The rains were over, the skies shone, and Khasak readied itself for Onam, the festival of thanksgiving. Children went up into the hills at sunrise to gather flowers. For ten days they would arrange colourful designs in their yards with flower petals to welcome the deities of the festival. Ravi heard the children sing on the hillsides, and for a fleeting moment they touched him with the joy of a hundred home-comings. The moment passed, and once again he was the fugitive. A fugitive had no home, and a sarai no festival.
Ravi sought to share his fears with Madhavan Nair—the Onam recess would last a fortnight. Would the children come back to dreary routine after that spell of freedom?
‘If I were their age, I wouldn’t !’ Ravi said.
‘You lost your childhood somewhere along the way, Maash. I hope the children find it for you.’
As they parted Madhavan Nair said with some hesitation, ‘There is one more pupil for you if you can take a risk.’
‘A risk? Who’s it anyway?’
Guilt and remorse made Madhavan Nair suggest it to Ravi. Some days ago Appu-Kili’s mother Neeli was at his shop waiting for him to put the finishing stitches to a blouse he was making for her. She sat there bare-breasted, watching the dressmaker anticipate the contours.
‘There, there!’ she said suddenly. ‘See, O Venerable Nair ...’
On the other side of the square there were children at play. In their midst stood the cretin, taller than them and clad in conspicuous motley. Madhavan Nair remembered how she broke down as she pointed to Appu-Kili and said, ‘Look at my son!’
It was just the other day that Madhavan Nair had made him that weird toga with scraps of cloth. He had scissored out a Gandhi and a sickle-and-hammer from discarded gunny bags, and stitched them on either side of the toga.
‘If only you could tell the Maeshtar ...’ Neeli sobbed.
Madhavan Nair saw the tears fall on her bare breasts.
‘I shall speak to the Maash, Neeli.’
‘Not to teach my Appu but to stop him from roaming with children.’
When they reopened after the festival break, Ravi was pleasantly surprised to find the school had survived the vacation ... Madhavan Nair arrived chaperoning Appu-Kili. The children crowded round the cretin who was neither man nor child. Ravi herded them back to their seats, taking care the dragonfly, the cretin’s constant companion, was not lost. He drew the Parrot aside and asked him gently, ‘Like to join the school, Kili?’
Madhavan Nair raised his hand to discipline the children, ‘Quieten down, evil ones! You are upsetting my Parrot!’ And to Kili, ‘Didn’t you hear what the Maash-Etta asked you? Speak, O Parrot of the Palms!’
Appu-Kili stood looking indifferent, his gaze on his toes.
‘Why are you afraid?’ Madhavan Nair reasoned. ‘Isn’t it our own school?’
That did not reassure the Parrot. The children in the school were all his playmates, they made signs of encouragement. From the benches came hushed invitations: Come, Kili, come here, sit near me! As Madhavan Nair turned to go, Appu-Kili let out a howl, ‘Take me with you, Madhavan-Etto!’
‘O avian!’ the tailor despaired, ‘you have put me to shame!’
Madhavan Nair took four coppers from his purse and asked one of the pupils, Alam Khan, to go and get some murukkus. He told Kili that the teacher would give him the murukkus if he sat quietly and did his lessons. Appu-Kili cheered up.
Ravi whispered, ‘Madhavan Nair, my life is in peril. This prehistoric pet of yours ...’
‘Have no fear, Maash.’
Ravi found the child-man a place next to little Sohra.
‘Sohra will take care of you, my winged being!’ Madhavan Nair said, and added this parting advice. ‘Study well, and become an engineer.’
‘He will!’ the class responded.
As Ravi turned to write out a sum on the blackboard, Sohra drew Kili close and passed him a sweet berry.
‘Don’t be afraid, Kili, I’m with you.’
During the Onam vacation cobwebs had gathered in the seedling house, and Ravi set apart a day for teacher and pupils to clean up the school. It became a war on the spiders. Adam drew a line on the floor with chalk and laid out the dead spiders. Appu-Kili picked up the biggest of them and tried to breathe life into it.
‘Saar, Saar,’ Kunhamina asked, ‘how big are the really big spiders?’
