K. Raja
That day, as usual, I waited for the postman. As usual, he walked by the gate without looking in my direction and went away. I was downcast. One more day with no mail. As I turned to go back inside the house, there was a tap on my shoulder. It was the postman. He was laughing.
‘Happy?’ he said, giving me an envelope.
‘Yes,’ I said, tearing it open.
‘Please report within seven days for an entrance test at this time at this place,’ the letter said.
Joy and fear – for the first time in my life, I realized you could feel them both at the same time. I told my father I had to go to Madras within the week.
‘You’ve not even been to the next town,’ he said. ‘How can I send you there alone? We don’t know a soul in Madras. Where will you stay, what will you do?’
My joy waned. The fear increased. ‘I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. I just need some money,’ I said.
My father didn’t know that I had already made arrangements with a neighbour just a little older than myself, my ‘brother’ Sivakumar, a student at Madras Law College. After all, wasn’t he the only one who had actually even seen my future college, on the way to his own?
By now, my joy had evaporated, leaving only fear in its place.
I told my friends that I was going to Madras to study. But maybe I should tell you what I was going to do there. I was off to join the Government College of Arts & Crafts, that is, if I got through the admission test.
As a child, my drawing abilities had been met with amazement by those around me. What an artist, they said. Exhilarated by this, I copied any picture or photo I could lay my hands on. But, beyond that, I didn’t really know how to become an artist. Now here I was, my youthful doodlings finally leading me to the city of Madras…
Appa agreed to let me go, on the condition that I was accompanied by a neighbour, another of my several ‘brothers’. He believed I was incapable of managing on my own anywhere. He was right. I had never even been to Tirunelveli, the city closest to Vallioor, my village. My father bought us both bus tickets. Of course, our neighbour was delighted with the prospect of a free trip to Madras.
I saw all the towns on the way to Madras in the darkness of night, disappointed at being able to note no detail I could take back to my friends at home. I had never undertaken such a long journey, fourteen or fifteen hours long. I felt a sense of dread. Somehow, I got to Madras.
My ‘brother’ from Law College took me to his elder sister’s house. My fear of the city was temporarily removed. On the way to his sister’s house, Anna showed me the various places and bus stops that I would need to know. The next morning, I had to go to the Arts College to take the test. Anna put me on Bus No 15C and said, ‘This will take you there, and you need to take the same bus back.’ I had to go from Choolaimedu in Nungambakkam to Poonamallee High Road to get to the Arts College. After I got into the bus, I was filled once more with fear. Anna had said that I had to get off at the Everest Hotel stop, and my college would be somewhere nearby. I asked the conductor again and again for my stop, much to his annoyance. ‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ he said, his Madras Tamil nothing like the polite tongue of my village.
I had asked him respectfully enough. Why was he being rude to me? In a while he said, ‘This is the Everest Hotel stop.’ The crowd pushed me out. I got off, my fear somewhat lessened. The hotel looked nothing like its namesake.
Now I was afraid about whether I would be able to find my college. But my fears were laid to rest. It was right there. It did not fill me with tension, seeming only like a large house. There were sculptures and paintings everywhere. Some I understood; some were so abstract, I didn’t get them.
My first test was ‘Portraits’. We had to draw the face of a live model. We sat surrounding him, a very old man named Amirthalingam, who, we later heard, had been there from British times. The other applicants had attended coaching classes, and seemed to have prepared for the test. I, on the other hand, did not even know such classes existed. The fatigue and anxiety of the last twenty-four hours weighed heavily on my drawing hand. While the others had boxes of something called charcoal, and pencils of various makes, hardness and darkness, all I had was a Camlin Flora. As I saw the other applicants stick their thumbs out in a professional fashion to take a measure of our model, I realized I was hopelessly underprepared.
I concentrated on shading, being used to copying from photos. An instructor came by. ‘Whose coaching class did you go to?’ he said. This made me feel I was doing okay.
