corpse.

No one could guess what she would do next. A year passed by this way. But that day, she had been particularly engrossed in staring at the moon.

Ameena’s ummā lay next to the coconut tree stump, fast asleep like a piece of log herself.

The fourteenth waxing crescent loomed large as it moved along its trajectory across the sky.

As if she suddenly thought of something, Ameena grabbed the copper water pot and went towards the well in the backyard. Her glance involuntarily shot over the boundary fence towards the yard of the house next door.

She saw the silhouettes of two figures that looked as if they were glued to the coconut tree.

They were in a tight embrace.

The monsoonal wind that blew from the riverside tamarind tree slapped her across her cheek and went on its way eastwards.

Perhaps they saw her, because suddenly they separated.

Ameena’s heartbeat fast, like a winged bird.

She dropped the water pot with a thud and ran back to the coconut tree stump at lighting speed.

The moon had set on the western horizon. The crows whizzed past overhead just as they did on that day.

All the scenes that transpired on that fateful day, within the cover of the cashew tree’s thick foliage, raised their heads again in her mind and danced as if they were in a cosmic frenzy.

Suddenly, all the men in her life were caught up in the whirlwind within her mind.

But he — Ismail — stood apart from the rest.

He pointed at her and guffawed.

That morning during the twilight hours as she carried coffee and hoppers for her vāppā… he had embraced her and planted a thousand kisses on her and toppled her onto the ground… sand grains stuck to her thighs like white blossoms.

Her heart was heavy as she remembered.

An unfamiliar thirst sprouted from the pit of her stomach, and swirled within her chest, in her throat…

Memories lashed on to the far shore and returned…

She went into the house.

She put on her favorite yellow long skirt and the verdant green blouse and draped the blue tāvaṇi across her chest and over her shoulder. She looked at herself in the mirror and combed her hair into place.

As she returned to stand by her sleeping mother, the muezzin’s booming adhan enveloped the entire region, allāhu akbar.

That smell, her first sensation of a man’s smell that forced its way into her nostrils as Ismail kissed her repeatedly on her neck and forehead, the smell that she opened her throbbing nostrils wide to inhale fully… her body prickled with goosebumps.

The adhan filled her ears again with its sweetness. She glanced at the direction whence it came. She saw the moon setting in the distant horizon.

Something came over her.

She started walking towards the adhan.

Now she crossed the front steps of her house, crossed the road, and was walking along the road.

1969

How terrible!

“Sundaram was hit by a car near the post office. It ran over him, leaving him severely injured and unrecognizable…”

Murthy stopped listening and took off like a bolt of lightning toward the scene of the accident. By the time he arrived, a large crowd had gathered. He pushed through to the center but could hardly bear what he saw.

“Aiyō aṇṇā!” his wail shook the entire neighborhood.

His beloved brother — his only brother — lay in a pool of blood. Just five minutes earlier, he had left home saying, ‘I’m going to the post office, I have an important letter to mail.’ Now, he lay there, motionless, speechless, lifeless…

Yes, he was dead. Nothing more than a corpse in the middle of the street.

He who was here yesterday was gone today. He who is here today may be gone tomorrow. Life is merely an illusion, nothing but a web of lies.

Murthy was shocked into philosophizing.

—

Friends and family sobbed uncontrollably, unable to hold back their grief. Sundaram’s sudden demise had shocked and saddened everyone. It was no surprise that the loss of a good man caused so much pain and grief.

Murthy could not hold his grief back either. Tears, tears, everywhere.

‘My dearest brother is no more. My brother, who sacrificed his comforts to ensure a comfortable life for me, whose only wish was that I should live a happy life, has left me, our family, and this world itself.’

Murthy could not bear his grief.

‘How he struggled to give me an education! What obstacles he faced to help me find a job. He paid the price of sacrificing his comforts only because he wanted to see me succeed.’

Choking back his sobs, he glanced at what was laid out on the desk. He had been handed the items that were in Sundaram’s pocket at the time of the accident.

A wallet, a pen, and a letter.

Sundarams had been using that pen and the wallet for a long time.

What was this?

— Murthy was surprised to notice that the letter was addressed to a woman.

Was he corresponding with a woman? Did he, too, have a romantic liaison like everyone else? Cheche! It can’t be anything of that sort.

Something in Murthy’s heart urged him to read the letter.

He opened it and started to read.

“My Darling Sarasvathi…,” Murthy was taken aback by the opening.

‘Aṇṇā had a lover?’

Overcome with disbelief and shock, he read the entire letter:

My Darling Sarasvathi

I bring you good news. The goal that made me postpone our wedding — my life’s goal — is finally on the verge of fruition. You may recall that I vowed to marry only after completing my responsibility of educating my brother Murthy and helping him find a job. That has come to pass. He is about to start his new job on the first of next month.

I’ll visit your home next week to meet your mother and ask for your hand. We’ll arrange the wedding right after that. You can wait, can’t you?

I understand the risk in delaying our wedding, and I feel your pain every moment. It’s true we made a mistake in a moment of weakness, but I share that responsibility. You trusted me, and I will never abandon you.

Saras, don’t worry about anything. We’ll be married before the truth comes out, and no one will judge us after that.

Yours

Sundaram.

Murthy reread the letter countless times. His surprise at discovering that his brother had a lover instantly gave way to grief as he learned of Sundaram’s resolve not to marry until Murthy had graduated and secured a job.

Che! Sundaram never had the good fortune to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving his dream. His life was taken before he could see his brother start a job.

Murthy felt there was something hidden in the letter that he did not quite grasp. But no matter how many times he read it, he could not figure out what it was.

He wondered how Saraswathi would grieve when she heard of Sundaram’s passing. How could he summon the courage to deliver such shocking news? Yet, he knew he must.

He recognized the village name in the letter’s address as the location of the school where Sundaram had been teaching until the previous month, when he transferred to a school in his own village.

Who was that woman?

Perhaps their liaison began at school?

The riddle seems to be slowly unraveling.

Murthy had heard that Sundaram was a lodger at someone’s house while he worked at that village school. He had eaten and slept in that house. He had heard that the house belonged to an elderly widow whose husband had recently passed away. The widow had a daughter.

Could it be her?

Murthy guessed that it might be her. Whoever it was, they needed to be informed of Sundaram’s death. Murthy thought it only proper that he himself went there to deliver the bad news.

He located the house i and stepped in through the front entrance. There was no one about.

When he called out for a second time, he heard a feminine voice respond, “Who is there?” Presently a young woman appeared, dazzling Murthy.

What a beauty!

Beauty had taken refuge within that woman. She was very attractive, despite not wearing any makeup. A certain indescribable charm radiated from her calm, understated presence.

Murthy recovered somewhat to say, “I am Sundaram master’s brother,” and stuttered, unable to continue.

Her eyes lit up, “Is that so? Come in, come in,” she invited him in and showed him to a chair.

Murthy sat down, still unsure how to break the news. All the preparation he had done for this moment evaporated instantly. He was sweltering.

How could he begin this conversation? He was at a loss.

Should he say, ‘The one to whom you gave your heart has forsaken you’ or ‘The one who was to enrich your life had his life taken away from him’ or ‘The hands that you hoped would hold you have been incinerated’?

What could he say? How could he say it?

She must have noticed Murthy’s discomort. She started the conversation herself, “Sundaram master has told me a lot about you. Even though he was staying with us for such a long time, it is only today that you found your way here,” she laughed.

‘It is not as if I am making a pleasant social call today. I bear horrible news. You are laughing now, but in a minute, you are going to wail,” Murthy lamented silently.

He had no option but to say something. In a shaky voice, he asked, “Are you Sarasvathi?”

“Yes, at least you know my name! Did your brother tell you that?”

Murthy’s heart howled again. He steadied himself. He must tell her the news.

“I came to tell you something, but I don’t know how to begin,” he hesitated.

“Don’t worry, just say it out loud,” she encouraged him.

‘Would she say this if she realized the horror of the news I bring? Aiyō, your grief is going to overwhelm you!’

“My brother… Sundaram.. He …last Saturday … he passed away,” Murthy spat out the words in fits and starts.

She reacted exactly as he had feared. Before he could even finish speaking, she let out a scream unlike any he had ever heard.

Somehow Murthy managed to tell her everything that had happened.

She sobbed, sniffed, screamed, and wailed.

Murthy sobbed along with her. He stopped grieving for his brother and began grieving for her.

They drowned in tears.

After what seemed like an eternity, Murthy handed her Sundaram’s last letter. When she heard that Sundaram met with the accident on his way to post this letter, her grief only became deeper.

She read the letter and sighed. Staring into nothingness, she moaned, “He has left me, but, but…”

Murthy felt that she was holding something back.

“But what?” he asked.

“But I can never forget him. It will be a symbol of our eternal love, that symbol…”

“What do you mean?” Murthy stuttered.

“That symbol is being formed…”

“Tell me in a way I can understand…”

“In… my.. belly…”

Murthy felt as if the sky collapsed in on him. He regarded her in shock.

Now he could read between Sundaram’s lines in a way he hadn’t been able to before.

His brother’s flesh and blood is growing within her womb.

What now?

“Does anyone else know about this?” asked Murthy.

“No one. Not even my mother knows about our relationship. Your brother lived here like a member of the family. Therefore neither my mother nor anyone else suspected anything…”

Her words were caught up in her throat.

She was silent for a few moments, but continued, “But sooner or later everyone will find out…”

In his mind’s eye, Murthy could visualize that, sooner or later, her life would be destroyed, and the world would spit on her and call her a whore.

‘Must the world label her a fallen woman? Does she not deserve a promise of a future like everyone else? Can she not live like every other woman? Is there no salvation for her?

Murthy closed his eyes and immersed himself into a deep trance, oblivious to his surroundings.

Silence reigned for a long time.

A profound silence.

‘There is a way. There is only one way in which she can find salvation.’

From some corner of his heart, a voice said, ‘Murthy, your brother Sundaram lived for you. Your happiness was his happiness. He dedicated his life for you. He even postponed the chance to wed his beloved for your sake, and lost that happiness forever. For him to rest in peace, for the sake of your dear brother, wouldn’t you do this?’

He opened his eyes as though he had reached a firm resolution, and his face shone with an extraordinary light.

He looked at her with unshakable resolve and, in a quavering voice, said, ‘I’ve come to a decision after careful thought. If you don’t object…’

“If I don’t object…?”

“I want to marry you myself.”

She was stunned and could not speak.

Silence. A long silence.

She struggled to turn her tumultuous emotions into words. Deep within her chest, words tripped over one another and festered.

Murthy looked at her face.

He could not tell if what he saw on her face was joy or surprise or shock or wonder.

After a long lapse, she started speaking again.

“Have you really thought this through?”

“Yes, I have. As far as I am concerned, it is a decision cast in stone now.”

Again, silence.

She said, “You are selfless.”

He looked into the distance, smiling to himself, and muttered, “More than my brother?”

***

Everyone was aghast at Murthy’s behavior. Not even a whole month had passed since Sundaram died. Murthy started his new job only a week ago. Yet, he had started planning his wedding. Who would not be surprised at such behavior?

People could not make sense of how Murthy could go from uncontrollable grief at Sundaram’s funeral to seeking the earthly pleasure of a wedding so soon.

No one could understand why he wanted to take on responsibility for another human being, even before he had drawn his first salary, even before he had set his finances on a firm footing.

But it did not matter what the world thought of it. Everything happened the way Murthy had wanted. Without any traditional wedding rituals, without the bustles and banquets of wedding ceremonies, Murthy wed Sarasvathi in the company of a handful of relatives.

He felt relieved to have shut the world’s mouth preemptively.

***

The baby was born.

Everyone — except Murthy and Sarasvathi — worried about the potential for a premature baby to run into health complications.

Everyone thought the baby looked just like Murthy.

That was no surprise, was it?

The baby sat on Sarasvathi’s lap, waving its tiny arms at Murthy and smiling beatifically.

It seemed to want to tell them, ‘I, too, know the secret of my birth, not just you two!’

Sarasvathi lifted her head to look at Murthy.

Her glance was filled with wordless gratitude saying, ‘You are selfless.’

Darkness smothered the sky in clumps. It seemed as if the vanguard of the night was spreading its tentacles while murmuring a lullaby song under its breath.

“Chē! After all, I shouldn’t have been so late.”

The thorn of guilt pricked at her heart. She was sweating profusely. She stepped over the threshold at the main entrance into the front yard and glanced at the hut. Having acquiesced to the beatific silence of the night, it lay there listlessly, like the life of a widow.

The passionate, youthful feelings that had lain dormant all this time broke through the sentiments of pity and snowballed into something greater.

‘At least for today, let this lamp be lit in the hut,’ her heart resolved.

As her footsteps drew closer, a voice stirred to life from within the hut.

“Is that you, Rāyilā?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Why so late today?”

“What can I do? How can I always come home early? Do I have a husband who’s gathered and bundled the firewood for me?”

Rāhilā snapped at him. The man who was curled up in the plain straw mat regretted asking.

He struggled to bury his hurt deep within his chest, only for it to erupt as a red-hot sigh.

Rāhilā took the edge of her saree to dab away the beads of sweat on her face. The nagging feeling that her response had been tainted with unnecessary cruelty played hide-and-seek within her.

With a sense of duty, she lit the lamp, and a dull light spread within the hut. In that light, Rāhilā’s eyes searched for the curled-up figure. It was not an unfamiliar figure. It was the figure that occupied the place of ‘Rāhilā’s husband’ for the past five years.

The wellspring was breached;

Compassion trickled forth!

‘The poor soul,’ her heart was anguished.

“Are you ok?”

The conversation they just had completely slipped from her mind. His heart became light as a feather; he was like a toddler scrambling into its mother’s lap after being punished.

“Rāyilā! I think I have a fever today. My chest feels tight, too, and I feel weak. Make me a little porridge with some broken rice.”

It took a Herculean effort for him to finish uttering these words.

Immediately, he was stricken by the thought of being on the receiving end of her sharp tongue with a retort like, ‘The Lord and Master demands porridge now, does he?’

For the past six or seven months, snapping at him no matter what he said had become second nature to Rāhilā. But today was different. Without a word, she complied with his request and began making porridge.

The clay stove caught the spark from her matchstick and began belching smoke. Rāhilā puffed up her cheeks and blew into the stove, wiping the smoke from her eyes. Her efforts were rewarded when a flame abruptly leapt up and spread.

Rāhilā’s husband thought her body shimmered like gold in the light of that little flame.

He was sitting up with his back against the hut wall, his solitary leg stretched before him.

The pain weighed heavily on his chest, making him pant.

The pillow that supported his neck and head brought him comfort, but gazing at the exquisite beauty of his wife from this new angle sprouted a thorn bush in his heart.

As the fire took hold in the stove, Rāhilā walked back into the living space of the hut. The flowery silk saree and the velvet blouse they had bought for her wedding lay abandoned in the storage box. She picked them up with newfound fondness and laid them out to air on the coir clothesline.

A soft light began to spread, heralding the rise of the crescent moon. In her heart, too, an unfamiliar dull light began to spread. Rāhilā returned to the clay stove and crouched before it. They did not exchange a single word but these two hearts often communicated more in silence than in words.

Rāhilā rinsed the rice in the arikkimilā, the metal pot for cleaning rice, to remove gravel, then poured it into the pot on the stove, and began mixing it.

He could not take his eyes off Rāhilā.

One cannot just introduce Rāhilā merely as a woman. She possessed the allure of a mango that had ripened on the tree amidst a cluster of others. When she smiles, it is impossible to take one’s eyes off the beautiful dimple that forms on her left cheek. He always thought she was the desert flower upon which God chose to imprint His unique stamp of beauty.

She was his cross-cousin, which meant she was an eligible match for him in a society that permitted such marriages. Beguiled by her beauty, he courted her persistently. When he finally won her hand, he felt the pride of having all the world’s riches heaped at his feet.

He felt a few inches taller, his chest fuller. As a lumberjack, when he walked to and from the jungle carrying small woven baskets full of snacks — the hallmark of a new groom — he exuded a unique majesty, like an emperor surveying the domain of his heart.

It was like the captivating light show of a rainbow, or the exquisite beauty of a water droplet shimmering like a pearl on the edge of a blade of grass… yet he was a simple, uneducated man, lacking the poetic imagination or the eloquence to describe the incredible life he had been gifted.

One day, he returned from the jungle, hobbling on his right foot. He laughed it off, saying a branch had struck his knee while he was chopping down a tree. Perhaps he believed that Rāhilā’s charming smile would be the soothing balm to heal his injury. But reality grabbed that belief by the horns and shook it mercilessly. The wound festered, dragging him to and from the Puḷiyantivu hospital for months, until his right leg was amputated, leaving him confined to the straw mat at home as a permanent patient. In the process, their meager possessions and the few pieces of gold that once glittered on her body all vanished.

