V. Sanjay Kumar
I am a young man and my name is Valiban. After my father’s death, I left home to stay with my ailing uncle Balan. He took early retirement from a steady job and has since developed an acquaintance with a cheap whisky. I steal a peg a day from his bottle and replace it with water. This has kept him alive. I have grown to fear evenings, the time when he drinks and I sit and watch and pretend to listen to his advice. Our family is a close one, an affectionate one, and full of menfolk who paused at the wine shop on the way to Sanskrit College. We have always stood by each other. No one in the previous generations has been markedly successful, famous or rich. Most of them broke with tradition by having affairs, or marrying outcastes; they drank and made merry at festivals, ate red meat with relish and made strange career choices. We followed in their footsteps but we make sure we visit the house of God, wear the caste mark and that safety belt called the poonal around our midriff.
You should know where I come from. I come from a restless sensibility that doesn’t give birth but it spawns nagars and purams. Put together, it is called a nadu and right here under the country’s armpit, washed by the Bay of Bengal, is the mahanagar of this nadu, one that houses Tamils. Chennai, the capital city of this Tamil Nadu, has grown quietly in the shade of neem and tamarind trees. Its people are quiet, too, unlike its gods who sit astride loudly painted temples. One of my uncles is a soft-spoken priest and he uses a loudspeaker and a bhajan tape to threaten the heathen. Our Chennai culture is ancient and unbreakable, like the stainless steel utensils we use, though of late my family complains about these mofussil types from the interiors that have swamped the place, bringing with them their peculiar habits.
My city stands firmly on its two legs that stretch far south to the temple town of Mahabalipuram. The right leg is called the Old Mahabalipuram Road and it is a four-lane highway. Money favours the left leg, which is the East Coast Road, and it hugs the coastline, giving residents a scenic view of sand and waves.
There are three connecting roads between the two legs and in one such connection there resides a small puram I call Utopia. I named it so because it has a posh complex called Elysium, which the Greeks thought was an imagined place. Elysium has thirty white villas that promise idyll and incredible happiness. Outside Elysium is a large hoarding. Stalin, son of Karunanidhi, smiles at me from this hoarding, looking thrilled to bits because he is wearing a huge rose garland that is the size of a traffic island, locally called a round tana. His father, who is a famous playwright and a canny politician, is my mentor. I call him by his first name, Muthuvel, though he is not on first-name terms with the populace. People defer to him as Kalaignar because his oratory, his literary prowess and his dark glasses give him the air of a political poet.
The dark glasses are really dark, darker than any other and they have thick black frames and when Muthuvel wears them even at night you wonder if he can see at all. The glasses were in fashion because a matinée idol, a veritable bhagwan called M.G. Ramachandran, wore them. MGR became chief minister of Tamil Utopia, a vast jagir that even had a prenuptial agreement with part of a nearby island. Once MGR started wearing dark glasses, everybody Tamil did so, especially in summer because the first invocation in that long season of heat and sweat was Madras eye, a brand of conjunctivitis that moved people to tears.
Where am I going?
‘Where do you want to go?’ asks the rickshaw driver. I am seated at the rear and to my left is a photo of him on the rickshaw panel that says Ramesh and on my right is a picture of a glam doll called Sneha. Ramesh looks at me in his rearview mirror and I point straight ahead.
‘Keep going,’ I tell him.
I lean forward and look out whilst Sneha pouts into my ear. Every street in my Chennai looks the same because the litter is the same everywhere. There are three or four puppies with their mama and many sniffing papas. Next to them is a garbage bin that is surrounded by garbage and nearby there is a small bridge over a smelly stream.
‘Should I take left?’ he asks, looking again at me, this time a little oddly.
‘Go straight.’
He overtakes a bus and slows down and soon the bus overtakes him. This happens twice and each time he glances at me.
‘Left?’
‘Straight.’
The fellow is so distracted by now, he almost runs over a pedestrian who is carrying vegetables in a basket. The poor chap jumps aside, spills a tomato and runs after it. We brake beside him with a slight skid. I wait for the chap to curse but he merely looks rueful.
‘All okay?’ asks my driver, peeping out at him. ‘How is your thakkali?’
‘Twenty rupees for half kilo,’ replies the old man, who thinks we are asking to buy. He shows us the fallen fruit.