Ravi pointed to the dome of the mosque, and said, ‘That big.’
‘Yaa Rahman!’
The spiders in the crevices of the walls were brown, and were only as big as an outspread palm. But outside, in the forests of the rain, they were born to power and splendour. Like the kings of old they revelled in the hunt. And in the teeming nights of fear they rose like stars of the nether dark ... Ravi told the children the story of the spiders, how after they made love the female ate up her mate. The children could not believe that such bloody dynasties ruled over Khasak’s peaceful grass and fern. Then Karuvu stood up and said the male spider was paying for his sins in an earlier birth. The children knew it was karma, the class was now unusually quiet.
The story of karma ended, but Ravi had set the children on a magic trail. They refused to do sums and recitations, and for the next two days Ravi did nothing but tell them stories of plants and animals. It was during one of these heady lessons that Kunhamina brought a hedge lizard to the classroom. The lizard made no attempt to escape.
‘Hurt it, have you?’ Ravi asked Kunhamina.
‘No, Saar. Just doped it with castor sap.’
The lizard took a few unsteady steps on Ravi’s table, then gave up, and looked around in ancient derision. Kunhamina had reckoned that Ravi would be pleased with the catch, but froze when she sensed his displeasure.
‘Will it die?’ Ravi asked Kunhamina. She wouldn’t answer, but the rest of the class spoke. The castor sap, said Madhavi, was like the liquor they made in Khasak, it killed only when one had too much of it. Adam said hedge lizards were used in sorcery, he terrified himself with the thought of saturnine deities called up by the sorcerer. No child of Khasak was friends with the hedge lizard, said Karuvu, because it sucked the blood of children, sucked it through the air from afar. One realized it only when one watched the lizard’s head suddenly turn crimson, the sign of the vampire.
There was more about the hedge lizard—the evil spirits exorcised by the astrologers went into exile riding the hedge lizard. They wouldn’t say anything more as it was Khasak’s secret.
Ravi and the children were engrossed in the stories and no one had noticed Kunhamina sobbing.
‘Kunhamina,’ Ravi said, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
That only made the sobbing worse. Tears brought the surma down in patches over her cheeks, and the silver anklets chimed as she moved her legs disconsolately under her desk. In the meantime the lizard recovered, and with one last look at everyone, stalked out of the classroom towards the hedges. Kunhamina smiled.
That day Ravi told the children the story of the lizards. In times before Man usurped the earth, the lizard held sway. A miraculous book opened, the children saw its pages rise and turn and flap. Out of it came mighty saurians moving slowly in deep canyons after the dull scent of prey, and pterodactyls rose screaming over their nesting precipices. The story was reluctantly interrupted for lunch; after hurried morsels the children raced back to school and huddled round their teacher. The pages rose and fell again ... Long before the lizards, before the dinosaurs, two spores set out on an incredible journey. They came to a valley bathed in the placid glow of sunset.
My elder sister, said the little spore to the bigger spore, let us see what lies beyond.
This valley is green, replied the bigger spore, I shall journey no farther.
I want to journey, said the little spore, I want to discover. She gazed in wonder at the path before her.
Will you forget your sister? asked the bigger spore.
Never, said the little spore.
You will, little one, for this is the loveless tale of karma; in it there is only parting and sorrow.
The little spore journeyed on. The bigger spore stayed back in the valley. Her roots pierced the damp earth and sought the nutrients of death and memory. She sprouted over the earth, green and contented ... A girl with silver anklets and eyes prettied with surma came to Chetali’s valley to gather flowers. The Champaka tree stood alone—efflorescent, serene. The flower-gatherer reached out and held down a soft twig to pluck the flowers. As the twig broke the Champaka said, My little sister, you have forgotten me!
The children had gone home. Ravi closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and abandoned himself to the charmed weariness. Around him rose the scent of incense, and the sound of bells and cymbals.
Vedan Uddharate Jagannivahate—the sloka celebrating the avatars of the Lord, evolute incarnations from fish to boar to man and deity resounded over everything.
The moment passed. Ravi, now awake, looked out. The sun was setting over Chetali’s valley. The sunset filled the seedling house with the warmth of a sensuous fever.