Rāhilā built a hut on a plot of sandy, barren, government land and began her life, hoping to find fulfillment by being there for her husband and caring for him.

The satisfaction she once found in realizing the dreams of her youth vanished into thin air, like a dream itself. Her youthful yearnings left her feeling exposed, with a bitter taste at the back of her tongue. She wore her status as a wife like armor and joined the ranks of women who earned a living on their own by collecting and selling firewood.

This arduous life continued for a few years, withering the flower of her life, petal by petal. But today, the fangs of the problem have risen up like a giant apparition.

The porridge boiled on the stove. The events that transpired earlier that day also smoldered and spread their tentacles.

Rāhilā had gone to the water’s edge to wash up. When she returned, carrying a bundle of firewood, the horizon was decorated in crimson to bid farewell to the sun.

Her first thought was, ‘Today is the day to deliver firewood to the village headman Ali’s house.’ The thought of that house made her shiver involuntarily from embarrassment and shyness.

She threw the bundle of firewood by the kitchen and drew water from the well to quench her thirst. Just then that village headman’s driver, Karim, appeared from the direction of the garage. Over the past eight months, it had become customary for him to await her arrival, and for her to await his. They both knew this, but neither expressed it in words.

The light that shone through the gap in the open garage door painted Rāhilā in a golden hue. She squinted and asked, “Have they gone somewhere?”

“Today is their nārisā at the mosque, offering free meals to the faithful. That is why the boss and his wife are out.”

As his mouth answered mechanically, his eyes lingered on her blouse, taking in the sight of her youthful, buxom figure that the fabric struggled to contain.

The complete self-realization struck her like lightning. She regarded her own body with newfound fondness. For four years, her husband had not been able to worship this body — the body that resembled a freshly bloomed flower, made firmer and stronger by the hard daily labor…

Shyness and modesty; Fury followed instantly!

She felt that the way he was undressing her with his eyes was obscene. Yet at the same time, a certain titillation tantalizingly tickled her.

In that moment, their eyes exchanged the timeless emotions surging within them.

The ecstasy born of forgetfulness was shattered by the birth of a sudden realization.

The faint memory of her husband lying in the cottage.

“Tell the headman that I have brought the firewood. Please give me some money if you have,” she mumbled each word hesitantly.

“OK, come inside!” Karim closed the door further as he went back into the garage.

Rāhilā’s suppressed emotions, long resigned to regarding the corporeal pleasures of youth as a mere mirage, began to bubble up whenever she saw him. In the beginning, her husband’s kind face and his disability joined forces to steady her wavering resolve.

But as time went by…

Whenever she lay down with her husband, Karim’s handsome face and his constant smile began to weave through her imagination as cross threads.

Eventually, the fortress was completely breached. The silent pleasure of offering her body to Karim in her imagination had begun to pervade her entire being.

She realized that Karim was inviting her in to take advantage of this rare opportunity for them to be together alone. She followed the footsteps of his desire and entered the garage.

Inside, a beatific silence connected them. They were so close that they could feel each other’s breath. He looked at her as if overwhelmed by the urge to drink in her beauty with his eyes alone.

“Are you going to swallow me?” she teased him with a smile.

“Rāyilā! I know your situation. I tried to talk to you so many times. But today I finally got the opportunity. Tell me if you agree.”

Until now, it had been Karim’s gaze that gave her the impetus to want to escape the prison of her anguished life. Now the third person has become the second person, speaking to her directly. A desperate hope budded in her heart and slowly began to grow.

“If you promise in the name of Allah that you won’t forsake me, I will follow you.”

The words burst through her lips, surprising her.

“Rāyilā!” he exclaimed as he embraced her tightly fulfilling his long-held desire. She lost herself in his embrace, powerless to resist his hands that were moving downwards from her waist. Muffled voices from the street outside reminded them that the garage they were in was not isolated from human habitation.

“What if the headman returns abruptly?” she hesitated.

“I, too, forgot. It is indeed time for them to return. Take the money for the firewood directly from him. We don’t want to arouse any suspicion. But keep this!” He thrust a five-rupee note into her hands. She hesitated again.”

“From now on, everything I earn is for you,” he forced the rupee note into her palms. She relented and took it.

“Rāyilā! Don’t forget. I’ll wait for you by the banyan tree just as the early morning train blares its siren.”

Until now, throughout this interaction, she had remained like a motionless statue. Now she hung her head to indicate agreement. Her legs started walking away.

Rāhilā took the porridge off the fire, poured it into a bowl and began cooling it down. The siren from the paper mill blared, filling the entire area with its shrillness. Rāhilā looked at her sleepy husband and said, “Here, it is almost ten o’clock. Get up and have some porridge before you sleep…”

He slurped the porridge while leaning against the thatched coconut-leaf fence — “Rāhilā you suffer because of me. But God will not make you suffer forever. One day you will see your dawn.”

He washed his hands and curled up on his mat once again.

The oil lamp belched thick smoke. A cluster of dark clouds slowly consumed the moon, which had reached its zenith.

The mist covered everything, as if a white silk awning had been draped over the world.

Rāhilā could clearly hear the first notes of birdsong welcoming the auspicious dawn.

She went to the well to do her morning chores.

The image of Karim waiting for her by the banyan tree filled her mind, spreading like a wall-to-wall carpet.

She retrieved the flowery silk saree and velvet blouse from beneath her mat and put them on, admiring the completeness of her own beauty.

Finally, out of habit, she glanced through the gap in the door — her husband’s hands, anemic from the disease that was consuming him, lay facing upwards in desperate appeal to God.

Teardrops welled in his eyes and slithered down his cheeks like a necklace of pearls. His dry lips parted…

“My creator! Forgive the sins I committed knowingly or unknowingly and save me from damnation, Rahumān! Have mercy on my wife, relieve her from the trials and tribulations she suffers because of me. Grant a good life at least to her, Rahmān!”

Rāhilā felt unable to move, as if her feet had sunk roots into the ground.

She thought of her husband who, despite being reduced to the state of a worm squirming in the mud, still showered her with love and compassion…

A newfound courage and resolve enveloped her.

She secured the five-rupee note in a knot at the edge of her saree. If she went to the village headman Ali’s house, she needed to return it to Karim.

An old pot climbed on to the new fire she made on the stove.

1970

The sky was overcast. Kādaṉ stood on the wooden watchtower and let his eyes roam. They swiftly scanned around Kusavai lake and surfaced on the east by the orchard of Indian laurel trees. The orchard seems to be in a trance without even a leaf stirring. Even the cranes and tiny birds that would fly away at the slightest provocation, screaming bloody murder, seem to be fast asleep.

His eyes turned their gaze towards the sky. Not even a star glittered. The waning moon was bathing in the waters of the Mahāveli.

If the overcast sky would permit a drizzle soon, Kādaṉ would definitely score a hunt.

In his mindscape a herd of deer galloped away. Kādaṉ folded his arms, unfolded them again, and shook them vigorously. He turned towards Teacher:

“Teacher, get up; the morning star has risen.”

“How is it this cold? It seems it would even beat the cold spells in our Kandy town.”

“If we get a rainy season downpour here, your Kandy cannot hold a candle!” Kādaṉ said proudly.

Kandy Teacher warmed his arms and legs in the fire.

In a little while, the koṇdal wind began to blow from the east. Having let it carry away their human scent, they started circling Kusavai lake in a northeasterly direction.

Kādaṉ walked swiftly, Kandy Teacher jogging to keep up with him.

There were only two people in the village who could walk like Kādaṉ. One was Tiger Sēhu, and the other was the government functionary for the farms in the village, Nūhu.

The thorns along the way that dared to prick Kādaṉ’s soles were immediately blunted with a “snick”. The skin on his sole was taut and rigid like the skin on the neck of a fully grown sambar deer. Teacher kept running behind Kādaṉ, occasionally lifting a foot to sooth its sole being ravaged by thorns.

They both had the same thought, ‘Today we must find game meat to grill.’ Both were on the same quest. Kādaṉ resumed the conversation.

“Can I sleep just because it is night, Teacher? All day I have to herd the cows like a cow myself. In the evening, I have to go to the lake shore to catch fish for the boss — if there is no fish, I have to at least buy him some eggs cheaply. Occasionally, someone leaves town after being transferred elsewhere. On those days, I must grill them wild boar,” he hawked and spat the phlegm out.

His flashlight spotted something and focused on it. Against the pitch-black backdrop tiny green marbles glittered. ‘It is a herd of deer…’ his tongue curled inwards immediately.

“Chee! That is a just a bird, Teacher. Everyone talks about truth and justice at the beginning. As time goes by, every donkey shows its true colors. Among them Senanayake is the worst. They ogle at our women cutting grass. Our women also grin and giggle at them shamelessly,” Kādaṉ said disgustedly.

Teacher had a sudden realization.

He remembered the gossip he had heard about Kādaṉ’s wife.

‘Who knows what the truth is!’ ‘If we chatter like this, the deer will scramble! Kādaṉ must have had a little bit of Pāthamuthu rāthā’s ganja, perhaps.’ Teacher’s thoughts scrambled back into their shells like startled turtles.

“Teacher, let us warm ourselves a little at Puḷiyadipattu and circle Mōttāṉ lake. We’ll find something there.”

Teacher let out a “muh” as he shivered in the cold.

“Look Teacher, the tamarind tree has fruited. We need deer bones to cook with this tamarind,” Kādaṉ drooled at the thought.

“Dēy! Hanifā kākā, are you so cold? If you move any closer, you will be on fire yourself.”

Hanifā kākā sat up when he heard Kādaṉ’s voice. He shook his hands vigorously and alternated his hands and feet over the flames to warm up.

“Do we have any sugar? Let’s make some tea,” said Kādaṉ.

“How long since we set eyes on sugar!” exclaimed Hanifā kākā.

“Teacher! Get up. If we lounge around the fire like this, the job won’t get done,” Kādaṉ was keen to get on with the hunt.

“Kādeṉ! Go look in Mōttāṉ lake. When I was herding the cattle back home during the day, I saw that a sambar deer had been shot there. If you get lucky, don’t forget us,” Hanifā kākā rubbed his hands as he spoke. “Today, I came here because of Teacher. He is being transferred out. He is the one who taught our children the alphabet, at least. Our people didn’t even give him a farewell meal. If it had been an MP, they would have bought a couple of bottles, and roasted a wild deer.”

He slung the rifle over his shoulder and started walking, with Kandy Teacher following at a trot.

“Kādar! It is too cold. The cartilage on my nose is crying.”

“Yes, yes! Don’t make a noise,” Kādaṉ warned him as he scanned the lake shore with his flashlight.

The darkness enveloped and swallowed the rays of light. A herd of deer that jumped up and scrambled was caught in the light. The next instant the “bang!” of a gunshot shook the entire area.

The wounded deer desperately hobbled towards the cover of the bush, dragging its hooves. Teacher caught its feet and folded it, towards qibla, the direction towards Mecca.

As the lips muttered ‘Bismillah’, a knife was sunk into the deer’s neck.

After a few minutes, Kādaṉ sharpened his knife and began skinning the deer. In his hands, the knife danced over the deer’s body like an artist’s paintbrush.

“Teacher! I knew already! That mangy dog at the house by the tamarind tree is a lucky charm. If we encounter it on our way to the hunt, we will definitely succeed.”

The Teacher was panting, exhausted from carrying game meat. He was sweating profusely, despite the morning chill.

Daylight was slowly breaking.

“Teacher! Do you not have any muttāsi either? If I go home, I must have some tea, Teacher.”

“Why don’t we go to the mosque? You have to smoke the meat for us anyway.”

“I can’t, Teacher. I will go home first, give some meat to the boss, sign in on the attendance register, and will come around by about eight.”

Carrying his share of the meat and the deer’s head, Kādaṉ turned the corner by the tamarind tree.

“Teacher! Be careful. Now is the time when elephants return to the jungle,” Kādaṉ’s words focused Teacher’s mind.

As Kādaṉ neared his home in the farm’s personnel quarters, he heard something following him. It was the mangy dog from the house by the tamarind tree. It was wagging its tail vigorously.

“Come, come, let’s go home.”

The dog followed him, smacking its lips.

When he reached home, he hung the meat hook on the barbed-wire fence. He wanted to relieve himself first …

As he set foot on the veranda, the voices from within the house penetrated his ears. His heart was like the wounded deer, desperately hobbling towards the cover of the bush, dragging its hooves.

“Get up and get going. He will come soon.”

He felt as if a knife was sunk into his neck.

His stomach churned, even though it was still very early in the morning.

He hocked spit as hard as he could, and spat it out with disgust

He turned around.

There — the mangy dog from the house by the tamarind tree had savaged the meat hanging from the barbed wire fence.

1978

The intermittent shooting pain struck the lower right part of his chest. He could never predict when the pain would hit. It could come any time, even in the dead of night when he was fast asleep. The pulsating pain would last for about five minutes, leading him to despair at the meaninglessness of life, inducing him to want to cry out in pain, making him moan, “Ammā, ammā…”

But his face betrayed only a faint shadow of the invisible thread of pain. His left hand would unconsciously caress the place in his chest where the pain hit him, even as he continued to work. He might be leafing through files at the office, traveling by train or bus, watching the exquisite beauty of the evening descending on the beach; or debating his friends. Sometimes he might even smile — a smile laced with a tinge of pain.

It had been about three months since the pain started. He learned to grit his teeth and endure it until it became unbearable. After crossing his threshold for tolerance, he decided to seek a remedy. The very decision brought him joy. But, with his characteristic laziness, he did not get around to seeking treatment. Putting up with the pain seemed to stretch the days.

His friend would scold him, “Why do you suffer needlessly in this age of science? For all your pontificating, you are just lazy. You should heal yourself first before you presume to prescribe solutions for others.”

Finally, one day, all these pressures induced him to find a remedy. He remembered that it was about ten in the morning when he left home. He went on foot, walking for about a mile, the overcast sky shielding him from the harsh sun. As he walked, he observed families living in apartment buildings, children running around naked, the vegetable seller pushing his cart along, the incessant ringing of bicycle bells, the young mother on the railway station bench with a baby on her lap. These lively movements of the day filled the senses.

“Why didn’t this feeling bother me until now?”

He felt an intense shooting pain in the lower right part of his chest. He wanted to cry out loud. In three minutes, the pain subsided.

The sky cleared and the sun shone with full ferocity; the cool- drinks factory lay behind the tall wall along the street featuring a huge advertisement showing a woman drinking soda. A lush cornfield stretched between the canal and the road, where a man in a hat stood irrigating the crops.. As he drew closer, he could see beads of sweat on the man’s face. Government offices. appeared, with notice boards in all three languages. Buses rushed past. Flowers rained down from the shady trees that lined the trees.

He spotted the smartly dressed man sitting on a chair in a modest room on one side of the hospital. The man was surrounded by beakers and test tubes, and a sharp chemical odor filled the air.

With a smile, he proffered the introductory letter his friend had written for him. The man glanced through the letter and launched into the customary inquiries: about his name, village, friends, and relatives.

Then the man led him through the crowd of patients thronging the entrance to the doctor’s office and introduced him to the doctor.

“He is my relative; works for the Department of Education.”

The doctor peered at him, “What ails you?”

He peered back and answered something. He sensed a sadness that pervaded the depths of the doctor’s mesmerizing eyes, along with a compassion that felt like a warm embrace. The doctor did have a rather long nose.

The doctor looked at him again, this time with a stern expression.

“I say, do you drink a lot? Are you into the habit of drinking moonshine?”

He shook his head pitiably, “I don’t even smoke.”

“So maybe you eat a lot of meat and spicy stuff?”

“I am a vegetarian,” he responded softly.

The doctor gazed at him with disbelief, shook his head, and asked him to leave the room, but the “relative” stayed behind.

He walked out unsteadily. The shooting chest pain reappeared.

A listless baby. An old man with an incessant cough, spitting out phlegm. A young man with a pencil mustache and a bandage around his head. An exhausted pregnant woman. And some others. At a distance, two construction workers standing on a wooden plank laid across bamboo scaffoldings, stacking red bricks to construct a new floor in a building.

He was waiting by the entrance to the doctor’s office. The “relative” walked quietly towards him, looking tired. Even when he asked the “relative” about the doctor’s diagnosis, there was no clear answer. Perhaps it was not something he was supposed to know; perhaps the relative surmised that he would be distraught if he heard the news. Truth be told, he did not really care what the diagnosis was. Perhaps it was his laziness, or perhaps his aloofness from life, that made him indifferent to what would happen to him.

The next time he went to see his “relative”, he had a bit more energy. His face was clear, the tiredness in his eyes had disappeared, and his cheeks were fuller. Even his speech was softer, more elegant, and more confident.

His “relative” was surprised. Even the doctor was taken aback but tried not to show it. The doctor regarded him with those mesmerizing eyes and said, “It seems you worry a lot. Don’t worry about problems. Who doesn’t have problems?”

