THE GROWN UP MAN
The sky had a dazzling look that late afternoon. Golden rays of setting sun trickled through the small window brought a blissful radiance inside his otherwise dark and dreary room.
He leapt up from the chair, took the letter from beneath the table cloth and carefully read it once again. How many times he’d been doing this ever since the post man had delivered it in the afternoon has no counts. No sooner had he finished reading the letter than he felt a beaming jitter abounding his heart. He clenched his fist and throws a punch in the air as if to release that overwhelming exuberance, which he thought, would make him feeble otherwise. In the last couple of years, he’d lost the habit of finer feelings in his life and hadn’t even smiled to anything which came as good or bad in there.
Glanced at the address written on the envelop, he thought,
“The Staff Selection Commission can do no wrong”
Bend forward to tuck it back, he found the frail figure of his mother appeared at the door step with a cup of tea in her hand. Eyes lighted up and a smile played upon his face, he took the cup from his mother, placed it gently on the table, guided her to an old fashioned wooden chair on the corner of the room and asked her without hiding his joy.
“Would you like to see it...Amma? Eh... please sit down here, let me show you”
Gazing at the portrait of Lord ‘Aanjaneya,’ hanging on the wall, she implored upon the almighty god to take care of her son in a spat of sudden devotion.
Watching her senile figure, he thought, how rare would he be able to see her smiling or talking about something which blissfully happened in her life! Destiny has always played bitter games on her which she gracefully accepted as her own fate for which no one had played any role. Scars of pain and anguish started creeping in her mind and body nowadays.
“All right.. All right…!" Said mother..,
“Its happiness Amma, it is just joy”.
Suddenly he thought something and said in a sturdy voice
“Tomorrow Iam going to my father’s village…” he decided.
“Early morning, But I will not disturb you, mother.”
This time he naively forgets to show her the letter and tucked it back beneath the table cloth.
“Do you know the way?” She asked in a muffled voice from behind.
“Oh, I think I don’t. Do you have any idea Amma, where I have to take the detour from the national highway, I forget everything…”
Scanning the route he travelled only twice or thrice in his childhood, sitting behind his father’s old Lambretta scooter, his reckonings were getting narrower and narrower and finally got faded away somewhere in the outskirts of the city.
She thought for a moment, took a step forward and said,
“Just across the Panchayat office, you will find a temple, a big Devi temple on the right side with a huge arch. Just a few meters ahead, you will find a tarred road going to the left dissecting vast paddy fields”.
She stopped, thought for a while and shrugged her head...
“No no …paddy fields are only after the hill. Oh I forget everything…it’s almost ten years now I had been to that place. But yes…, I remember, there is one tea shop of Krishnan. You can ask him. He will guide you. He is an old friend of your father. His class mate, I think.” She looked as if she has got everything correct, paused a while and continued,
“Few a kilometer more and you will find a small red monument. I think it’s an effigy of a communist leader. No…! May be a congress leader. No, no… definitely communist. That’s why it is red.Ok, take a right turn and a thinning road will take you to your aunt’s house. I have been told that they have renovated the house recently. Not sure.”
After guiding her son almost perfectly, she slowly went over to him, pulled his face down and gave him a kiss on his forehead. Looking at her eyes he found, flecks of tears welled up in there.
She quietly left the room.
He lay awake all night as wandering thoughts of his parents, teachers and all the fun and frolic of his childhood days abound his heart. He could hardly wait for the dawn to come. Chirpings of long mounted beetle crickets and strange sounds of night birds which woke him up so often till yesterday came as soothing music for him. The night was like a reticent village girl with the moon that appeared in the window looked like her sparkling nose bud. Small fluffy clouds that scattered around the sky formed obscure images of god and goddesses. A cold light breeze that drifted across the curtain engrossed him in a blissful delight. He is now a happy young man with a beaming heart.