With the test done, we broke for lunch. But I had neither the appetite nor the courage to find myself a meal. The next test was on the ‘Full Figure’. I started drawing. But I lacked even the little strength I had had that morning. My fingers shook, and grew sweaty. I could barely hold my pencil. I knew I wasn’t doing this test as well as the earlier one. Somehow, it got over. I spoke to some of the others, and found that several of them had come there from far away, just like me.
On the way back, I didn’t realize I had to cross the road to take the bus home. I figured this out after a while, and got into the 15C to get back. I had kept in mind a particular hoarding, one of MRF Tyres, to help me identify where to get off. But, unbeknownst to me, they had changed the hoarding to one for VIP vests. After spending what seemed like an eternity looking for MRF, I got off, scared that I had missed my stop. I had got off at a stop much after mine. I didn’t realize then that, like all things in the city, even the hoardings couldn’t be trusted.
I went back and forth, trying to find my friend’s sister’s house. An hour passed, and I was filled with panic. You have to understand that I had come straight from a village. Four buses following each other was itself a big thing there. Being in the city for me was like being on another planet.
After some time, Anna himself came looking for me. I felt life returning. I thought, more than studying in Chennai, just finding my way around the city was going to be daunting. How was I going to last here five years?
In the next few days, I completed all the tests: Water Colour, Design, Clay Modelling, and several others, and returned to my village. I was relieved.
Back home, the city’s glamour had attached itself to me. I boasted of my exploits in Chennai to my friends, taking care to leave out the fear and panic and fatigue and the tricky hoardings.
Again, I waited for the postman. I received an admission card from the college. But there was a problem. I did not anticipate that it would grow into a very big problem. I had applied for the painting course. But I received an admission to ceramic design. At first, I was happy to have got admission to any course at all. But I did not know what ceramic even meant. I asked several people but nobody seemed to know. I looked up a dictionary. It said ‘peengan’ in Tamil. Peengan? I didn’t know what that meant either, till someone in the village with a bit more education than average finally pointed to a white object on top of an electric pole and said, ‘That’s peengan.’ Well, whatever it was, I had got into Madras Art College and, ceramic or otherwise, it couldn’t be anything other than an art course.
The day I had to join arrived. This time, Appa came with me. We took the train, and it was much better than travelling by bus. We arrived at 8.40 a.m. at Madras Egmore Station. There was time enough only to brush my teeth.
The college was close to the station. I decided that the first thing I would do would be to change my course from ceramic design to painting. I mentioned this to a senior student while my father was doing some investigation on his own. I went to the principal’s room. There was a bearded man there who looked very much the artist. He asked me to come in. I saw him bending down behind his desk to pour something into a glass. He listened to my fervent plea, taking a sip from his glass from time to time. He told me politely but firmly that no change to my course could be made, and that ceramic design was no less art than painting. I left the room feeling cheated. I realized only later that this was a famous artist.
My father had made a decision. Some senior students had brainwashed him into believing that the ceramic design course was a sheer waste of time. He pointed to several students dabbling with clay and said, ‘See, that’s what you’ll be doing.’ He feared that I would end up becoming just a glorified potter.
At 11.30 a.m., we were on the Vaigai Express, heading home. We had not been in Madras for two hours and, here we were, on our way back. My dreams lay shattered all around me, like pieces of peengan. I had never felt more miserable in my life. My father tried his best to console me.
In Madurai, we got on to a bus to take us the rest of the way home. On the way, the bus toppled, as though mimicking how I felt, trapping us all inside. We managed to get out, breaking the window open, and returned home, bruised in more senses than one.
I did not leave the house for a week. I did not eat. My defeat crushed me. I did not know what to do next. I shared my sorrow with anyone who cared to listen. I vowed to go back the next year, and attend the painting course. But I didn’t know what to do with myself till then.
All my friends had gone away to college. I didn’t know what to tell people who asked me what I was doing. The tragic events of the past couple of months threatened to turn me into a comedian in my own eyes.