He remained silent, a rush of thoughts flooding his mind. The listless baby, the old man spitting out phlegm, the construction workers building a yet another floor, the beads of sweat lacing the fisherman’s face….

“My dear boy,” the doctor’s voice had a certain majesty. “No one is free of problems. Don’t worry too much. Do you know that unnecessary worry can cause stomach ulcers?”

He was a new man when he emerged from the hospital. The whole world shone with a certain mesmerizing magnetism. He felt that life was full of meaning. He even remembered her smiling face, after a three-month gap. He started mumbling a song, and even his gait had a certain majesty.

The same street, the same path.

Naked children roamed the street.

The young man with frustrated eyes and a week-old stubble, held the hem of his sarong with his left hand and stared emptily onto the street.

The crippled beggar.

The thirty-year old spinster who stood by her front door people-watching with a certain longing in her eyes.

A brightly painted poster on the wall screamed in big red letters about how the fascist rule in Chile was oppressing its people.

His face darkened. The mumbled song suddenly went quiet. As the shadow of pain shrouded his eyes, the fingers of his left hand clutched the right side of his chest.

He realized that the pain that had been absent for a week had decided to return.

“Chai — how painful!’

He resolved to find a permanent remedy.

1974

He woke up with the incessant tweeting of that bird. He rolled over to his left and realized that his feet were cold and pulled at his blanket to cover them. Someone yawned softly in the next room, followed by the rustling of getting up from bed. His eyes were closed in his half-awake drowsiness. He could see dark and light circles dancing on his closed eyelids. They met, blended, merged, and then separated. A certain peace, a certain stupor, an unknown weariness. The bird kept tweeting relentlessly, dring, dring.

Suddenly a bright light intruded through his closed eyelids. He woke up with a start. The light was turned on in the next room and had seeped into his room through the gap in the door and the gap between the roof and the wall. He could faintly see his friend Sivam sleeping soundly, covered by his blanket from head to toe. From the commotion in the next room, he guessed that his landlady was awake.

He stretched, opened his eyes wide, and stared at the ceiling ridge overhead. He felt he did not get a good night’s sleep. He faintly remembered the story he was reading just before falling asleep at eleven. He remembered the movie he had seen the previous day after taking the day off from work. He remembered that letter he received from his close friend the previous day, the letter that caused a momentary ripple and a strange sadness in his heart.

The bird continued to dring, dring. ‘Why is this darned bird making a ruckus?’ He thought. Immediately he was ashamed of that thought. He listened intently to the bird, sensing the unbridled joy in its birdsong. He could not but feel that he ought to be jealous of the little bird.

He sighed and leapt up from his reverie, rubbed his eyes vigorously and started doing his calisthenics, swinging his arms back and forth, up and down. He bent down and straightened up, took a step forward and then backward, repeatedly. He persuaded himself that all this exercise had washed away his weariness and imbued him with a new energy.

He opened the window slowly and looked out. Dawn was coming in fast. Floating in that half-darkness, leafy trees and coconut palms seemed as if they were a dream sequence. The bird tweeted dring, dring. He thought his heart was also filled with joy.

He turned around and was about to turn the lights on when he noticed his soundly sleeping friend and changed his mind. He, too, felt like crawling back into his bed, covering himself with a blanket and lying down with his eyes wide awake. How was it possible for his friend to write that letter as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world? He felt that all these longings, and expectant waits, and even life itself were meaningless. Wearily, he sat back down on the bed.

The bird continued to tweet incessantly, dring, dring.

He heard the bathtub being filled noisily and assumed that the landlady was getting ready for a bath. He tried to imagine taking a bath so early in the morning in this chilling weather, took his towel, soap, and tooth powder and opened the door of his room. It seemed to creak unusually noisily. His friend rolled over in his bed. A dim light was seeping out of the outside bathroom. He saw his landlady’s silhouette as she brushed her teeth in the gully between the bathroom and the house.

He went to the main entrance gate of the house and started brushing his teeth, covering his chest with his towel to ward off the cold. Leaves of the coconut palms stood still. A star or two twinkled overhead. Crows flew away noisily.

The landlady was returning from the bathroom. She looked surprised to see him but hurried past. He went into the bathroom and closed the latch. He was shivering from the cold, his teeth conducting a solo percussion performance. He dipped his hand into the water, hesitating. ‘What is the meaning of life? Is there any meaning beyond the day-to-day chores? Bathe, eat, dress, talk, laugh.

Laugh…

She laughs beautifully, her lips parting as if they want to express her joy within, her eyes lighting up, her white teeth flashing, a soft tone bubbling up from the bottom of her throat.

He hurriedly poured a few buckets of water on his body, soaped, and rinsed himself, and returned to his room toweling himself.

The light was on in the living room. The curtain that separated the door to his room from the living room was only half closed. He could see rings of smoke rising from the gap. Soft music from the radio flooded forth.

muttaṉṉa veṇṇakaiyāi muṉvantetireḻunteṉ [Her smile like a string of white pearls, awakes early]

attaṉ āṉantaṉ amutaṉ enṟraḷḷūrit [lavishly singing His praise]

tittikkap pēcuvāi…. [so sweetly…]

He heard the tiruvempāvai verse and remembered that it was the first day of tiruvempāvai observance. He felt an urge to visit a temple. He gulped down the cup of steaming tea brought to him by the family’s young servant boy. Looking at the anemic sleepy-eyed boy, he was overcome with pity.

vaṉṉak kiḷmoḻiyār ellārum vantārō [Is everyone who speaks like colorful parrots here?]

Her soft, elegant voice.

He got dressed quickly. His friend finally woke up and gaped at him. “I am going to the temple,” he said. His friend leapt up from the bed saying, “I have overslept; I only have twenty days before the exam.”

He felt his enthusiasm drain away. He wanted to give his friend a slap on the cheek and tell him to go back to bed. He hesitated for a few minutes. Then he said, “See you,” and left the room.

Mist covered the outside world. He ran into a bald man who asked, “Are you going to the temple?” When he nodded affirmatively the man put a packet of camphor in his hands and hurried away somewhere.

He walked towards the bus stand wearily.

In the silence of dawn, the road appeared to be long. Lights flickered in the houses along the road. Occasionally a vehicle went by, drawing a streak of light.

A few people were already waiting at the bus stand. Except for one or two people with luggage who might be traveling far, the rest appeared to be going to the temple. Most of these, save for a few young men, were women. They looked fresh in their colorful silk sarees. Young women wore long skirts and tops. Their faces looked like flowers that had just bloomed.

Like flowers… he remembered how when they were still innocent little tots, he and she used to pick flowers from under the coral jasmine tree along the village temple road.

The bus arrived, gasping and panting. People elbowed each other as they rushed into the bus. He boarded it last. After a few stops, he got off and walked alone towards the temple.

The temple was teeming with people. The singing of devotional songs was coming to an end. Following the last song, the priest ceremonially waved the oil lamp in front of the deity. The drummers made their mēḷams roar. The crowd chanted “arōkarā.” The person in front of him brought his hands together above his head in worship and walked around thrice in a circle. He raised his hands in worship, too. He felt a spark within, “Why do all this? Why?”

They distributed vibhūti — the holy ash — , holy water, sandalwood paste, and prasātam, food that was offered to and blessed by the deity. As the religious rituals drew to a close, people gossiped with one another in whispers. They moved around like shadows. He felt the urge to look at each and every face, to learn the sorrows they carry, to take their hands into his and console them.

He could not find any of his close friends among the crowd. He wanted to sit for a while on the short wall by the temple hall. He watched the people moving about, their smiling faces, their mouths moving non-stop, their nods and smiles, their captivating colors, the refined elegance of their movements, their sideways glances.

The crowd was thinning gradually. He heaved a sigh and stood up. When he reached the temple entrance, he debated whether to walk home or take the bus. He thought a morning walk would be a change from his routine.

The morning was now in full swing, and the city had become lively. People bustled about in a hurry. Vehicles sped past noisily.

He walked on as a feeling of distress engulfed him. He felt that the actions in this life were meaningless and full of sorrow. Meaningless actions and sorrows laden with a sweetness seemed to be the gist of this life. He hummed a song as he walked.

He came up to a bridge. Through the treeless gap formed by the canal below, he could see the smoking chimney of the factory at a distance. The smoke rose up in a spiral, as if it was seeking something. The golden rays of the morning sun drew smoky lines between the trees.

It was almost seven o’clock. He quickened his pace. He walked, swinging his arms, without looking at anything or allowing any thoughts in. Occasionally he lifted his wrist to check the time.

The factory siren sounded. He used to live on this street some months ago. He remembered the beautiful woman whom he would cross paths with right after the siren went off. She was fair-skinned, with dreamy eyes; her youth infused throughout her being. She would swing her arms daintily as she walked. Occasionally she would smile at him. Sometimes she ignored him. He saw her coming towards him at a distance and his heart fluttered. He prepared himself to meet her after a long gap. As he approached her, he saw her lifeless stare. She cast her eyes downwards and quickened her steps.

He felt something shatter within him. He wanted to break everything around him into a hundred pieces: the factory, buses, cars, wristwatches, glasses. He wanted to drag every human being and teach them to smile.

She smiled… he saw her while waiting for her at the temple festival. She who had laughed and frolicked with him earlier was now laughing heartily with another man. He saw it with his own eyes.

“Aiyā,” a hand extended towards him, seeking charity. The man was leaning against the school wall, dressed in rags, sporting a gray stubble, and eyes that were ….

He tossed a ten-cent coin towards the beggar and kept walking.

He walked, swinging his arms, with wide strides, chest thrust forward. He hated himself. Thinking about people, he felt like banging his head.

People rushed. Cars and buses rushed. He waited for the right time to cross that wide street.

The traffic light on the crossing was green. Giant vehicles rushed along making a giant ruckus.

He waited on the sidewalk for the signal light to turn red.

1973

As he approached James Cafe, Yēsuthāsaṉ noticed his friends staring under the portia tree.

With a smile, he slowed his bicycle down to a complete stop right next to them. “When did you come back?” asked Alphonse.

“Just last night …,” before he could finish the sentence, Johnpintan interrupted, “Master, big things are afoot here… …..” He had a smile curling at the corners of his mouth. He was always like this, looking like he hesitated to elaborate further.

“Dēy! Out with it… what’s with all this silly embarrassment?” Emiliyoos teased Johnpintan, nudging him on. Christurāsā clasped his hands behind his back as he drew patterns on the sand with his toe. Kulasiṅgam, who was repairing a fish net some distance away, got up and walked towards them.

The suspense intrigued and confused Yēsuthāsaṉ.

“What is it? Give it to me straight,” he asked Christurāsā eagerly.

“They are proposing a marriage for you,” responded Christurāsā. Yēsuthāsaṉ felt a weird sensation. Curiosity and shyness jostled each other to occupy his face. With an embarrassed smile, he looked at Johnpintan directly and said, “Is that so? OK tell us; we do have to know, don’t we?”

Emiliyoos said, “Let’s talk inside the cafe.” They walked into James Cafe and sat down on a bench. Emiliyoos ordered tea.

Johnpintan overcame his hesitation and came directly to the point.

“Your uncle Selvanāyakam asked us to discuss it with you. They are prepared to give twenty thousand rupees in cash; jewelry for the girl; the house by St. Sebastian’s church… …He asked us to sound you out”

“It is all right, isn’t it? All in all, it will come to about seventy thousand… a good family, related to you,” Emiliyoos piled on.

‘These guys! Money will be enough to satisfy them….. This capitalist system builds relationships on money and possessions, and sweeps these people along by its force,’ Yēsuthāsaṉ mused.

He never cared much for money or the rich. On the contrary, he had developed hatred and anger towards them. He was certainly not waiting for an opportunity to ride on the coattails of his marriage to join the ranks of the village elite as a fishing-fleet owner or a fish auctioneer.

His thoughts and yearnings were elsewhere. He was seeking a meeting of minds, someone with mutual understanding, someone who would be his intellectual equal.

That search had led him to her…

The memories came flooding back to him like strikes of lightning.

He remembered knowing her for about a year at the university in Peradeniya, the desire that sprouted within two or three months, how in the last couple of months, she would shyly bite her tongue and cast her eyes downwards as they sat chatting at the round table in Sanghamitta Hall, how the shyness in her eyes shone against the backdrop of her face, how delightful it all was!

When she invited him home during the university vacation, he visited her home and understood her family’s situation very well. A small house; an aging father; the family dependent on the elder brother alone. There were no rewards waiting for him there. But he did not expect any rewards in the first place.

He resolved to overcome the differences in caste and religion that stood in their way.

“Malar! If you are willing to commit to us, I will, too.”

His reverie was interrupted by Johnpintan, “What is there to ponder over? A marriage proposal from your relatives, just say yes.”

“What can I say? Tell them to ask my family,” Yēsuthāsaṉ deflected the issue. After a bit of back and forth, they all fell silent.

After the others left, as they walked towards the beach together, Christurāsā asked jokingly, “Good money, a girl who is related to you, why don’t you marry her?”

Yēsuthāsaṉ felt a spark of anger. With a dismissive smile, he started, “Christurāsā… relatives… What kind of relatives! They haven’t spoken to us in a dozen years; the haughtiness of wealth. They socialized only with other rich people… but now they want a trouser-wearing groom with a government job. That is why they come running to me. Even now, it is not me that they value, it is the trousers and the job. Whether it is a relative or stranger, what matters is to choose good people to build relationships with, does it not?”

The old, painful incidents flooded into his memory. When the term for the loan ended, his aunt evicted her own brother, his father, to take over the house and the land that were collateral for the loan. For a loan of a mere four thousand rupees, they cheated him out of property that is now worth at least thirty-five thousand rupees.

‘How they cheated the poor lower caste paṟaiyar families from their plots of land near St. Sebastian’s church! How the evicted families, some with unmarried daughters, were forced to spend days and nights in hastily erected makeshift gunny-sack tents by the lane,’ he mused.

‘This is how they accumulate wealth,’ he thought, ‘These ghastly rich people ….’ Anger welled up within him.

He said with utter disgust, “Who wants this money?”

II

Yēsuthāsaṉ came home on vacation after three months. When he was returning from the public library at around noon, he saw Emiliyoos waving at him from the municipal council building and stopped.

Emiliyoos hurried down from his upstairs office, “Master, I didn’t know that you were back in town. Your uncle came by at around ten, saying that you had returned, and urging me to sound you out. That is when I realized that you had returned.”

“I arrived just this morning… perhaps he saw me when I was going to the library,” said Yēsuthāsaṉ.

“Aiyō, master… he has become a real nuisance. He bugs me every time he sees me. It seems he is getting restless because many other people are also trying to arrange a marriage for you.

This is out of control. I am tempted to give him a piece of my mind, I am holding back only because he is an elder,” The irritation from the repetitive nagging pervaded Emiliyoos’ words.

“Emiliyoos, if he asks you again, you don’t have to do anything. Just say to his face, ‘Talk directly to Yēsuthāsaṉ or his parents!’”

When he reached home after the chat with Emiliyoos, he thought he should warn his sister about this.

She was in the kitchen making lunch. Conveniently, Ammā had gone out to the market in town.

He relayed everything Emiliyoos had said and asked, “Did they come here proposing marriage?”

“They did come two or three months ago. But Ammā told them that we are not inclined to accept.”

“They came here! It must have been hilarious, no?”

“Mmm.. Uncle and Aunt came by. Aiyā was at the door. He invited them in. They sat in their chairs looking at one another silently. Aiyā nudged them to state their business. It was only then Aunt said, ‘We came proposing marriage.’ Aiyā remained silent.

Ammā then said, ‘He doesn’t yet want to get married,’ and Aunt said, ‘We came here because we just want my brother’s son to inherit all our assets.’

Ammā interrupted her saying, ‘Aiyō, your family is rich… it is better for you to continue as you always do and mingle with other rich people. We are dirt poor; we will mingle with the same people that we always mingled with.’

Uncle and Aunt were taken aback. They sat quietly and then left.”

Yēsuthāsaṉ was overcome with a newfound respect for his mother. ‘The woman doesn’t care about money, she cares about people,’ he thought. He felt a growing revulsion towards Aunt and Uncle.

‘Chee…. They didn’t care about us until now. When they want something from us, they make a beeline for us. Shameless people with no self-respect, pure selfishness, they thought they could throw money around and make us dance to their tune.’

As anger and disgust welled up within him, he thought, ‘If only they had asked me directly, I would have given them a good talking to.’

III

When he woke up from his siesta induced by the post-lunch drowsiness, he put on a vētti and decided to head out on his bicycle.

The foot traffic on the streets had subsided because the fish auction market had been already shut down for the day.

Some women were arranging dried fish into baskets; A woman sitting on her haunches puffing her cigar, pointed to him and said something to the other women there.

He bicycled on, pretending not to have seen them.