A very thin layer of haze that blanketed the air shadows the rising sun on the eastern hemisphere. Besides the noise of his motorcycle, the desolate national highway at dawn kept the murky silence of a bronze statue.
A very thin layer of haze that blanketed the air shadows the rising sun on the eastern hemisphere. Besides the noise of his motorcycle, the desolate national highway at dawn kept the murky silence of a bronze statue.
Having stopped the bike near Krishnan’s tea shop, he took the helmet off, stretched his tired arms, lifting it up the air and made a sound similar to a grumble which helps him to release all the stiffness engrossed him and made him lively. Now he felt the need to have a cup of tea.
“Is anyone there?” he looked around for someone.
“Who is it here?” replied a young man’s voice. Light steps were heard approaching from the room behind.
“Can I have a cup of tea?”
“Yes…Sit down”
Sat on a wooden bench placed in the darkest corner of the room, he stared at the portrait of a man in traditional costume hung on the shabby wall with a plastic garland wreathed around it. He didn’t ask anything but felt his father has got one of his good old friends with him at the heaven.
Just as he drove past the hillock, he noticed, there were no paddy fields that had once stretched to the limits of eyes. They were swallowed up by hoards of rubber plantation on either side of the road which gave a dark semblance to the place. Traditional paddy cultivation was disdained by villagers much before. The culture is now fading away.
Red monument of the old communist leader had fallen into a dilapidated state.
He stopped his motorbike under a huge banyan tree where the tarred road came to an abrupt end. Drops of mist were dripping from the tree.
Slipping his way through the narrow mud path dissecting a vast rubber estate, he felt the only sound that breached the serene atmosphere was the crumbling voice of dry leaves crushing underfoot. Villagers were yet to come out of their closed houses.
“They are least bothered about time and are indifferent to the modern life”. He thought.
Melodious prayer songs heard from a temple afar, brought delightful reminiscences of his last visit to the village with his father.
In those days, he fondly remembered, they were to park the scooter at the temple itself. Thereafter it’s another half an hour walk up to the house through narrow boulevards dissecting lush green paddy fields.
He would run through them in a wild frenzy, ignoring the warnings of his father from behind,
“Be careful, my son… you will fell down”.
He would then stop at a distance, turn back, wave his hand to his father and hurry on his way to the next boulevard. Rat snakes that crisscross the path were the only ones that stopped him from getting too far away from his father.
Often he would encounter brisk walking farmers, barefoot and clad only in torn Dhotis, who’d smiles at him, ask something, but never waits for reply. They will just pass on in a hurry. Then he will turn back to see his father talking to them. They all knew him as he had, in the prime of his youth, been well known throughout the village.
Once into the house, Aunty will start cursing them as usual.
“Oh…My son…..Come Come…..you people never comes here. All forget me…when Uncle lived here there were so many guests…”
Father would found himself on the receiving end of aunt’s wrath, but always escaped by virtue of his affable smile.
2
Oh..! When did you come?
A sudden boisterous voice from his left brought him back to the present.
An old man, might be a helper of aunty, but somehow knew him, was there in front of a small shed, ventilating the freshly trampled rubber sheets.
He smiled at him and said,
“Iam on the way…is aunty in there?”
He came down in a hurry with an innocent smile on his face, wiping his hands on the front of his waist cloth.
“Yes, she is feeding hen… Just came back from the temple. Come, come…”
He followed him up to the veranda. There he’d found several black and white photos hung on the wall. He scanned them for a space and found the portrait of his father with a glittery garland around its frame, somewhere in the middle.
An old door was opened with a crackling sound and came out his Aunt whose head was silvery white.
“Ah...it’s you…, my son…!” says his aunt, trudging towards him slowly.
“Ah..! How did you come to be here?” she caught his hand and asked in a feeble voice.
Looking at her eyes he said with a gentle smile,
“To see my father…!”
For half a minute she stared at him and then, went into tears.