‘Mad guy,’ says my driver as we continue our journey. We follow another bus and the cat-and-mouse game continues. We pass a Murugan Koil (temple), then a Sivan temple (koil) and finally a marriage hall where, below a neon sign that says kalyanamandapam, Ravi is wedding Meena. Ravi in a crisp veshti and cream jibba is wedding a flower-bedecked, bejewelled and fully waxed Meena. The long wind instruments they call nadaswarams are sounding the chorus crescendo backed by a volley of drums and I can imagine garlands being exchanged while the families shower rose petals on the young couple and the guests sigh and queue up for a five-course meal.
‘Further?’ asks my man. The meter reading is still showing sixty rupees.
‘Stop at hundred rupees,’ I tell him.
He looks at my reflection and is clearly unhappy. ‘Are you testing my meter?’
I guess I was. I hated auto-rickshaw drivers who tampered with their meters. We cross one nagar and one puram and come to a halt in Thiruvanmiyur. I offer him a single crisp note.
‘Happy?’ he asks me. I give him an additional twenty and ask him to wait.
A man wearing a smock emerges from a clinic opposite. He looks grim as he comes up and then in an apologetic manner he tells me, ‘She doesn’t want to meet you.’
‘Does she know what day it is today?’ I am surprised.
The doctor nods, spreading his hands helplessly. ‘She is not in a good way today. Some days are really bad.’
I notice the rickshaw driver is standing right next to me, attentive and curious.
‘You still want to come up?’ asks the doctor.
I shake my head. He places a hand on my shoulder briefly, nods and leaves, crossing the road carefully. A local bus hurtles past behind him. I stand still, knowing Ramesh had questions and I felt he deserved an explanation.
‘She is my aunt but an estranged relative. She is quite old and behaves funny.’
‘Aha,’ says Ramesh. He scratches his head pretending he understands.
‘I meet her once in the year and always on this day.’
‘It is an auspicious day,’ says Ramesh, shifting from one foot to other.
‘Nobody in my house knows I do this,’ I add. If they knew, would they approve?
Car after car goes past us, a few cyclists swerve and two-wheelers squeeze into every possible space, even on pavements. My driver scratches his head again and he spits to the side of the road.
‘Meter is running,’ he says.
If we wait any longer he will smoke a cigarette. He has that restless air that spawns dead cells. A few schoolchildren and an office-goer emerge from the apartment buildings around us and undulate towards him.
‘Take me to Valasaravakkam,’ I tell him. ‘Quickly.’
He jumps in and off we go, making wind. We pass roadside temples, some colony temples and one multi-storey temple that has gods on different floors. The entrance has a huge gate that can welcome elephants, and flower-sellers sit on both sides, busy tying lengths of jasmine buds. We are parked at a signal and I can feel a buzz. I haven’t had a bath and have hardly brushed my teeth.
‘Stop. Stop here for a while.’
Ramesh makes a nifty manoeuvre that is half-brake, half-swerve and total disregard for the traffic following us. I remove my slippers and walk into this temple I have never been to. People are milling around and I stand in the queue for the aarti. As I stand I catch a young girl’s eye and for a fraction of a second we are alone. She is fair, tall and lissome, a vision in a red-and-orange Kanjeevaram. Time is on the cusp as the temple bell rings, destiny is poised on the brink as the flame makes circles and in there is my deity, my favourite, Muruga, and out here is reason to linger and take that chance that our eyes meet again. But I have to leave.
My man pulls the lever from the floor, the rickshaw sputters and the fuel catches fire and with a jerk we are off, careening down the road, speeding past the orange signal and a cop who let us go, barely. The wind rushes by as we take a bend by the neck, straighten and then take another reckless turn. I begin to hum a melodious song remembering those eyes. There it is, the romantic moment, tugging at me, brought to the fore by those perfect eyelashes, the thin black outline of kajal and that hint of a smile.
‘Hundred rupees,’ says my friend at the wheel.
‘Keep going,’ I tell him as we sway from side to side. We speed past a puram and race through a colony with two dogs yapping at our wheels. We are now in sync as Ramesh has started to sing, and every movie poster we rush past brings another line and another song. A cloud crosses the sun and the light changes, the sounds get hushed and I can hear snatches of conversation from morning walkers as we blaze past. We reach a large bungalow in Valasaravakkam. Behind tall walls and a gate is my mother’s family. I eat some sweet pongal, some murukkus and drink some excellent coffee. And I am handed a nephew, a young snot-nosed boy who is in his teens and has pimples. Puberty, my erstwhile friend, is playing havoc with his hormones. We leave in the rickshaw.