He pedaled past the dried-fish huts, and as he turned the corner by the ice-cream factory, he thought he saw his uncle Selvanāyakam standing by the tobacco godown. As the bicycle neared him, he confirmed his guess. He remembered his uncle boasting once, ‘If Selvanāyakam casts his net, nothing can escape…,’ his lips curled into a sarcastic smile.

Selvanāyakam signaled him to stop, saying, “Thambi, I have something to ask you….”

Yēsuthāsaṉ intentionally rode on a little past him and stopped. Selvanāyakam jogged to where the bicycle had stopped, his paunch jiggling with the effort.

Yēsuthāsaṉ did not dismount. Selvanāyakam said, “Thambi… Emiliyoos would have explained everything to you…. Tell me what you think…,” he spoke hesitantly in spurts. His voice was excessively deferential.

Yēsuthāsaṉ’s eyes settled on his uncle. A double-strand gold chain hanging around his neck lay resting on his round belly, tracing its curvy contour. Three fingers in each of his hands glittered with gold rings. He was the type of fishing-fleet owner who had amassed a fortune by spending his time at home or at the fish-auction market, without ever getting his feet wet in the salty seawater…

‘What disgusting people …. All these days he was blinded by money; now he is restless…’

As his thoughts crowded his mind, anger and hatred welled up within him, and he remained silent.

Thomas and Aruḷseelaṉ walked past them carrying a fishing line on a punt pole. They grinned at the pair. Yēsuthāsaṉ was too livid to be able to politely return the grin.

Suddenly a motorboat started, and noisily drove away, tearing the sea apart.

A lone hawk was circling above the sea by the ‘Victor” mound, formed by dumping the soil excavated by Victor machines while deepening the Dutch-era canal.

Perhaps Selvanāyakam mistook Yēsuthāsaṉ’s silence for consent. He took a step forward, gently.

“Thambi… why should my wealth and my boats end up with some stranger? Francisca is your cousin after all…”

Yēsuthāsaṉ wondered, ‘Perhaps he is afraid that a groom from the outside may demand to split the assets and be given his share… He couldn’t get my parents to consent, so now he is trying to influence me…. Perhaps he thinks that he can sway a young man by dangling money and a girl in front of him….’

As these thoughts rushed into his head, he felt a strong emotion bubble up from the depths of his heart, ‘They are insulting my self-respect!’ Anger pervaded his entire body. He glared at his uncle.

Selvanāyakam had not expected the sudden change of expression in Yēsuthāsaṉ’s face. He stared dumbly at Yēsuthāsaṉ.

Against the backdrop of the reddening sky by the Paṇṇai beach, Yēsuthāsaṉ made Selvanāyakam grow fearful.

Yēsuthāsaṉ’s anger leapt out of his body.

“Look here, we are not crazy. After ignoring us completely for ten years, if you think we will grin and acquiesce just because you dangle money in front of us, you are barking up the wrong tree.

We only see people, not money.

We have self-respect, we are not shameless like you.”

The seawater was lifted above the breakwater by the southwest monsoonal wind, showering the road and receding away.

“Thambi! Mammanifā, do you remember me, son? That day, your wāppā and everyone else remained mum. You were a little boy. Like a vigilant crow, you spotted it. Your shout was like someone whistling to raise the alarm.”

“He is hit, he is hit, Aṇṇāviyār is hit on the head!”

“Only you saw the hit, son. Even today, your shout keeps resonating in my ears.”

The game happened so long ago. But it is still fresh in my heart, as if it happened just yesterday …

In those days, the fragrance of the impending Haj celebration would start wafting in the air three or four days before the holy day itself.

On the eve of the Haj, Paiyeṉṉā “hotel” was abuzz with activity. The two showcases sparkled; the delicacies arranged within them twinkled. The irresistible fragrance of the muscat lovingly matured in cow ghee by Paiyeṉṉā’s hand. A piece cost twenty cents. A cup of tea was ten cents.

The tea made by Paiyeṉṉā’s hand using “Nona brand” condensed milk had its own unique deliciousness. It was magical how the touch of his hand blending the condensed milk and the tightly infused tea water elevated the taste.

On exiting the “hotel” after a bite of the muscat and a sip of tea, one noticed the flyer, stuck to the portia tree which served as a natural air conditioner for the hotel.

To mark the Haj, there was going to be a grand martial arts competition following the Asr evening prayers at the mosque. Challengers were invited to fight Nūhuththambi, the renowned teacher of cheeṉadi — the stick-based martial art in Eastern Sri Lanka inspired by ancient Shaolin monks. The victor would be rewarded with a Meccan Shawl and an entire cluster of paṟangi plantains.

The holy day celebrations that year had been grand. The sun had reached its peak overhead and had started on its lopsided descent towards Uppāṟu. Multitudes from the neighboring villages swarmed towards the front of the village marketplace.

We, the village tots, crouched down on our haunches, squeezing between the legs of adults in the front row.

The village headman and the mattichem trustees from the mosque were managing the crowd. Time crawled. The challenger aṇṇāviyār and his disciples were getting restless. Teacher Nūhuththambi who had issued the challenge was not yet present. Everyone kept looking at the riverside road. Sarcastic talk and putdowns started raising their heads. At a distance, a bicycle was hurtling fast towards the market.

“Here he is! Hoyrā…!”

A roar went through the crowd instantly rekindling the buzz.

It was indeed Nūhuththambi. He hopped off the bicycle seemingly without slowing down, handing the bicycle over to someone else. The next instant, he leapt to the center of the street where the challenge fight was to take place.

He had a physique like an ebony tree. The years of casting fishnets had reinforced his arms and legs. He looked like a bull that could not be tamed.

Once again, applause and whistles. He removed the Indian ‘pazhaiyagād’ sarong he was wearing. The sarong flew from his hand over to the portia tree and stuck to it. Inside he was wearing the siṟuvāl underwear covering his thighs down to his knees, and a sleeved undershirt….

From his buffed chest, two long arms emerged like fine swords. Rooted to the same spot, he swirled his hands bent down suddenly — having leapt into the air — to kiss the ground seeking permission and the traditional ritual salām varisai salute of cheeṉadi practitioners. The crowd went into an ecstatic roar and calmed down.

The village headman made the formal announcement: “Those who want to challenge Nūhuththambi, come forward.”

A figure emerged at the far end of the teeming crowd. It swirled and twirled, moving through the lightning streaks traced by the rapid movements of the kalviṇṇāṅku-tree pole held in its hands, which whooshed with a high-pitched howl.

The spectators’ feet barely held on to the ground below them. The hands and feet of those who knew how to play cheenadi were itching to get into the arena.

“The winner of this game will be given a cluster of plantains as the prize and will be honored by the draping of a Meccan shawl.”

The village headman’s announcement elicited thundering applause.

Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār stood on one side, Teacher Nūhuththambi on the other. Both unique in their own ways. A peerless pair.

First, they stood facing each other, sixteen cubits apart. The headman yelled, “Start!” The next instant, both kicked up dust storms as they took their salām varisai.

They swirled like whirlpools — leaping into midair — as four arms sliced the air like lightning…. people’s eyes only saw two amorphous figures spinning like tops.

Having taken their salām varisai, they retreated to their corners and stood there.

Weligāmam Maulana Wāppā was Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār’s guru. Wāppā’s son took the cheeṉadi stick blessed by Maulana Wāppā and handed it to the Aṇṇāviyār who grabbed onto it respectfully.

The stick stood between the fingers in his hands and danced with a high-pitched drone. The one stick became four, and then sixteen, and exploded into many more, weaving a magic trick for the watching eyes.

On the opposite side, Teacher Nūhuththambi stood holding the cheeṉadi stick blessed by his guru, the Indian nānā.

It was a bamboo cane with silver rings at either end. He lifted it with his right hand and swirled it.

His left hand remained motionless while the right hand twisted and turned. That was a skill and facility that only he excelled in. Like a silver bird flying with its entourage, weaving up and down in pitch-perfect formation before disappearing into the horizon, the silver-ringed cane in Nūhuththambi’s hands just flew hither and thither.

The first round was over and the second began. The two crows glared intently at each other through their fighting sticks and snarled. They chased each other around … they each invited the other to battle, again and again, …. They circled each other, wearing out the opponent, and then suddenly leapt like lightning… grappling with each other…

The dust storm that rose from the ground was a sight to behold!

Out of nowhere, Nūhuththambi’s silver pigeon leapt up to lightly graze Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār’s shoulder in a flash and returned. Aṇṇāviyār, momentarily shaken, steadied himself by planting his feet firmly on the ground.

“He is hit, he is hit, Aṇṇāviyār is hit on the head!” Mammali and I screamed at the top of our voices. In the village, we had, in fact, earned a reputation for being little rascals.

“Dēy! Shut up. Who do you think you are talking to!” Eerāṅkutti, one of Aṇṇāviyār’s disciples hissed with rage.

“Not hit, not hit… yeah, right, only these misbegotten tots managed to see what all these important people couldn’t see!”

Village headman Buhāri, who was refereeing the fight, did not see what actually happened because he was momentarily distracted. The restless crowd clamored. Aṇṇāvi Ahmadlebbe’s disciples encircled the ring, grinding their teeth.

They were literally shaking, looking as if they wanted to jump on Teacher Nūhuththambi and shred him to pieces.

“Dēy! You think our man can be hit? Bring it on!” each swirled his fighting stick, seething with rage.

Teacher Nūhuththambi stood alone aghast, his hand covering his mouth. Calming the disciples down was a herculean task for the village mosque’s mattichem trustees.

“Dēy! Shut up, all of you,” the headman commanded, cane in hand. The crowd calmed down like an obedient kitten.

“Let us resume the fight.”

The village headman decided.

“What! Resume the fight? You must be kidding!” Teacher Nūhuththambi was adamant.

“We didn’t see you hit him…” the bulk of the crowd retorted.

Outrage surged within Nūhuththambi’s heart.

“Not only did they rob me of my victory, but they have also resorted to abuse me for my fisherfolk caste.” Tears welled up in his eyes. As if he was possessed, he picked up his silver-ringed cane in a frenzy. The fight resumed. Everyone’s eyes were fixated on the cane.. and the stick.

As the game proceeded, Nūhuththambi felt as if a fiery pearl flew through the air and struck him in the eyes. His eyes burnt. He lifted a hand towards his eyes. Just at that moment, the serpent thrown by Aṇṇāviyār bit his shoulder and retreated.

“He is hit, he is hit… Aṇṇāviyār has won.”

They lifted Aṇṇāviyār up in the air. The headman and the mattichem trustees draped the Meccan shawl over his shoulder. Paiyeṉṉā took the cluster of paṟangi plantains hanging in his eatery and handed it to Aṇṇāviyār.

They took him in a procession as the salawat prayer praising the prophet, blended with the ululations of the women, reached sky high.

“Thambi, a penny for your thoughts?”

His voice broke my reverie and brought me back from bygone memories to the present.

“I remember very well. Very well, indeed. What happened to you that day was injustice,” I said calmly.

“That day, I left behind this soil and my kith and kin. Now, I have returned after thirty years, and I am glad to see that you have grown into an important man in the village.”

His eyes became moist.

“Mammanifā, two of my kids are attending university in Colombo. My eldest went abroad to work and has returned with two outboard motors to go deep-sea fishing. Now people respect us as somebody. On that day, we didn’t get justice because we are fisherfolk. Today one of ours has become the leader of the village and of Allah’s school. Our rotting fish goes for a hundred rupees per kilo, son. It has become five times more expensive than rice.”

In his heart, the swirl that started all those years ago has grown into a roaring tsunami.

“What should we do now?”

“I want justice. I want a rematch with Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār. I want to be draped in a Meccan Shawl!” He spoke with passion.

This man has such a desire after all these years? Perhaps he is a little demented?

My heart was anguished.

“Why the hesitation? I will stay the night at my elder sister’s place. I will return after the early morning subhu prayers. Tell me your decision.”

He stroked his silvery beard that hung from his chin like a box of cotton wool and quickly ran down the steps.

“Anybody home?” I called out.

“Come in, come in, thambi!”

Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār’s wife herself welcomed me.

“Where is Aṇṇāviyār?”

“He has gone to oversee the paddy fields in Padukādu. He should be returning any minute now,” she started moving slowly towards the kitchen …

A teapot climbed up on the clay stove. Even after fifty, her beauty was intact. All her teeth were like white pearls. There was an occasional gray streak in her hair.

“What is it thambi, you have come after a long time?”

“I want to see Aṇṇāvi chāchā.” Even before I could finish, a bicycle peeked through the front entrance. Our ensuing conversation meandered all over the place and finally arrived at Teacher Nūhuththambi.

“Chāchā, it happened thirty years ago. But it is still fresh in my heart …”

“Yes, son! That day, it was he who …” Aṇṇāvi held himself back. His face reflected the rush of emotions. It was as if the Meccan shawl on his shoulder suddenly became unbearably heavy…

“A rematch? Why not,” he said distractedly, his thoughts dwelling on something.

“What? A cheenadi fight? These old men, at their age?” Chāchi mocked.

It was a Jummah day.

After the Asr prayers, people emerged having forgotten their fears and worries …

Paiyeṉṉā hotel lay in ruins — the market stalls had been long abandoned — its padlock lay rusting.

The crowds jostled as if it was a funeral.

The two seventy-year-old young men stood in the ring…

Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār tied a rubber band to the temples of his eyeglasses and tied it behind the back of his head. His eyesight had deteriorated after he hit his forties.

None of the mosque mattichem trustees from that day were alive any longer. All of them had been reunited with the soil. New blood was administering the village now.

“Begin!”

The fight started, commanded by the new village headman. Aṇṇāviyār held the same kalviṇṇāṅku-tree pole–its oils had dried out but still emitted the same low-pitch drone and swayed like a cobra. He squatted, straightened up and whirled, jumping into the air, and bent down again in one smooth motion to touch the soil and kiss it.

Nūhuththambi mastān had the same silver-rimmed bamboo cane. It took wings in his hand, flew around and cackled. His one-handed swirling made the bamboo cane produce an ethereal hum.

The two seventy-year-old crows swam and resurfaced. Their chests swelled up and subsided.

The fight resumed.

Nūhuththambi mastān brimmed with the thirst for revenge as he swirled like fire.

Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār stood calmly looking for an opportunity to trap his opponent. He had beenparrying every blow of the bamboo cane deftly and cleverly when it happened.

Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār’s eyeglasses came loose, flew to the other side of road and shattered. At that very instant, Nūhuththambi’s white dove went right next to Aṇṇāviyār’s shoulder …

If the white dove had wanted, it could have pecked at the shoulder. It hesitated just for a moment, and retreated …

Aṇṇāviyār saw hundreds of white doves, making him gasp.

Nūhuththambi mastān slowed down. As the bamboo bird in his hand flew in circles, the train of his thoughts pleaded plaintively at him.

‘His eyesight is hazy. It is not fair for me to fight him. Even at this age, Allah has blessed me with strength and light in my eyes. That is the greatest prize.’ his conscience delivered its judgment.

The next instant, the silver-ringed bamboo dove flew away from his hands as he leapt towards Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār and embraced him to begin a musaba, the formal two-handed handshake.

Ahmadlebbe Aṇṇāviyār, too, cast away his kalviṇṇāṅku-tree pole.

The two crows embraced each other, did musaba, and kissed …

The spectators had goosebumps and tears in their eyes.

Aṇṇāviyār extricated himself from mastān’s embrace and appeared to be getting ready to say something. The crowd quietened down expectantly.

“Assalāmu alaikum! It was Nūhuththambi who won the fight thirty years ago. My empty vanity did not allow me to acknowledge that victory. He is the victor then and now.” He respectfully removed the Meccan shawl which was tied around his hips. The same shawl that the crowd had draped on his shoulders to honor him for the fight thirty years ago. He brought its two edges together and flapped it vigorously, and in one deft motion, draped it around Nūhuththambi mastān’s shoulders. Tears of joy trickled down from his eyes, relieved at discarding the guilt that weighed on him all these years, and from the satisfaction of having bestowed the honor of the Meccan shawl upon its rightful recipient.

The salawat prayers praising the greatness of the prophet reached sky high. The portia tree smiled with joy. The fragrance of the attar wafting from the Meccan shawl draped around Nūhuththambi mastān’s shoulders filled the air.

– 1991 –

The melody of the harmonium blended with the rhythms of the percussion instrument mridangam wafted through the air.

The cacophonous voice of the background singer followed, over the loudspeaker.

These were the signs foretelling the imminent arrival of the popular sinnamēḷam dance performance.

A sudden bustle started to sizzle among the temple-goers.

People who were bored by the mēḷaccamā — the playful back-and-forth between the thavil drummers — and were lounging on their sālvais spread out on the sand, woke up abruptly and started to swarm towards the temple hall.

Commotion and cheering ensued.

What the crowd has been staying awake for, until two in the morning in this cold weather, was about to begin.

The temple hall was filled within half a second. Crowds teemed everywhere.