Sat on a nearby bench, she mumbled in a trifle voice “it has been an unbearable loss for me!” wiped the tears from her eyes, she said, “Almighty god calls nice people early and let people like me to suffer the days alone. It’s just our bad luck, our fate. I have no strength to suffer in silence anymore… he was….” She could not complete it. Few more minutes of gentle sobbing and she came back to present.
“Oh..! I forget, I’ll give you tea… Just a minute..Son…”. He saw the frail figure of aunty slowly disappearing behind the door in feeble steps.
When she was gone, a silence followed. Looking at his father’s portrait for few minutes, he soon felt his eyes going blurred.
He sank into a deep thought.
It was almost three years back on a terrible day that his eyes got blurred in similar fashion last time. He felt exactly how a tree would feel the tremor when the first blow of a wood cutter falls on its trunk.
Coming out of the Neurosurgeon’s room, he saw his father sitting on the farthest chair, with head in hands, stooped over, and smiling at everything and everyone who pass by like an insane child. As he walked slowly to him, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve, so as to avoid his father notice him weeping. But then he thought, “Would it make any difference to him, even if he noticed, as his senses of finer feelings banished few days before ?”
Upon reaching his side, father flashed a poignant smile at him. In that smile he felt the pain of a thousand arrows piercing his heart. One drop of tear fell down onto the marble floor, without anyone noticing it. Helping his father out of the hospital by holding his hand so firmly, he was crying in his heart. Sometimes when it grew as an occasional weep, he controlled himself. His father, who once took him to places on his hip, is now clanging onto him like a small child. The corridor of the hospital resembled a long, long tunnel for him, so full of darkness. His father didn’t ask him what the doctor said. He never would.
But for few with pounding hearts waiting outside the hospital, it was a question so important.
“What did the doctor say?”
Many tongues asked in one voice.
With his father on his side, it was all the more difficult for him to tell the answer. He overlooked everyone and helped his father to the waiting taxi at the parking lot.
Then he slowly trudged towards a nearby tree, and murmured in a subtle voice to those anxious souls that followed.
“He has been diagnosed with a big tumor on the right side of his brain… an urgent surgery is required….” Voice chocked in his throat.
When he heard a sudden buried wail from behind the crowd, he felt terribly sorry for not seeing his mother standing there.
And now, everything changed for him. It was like an ocean so turbulent, striking its shore line with horrendous rage. Nights were spent with tears streaming down the eyelids and days, wandering here and there managing all essential formalities for an impending brain surgery. Memories of his father, the sleepless nights, and the cramps of repentance- everything combined to make him viciously exhausted.
He could not see a fleck of sheen on any nearby horizon. A strange melancholia hung around the house.
On one such night, sitting alone in the veranda, feeling the pain of having his father caught in that terrible malady, he remembered an incident, few days back, while he was busy with his studies in his room. His beloved father, then a very normal person came at the door and stared at him for long.
What’s the matter father?, he asked glancing at him.
Slowly walked down, father sat up in the bed and called him to his side.
With one hand over his shoulder, father asked him, in a soft voice.
“Am I disturbing you my son?”
“No father, not at all, I’am in fact preparing for the grad exams.. Why father?”.
“Ok…That’s fine; I won’t take much of your time…Just a few things cropping up in my mind since last few days, I wanted to share with you. At least, with you, you know”.
Father smiled, but he looked a tired man and there was an odd quiver in his voice.
“Please listen to me carefully. May be I won’t get a second chance to tell you all this. May be, nothing will happen, I know, but there are certain things in this universe that we humans have no control over. Do you agree with me son?”
A timid and fearful silence reigned all around as he looked at his father’s face irresolutely…, he never saw him like this before.
“What happened father?” this time his mouth wore a curious expression.
“Son, I love you and you know, I want to live with all of you for years… I mean, but…but then, Iam afraid that, I might have to leave you all soon. May be, I mean, very soon…you know..!” he said in a stuttered voice.