A bus stop brings us to a halt. I count out and pay Ramesh the exact fare. It remains an honest transaction. He says nothing and asks for nothing extra. ‘Auspicious day,’ he tells me, as if that explained his divine behaviour.
In no time at all the bus arrives. Sitting inside is my friend Kari. Kari is my school friend, lungi buddy and fellow no-gooder, lead singer of the aborted music group called West Mambalam Mosquitoes, and a beautiful boy. He is wearing a veshti and a half-unbuttoned white shirt through which his navel is showing. Black hair has gathered in his chest and made a beeline for his navel. On his head is a curly mop that he brushes by hand. A gold chain hangs around his neck and a single stud glints in his left ear. We sit next to each other, sharing thighs, and my nephew stands beside us and sulks.
‘Vandalur’ says the bus. The driver complies, every day, taking a circuitous route that meanders south past the airport. It is a long journey, the bus fills up very quickly and we are slowly drawn into a collective stupor, sitting in this loaded elephant that sways, rumbles, belches and rolls, stopping at shelters, preying on leaf-eaters young and old till it finally reaches the Vandalur Zoo where, with a final trumpet, it grinds to a halt amongst the herd at the depot.
Kari has some Pongal festival leftovers and three sweet kozhakattais – sweet, juicy momos – that we pop in whole. My nephew smiles for the first time, the bloody sapaatrama.
What have I done?
In a rare burst of energy, on a humid January day, Kari and I have caught a morning bus from Valasaravakkam to the zoo. Why? Because it is a holiday and I have my nephew who needs to roam and Kari who has no relatives but has me. In the zoo there is a large group of schoolboys who are loud, excitable and badly behaved. They look at the animals as a source of entertainment. At an enclosure that has langur monkeys housed behind wire mesh they shout, scream, make faces, and imitate their actions and soon it starts to affect the langurs. Encouraged by their reaction, the boys show them food and, when they come close, they take it away. They throw small stones at the largest langur and he begins to slap his own head and growl. And the boys laugh loudly, rocking back and forth pointing fingers. The laughter does it. The langurs lose it and throw themselves at the wire mesh, grip it with their small fingers and shake it vigorously, jump away and swing up to the branches of a tree and a few of them scurry behind some stone shelves and hide. Kari cannot stand it after a while. He slaps two of the boys real hard and right across their faces. The sharp raps sound like pistol shots. The moment of silence that follows is such a relief and then the teachers come into the fray and it begins to get ugly. Luckily, a tiger in a nearby enclosure starts to roar and that primal sound stills the silly fight.
Everybody moves to the tiger enclosure. There he is, magnificent, full-grown, and busy examining his paws. The tiger looks up once, mixing in one look boredom with disdain. A feral smell drifts past us like a stain.
The children are tired and they eat their picnic lunch in the small train that is parked at a mock station. Their chatter dies. My nephew heads off to get some ice cream. Kari and I lie on some grass in a clearing. I have left an open book on my face, shielding my eyes. In my hand is a single blade of grass that I use to tickle Kari’s ear.
Someone walks up to me and licks my hand. Someone shifts the book from my face. I shield my eyes with my palm and open them slowly. Standing over me and looking for attention is a dog. Its pink tongue is out and it is wet and glistening.
Hello.
The dog waits for me to do something. I hoist myself up on an elbow and look at him. He has a jet-black coat, dark eyes and a face like a crow, intelligent and curious.
‘Blackie’, I call him. Blackie bends forward like a yogi beginning a suryanamaskar, arches his rear and wags his tail furiously.
‘What do you want?’ I ask him.
‘Try asking in Tamil,’ says Kari. ‘It is a local dog.’
I look around, wondering in passing about how a dog roams free in Vandalur while all other animals are caged. It pays to be loyal and friendly, I guess.
‘Look,’ I tell Blackie, pointing to the daylight moon in the sky. ‘Vaanathil vennilaa.’
Blackie licks my toes, rushes away, returns and rushes away again. He wants to play.