The famous Kamalā-Vimalā dance troupe was set to perform that day. No wonder that the hall was full.

The sound of salaṅkai — the ankle ornament with little bells — drifted over. The entire crowd forgot to blink and turned their heads towards the direction whence the salaṅkai sound came.

Two dancers walked elegantly like swans, towards the center of the stage. Once they reached the center, they glanced around at the crowds surrounding the center stage and graced them with a smile.

The smile had the power to enchant every single person in the audience.

“āḷai āḷaip pārkkiṟār ….,” the loudspeaker started blaring a popular cinema song.

The dance began. As the harmonium player kept the tune and the mridangam drummer showcased his skill, the two dancers twisted and swirled.

Their contortions captivated the hearts of the audience and enthralled them.

The crowd jostled, hoping eagerly to catch a glimpse of the sinnamēḷam dance.

Outside, under a tree a little distance away from the temple building, there was a crowd that had come to witness the festivities.

Surely, they, too, would want to enjoy the dance performance, wouldn’t they?

They would, with all their heart. But …

They could not step inside the temple with the others to participate in the festivities. They did not have that privilege.

They were dalits, people from the downtrodden, segregated, lower castes …

They could not see anything that was going on within the temple. They merely heard the songs and the sounds of salaṅkai over the loudspeakers. From the sounds, they had to fill in the gaps by imagining the dance performance.

2

Kandasāmi was dissatisfied. He had stayed up till two in the morning to watch the sinnamēḷam performance. How could he settle for merely watching the thronging masses instead?

He fumed at his mother Vaḷḷi. He wanted to go near the temple to get a better look at the dance performance. But she forbade it.

She, too, was angry. When all the poor souls under the tree were content to enjoy the festivities from a distance, why was he so impatient?

No one could fault him. He was just an eight-year-old tot who did not understand the intricacies and distortions of society.

Vaḷḷi had been very firm. He was not to move even an inch from where he was standing.

Kandasāmi was equally firm: he had resolved to himself that he would somehow give his mother the slip to go watch sinnamēḷam.

When Vaḷḷi dozed off momentarily, Kandasāmi saw his chance and made his move.

He rushed towards the temple and blended into the crowd that was enjoying the dance.

But no matter how he allowed himself to be crushed and trodden on, he could not see what was going on inside. He circled the crowd to no avail.

Frustrated, he was ready to give up and return back to where he came from, when he spotted a good vantage point.

There, in the women’s section, on the side of the ceremonial temple flagpole.

Somehow, he reached that spot, climbing over some people, being trodden on by others, and squeezing himself through between yet others.

As he sat there and watched the dance, he marveled at its novelty and beauty.

He was thoroughly absorbed in enjoying the performance.

Then —

“Dēy, you low-caste scoundrel, who let you in. Get out at once, you dog…”

— This was the voice of vithāṉaiyār Veluppiḷḷai, the government official in the village.

Kandasāmi did not remember what happened thereafter. He was dragged outside brutally. Everyone had a go at him. They beat him until he fainted.

Someone dragged Vaḷḷi by her wrist to where he lay.

— “Look at what your kid has done. He has stepped inside the temple…. The devil…..”

— “He has done something that no one has ever done before…..”

— “How can we continue the festival without a ritual atonement?…..”

Vaḷḷi’s world was spinning around her….

Kandasāmi lay unconscious on the ground, like a corpse. Blood was oozing out of his face and mouth, making his tender face look grotesque. No one sympathized with his situation. Instead, there was plenty of abuse, scorn, and swearing….

But it did not stop there.

— “Take him away, the devil, the dog…,” vithāṉaiyār Veluppiḷḷai again kicked the curled up body of Kandasāmi.

Even after Kandasāmi was unconscious, oblivious to everything around him, vithāṉaiyār’s anger did not subside. “Vaḷḷi, I am letting him go just for your sake, just for the sake of your face. Had he been anyone else’s child, he would be lying dead now for what he has done… I held myself back for your sake…. Mmm.. lift him up,” he growled.

Without a word, like a lifeless machine, Vaḷḷi lifted Kandasāmi over her shoulder and walked away.

3

Kandasāmi lay on a torn straw mat, moaning. Vaḷḷi sat next to him, gently stroking his body.

They had no one to help them…. They only had each other. Vaḷḷi’s husband Siṉṉathampi had passed away two years earlier.

Vaḷḷi stared at Kandasāmi’s face.

That face….

— The memory brought out a surge of sadness in her. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The face rekindled memories that she had long forgotten.

The memories trampled on by time slowly raised their heads.

Her thoughts zoomed back to several years prior.

It must have been just a year or two after Siṉṉathampi married her. Her beauty and his masculinity entwined in each other. They led a happy life.

The livelihood of that family depended entirely on vithāṉaiyār Veluppiḷḷai. Siṉṉathampi worked his land. Vaḷḷi did his household chores. Veluppiḷḷai paid very little for their work. They were used to living their lives within that meager income.

That day, vithāṉaiyār had sent Siṉṉathampi off to another village on some errand.

Vaḷḷi would have had to sleep alone that night.

When she finished her chores and prepared to leave, vithāṉaiyār said, “Why don’t you sleep here, Vaḷḷi? How would you sleep at home, alone without anyone to help?”

“No, sāmi… why would I need any help… I can sleep alone.,” Vaḷḷi said as she left.

At around eleven that evening, Vaḷḷi shut her front door tight, put the lamp out, and was about to go to bed. She heard someone calling out her name.

“Vaḷḷi … Vaḷḷi …”

Who would that be? It sounded like the voice of vithāṉaiyār.

She opened the door a little. She was right, vithāṉaiyār Veluppiḷḷai stood outside.

“Why sāmi… at this hour?”

“Nothing. You were going to go to bed alone. I came to check if you were afraid…”

Vaḷḷi was overcome with joy. What a kindhearted person!

Vaḷḷi came out onto the front yard.

The blackness of the moonless night reigned supreme.

It was then that it happened.

“Vaḷḷi,” Veluppiḷḷai said, as he grabbed her wrist.

She instantly understood the reason for his visit, and the hidden motive that lurked beneath his kindness.

She jerked her wrist free and ran inside the house.

Like lightning, he followed her inside.

Then? ….

She sobbed into her pillow until dawn. She wept until the sorrow within her heart was exhausted.

4

Kandasāmi’s moaning put an end to Vaḷḷi’s reverie.

She chastened herself for allowing her stray thoughts to confuse her mind.

Even in the middle of his unbearable pain, a gentle smile formed on Kandasāmi’s lips.

That face… that smile…

— It was as if vithāṉaiyār Veluppiḷḷai stood there smiling.

Right off the bat, my eyes were drawn to a news story, overshadowing the headline about the Olympics Games scheduled to take place in Paris this year. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I was almost knocked senseless as my eyes digested that story. In disbelief, I read it thrice. The leader of a fast-rising nationalist party in France had said the following:
 
 “Our fatherland has become a dangerous place to live in. This sacred land is being trodden on by the dark feet of criminal gangs and agitators. There is only one way for us to emancipate ourselves from this lawlessness. In public lands, we should re-institute that symbol of France’s unique, great revolution, the wooden sculpture.”

It is common in the daily use of the French language to refer to various animate and inanimate concepts by their nicknames. A policeman is referred to as the ‘chicken,’ a woman the ‘flea,’ and a penis the ‘cock.’ ‘The wooden sculpture’ is a nickname for a guillotine.

In his novel ‘Les Miserables,’ Victor Hugo declared that “As long as one has not encountered the guillotine, one can be indifferent about capital punishment. But the moment one sees a guillotine, the shock would leave them senseless.” I worship Victor Hugo whole-heartedly. I have seen a guillotine with my own eyes.

It happened by accident. There was an exhibition in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay which had borrowed the title ‘Crime and Punishment’ from Dostoevsky. Attracted by the title, I went to see the exhibition. That is where France’s last guillotine was on display.

That wooden sculpture is fourteen feet high. Its base measures seven feet by two feet. They would make the person condemned to death lie on their stomach, their hands and feet bound to their body using thick rope. They will be positioned so that their neck fits within the hole that looks like the anus of the wooden sculpture. Their head would be on one side of the hole and the rest of the body on the other. Where would their soul be? When the heavy knife hanging at the top of the wooden sculpture like a crown dropped forcefully the severed hell would leap up. A dirty wicker basket would be placed underneath to catch the severed head.

One cannot say that every guillotine constructed during the French revolution looked thus. The Revolutionary Tribunal kept passing death sentences on tens of thousands of people around the country. Therefore, hundreds of little portable guillotines were constructed so that they can be carried by hand to get the job done effectively.

I came out of Musée d’Orsay thoroughly shaken. The disgusting wooden sculpture refused to vacate my brain. The victims who were decapitated by the wooden sculpture roamed within my head as formless images speaking silently. What would they have said when they were marched to the row of wooden sculptures standing in Paris’ Revolutionary Square? What would they have been thinking?

Was it true that King Louis XVI said, “I forgive my enemies,” when his head was placed on the anus of the wooden sculpture? What would Queen Marie Antoinette have thought when she was laid down on the wooden sculpture and her hair was cut off at the nape so that the knife could make a clean cut? When the Revolutionary Tribunal accused the queen of forcibly having sex with her eight-year-old son Louis Charles, she had declared, “I respond not to you but to all mothers here… Nature itself prevents me from responding to such a charge laid against a mother.” Did she think of that nature during her final moments? When the key leaders of the revolution, Danton and Robespierre were brought to the Revolutionary Square one after the other in the very next year and laid down on this wooden sculpture, what would they have been thinking? Would they have uttered their mantra of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity as their final words? The words chanted by the crowd in the Revolutionary Square, “Kill the traitors,” the last words they heard? When the twenty-four-year-old young woman Charlotte Corday who had driven a kitchen knife through the heart to murder the great revolutionary hero, the Friend of the People, Marat, the leader most instrumental in inciting the guillotine murders, was marched towards the wooden sculpture, what would she have thought? Did the words she uttered standing in front of Marat’s dead body, “I have done my duty! I murdered him to stop him from ordering the guillotine deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,” stay with her till the end and leap into the dirty wicker basket?

I threw the newspaper down on the table, and slowly opened the rickety window to invite the fresh sea breeze inside. For a week, I had been staying in this old inn by the sea in the city of Marseilles. When Paris is subject to a bitter cold and snowstorms, I gravitate towards a coastal town looking for the sea and some warmth. The management of this inn was very particular about preserving the old traditions. It was one of the very few inns in France that persisted in the cultural tradition of providing guests with a free daily newspaper. The goddamned curse that they slid under the rotting door of my room this morning has engulfed my whole being and was suffocating me.

The breeze that entered the room made me even wearier, instead of calming me. I sat at the writing desk and tried to write something. I could not write even a single letter. It was already half past ten. Thinking that a cup of coffee might invigorate me again, I put on my shoes and left my room. I rolled up the cursed newspaper and took it with me. Madame Annabelle would be waiting for the newspaper.

I met Madame Annabelle on the very first day I arrived in this town. It was around nine in the morning when I alighted from the train. The manager of the inn said I could check in to the room only after noon. I went to the cafe across the street to kill time until then. I chose a small round table under the awning because it was a convenient place to smoke in. Having ordered an espresso, I whiled away the time watching the street and puffing cigarette smoke. It was then that Madame Annabelle walking very slowly towards the cafe.

I think she was about seventy years old. Her white legs, arms, and chin had a dusting of golden hair that glittered. The hair on her head had gone completely white, with patches of baldness here and there. Colorful ribbons of the kind that little girls wear crisscrossed her head, perhaps in an attempt to hide the bald spots. Her fleshy under-eye bags hung like rotten orange segments below her small gray eyes. Annabelle was below average height. But she was heavyset, with thick arms, legs, and neck. In reality, they were probably swollen. She wore a knee-length gown. Her stockings were rolled down. She was carrying a bulging cloth bag with difficulty. Her face was swollen like a pink balloon, clearly giving her away as an alcoholic.

Annabelle sat down at the table next to me. Her panting sounded to me like the cooing of a pigeon. The waiter greeted her with, “Good day Madame Annabelle! How are you today? You are well, I hope? I have brought you your usual drink,” and put a small shot glass full of liquor on her table. Annabelle lifted the glass towards me, drank its contents in one gulp, and put the empty glass down in a corner of the table. Then she took out sheaves of newspapers from her cloth bag, spread them on the table, and started reading them.

Bored, I squinted trying to see what she was reading. The papers she was reading were all old from the previous day or even the previous week. I was not sure how she sensed that I was observing her. She turned suddenly to me and said, “My friend! I don’t remember seeing you here before. Where do you come from?” I noticed two things about her voice. It was masculine, and it was flat, devoid of emotion. It sounded like those mechanical-sounding daily announcements in railway stations, “Votre attention, s’il vous plaît.” She always spoke this way. Whatever emotions she had, emerged from her in the same flat tone.

In the subsequent days, I learned one thing about her. Annabelle arrived at the cafe at ten every morning. She sat at a table until six in the evening reading her newspapers. She ordered a drink every hour. She collected the newspapers from the roadside and from garbage cans. I made it a habit to give her the free newspaper I got in my room at the inn every morning, after quickly browsing through it.

As I descended the stairs at my inn, my consternation made me sit down on the steps and read the story about the wooden sculpture again. The cursed news had so blunted my brain that I did not comprehend that no matter how many times I read the news, it would remain unchanged.

When I reached the cafe, Annabelle sat on the table at the far-left end under the awnings, reading her newspapers. “Bonjour Madame Annabelle,” I placed the newspaper on the table and sat on the chair opposite to her. Within a week, we have become acquainted well enough with each other for us to drink sitting at the same table.

The waiter said, “You look tired? Are you not well? The salty air doesn’t agree with everyone. Let me bring you a cup of coffee,” and went to fetch the coffee. Annabelle kept looking at me, pouting her cracked thin lips. I pointed to the story about the wooden sculpture. As she finished reading the story, her next drink arrived. She drank it up in one gulp and was dabbing her lips with her handkerchief.

Impatiently I said, “These barbarians want to dig out the bloody wooden sculptures buried centuries ago and stand them in public places. This shameless newspaper is even reporting this story.” I felt that even a word or two in Annabelle’s monotone voice would calm me down.

Annabelle folded her handkerchief and said:
 
 “Not centuries ago. The wooden sculptures were in operation until forty-seven years ago. The last head it chopped off is buried in this town.”

I first thought that Annabelle was blabbering because she was already drunk this early in the morning. But I had never seen her blabber, even when she was drunk. She was clear and precise in everything she said, just like an announcement in a train station.

“What do you mean? Forty-seven years ago?” I asked.

“Tenth of September 1977, at 4:40 am,” Annabelle said in the same emotionless voice.

I could not believe my years. Dear reader, can you?

It was a time when great thinkers and artists like Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, François Truffaut, and Goddard were living here. Giscard d’Estaing, who was the president of France in 1977 had fiercely fought the Nazis in his youth. How could the bloody wooden sculpture have operated at a time when such great people lived?

Therefore, I concluded that Madame Annabelle was somehow deluded. Still, propelled by something unseen, I cross-examined her, “Whose head was cut off?” Now her delusion would be cleared.

“A young twenty-seven-year-old man called Hamida was killed. His family name was Djandoubi,” she droned on in her voice devoid of emotion.

How could I now not believe what Annabelle was saying! She had mentioned the family name of the murdered man and even the date and time of the death. Still my doubts had not completely dissipated because I still had faith in the inordinate amount of reading I had done on French history and life. Therefore I asked Annabelle, “How do you know all this?”

Annabelle was silent for a while. Then she beckoned the waiter and asked for another drink. When it arrived, she downed it in a single gulp and started talking. As she talked, I came to believe her story completely. Without interrupting her in any way, I listened to her quietly. She spoke in her characteristic emotionless voice and a flat expression on her face.

“Hamida lived in our upstairs room for a while. I was then fourteen or fifteen. He was Tunisian. He came to this city by sea when he was nineteen, in search of a job. He found a job in the sawmill. Sébastien worked in the same sawmill — Sébastien was my father. I called him by name since I was very small. Sébastien liked Hamida. “Hamida is a smart boy, a hard worker,” he would say often. It was through this acquaintance that he ended up as a boarder in our upstairs room.

In those days, everyone would agree that Hamida was the handsomest among all the young men in this town. Black curly hair. A broad forehead. Smiling brown eyes. A physique like a stone sculpture. He could win anyone over by speaking softly and pleasantly. He met with that horrible accident while he was living in our house. His right leg was trapped under a vehicle in the sawmill. When Sébastien told me that Hamida’s right leg had to be amputated at the knee, I could not stop sobbing the entire day. Hamida was in the hospital for a very long time. He fell in love with a woman he met at the hospital and went to live with her. They arrested him for murdering that woman. I met him accidentally on the street just two days before he was arrested. Wearing his artificial leg, he was a little unsteady on his feet. “You still live at the same address, Annabelle?” he asked. I responded ‘Yes.’ That was the last time I saw him. Sébastien was at the court on the day they sentenced Hamida to death. When he came home, he started drinking without talking to anyone. He kept drinking the whole day.