Shocked for a split second, he stared at him. He could hear his heart began to beat even louder.
Then he shook his head in dismay and asked in a pretty loud voice.
“What are you talking about, father, for god sake please don’t say all these things to me. Nothing happened here. Why are you telling me all these things now? See, I have to study a lot, please leave me alone. I don’t want to hear this” he sprang to his feet and moved away a few paces.
“Calm my son, sit down here, and Let me finish that please.” he said, with a sigh of anguish in his voice.
“You know my son; your mother is a poor lady. I have never left her side for a moment. Now that, you have grown up to handle the things pretty well, Iam sure you will take care of her and your younger siblings. Ain’t my son?
This time, he didn’t say anything. But with a facial expression bore the most stoical indifference to what his father is talking, he stared down the floor.
Looking up at the heaven, father said this time with a pale face that was almost anguish,
“Son, I lived a life, so beautiful with you albeit all our hardships.
I’ve always been happy that I have got a very caring and understanding family. I wish I would have got few more years to live with you. But…, I..don,t…I mean, I don’t, think….that I would be able to get it.”
Then he stood up, and left the room, silently.
Once his father walked out the door, he sat there, hell bounded for long. He wanted to ask him why he was talking like this. But then he thought otherwise. How can the almighty god be so cruel to him?
Now, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he whispered in a hoarse voice, looking at that portrait with a garland trimly strung around,
“How come you have a prediction of your own death, father.”
3
“What are you thinking about….My son” Aunty called him from behind.
“Drink this tea”.
He stealthy wiped his tears with his sleeve before turning around. Took the cup from her, finished his tea in a few gulps and returned the cup to the tray, took a deep breath, and got up. He felt like he needed to go outside for some fresh air, to have a walk around the canal and confabulate with a few good old farmers. But the canal was not there to be seen; instead he saw numerous piles of garbage left over there along with few clusters of thorn bushes here and there. Cow shed has now become an extension of the house. He did not find any goats or hen there. He could not find even a single brisk walking farmer. Crestfallen, he sat there on a stone.
At noon, Aunt made an early lunch for him. After lunch he went to the pond. It was long grass all around. The noon sun poured fiercely down. In the shade of a huge unknown tree, he lay down to rest.
Again, the reminiscence of his father’s last days thronged his mind like a horrible heat wave with all it fierceness.
On the bank of this pond, he remembered, he sat with his father and had a long session when they’d visited the village the last time. Father would make him recline his head on his lap and they will discuss all the trivial things about village and its people. He always used to tell by looking in the distance where, endless line of cows would be grazing on the paddy fields,
“These innocent village folks have their mind bursting with goodness. After my retirement I will come here with your mother and will settle down here. By then you will be a grown up man, isn’t son. Iam sure, you will become a police officer then.”
Father, then with a boisterous laugh, will put his arms around his neck, hug him tight and give him few kisses on his cheek. They used to sit there till evening.
When father would remind him of school, he would start cursing the evenings.
Saying Good bye to aunt was always painful with tears and curses.
By the time they would reach the main road, they would find the temple open. Visit to the temple was most important to his father. Stepping into a narrow wooden bridge across a small canal, that separates the temple and the road, father would often caution him from behind.
“Be careful my son, you may lose your footing.”
Once darkness starts putting its gown over the village, they would return back.
There would be few villagers, crowding around as they always do, enjoying the melodious old Malayalam songs from the Gramophone. He would wave at them as they pass by and they will wave back with smiles.
“All now will never return. May be I will not return to this place again. It gives me painful memories.” He thought.
Still afresh in his mind, that afternoon when his father gave a faint growl broke from his trembling lips and then a terrible shiver ran through his entire body. Frightened, he took his lean, feeble hand and gently massaged it. They were burning like fire. His father took a deep breath inside…. And then…it didn’t come out.
Anxious moments elapsed. He waited and waited….but, no it’s not coming out. That breath stuck up somewhere inside his chest.