‘Animals don’t look at the sky, stupid,’ says Kari. ‘You don’t know anything. Have you ever seen any animal or bird looking at the sky?’
After a couple of hours roaming around the whole zoo, we are tired, thirsty and hungry. On the way out, I stop at the tiger enclosure and stalk him with my eyes. He feigns disinterest. I continue to stand and stare and finally he walks towards me, intrigued. His padded feet make no sound but I can almost hear his intent.
‘May I come in?’ I ask him politely. I swear the big cat smiled. This pussy was a riot. This would be the only time perhaps he would receive a formal lunch invitation.
Time now to go home.
Every year, this day is truly irrational; a day spent at random in search of a prayer. This fourth day of the Pongal festival is spinal tap for the orderly. On this day I find in me a surrogate self, one that wanders away from my life as I know it.
It is late afternoon and the bus is half-empty. The three of us flop at the rear and fall asleep. Halfway through the journey, the bus conductor wakes us up. We buy tickets for Besant Nagar.
‘You are supposed to meet a relative today,’ I tell Kari. We don’t have sisters so any relative would do.
He shrugs his broad shoulders. ‘I will try,’ he says.
Where is he from, this fair friend of mine? He is not sure and does not really know. But someone did tell him that his name was unusual, and, on further enquiry, he was told that it was Karim Bhai. I heard it as Currimbhoy. In Chennai there was a family by that name which had a long history in the city. So Kari adopted them as his family even though he had never met them. I was sure they weren’t aware of his existence either. I had seen the store called Currimbhoys. It was a retail establishment that sold crockery, cutlery, kitchen appliances and other such things.
‘We are from Gujarat,’ Kari told me. ‘Like the Jamals of Poppat Jamal. My forefathers had a small store in Evening Bazar.’
‘Your forefathers?’
‘I am sure I am a Karim Bhai,’ he said. ‘I look like one. It is just that I am a child of bad times, an abandoned baby, borne out of wedlock.’
I wondered how he felt, being someone’s shame. He was the only school pass-out without a birth certificate.
‘Muslim?’ I asked him.
He nodded. He cupped his hand to my ear. ‘Full Muslim, as I discovered in my teens.’
‘You went to a home?’
‘Yes, I was brought up in an orphanage. But no need to get choked up, my friend.’
We get off the bus at Adyar and there on the road is Currimbhoys, the shop we have come looking for. My nephew and I hold back as Kari crosses the road to meet a potential relative. We watch him hesitate and then step through the open door of a small shop, a pottikadai, next to Currimbhoys. The board says ‘Karim Bhai’. It seems there was an old man at the counter and the shop was full of cigarettes, beedis, matchboxes, chewing gum, talcum powder and newspapers.
‘Does your family have a history, a family tree?’ Kari said
‘Illai,’ said the old man. A simple no. ‘Mayirumillai, mannangatiyumillai.’
Kari persisted. ‘Is there anybody in your family who went missing?’
‘No,’ said the old man, looking at the young fellow, a little surprised.
‘Was there any baby in your family that was said to have died at birth about twenty years ago?’ He asked the question casually. Kari had learnt to be nonchalant when asking a tricky question. He behaved as if the answer did not matter to him.
‘There was one,’ replied the old man. When Kari returned, he looked so happy. He gave me a hug. He and I are supposed to pen a script for a movie. We are not sure which language it will be in. It is still a pupa, an idea yet to take shape. Will it happen? Of course it will. We are from the school of chance that has a sunny view, which says if you believe in something it will happen. Just marry time and hope, it will happen sooner; after all, proximity is the only thing that breeds offspring.
We spent that evening at Elliot’s Beach in Besant Nagar. The place was crowded and all of Chennai seemed to have descended there. It was the same with the larger Marina Beach where hordes had gathered. This was the day of Kaanum Pongal, a festival day when all of Chennai went out compulsorily, roamed about, got lost, found friends, fed some birds, and met a sister or two. In the evening of this strange day you found your way to the eastern waters that came and lapped your feet, teasing your toes till you decided to step in and the waves then waded into your shorts, tickled your balls and sprayed your face. The wind cleared the air and blew your hair from your face. You stood there with your feet embedded in sand, rooted in your little utopia. You tasted salt and you healed.