I tried to get into a calendar-printing company in Sivakasi as an artist, and was rejected even by them. I decided to go to medical college. I bravely informed my friends of my decision. They were disbelieving. In reality, my medical college was the village medical shop, Kani Medical Store, where I had joined as shop boy for a salary of two hundred rupees. I worked there for a period of seven months, all the while fearing that I would end up being a medical shop assistant my whole life.
One year later, I got into the painting course of my dreams. My joy whited out my father’s sorrow. His fear was how he would support me on his meagre TNEB salary. I bravely told him that six months’ support was all I would need. After that, I would manage on my own, working part-time.
This time, I went by myself. As usual, I was to go first to Anna’s sister’s house. He had told me to get off at Parry’s, take a bus to Egmore, and then take the electric train to Nungambakkam. On the way to Egmore, I saw Central Station. I mistook the red building for Egmore, and got off. I realized I’d got off in the wrong place; once more, the city had tricked me, and I feared it. But I was scared to ask for directions, not wanting to appear inept. In the end, I got into an auto and somehow found my way to Anna’s house.
For a week, all I did was go to college and back, without a problem. I had a place to stay, a place to eat. I was still to experience real city life. At the end of the week, Anna came to me and said, ‘Come, I will admit you as a guest in the Law College hostel where my friend stays.’ I was confused. Why couldn’t I just stay where I was, in Anna’s sister’s house?
But I didn’t question him. I took my things and went to the Law College hostel. I could not remain there even for a day. It was a terrifying place, with fights breaking out all the time between students of two different castes, all there, ironically, to study law. I packed my suitcase, and went to college. I must have been the first person to go to college with a suitcase. When my friends asked me, I told them I didn’t have anywhere to stay. ‘Come to our college hostel,’ they said, ‘we’ll think of something.’ I felt some peace. The hostel was in Taramani, a place most people even in Madras hadn’t heard of. My friend and I took 23C from Egmore to Taramani. We got off at Adyar, which was tree-filled and beautiful. We walked from there, through Indira Nagar, to Taramani, a distance of three or four kilometres through a deserted area. My friend kept assuring me the hostel was just a few yards away. At last, we got there. The hostel was surrounded by a forest. There were many other hostels there as well. I, who had had nobody, was happy to have friends at last.
The first night there was horrible, to say the least. My friend said the seniors were asking for all the first-year students. They surrounded us, asked us where we were from, and said we were to do as they instructed. I didn’t know why I had to obey their orders. But I realized this was ragging, having read about it in books. They asked my friend to sing a song. Thinking he was being very clever, he chose an old philosophical song, ‘Kallellaam manikkakall aguma?’ (‘Will all stones turn out to be gems?’) The senior suggested that my friend sing it while doing calisthenics. Can you imagine how that went? I can never forget it! Forever more, my friend remained ‘Mannikka kallu’.
The ragging then took a serious turn, with students being asked to strip. Twelve students, completely nude and strangers to each other, had to hold each other by the hips and pretend to be a train. It took me (and all of us) over an hour to submit to this. We would remove a shirt or underclothes, then cover ourselves up when the seniors were harassing some other poor fellow, only to have them turn violently back to us. At the end, I was stripped not just of my clothes but of whatever makes up a person’s dignity.
I wondered whether to call the police but was not sure how to go about it. By this time it was past 1.30 at night. At last, they allowed us to sleep. But the mosquitoes decided to rag us further. They were like parrots, plucking away at us remorselessly. Since we were not allowed to go into the rooms, I spread a bed sheet and lay down on the floor of the main hall, covering myself fully except for a narrow opening to let me breathe. Suddenly, I heard strange cries. A senior said it was nothing to worry about, just jackals in the surrounding forest. Only the previous day, two huge snakes had been caught in the hostel, we were told. A senior said he was raising two tortoises that had wandered in one day. He asked us to wake him up at five o’clock. I wondered how I could do that, since it was already past two. I didn’t realize this was yet another form of ragging. I woke up only at six a.m. Terrified, I woke up the senior, still asleep, telling him what time it was. He said, ‘Wake me up at seven,’ and went back to sleep.