I interrupted impatiently. “But did they kill him on the guillotine, Annabelle?”

Annabelle nodded in agreement. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the scene when they laid him down on the wooden sculpture and cut him into two. What did they do with his artificial leg? What was his final minute like?

Annabelle looked at me as if she wanted to ask, “What are you thinking about?” I told her what was on my mind. We were silent for a while. When her next drink arrived, she downed it in one go and said, “I will tell you that story,” in that same dry emotionless tone.

2

On the ninth of September 1977, the French president Giscard d’Estaing rejected the plea for mercy from the convicted man. At three in the afternoon that day, Mrs. Monique Mabelly, the investigating judge, received word from the Head of the prison. Early the following morning, the convict’s head was to be inserted into the anus of the wooden sculpture in her presence. A vehicle would arrive at Mabelly’s house at four in the morning to take her to the prison.

Mrs. Mabelly was shaken by this news. The convict’s face appeared in her mind and unsettled her. The realization that this man was just a year younger than her son Rémy spread throughout her brain like scabies.

At the end of the trial, just before the verdict was to be announced, the counsel for the accused, Jean Cudarro pleaded, “Ever since Hamida Djandoubi met with the horrible accident, he has been suffering from trauma that impaired his judgment. Therefore, your honor, I appeal to consider the case of this handicapped man with compassion and mercy and sentence him to a minimal punishment. Those words still kept ringing in Mabelly’s ears. But she could not escape from the bloody ritual that was to take place. The law stipulated that she must be present at the events that were going to unfold the following morning.

At seven in the evening, Mrs. Mabelly went to the movie theater with her friend Bastiana to see a movie. After the movie, they went to Bastiana’s house. Mabelly dreaded the thought of going back to her house. The vehicle that would take her to the prison would arrive at four in the morning.

“Shall we watch another movie?” Mabelly asked Bastiana. They had snacks and watched the Ciné-Club film on television until one in the morning. She then went home dejectedly. By the time she went to bed, it was already two in the morning. She could not sleep at all. At half past three, she got up and dressed herself up in her official attire. She felt that the hands of the clock were running at breakneck speed that day. At four in the morning, the vehicle arrived. An official was sitting in the front seat next to the driver. No one said a word. The vehicle sped towards Baumettes prison.

When Mabelly reached the prison, everyone was there awaiting her arrival. A procession formed, consisting of some thirty people including Mabelly, the Attorney General, the counsel for the convict, prison officials and guards, the people who operate the wooden sculpture, and the imam who was there to carry out his religious duties. The procession moved towards the area where the wooden sculpture stood. Brown blankets had been laid along the floor to avoid the procession from having to walk on the floor. Along the way, a chair stood in a corner. Mabelly and some others stopped by the chair. The rest went to fetch the convict. The imam went with them. “He is lying down, but not sleeping,” an official informed Mabelly. A couple of minutes later, another official told her, “He is now putting on his artificial, wooden leg.”

The convict walked softly over the brown blankets. His hands were cuffed in front of him. When he saw Mabelly, he locked eyes with her with a gentle smile. Mabelly lowered her eyes, pretending to check the documents in her hand. The convict was made to sit on the chair next to Mabelly.

In a calm, steady voice, the convict asked, “I want a cigarette.” The guard placed a cigarette between the convict’s lips and lit it. He took a deep draw of the cigarette, raised his cuffed hand to remove it and said, “These cuffs are too tight.” The guard tried to loosen the cuffs. Charles Chevalier, the man who would operate the wooden sculpture, and his young assistant were standing to the left of the convict. Since the guard did not succeed in loosening the cuffs, it was decided to remove them altogether and tie the convict’s hands with a rope. As soon as the cuffs were removed, Charles Chevalier patted the convict on his shoulder and said, “See! you’re free!” Those ghastly words sent a shiver down Mabelly’s spine. She looked at the convict through the corner of her eye. But the convict sat silently, lost in thought. Perhaps he was reminiscing about Tunisia, the land where he was born and brought up. Or perhaps he was thinking about his childhood. Or perhaps he remembered the Mediterranean sea which he had crossed to get here. Or perhaps he was thinking about his former lover whom he had murdered.

The convict’s hands remained unbound for a few minutes. His cigarette had burned down to its stub. When he asked for another cigarette, he was given one. He was now drawing on the cigarette as slowly as he could. There was no escape anymore. When that cigarette ended, his life would end, too. His face gradually tightened, as if he was slowly realizing the gravity of his situation. Mabelly wondered how long that cigarette would last.

The convict beckoned his lawyer and spoke to him in hushed tones. By the time they finished talking, the second cigarette had finished. The convict had been sitting in that chair for a quarter of an hour.

A young guard showed up with a bottle and a small glass, and asked the convict, “Do you want to have some rum?” The convict nodded slowly. The guard filled half of the glass and handed it to the convict. The convict slurped the rum very slowly, sip by sip. Mabelly realized that he was pretending to enjoy the rum. In reality, he was just trying to prolong the time he had left to remain alive. Everyone present understood very clearly that if the convict was given just one additional second to live, he wanted to live it fully.

The convict tried everything he could to prolong his life. He spoke to his lawyer again. He took a piece of paper from the lawyer, shredded it into a hundred pieces, and handed them to a prison official saying, “Please throw this in the garbage.” The official stuffed them into his pocket. He asked the official, “What are you going to do with the books I have in my prison cell?” The official said, “We would handle them according to the law.” The convict called the imam over. When the imam said something in Arabic, the convict responded. The official standing next to Mabelly murmured with irritation, “Is he asking to be slaughtered in halal fashion?” When Mabelly turned sharply towards the official, he grinned sheepishly and lowered his eyes.

Only one sip of rum remained in the glass. The convict knew that once he drank that, his life would end. He made one last attempt. He asked calmly and politely for another cigarette. When a guard attempted to give him one, Charles Chevalier, the operator of the wooden sculpture, interrupted. He was starting to lose his patience. When he said, “We have already been dealing with this man with more compassion and charity than is called for. We must now put an end to this,” the Attorney General intervened and stopped the convict from getting a third cigarette. The convict asked again in a very polite voice:

“Please give me my last cigarette.”

That voice gnawed at Mabelly’s heart. Mabelly had no doubt that the convict was in a sound mental state. He understood that he could not do anything other than delay his demise in the wooden sculpture by another two minutes by asking for one last cigarette. Just like a child who tries everything possible to delay going to bed, the convict was trying everything he could to delay going to lie down in the guillotine bed.

The convict had been sitting in the chair for twenty minutes. Everyone except the convict looked at one another as if to say, “We cannot delay any longer.” A prison official nudged the convict to take the last sip of rum. The convict peered into the eyes of the official and poured the last bit of rum onto the floor. For a minute, true silence prevailed. No one said anything. It was Mabelly, who was standing to the left of the convict, broke the silence. She said, “It is getting late,” to the prison official.

Two guards grabbed the convict’s shoulders with their strong hands and turned his body slightly towards the left in the direction where Mabelly was standing. Immediately, Charles Chevalier and his assistant, who were standing to the right, grabbed each arm of the convict, and started to tie them behind his back using a rope. At that time, the convict’s brown eyes were on Mabelly’s. Mabelly could not tell if the emotion in those eyes was suffering or pleading or hatred or anger or guilt or a mixture of all of these. Mabelly thought childishly that if they tied his eyes instead of his hands, she could escape this uneasy feeling.

Once the convict’s hands were bound, Charles Chevalier’s assistant took a pair of scissors and started cutting the neck region of the convict’s prison uniform. But while he was cutting the cloth haphazardly, the pointed tip of the scissors accidentally grazed the convict’s skin. A droplet of blood bubbled up on the convict’s skin like a red ruby. Everyone except the convict was shaken by the sight of the blood drop. Mabelly involuntarily shouted, “oh my!” Charles Chevalier leapt over to the side of his assistant and yanked the scissors out of his hand, shouting, “You pig! Can’t you do anything properly? Are you trying to make my job go up and flames, you idiot?” The convict remained motionless. Charles Chevalier deftly cut out the neck portion of the blue uniform.

The convict was ordered to stand up. He stood up slowly and bent his head to regard the ground. What was he leaving behind on this earth? A sip of rum?

The single door next to the chair was opened. The procession led the convict towards the wooden sculpture. It stood erect in the inner yard of the prison. The convict looked upwards towards the sky in order to avoid looking at the wooden sculpture. Perhaps he wanted the sky to be the last thing he saw. But a black screen blocked the sky out from the prison yard. The sky was blocked off for fear that someone in a helicopter might try to film a death sentence being carried out. Even a little bird cannot watch what went on in the prison yard.

Charles Chevalier brought a small red carpet and spread it out on the ground in front of Mrs. Mabelly. His assistant removed the artificial leg from the convict. Since his hands were tied behind his back, the convict hopped over on one foot towards the wooden sculpture and lay down on his stomach inside it. Mabelly secretly pleaded to God that the convict would not ask for water to drink or for another cigarette. She just wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible and leave.

When the wooden sculpture moved, blood spurted out of its anal hole. There was no other option: Mabelly now had to examine the dirty wicker basket to confirm that there was a severed head inside. Charles Chevalier lifted up the basket and brought it to show it to Mabelly and the Attorney General for confirmation. Then he lifted the head out of the basket and placed it on the red carpet. His assistant brought the artificial leg and placed it next to the severed head. It looked as if a human head grew out of that leg.

3

If you, the reader, find it difficult to escape from Annabelle’s last words, you can imagine my state of mind, having listened to the story in person. At the same time, I wondered how Madame Annabelle knew all the little details. It would be more comforting if this was fiction, I thought, in my anguish. I asked this question aloud from Annabelle.

“How do you know all this?”

She responded in the same flat voice.

“Justice Mabelly returned home at 5:10 in the morning. She sat at her writing desk and wrote all of this on two white sheets of paper. She then sealed the sheets in an envelope which she handed to her son Rémy, instructing him to submit it to the government after her death. When Mabelly died, the envelope was submitted to the government. Somehow the two pages ended up being published by a newspaper. I grabbed a copy of that newspaper from the garbage can by the lighthouse.

Suddenly a question popped up in my mind. I asked Annabelle right away:

“Just as Justice Mabelly wrote what she wanted released after her death, isn’t it possible that the convict also wrote something to be released after his death, and left it with someone?”

The waiter brought another drink and placed it in front of Annabelle. Annabelle took the glass without a word and started sipping it patiently. Looking at the way she was drinking, it seemed to me that she would be consuming this drink sip by sip for the rest of her life.

March 2024 (appeared in the Tamil short-story collection imiz).

He woke up at around seven in the morning, when it was already rather bright. His little sister shook him awake, calling out, “aṇṇai, aṇṇai.” He stretched lazily, rolled up the reed mat and stood it next to the wall.

The house was buzzing with activity. His siblings were bustling about getting ready for school.

“Ammā, the seven-fifteen bus is about to leave; please get me my lunch parcel quickly.”

“Aṇṇai, aṇṇai, I’ll take your pen to school today.”

“Geetha, how many days has it been since you had a bath? Today, you cannot go to school until you have had a bath.”

“Aṇṇai, Vathaṉi wants you to give her a bath.”

“All of you stay in bed for too long in the morning. Now you are all scrambling at the same time.”

A mist enveloped the sky. Morning rays drew smoky lines on the front verandah. A gentle cool breeze drifted by.

He broke off a twig from the neem tree and started chewing it. He fetched his little sister and gave her a bath. “Aṇṇai, when did you arrive?” the little girl next door asked. She was his little sister’s friend.

“I came already yesterday. Didn’t you see?” he said

“Liar, liar,” she grabbed his hands and shook them vigorously.

The bustle within the house dissipated away. Everyone had gone their respective ways. Ammā relaxed on the floor, cutting arecanuts noisily using a nutcracker. The calf came galloping towards him, frowned at him from a distance, and galloped away. A crow sat on top of the chimney and cawed. Ammā got up to shoo it away.

“The first thing in the morning — we get the crow cawing.”

As the morning advanced, the sun rose higher and its heat started to prickle. He was looking at the flower bushes in the front yard as he brushed. The lush white-and-red night-blooming jasmine that sways in full bloom was missing. In its place a royal jasmine creeper was rising up, sprouting green buds. Tender green fruits dangled from the guava tree. Some insect had devoured the leaves of the Indian gooseberry tree. The queen-of-the-night was shedding leaves.

“It is getting rather late in the morning! Wash up, won’t you? I do have to get on with my chores, don’t I?

He silently went to wash up wondering how he was going to spend the day. ‘Chee.. it is really boring to spend my vacation here. At least if there was a bicycle, I could go somewhere. But then the boys won’t be around either. They would have all gone to work…!”

After breakfast, he took the book of Bhārathiyār short stories, leaned against a wall and started to read. Gñāṉaratham, The Story of Little Saṅkaran, The Weighing Scale, … his eyes glanced through the story titles. The dark print irritated his eyes. He had the urge to close his eyes, as if he wanted to just lean over and sleep.

‘I am not going to sleep now. I spend all my vacation sleeping in late, and then sleeping through the day.’

He peered at a distance through the treeless space in the garden. The large iluppai tree that stood on the northeast corner of the yard had been cut down. They sold it when he was still a tot, not wise to the ways of the world. They said they were taking the trunk to build a wooden boat.

His appāchchi, paternal grandmother, used to live in a thatched hut under that tree. She would secretly make him roti from raw wheat flour. Her life was deeply intertwined with the tree. Flowers will bloom on the tree when it is the right season; the time when the flowers start to shed, falling down with their characteristic smell, was a magical time. Buds would sprout; buds would be shed; fruits would ripen; bats and birds would chatter; having shed the leaves, the bald tree would stand erect; the jauntiness of spring would make it sprout fresh green leaf buds.

Appāchchi’s hut would smell of iluppai flowers. Up front iluppai fruit would dry in the sun, looking like pearls. Women who come to buy them would bargain noisily.

“I swear on your head āchchi! I will not give you a cent more than one and a quarter rupees.”

“Old woman, how much do you want for your garbage?”

“Forty five rupees.”
 
 “Ok, ok, I will give you forty rupees. Don’t quibble.”

A double-oxen cart would show up to collect the old woman’s garbage, collected over the previous year within a fenced off square in the yard. They would disengage the oxen while the garbage was being loaded onto the cart, and tie them to the coralbush tree. The oxen would graze while swinging their tails to shoo away the flies on their backs, making their cowbells jingle.

For two months after selling her garbage, the golden necklace will adorn appāchchi’s neck. Appāchchi would be the embodiment of happiness during those months. Thereafter, it would make its way back to the pawn shop. One morning in the rainy season, appāchchi died.

“When did thambi return?” Startled, he looked up. Periyān stood obsequiously, yellow teeth grinning through the white beard. He had crossed his hands, holding his palms tightly on the sides of his belly above his waist.

“I came by the mail train yesterday, Periyān.”

“That is what I heard over there.”

He wanted to ask where, but once he could guess where, he just stared silently at Periyān. Thoughts rushed into his head and started sprouting. A certain sadness engulfed his chest. He bowed his head towards the ground.

He collected himself and looked up, his eyes settling on Periyān. He could not help notice the sense of pity in Periyān’s eyes. Periyān had watched over their childhood links and dreams with limitless fondness and had silently blessed them in his heart. When they met their unexpected demise, he silently conveyed his limitless condolences and comforted him. He knew everything but pretended not to know anything. “Periyān you know everything.”

“Thambi seems to be mulling over bygones.”

“No, Periyān,” he rested his cheek on his palm and remained silent for a while.

Periyān stood staring at him with his back bent and pleading eyes.

“What is the going rate now, Periyān?”

“Fifty cents, thambi.”

He silently stood up, walked inside, returned with a one rupee coin, placed it in Periyān.s outstretched palm, and sat back down leaning against the wall.

“So, I guess I’ll get going.”

“Thambi… tell Periyān to wait a little,” ammā yelled from the kitchen.

“No piḷḷai; thambi gave me a rupee; I am going to leave.”

“Oh, so you won’t have tea now! Then come back later.”

“I’ll see you later thambi.”

He saw Periyān leave with long strides, stooping, arms folded across his belly, palms on hips, and cross the gate in the southern fence. He was utterly bored.

“Thambi,do you want some tea?”

“Not now, ammā.”

“Then shall I mix some lemon juice for you?”

“Nothing for now.”

His mind kept straying. ‘What would I be doing now if I were at the office? I would be sitting in that dark corner reading something. Or perhaps I would be at the canteen having tea with my friend discussing politics or literature.’

‘The girls who sit at the desks across the aisle from me would be chattering gaily as usual, throwing bits of paper at one another.’