A nurse hurriedly came to the room, checked his pulse and said,
“Sorry, It’s over”, the word that still haunts him some times.
The day he understood, his father would now never reach for his hands, ever spoke, hug or kiss him again.
For long he stood there as a statue, looking at his father’s half closed eyes; then, stretching out his hand and gently combed his hair back. One fleck of tear followed by a punched weep came out as his final tribute to a person who carried him on his shoulder, nurtured him, hugged him, laughed with him, gave a million kisses to him…... It’s all over!
With eyes fixed steadily on his frail body, he wept silent tears.
It’s almost two years now, the world lost him.
As the rays of evening sun started getting a yellow radiance, he stood up from there. He heard light steps approaching unhurriedly.
“Oh ! you, my son sitting here ! What are you doing here? Iam searching you in the estate and you are here” Aunty had in her hand, few homemade eatables for him.
“It’s now the time for me to leave” he went up to aunt, grasped her arm and said adieu to her. Aunty raised her eyebrows, wiggled her lower lips and tears rose to her eyes. Again the same curses, weeps, muttering to herself, she silently walked back to her house with a poignant face.
He left his aunt’s house and without a backward glance, made for the mud road. While walking back, he found, all the aches and distresses from the last couple of gruesome years had vanished and it was with a veritable vigor in step that he went down to the road head. Bolstered he traversed the rubber estate with a mind free of somber thoughts. He felt somebody surreptitiously tagging along with him, guarding him. But who…!
When he drove the motorcycle to the temple, he found few people crossing the bridge which is now a concrete structure and is wide enough to accommodate a scooter. Put on stand his motorbike on the road itself, he opts to walk by the bridge. He got progressively more enthralled as he approaches the bridge with a pounding heart. Elated with his newly earned buoyancy, he walked with the speed of memoirs. No sooner did he step on to that bridge, heard somebody yelling him from behind, a voice that influenced him enormously in his life, the voice that was thronging in upon him in dreams quite often during these days, subtly but distinctively.
“Be careful my son, you may lose your footing”.
Astounded, he suddenly turned around on his feet in the direction of the voice, but found nobody there. Nobody was there. He stood there for a while flabbergasted. Few minutes passed. He still stood there in a strange ecstasy till the loud sound of drums from the temple announcing the ‘arathi’, aroused him from his reverie. He, then slowly walked up to the shrine, stood there, with eyes welled up, prayed for few minutes, then slowly turned around and headed back out to the bridge.
Outwardly calm, he traversed the bridge and reached onto his bike, paused a moment, he glanced over his shoulder, at the bridge. An effervescent smile set upon his face.
“Father, don’t worry, Iam a grown up man now.” in a voice of a man determined and strong, he said to himself.
When the voice of his motorbike merges with the darkness that was descending on the village, he heard an old Malayalam song emanating from the good old gramophone reminding him of the villagers crowding around it. There weren’t any. But still he waves his hand to the villagers, the good old farmers, the traditions, the perpetual goodness. When the song had gradually withered and faint at a distance, he pulled something out of his pocket and with a hint of smile in his intent eyes, he put his hand out upon the air, and in that hand waved an envelope from the Staff Selection Commission intimating him that he has been selected as a police officer in the Central Police Organization.
Like a whisper, he sang quietly the song he had just heard on the gramophone.
“The river will flow again, this way; the cold breeze will blow again...”
P.S:- This story is autobiographical. The twenty one year old protagonist is, of course - yours truly me. I was bursting with emotions since long and had to write this one. The events described in it took place in a small village "Poovachal' some thirty kilometers away from Trivandrum, where my father was born and brought up. This work is dedicated to him who, during his days, used to tell me with regret that he could not give anything to me except good food and care...
"Father, it’s your imagination, your thought - health is wealth- made me what Iam today.. "
"Father, it’s your imagination, your thought - health is wealth- made me what Iam today.. "
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