In the day, we were ragged in college, at night, in the hostel. My anger grew. Some seniors became good friends, others kept at us. One day, in fury, I punched a senior in his face. The blood came out in spurts. I was petrified. I was five feet tall, he was six. I didn’t even know how I had done it. But the seniors began to see me as their enemy. They began to fear me, and left me alone after that. I myself was such a timid fellow, I found it funny that they were scared of me. I began to behave like a rowdy to keep myself safe but it was not easy for me, so far from being a rowdy was I.
If finding my way around the city was hard, even harder was being able to afford to eat. With five hundred rupees, I had to not just feed myself but pay my college fees, buy art materials such as pens, boxes of water colours, oils, brushes, canvasses, and so on. Poverty is tough. Poverty in youth is even tougher. All around my hostel there were different institutes, such as the film institute, a polytechnic, the catering institute, and their hostels. Each hostel had its own canteen. Only our hostel didn’t have anything, no warden, no watchmen, we had to be all these things ourselves. When the lunch bell rang at the next hostel, we had not even eaten breakfast. This was tough for me at first but I got used to it. In the morning, I managed with a cup of tea and cigarette. I soon got addicted to smoking. I told myself, as an artist, it was normal to be a smoker. In the afternoon, I ate either a cream bun or a banana. That was lunch.
One day, a senior asked my friend and me to go to Marana Vilas and buy him some idli. The name sounded strange, even frightening, but we were too scared to ask him to confirm it. So off we went looking for Marana Vilas but could find no such place. There was only one hotel in the area, so we went there. It had no name. We went in, and asked the owner, ‘Is this Marana Vilas?’ He got very angry and abusive, and started cursing in Malayalam, thinking we would not understand. But I knew some Malayalam, and tried to placate him, saying this was what our seniors had told us, that we were not trying to insult him.
We ate in Marana Vilas, having no choice. Before I could eat the idli there, I had to pull off the top layer, which was like skin, it was so old and dry. I realized how the place had come by its name – Death House. We found out later that many students had had nausea if not outright dysentery after eating there. If we had known, we would have waited for the kaiyandi bhavan, the hand-drawn cart that sold the cheapest food on the street, which would appear later in the evening. Most often, we hardly ate anything, forced to skip breakfast, making do with barely any lunch but making sure we ate dinner, whatever it constituted, else there would be no sleep.
We soon developed various techniques in order to get the richer students to feed us. One such technique was to invite them to an eating competition. We would challenge them about how many dosais they could eat. Some would claim that they could eat ten or fifteen dosais. We would tell them that if they couldn’t manage to eat the dosais, we’d get to eat them, and they would have to pay for everything. They never won, and we always had some dosais left. This was how we won: at first, we were so hungry, we would eat as many dosais as possible plain. The next few were eaten with chutney, and finally, the remaining with sambar. We had to resort to such tricks, much like camels store water.
One day, my friend and I were famished beyond understanding. We had not eaten a single thing all day. As evening approached, we borrowed money from another student and went to a kaiyandi bhavan. First, we ate five idlis each, then another five. Now we had eaten for both breakfast and lunch. We ate another five each for dinner. Soon, we became competitive. We ate another five idlis each. When we had finished, we had eaten twenty-five idlis each. We had run out of space. We had, more importantly, run out of money. Between us, we had had a grand total of twelve rupees fifty paise worth of idli. When we went back the next day to the same place, the woman there put an entire idli stand in front of us. We laughed in embarrassment, and told her that what we had had the previous day was a competition. We ate five idlis each, and left.
Poverty was a part of my life then. Many times, I filled my stomach with the aroma that drifted out of hotels.
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Translated from Tamil by Chitra Viraraghavan with K. Raja