‘I have the urge to see her once. To somehow find a reason to chat with her in my half-broken Sinhala. I feel like I want to see that dazzling, meaningful, eager gaze and smile and return her smile!”

His maternal grandmother was walking along the edge of the yard, under the tamarind tree. She was swinging her arms rhythmically as she walked, balancing a huge palmyra leaf basket on her head. She put the basket down on the veranda, nodded towards him and smiled brightly. He smiled back emptily.

“When did you come back, thambi?”

“Yesterday; How is your health ammammā?”

“Nothing wrong with our health!”

She sat down next to him and leaned against the wall.

“How is the food in Colombo? You look like you have lost weight.”

“I have always been like this,” he smiled sheepishly and continued, “The heart has to be content for the body to flourish.”

“Why? What is wrong with your heart?”

“I don’t like this job; in order to be content one has to have a job that matches one’s education.”

“Why, how much are they paying you?”

“About three hundred. I am not complaining about the salary, ammammā.”

He was silent for a few moments, pondering how he could convey his complex feelings and sorrows to her.

“People can be happy only if they like their jobs.”

Ammammā did not say anything. Once again, he immersed himself silently into his own thoughts. How wonderful life is! How many different dreams, how many different kinds of captivating beauties; how many types of sorrows; how much naivete; how many pretensions; how many guileless innocences.

He looked at ammammā. She had stretched her legs along the floor and was busy cutting arecanuts with a nutcracker on the betel leaf tray.

“Ammā, ammammā is here!” He yelled.

“My dear! The betel leaf tray is over there. Keep talking to thambi. I will finish my chores and come to chat with you,”ammā stepped out of the kitchen and announced.

“He is not saying anything piḷḷai, just merely responding to questions.”

“What do you want me to say?”

Ammammā went into the kitchen with ammā.

He was left alone.

It was already ten o’clock. The sun had already started to scorch outside. The lush leaves of the jackfruit tree in the yard swayed noisily in the wind. Underneath the tree, spots of light drew beautiful lines and shapes.

He looked through the eastern fence that was not fully covered. At a distance, he could see the coconut trees by the well in her aunt’s yard. Some woman was washing clothes on the wash stone by the well. She was lifting the saree she was washing above her head and brought it down to beat against the wash stone.

Sleep clouded his eyes. He rubbed them.

‘If I go to aunt’s house, I might find Rāṇi or Baby. Perhaps I can chat with them.’

“Ammā, I am going to visit Gnana aunty.”

1974

Anguish pervaded his entire being. He felt that these two months since their wedding had been incomplete. He wondered what this nameless impediment was. That which was bubbling up from within his chest, that which irritated him like a thorn on his side, that which threaded within him like a strand of sadness, that which stood in the way of a beautiful, complete, union of his and her emotions.

He felt that he understood it. But at the same time, he also felt that he did not.

He loved her for five years before he married her. He was firm in his resolve, ‘If I am to live, it is with her.’ He withstood countless challenges to live this life with her. He hurt the feelings of so many loved ones, and tearfully tore asunder so many strong familial bounds.

She stood by him in that ideological quest. She, too, was shaken by many sorrows. She cried on many occasions. She wept uncontrollably in many others. She went without food or sleep for many days.

He knew all that.

She knew all that.

They had unshakeable faith in the love they had for each other. If she laughed, he laughed. If he cried, she cried. He laughed because he wanted to make her laugh. She laughed because she wanted to make him laugh.

They experienced the joy that the world feels during the spring season. They feared the whirlwind and the frightening thunder that roared in pitch darkness. They rejoiced in the feeling of singing while sailing in calm waters. How quickly time flew then; Moments crawled; time stopped to watch them admiringly.

He leaned against the door frame and looked up at the sky. The tops of the coconut palms by the well in the front yard were darkened. Their leaves rustled intermittently in the gentle breeze. Twinkling stars were strewn all over the sky, like a sea of golden ear studs.

He turned to look inside the house to see where she was. The pale-yellow light from the glass lamp was weak. As the window curtain slithered in the wind, the rays of light oozed out to cast patterns on the outside. There was a deep silence within the house. One could hear the old woman pounding arecanut in her little corner. Perhaps she was in some room, reading.

She yawned.

How they had yearned for solitude like this! Those rare moments of solitude.. they were precious moments of joy. The sorrows of solitude, the burdens, the sadness, the worries… those moments when they shared these with each other, when they understood each other, when their fingers gently wiped the tears rolling down, when the gentlest of smiles graced their lips, when they immersed themselves in their joint laughter, when they embraced each other, when they buried their faces in each other’s chest or shoulder to weep, when they had a tiff and then made up.. Joys, joys they were. Are these the meaning of married life? Nay of life itself?

A wall clock in the living room was tick-ticking away with immaculate precision. A gecko uttered something in its own language. A male voice laden with the weight of age wafted over the air from the neighboring house chanting a devotional song by the Tamil saint Chuntaramūrtti:

pittạ̄ piṟai cūti perumạ̄ṉē aruḷạ̄ḷạ̄ [O madman with the moon-crowned hair, God of grace]

eittạ̄lmaṟa vạ̄tē niṉaikkiṉṟēṉ [O Lord, how can I forget you?]

He remembered. The temple chariot crawled, gently swaying from side to side. The bhajanai troupe chanted and danced. The karakạ̄ṭṭam folk dancers swirled. Devotees carrying kạ̄vadi danced to the accompaniment of nạ̄tasvaram and traditional thavil drumming. From time to time the fragrance of incense sticks drifted over in the wind and captured one’s heart. Little children gallivanted in the jaggery-water stalls set up to quench the thirst of devotees. The multitudes in silk vēṭṭi sạ̄lvais, silk sarees, and colorful frocks inched forward. The loudspeaker was belting out a Tamil song. It was then he saw her.

His eyes widened in wonder.

Has the onslaught of time given her such a sheen?

How she has grown up! Slim, tall, fair, attractive, … thick, long, black, wavy locks….

She saw him, too.

The black pupils of her eyes darted hither and thither.

With a gentle smile, she turned her head away.

He had last seen her about four years earlier. That, too, was at some temple festival or a wedding celebration, he remembered vaguely. He remembered her as a little girl, running around in a silk skirt.

“Appanē murukạ̄,” he could hear an old woman moan. He heard the jingling of running water as some neighbor was drawing water from the well in the yard. He also heard the bustle of the cows and calves standing under the eave.

He started doing his rounds on his bicycle at exactly the same time every day. First a pair of excited eyes were visible through the hole in the cadjan fence. In due course of time, the eyes smiled. The fence hole grew bigger until her entire face blossomed through it like a red lotus flower.

One day, he asked, “How are you?”

She responded with a slight smile on her lips.

“How are you?” he repeated the next day.

“I am fine,” she responded.

Thus began their life of sweet tussles. Sweet tussles indeed. Is life nothing but sweet tussles?

He left the door frame to sit on the front step.

He reflected on how that sweet life turned into a life of tussles.

He reflected on those who stubbornly insist on maintaining caste barriers for no good reason. Although, luckily, he and she belonged to the same high caste, the economic and social status disparities between their families was enough reason for his relatives to rise in opposition to their liaison. But he had remained resolute. He was proud to wed her by overcoming fraternal, filial, and family bonds. He marveled at his resolve and ingenuity in overcoming all the obstacles thrown in their way by those in his family who opposed their liaison.

Nevertheless… nevertheless.

He had a nagging feeling that something was amiss in their relationship. On their first night together, in the faint yellow light, when he tried to embrace her, she gently removed his hands, and, like a lifeless doll, looked up at him with moist eyes. At that moment, he sensed a deep sorrow in her heart.

He consoled her by kissing her forehead and wiping away her tears.

“Piramiḷā, why are you crying?”

Why did you have to cry at a happy occasion like that? How we had looked forward to that joyous day, letting our imaginations run riot? One day when we were alone in pitch darkness, and I tried to do something, you said “Why are you always in such a hurry? There will be a time and place for everything. Why don’t you wait patiently?”

In my anguish at the time, I had said, “Why are you afraid? It is certain that we will be together.”

You were silent.

I, too, became silent.

“Piramiḷā, why are you crying?”

I married her out of love. I know the beauty of love. But that does not mean that I am beyond natural urges. I am a man. She is a woman. The yearning to know the secrets of creation sprung forth from within me. But I know that the goal of matrimony is not entirely the urge to learn the mechanics of creation.

“Piramiḷā, why are you crying?”

She just smiled, “The liaison between a low-status person and a high-status person does not make them equal, does it?”

He understood. But he keenly felt the anguish that comes from powerlessness. His loved ones, his kith and kin, did not indeed respect his wife. But did that require him to yield some things to her once they became man and wife, understanding, and loving each other, seeking solace in each other, living for each other? Is marriage nothing but the dregs of society forsaken by others coming together to forget their sorrows of loneliness to find solace in each other?

The wall clock rang nine times and went quiet.

“Come to eat.”

He looked up from the front step. She stood there, with her beauty shimmering through. How charming is her smile! How pure and without blemish she is! She who has dedicated herself to him, and lives for him, she who is his.

A rush of thoughts crowded his mind.

“Why do you look at me like this? Come to eat, won’t you?”

He stood up and took hold of her hand and kissed lightly on her forehead. “Piramiḷā, I understand you; I will live for you.”

She held his hands tightly, buried her face in his shoulders, and wept.

1971

She was sitting next to him. He peered at her intently with curiosity. Her proximity made him fidget. He breathed in the scent of the perfume that wafted from her and delighted in the gentle embrace of the front piece of her sari.

Something told him that he had seen her before. Peering at her, he tried hard to remember where. He looked at her light blue sari, her single plait that dangled like a black snake, and the white jasmine flowers that smiled from the top of her plait. He looked at her lips coated with a very light red gloss, and the slim gold chain that glittered in her long, shimmering neck. With a sideways glance, he could see one side of her face, her long nose, the long eyebrow that reached till her ear, and the shining rolled gold of a cheek.

Suddenly he remembered that he had seen her at an examination hall before. Towards the end of that examination, he saw that face and the inquisitive round eyes like black beetles on them, as he looked up to ponder how to beautifully answer a question about literature. He smiled charmingly. She smiled back and bowed her head. He remembered how that beautiful poetic experience gave him the impetus he needed to excitedly write an exquisite response to the question.

He recalled how he tried, and failed, to meet her after the examination. He remembered how he frantically looked for her, and the soaring sensation he experienced for the next two or three days, thinking about her smiling face, with a joy tinged with sadness. Thereafter, he remembered, he forgot about her, and went on to appreciate the attractions of the ups and downs of daily life. He remembered those charming times.

He let out a huge sigh and crossed his legs. He lifted his arm intentionally so that it brushed against her, and mumbled, “Sorry!” as if he regretted it. He tried everything he could to attract her attention. But she did not budge. She sat motionless, with her attention fixed on the stage, completely immersed in the happenings on stage.

He was frustrated. He glanced cursorily at the various decorations in that hall. In that time when evening met night, the electric lamps in the hall was oozing yellow tinted light. The hall was filled with heads. The sound of salaṅkai, the traditional Tamil ankle bracelet with bells, emerged from the stage. The middle-aged man in front of them was casually belching out cigarette smoke. The young woman next to him wearing a silk saree — perhaps his wife — turned her face away as if she was disgusted by the smoke. She appeared to be much younger than the man. She wore her hair in a single plait, tied at the end with a flowery tassel adorned with round red and white beads. A smiling, beautiful doll-like girl of ten came running from somewhere to hug the young woman, shouting, “Aunty!”

His neighbor clapped her hands excitedly, shouting “Bravo, bravo.”

He looked at the stage. The elaborately bedecked young woman on stage lifted one foot, repeatedly pounced it on the floor while bending her hand several times, showing some abhinayam, a stylized hand gesture in bharatanātyam. The sounds of her salaṅkai were sweet to the ears. The singer sang in Tamil in a sweet voice:

“I found the meaning of the word ‘beauty;’

I was elated…. my friend!”

The dancer set her legs apart, lowered herself towards the floor, and stood up again while gesturing with her hands. It was indeed fabulous. He lost himself in the charm of the performance.

He turned to his neighbor and asked, “She dances beautifully; Who is she?”

She turned to face him fully. She was momentarily startled, but recovered quickly to respond with a smile that signaled her recognition, “I don’t know.”

He smiled gently, and said, “She is beautiful.”

She turned to look at him as though she did not like what he said. “This hall is also decorated beautifully,” she said curtly.

He looked around the hall as though he was doing it for the first time. Coconut and mango leaf decorations gently swayed in the wind. Colored paper decorations glittered under the floodlights. A portrait of the goddess of the arts, kalaimakaḷ, sat on one side of the stage decorated with colored light bulbs.

He said, “You are right. But then one could say that the whole world is beautiful. The dancer has one kind of beauty that is natural, the hall has a different kind of beauty that is artificial.”

The moment he said it, he was distressed, wondering if he had been too presumptuous in trying to explain something that she would not understand.

She turned to look him in the eye and said, “Beauty is a theory of the mind.”

He immediately became alert, realizing that he had underestimated her. He understood that she was well-informed about subtleties like this. He looked squarely at her face, having previously seen her face only from the side. He regarded the red poṭṭu on her forehead that stood like an exclamation mark, her lightly accentuated eyebrows, the two circular earrings that dangled from her ears, and the immaculate straight line that parted her hair, and said:

“Beauty is indeed a theory of the mind. What appears to me as beautiful might disgust you, what disgusts you might bewitch me with its beauty. I can assert something is beautiful even if you didn’t think so. Yet, this world does indeed have things with eternal, natural, charming beauty that everyone would agree on.”

She sat with her head bowed, as if she agreed with him. Suddenly he felt he may have spoken too loudly and looked around to see if anyone noticed. People were whispering among themselves. He looked at the stage. A bespectacled old man in trousers was rehashing the philosophy behind the Navarātri celebrations that everyone had already heard many times over.

“Tamils have given a pre-eminent place to women; they respected womanhood; this is why they built temples for the goddess of feminine energy, sakthi and worshiped her. Learning, wealth, and bravery are indispensable for human life. Tamils worshiped them in the form of female deities kalaimakaḷ, alaimakaḷ, and malaimakaḷ respectively. They were cognizant of the significant role played by women in human life.”

He smiled to himself. He remembered the words of the poet who lamented, “Aiyō, the debased Tamil country,” out of anger and frustration. For how long do we go on making orations like these …?

He looked at her. She continued to be silent.

“Are you angry with me…,” he asked tentatively.

“Not at all…”, she smiled back.

“You are very beautiful,” he continued.

“You, too…”, she cast her eyes down, in embarrassment.

Her cheeks reddened. He was in a state of bliss. He felt he perceived the eternal permanence of worldly life. He thought that the words, “You, too…” coming from the mouth of a pleasing woman contained the essence of a wonderful poem. He felt the same overwhelming emotion that one felt while looking at a beautiful painting or listening to timeless music or reading an immortal story. He felt that the entire essence of his life was contained in that moment.

He took hold of her hand. She squirmed as though she did not like it. Her left big toe scratched the ground, she bit the nail on her left little finger, and whimpered silently.

A singer on the stage was into freely rendering a raga elaborately as if he was showering the audience with flowers.

As he gently stroked her hand, he thought he was incredibly fortunate, at least in this matter. He brimmed with pride at recognizing his good fortune in having found someone who was beautiful, whose intellect was equal to his, and who could be his intellectual companion. He thought even if they disagreed about something, the disagreements would also be a form of bliss.

As the audience chattered, the singer brought his performance to a conclusion. She extricated her hand saying, “Let me go.” Her other hand gently caressed the hand she extricated from him.

He remembered the scene he saw some time ago at the rocks by the seaside hotel. A white man kissed a woman — perhaps his wife — so openly. How many people would have seen that scene against the backdrop of the red globe of the setting sun, and the blue sea. He was embarrassed at having seen that sight, concerned that the young generation who witnessed such scenes would change their own behavior.

He compared the femininity of the woman who shyly extricated her hand saying, “Let me go” to the femininity of the white woman who kissed a man publicly in front of many people. He marveled at how place, time, environment, and history influence the lines of civilized behavior.

“What are you thinking about?” Her voice sounded sweet in his ears.

He awoke from his reverie.

The crowd started to disperse after the event. She handed him the package with the pirasạ̄tham, the temple offering blessed by the deity, that she had picked up for him. She said, “I am going to take my leave,” and turned towards the bevy of young women who were waiting for her.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “you didn’t tell me your name or anything else…” he hesitated.

“I think that isn’t necessary. These moments between the two of us are sweet for both of us. Do we need to cross paths again?” She turned and started walking towards her friends.

He stood stunned as though he had been struck by lightning, feeing his emotions growing numb. As he followed them, he wondered about the vicissitudes of human emotion.

He could hear their vivacious laughter. They laughed and chatted gaily among themselves with nary a care as they turned towards the east.

He turned towards the west, thinking about himself. He felt that a strange unknown emotion, neither joy nor sadness, filled him.

The moments with her gave him joy.

Her parting gave him sadness.

He consoled himself thinking that life itself consists of lines drawn by the mosaic of emotions.

The leaves on the trees swaying in the wind under the light of the streetlamps drew their lines as shadows.

1970

This is a happy evening for all of us. We have met many evenings in our life’s journey. Many more await. Many evenings past may rekindle sweet memories in your mind. Perhaps you got married one evening. Perhaps you met your soulmate for the first time in another. Perhaps you gave birth to your firstborn in yet another.

I remember clearly. He was born twenty-seven years ago on an evening during the waxing moon. Someone brought the news to his father, who was plowing my land. I remember very well when he came before me with a wide grin and said, “Nayinār, I have been blessed with a son. I need to go home.” I remember that when I responded, “What if your son was just born? Are you the doctor taking care of him? Finish the work before you leave,” his face fell. Unable to bear that sight, I remember telling him, “Go, go,” and sending him off.

Now I am sixty years old. My hair has turned gray. My voice has faltered. The experience of maturity has creased on my face. I now understand people, their desires, and their ideals about what constitutes a worthy life. But back then, I did not have the same maturity. I was a fearless buck in those days, blessed with enormous wealth and accustomed to being treated like a lord….; I regret wasting those precious days. How much drama did I create! How many atrocities did I commit! How many lives did I destroy!

You might find it strange that I myself recount negatives about me. But I am not at all ashamed to do so. On the contrary, I think it is entirely appropriate that I talk about them. Many of you are educated, hold good positions, and are savvy enough to understand the duplicity, dishonesty, and selfishness that lie hidden beneath the facade of the great and the good; Many of you gullible innocents — hard workers; Many of you grew stronger because of your constant struggle with life. It is just fitting that all of you learn how a man who lived a flawed life was sainted. But I don’t want to make you weary on this occasion by delving into these topics at length.

It was yet another evening when he came to see me. It must have been a Saturday. I had had an oil bath, had a drink before my lunch, and had just woken up from my post-lunch siesta. It was a lethargic dusk. I was sitting on the recliner in my front yard, staring at the eastern horizon. I was plotting to take revenge on someone or the other, root them out, and drive them away from their home.

It was then that he came to see me. He leaned his bicycle on the jasmine bush in the front yard and walked over to stand next to me. He was wearing a white vētti and a white shirt. He had a budding pencil mustache. His face was serene, sporting a smile that would instantly disarm anyone.

All of you know him very well. I need not describe his appearance at length. But I cannot forget my first meeting with him that drowsy evening, as my drunken stupor was subsiding. Although I had seen him on many occasions prior, the meeting that day is memorable because that was the first time I spoke to him; It was that meeting that drew me to him and his convictions. I started to transform into a human being only after that meeting.

I keep talking about myself. While his memories bubble forth in your minds, I think it is inevitable that I recall my memories of interacting with him. On this happy occasion, I think it is fitting, and is, in a way, a tribute to him.

That evening, when he met me, he started his conversation by greeting me with a “Vaṇakkam,” first. I didn’t return his greeting. I didn’t even invite him to sit down. I had a certain arrogance back then. I was the honorary chairperson of all the sundry clubs and societies in the village. Whatever I had heard of him until that day was not exactly palatable to me. I regarded him with distaste.

He did not seem to mind my ill treatment. He said, with the same constant smile, “I want to discuss a few matters with aiyā.”

It was probably around that time that he devised the plans for a road running right through the village, from the northern end of our village to the main street in the south. As I listened quietly, he started speaking. From beginning to end, he explained very clearly and in detail. It was as if he saw the road in his mind’s eye and was relishing the experience of walking along the road. He spoke as though he was in a trance.

There is a lump in my throat when I say this. From your faces, I can see your sorrow, too. I can hear someone sobbing. Many of you are wiping your eyes. Even though his memories bring out your sadness, you must be happy to see his dream come true. You must not grieve as if there has been an irreparable loss or destruction because you know that he would not want that.

Back then, by crook or by hook, I owned half the land in this village. I inherited all that from my father. I was the master of my domain, the king of my hill. I laid down the law. I was at the pinnacle of my reign when he came to see me. He talked at length about the road he wanted to build, a road that will rip through my lands. I was mesmerized, listening with rapt attention as he held forth.

He spoke logically. He explained what righteous living is. He showed me the sorrows of people who struggle, explaining the lengths to which the residents of the high ground in my lands were forced to go to, in order to fetch just a pot of water. When he said, “This suffering is not permanent; It should be removed; It can be removed; Think of how elated the people would be when this suffering is removed!” I was engrossed in what he was saying, oblivious to everything else.

I remembered the face of his father who came before me with a wide grin on hearing the news of his birth. I remembered the faces of the naive, innocent village folk who lauded me as the ‘big-hearted farmer’ when I used government funding to dig a community well in my property under the guise of helping the high-ground residents.

I marvel even now. I couldn’t understand how my distaste and hatred simply evaporated when he started speaking. It cannot be said that I was delighted by his speech simply because I was in a drunken stupor. What was compelling for anyone was his speech, the thread of logic that ran through his speech, and his deep regard for his fellow human beings that made him strive to remove their suffering. Occasionally I compared him with great leaders like Vinobha, Gandhi, or Lenin. I am sure you will not disagree that the comparison is warranted. In truth, he would have blossomed into a leader who charts the course towards the emancipation of the suffering masses.

I know very well that wallowing in the memory of past sorrows is futile. But how can we forget his memories just because they are past?

I am blabbering at length. But I won’t have another occasion to share these thoughts with you. I hear that many of you laud me as some great philanthropist. I am no philanthropist nor saint but just an ordinary human. I am an ordinary man who went from lacking humanity to being a person with love for his fellow humans. When he made me discover my humanity, I spent a big chunk of my wealth for the common good. I gave away a part of my landholdings for this road. The target of your gratitude for all of this should be him.

In a sense, I know that asserting ownership over one’s assets is wrong. He said that if a person owns more than they need, then the excess should be made public property. He would assert angrily that those people who appropriate nature’s wealth for themselves when millions of people struggle without food, clothing, or the means to live a full life, are the scoundrels of society. He would declare that there would come a time when everyone would live with fulfillment, and that we were going to strive to bring it into fruition.

I sense a bustle among you. I don’t want to stand for long between you and the others who are waiting to speak. I am deeply honored to have been invited to give the keynote address on this occasion of declaring this new road open. But my speech would not be complete if I didn’t share a little more about his struggle for making this road a reality. You are now going to walk along this road. This road that cuts through palmyra patches, farming lands, shrubs, and small settlements, will become useful to you. Many of your inconveniences will be removed. Now you don’t have to walk a mile-and-a-half to post a letter. You can put your letter into the little red box that hangs on a roadside pole. Pregnant women need not be carried over to the main road but can be driven to the hospital directly. He was the one who saw your travails and dreamed up ways to address them. He was the one who planned them, worked for them, and ultimately sacrificed his own life for them.

This beautiful curving road cuts through the village. Those of you who are old enough will remember it when it was just a footpath. It was strewn with spurges and thorny shrubs with black claws that would grab you. He toiled by himself to broaden the footpath to pave the way for the road. Eventually a handful of other youngsters his age joined him. He was injured at the spot where the mailbox stands now. He ignored it because it was a small scratch.

I am obliged to tell you what he told me when his injury became serious. His last message to me and you was this: “I will not survive aiyā…,” (from the beginning till the very end, he called me “aiyā”) “please tell everyone that my death will not mean the end of this pilgrimage towards the salvation of our people. Tell them that the journey will continue until its goal is reached. Tell them that until every person in this world has the opportunity to live a happy, full life, this journey will not end.”

When I heard this word, I teared up. Your eyes would tear up, too. No matter how strong we are, some occasions call for crying.

1973

The sky was gradually growing darker. The wind swirled and howled. The blue waves, folding and foaming, crashed against the shore and retreated.

He, along with Nandakumār and Poṉṉuthurai, was sitting on a branch of a seaside screewpalm tree that dipped towards the sea. He was completely lost in thought. A certain joy bubbled up, breaching the bounds of his heart. A joy that could not be captured in words. He was immersed in those feelings, drawing a tapestry of melodies in his heart, mumbling something in an attempt to give voice to this tapestry. His mind dwelled on the melodic shifts of his mumbling and realized that those variations exquisitely captured his joy in a way that words could not. Enveloped in his bliss, he forgot his surroundings and became one with nature.

He reflected on the life of a river, born in the mountain, culminating in the sea. When it encountered vertical cliff drops, it fell like streaks of diamonds, shattered like silver beads, and then reunited, with the magical incantation, ‘Ōm,’ into a whole. Through the forests bearing flowers, it crawled like a smiling little baby. It bumped and crashed into rocks, swirling and flowing on ferociously. It entered the fields in villages and ran in rings, frolicking. When it reached its point of confluence, it calmly merged into the sea, like a hermit who had given up all worldly bonds and desires.

He imagined the lively movements of the river as melodies. The river flowed within the ups and downs of the melodic variations in his heart. It made music like a waterfall. Bearing flowers, its laughter tinkled. It roared, pounding on to the rocks. Finally, it became silent with the sea. He reveled in his joy. He felt as if he was soaring high in the sky. His body became weightless like a bundle of cotton wool. He felt the urge to sing aloud. He wanted to roll around on the moist green cover of the screewpalm leaves. He wanted to jump with joy on the moist crystalline sand that reflected the colors of the sky, and dance as the waves retreated back into the sea. Eventually, he felt dizzy and faint.

He held fast to the branch of the screewpalm tree to steady himself. Extricating himself from his poetic reverie, he regarded his friends. Nandakumār was immersed in some story in a Tamil magazine. He was holding the magazine in his right hand, while his left was unconsciously ruffling through his hair. His face was serene. He looked very handsome in this pose. The budding pencil mustache gave him a particular radiance.

Poṉṉuthurai was sitting at the top of the branch, his feet swinging freely below him. Holding the branch with one hand, he was savoring the smell of a withered screewpalm flower.

Time crawled. A southbound train sped along the seaside tracks. The green screewpalm leaves, dappled by the yellow evening sunlight, shimmered, glittering through the foaming white waves. A young girl of twelve or thirteen, at the cusp of womanhood, was frolicking on the beach, keeping up with the advance and retreat of the waves.

He delighted in the beauty around him. He thought that the soul of the universe manifests in beauty like this. Musical montages pervaded his heart, like a fresh spring gushing forth; like a vibrant multi-coloured sparkler that pours green, red, blue, and yellow; like a grand park pulsating with life in the Spring; like the flocks of birds that rise from the paddy fields at dusk. They gently caressed his heart and blossomed into mumblings and scattered.

He thought about her, her warmth of her sideways glance, the elegance of her gait, the charm of her smile, the sweet majesty of her voice that emerges from the depth of her heart, the easy grace with which she gets along with everyone.

Overcome with emotion, he suddenly turned to his friends and said:

“The genesis of art is based on the appreciation of beauty. It is the allure of beauty that enchants the human heart and triggers the emotional outburst that leads to the creation of art. What do you think?”

A soft, gentle smile appeared on Poṉṉuthurai’s face.

Nandakumār lifted his eyes up from his magazine, hesitated for a moment, and then twirling the ring on his right ring finger with his left hand said:

“I cannot accept the argument that beauty is the basis of art. Emotional turmoil and sorrow have also engendered great art!”

He interrupted Nandakumār, “That is true; but it is only when a person is full of joy that their emotions bubble over the brim. Ancient humans produced art only when they were joyful. Was not every art form, be it dance, music, painting, or sculpture, the expression of some emotion? Is it not so, even now?”

“That is exactly what I said. Appreciation of beauty is not the basis of art. The expression of all nine types of emotions, like joy, suffering, sorrow, happiness, and so on, is the basis of art,” Nandakumār said as he flipped through the pages of his magazine, reflecting on what he had just said.

Poṉṉuthurai, who was silent until then, hopped off the branch, planted his feet firmly on the ground and leaned on the branch. He folded his arms across his chest, smiled and said in a booming voice:

“You say that art is the expression of emotions. I daresay that the best art is that which expresses society’s emotions. They are the ones that will hasten social development. They are the ones that will nudge the oppressed, who suffer like slaves under the yoke of society, into reflecting about their plights, and catalyze them into struggling for equality in society. I will say that the laments of those who suffer under the oppressive social structures of today should be the weft of creative art. Just focusing on personal human emotions and sorrows only serve to distract and destroy attempts to reform society.”

“I cannot accept this argument. Neither the struggle for basic needs like food and clothing nor victories in those struggles constitute social development. Meeting all the basic needs and beyond, and the distraction of creature comforts in life, do not constitute an ideal life either. There should be a meaning to life, my friend. Struggling for food and clothing is not the meaning of life.”

Nandakumār was listening quietly to both arguments while looking at the round-faced beauty on the cover of his magazine.

The waves in the sea roared.

Poṉṉuthurai usually roared with righteous indignation like a tumultuous sea whenever he talked about societal ills. But that day, he was very calm. He said, with determination, and a hint of sarcasm, in his voice, “A man who is denied food and clothing must need to think about food and clothing; the meaning of his life is the satisfaction he derives from food and clothing; if he cannot eat, there is no life for him.”

He remained silent, rocking the branch back and forth by rhythmically pushing against a big rock, staring at the horizon. He was watching the blazing red globe of a sun set into the sea.

Dark clouds were dispersing.

He was deep in thought, pondering the meaning of life. He marveled at the magic of creation, wondering what puzzle lay behind its secret. “How many living beings; How many kinds of grass and weeds; How many trees; How many bushes and creepers; How many birds; How many creatures; How many types of people; How much beauty,” he thought, amazed.

‘This life is a struggle. The world revolves around the struggle between the strong and the weak. Creation itself has produced the strong and the weak and is spectating the ensuing struggle between them. Sometimes the survival of one depends on the destruction of the other. When destruction leads to sorrow, this entire world glistens in its sadness,’ he thought.

Poṉṉuthurai was deep in thought, leaning on the branch with his hands folded across his chest. Nandakumār, holding the rolled-up magazine in his right hand, spread his legs wide, bent over as if he was searching for something on the ground, below his legs.

He looked at them and said softly, “The struggle between the strong and the week, and the struggle between humanity and nature, are the forces driving the evolution of human civilization; They are authentic and inevitable; How many people lack food, clothing, and other essential needs, and are exploited by others; It is true that creating art about them can make them ponder their fate, and thus lead to their emancipation; But that is no reason to assert that art must be concerned only with their plight. The beauty, sorrow, and the ups and downs of all creation can also be made into art.

He hesitated for a moment, and continued in his soft, refined voice.

“External struggles are inevitable; Art must explore them; But one must not argue that aspects of the internal life of the human mind is off topic for art. The beauty that humans see in nature, the empathy they feel with the naturally deprived and the disadvantaged, their inherent sorrow they see in destruction, their yearning to appreciate beauty, and the resulting anguish and disappointment, all certainly lead to exquisite art. This is what we see in the ruins of ancient civilizations.”

They were silent.

Time crawled.

The silence hung heavily among them.

He waited for them to say something but could see from their facial expressions that they would not. He stared at the expanse of the sky through the gaps in the screewpalm branches towards the northeast.

A yellow electric lamp whimpered on top of the tall pillar that rose from the southern wall of the railway station. Two crows sat on the iron grill supporting the lamp. It looked like a signal post. Behind them, in the railway station building, the roof ridge that ran in the east-west direction was bookended by two sharp, erect poles that reflected the traditional architectural style.

He closed his eyes.

A melody that carried the essence of suffering emerged as mumblings from his mouth.

He reflected on the atrocities of this societal life. This society, which insists on repeatedly wailing loudly about ethics, morality, justice, religions, and beliefs, nevertheless carries on its unethical, immoral, unjust, faith-destroying march. The bulk of this society has transmogrified into a fertile ground for unethical life, a sacrificial altar for justice and faith. But the righteous sermons continue…

One can be immoral while admitting being immoral or destroy justice and faith while acknowledging doing so. That would be better, he thought.

He was truly enchanted by her beauty, its bewitching charm, and its elegance. He had complete trust in her and his friends. After she declared, “You and I are one. The essence of my life is in living it with you,” he had wholeheartedly allowed her to socialize with his friends.

She could have told him, “I like your friend better than you.”

He could have tried to make me understand, “Machān, she loves me — I love her, too.”

He mumbled to himself, ‘When I see morality and faith being destroyed, I am overcome with emotion, anger, self-pity, and hurt.’

Through the screewpalm branches, the night smiled where the sea and the sky united on the western horizon. Dark clouds gathered, chasing one another.

They jumped off the screewpalm branch and walked away.

He followed his friends, intently watching their footprints forming in the moist beach sand; He walked mumbling that painful melody.

1971