By Veena M
This time it is nothing less than a heart attack. I was certain. Very certain.
Have you ever felt the disappointment of waking back to life? Coming back to a boring ritual of absolutely nothing?
Waking back to the odour of blood, sweat, tears, death and never life. I live on the sepsis of it. And will probably die of it.
A late hospital scene of my Achachan’s Phlebotomy samples turning mere clots of red. The helplessness I saw in the doctor’s face that very day haunts me even today.
The bare ‘ordinaries’ to be endured post discharge made me think of the fortune of dying then and there.
DISCLAIMER: Though I may sound very casual and easy about death, the thought of it scares me out of my wits. I swear.
Life choking me to death!
This is getting difficult. Very difficult.
………………………………………
Reddening fumes. Deafening silence. Logs burning red hot. Or are they smelting? Smelting into an ineffable ecstasy of the unknown.
Sweat channelling through every palpable shrink of my body.
I swapped back to my senses all of a sudden.
I need water.
I could literally hear my heart beating in my head.
My uneasiness went unnoticed. I was sure that nobody would regularly empathise with an unhealthy employee who falls sick every 3 days a week. They aren’t to be blamed.
After all sympathy is a habit.
I gathered all my strength and lifted myself up from the chair.
“I’ll be right back.” Shenoy doesn’t seem to hear though.
…………………………………………………
I wanted to reach home as soon as possible.
This was a habit. I wanted everything then and there and was never ready to wait. Achu used to scold me for my impatience. I never listened to him and now I cannot. I booked my ticket for the evening flight.
Homecoming isn’t always the same.
I remember coming back home for the first time since I moved abroad for my Masters. It was something else. Ammi, Achu and Chilllu were all at the airport waiting for my arrival. I cannot explain in words how I felt that day.
“Bus stand, bus stand...”, screamed the autorickshaw drivers.
No, they weren’t welcoming at all.
I took an auto to the bus stand and boarded a bus.
The bus dropped me in front of Fernhill English school, my school. I can’t get over the beauty of that brick structure even today. Memories kept on flashing. I felt exhausted in a nostalgic pleasure. Was it exhaustion or pain?
See, I am a person who is weak at explanations. I can’t communicate well and good. I am a master of failed relationships. I am a made-introvert. A serial loser.
I was carrying a backpack and a sling bag. Even that felt heavy for my shoulders. I was constantly adjusting the shoulder straps while walking.
The way ahead was getting greener and darker. The sky was conceived and amniotic leakage would happen anytime soon.
It was then I noticed someone walking through the other side of the road. The face seemed very familiar.
It took me no time to recognise him.
Raghuvettan.
I had a little glance of him, so did he. But all of a sudden his face repelled like a magnet which met a like pole.
Naked upper body. A kavi dhoti below. Barefooted. An Elas on the neck. Hair sleek with oil. The man who always smiled, no matter what. But this time he didn’t smile.
He was walking very fast as if someone was chasing him from behind. Within seconds he reached much ahead of me.
The mystery man of my childhood. His eyelids were always smoky with kohl ink. I had never dared to see him closely. But everytime you see him from a distance, he will greet you with a smile. That has never changed until today.
It was quite astonishing to me how a man could appear so demonic that you fear to go closer yet his smile is angelic.
Oo man, I have no idea. Why do everything seems so complicated to me? Why do I love putting myself into difficult positions?
Raghuvettan walked in a relentless pace. Or was I too slow to catch up?
Maybe I suddenly became that child once again, who would only love to see him farther. Eventhough my Amma has explained to me how good and sweet a man he is, all that fills my mind is that ferocious red face with painted eyes and metal canines and sweat mixing it all up like a fine palette.
And he would even dash in through the smouldered ember. Not once, not twice! He was a Theyyam artist.
Maybe the mystery of his art somehow drooped into his life as well.
Adding onto the mystery was yet another story of how he never spoke to his mother, Kallu Edathi. The only time the poor lady could hear him speak to her was when she goes to offer nercha to the Theyyam that he performs. The sick, old woman with her eyes of quartz would stand in the warp queue for hours; not because she wanted to hear what the gods say, but let alone hear her son speak to her, atleast once in an year.
I have heard that Raghuvettan is the one who does all the household chores, cook, nurse and feed his mother, but never speaks.
‘How can someone not speak to their mother?’
‘Where would he have unleashed the sorrows and troubles of a lifetime?’ ‘Whose shoulders would have warmed in the wetness of his tears?’
The locals have many versions of the story. You would get handful if you visit my place. If you are not done, then they will appease you with more cooked ones- then, there and hot.
I could now see my home at a distance. I took left and walked without another glance of the man and another thought of him.
A cool breeze slightly blew.
I felt chills.
Walking home. Walking back home.
Amamma was standing outside and right next to her was my Amma benting and lighting the burnt leaves collected in a heap. She suddenly stood straight holding the eerkili chool which she has made with the midrib of coconut leaf. She recognised her daughter from a distance and threw the broom onto the other side.
“Come, come” she said.
A welcome call to one’s own home feels a bit odd.
“Who is that?”
“Kunju”, Amma said to Ammama, whose eyes have turned mistier than Matheran.
Suddenly, it started to drizzle. The power went off. The smell of the soil led my way to the verandah. Amma came with a glass of tea . On the glass was written ‘Maharani silks’. The tea was too hot to my tongue which got accustomed to the fanciness of an ice tea.
I sat crosslegged on the scaffold, slowly and carefully sipping from the Maharani silks. Amma joined me and later Ammamma with the lamp.
All of us sat silently and watched the rain. No conversations but the silence was very well heard.
I sat staring at the drizzles falling on the lighted heap of dead leaves. With each droplet, the leaves exhaled a puff. Gradually, the fire ended up being mere droplets on the leaftips and extinguished.
How crazy it is?
A passionately ingnited fire got extinguished my mere teardrops?
Or how easily can a raging fire be eased down by the gentleness of an unexpected summer rain?
“Did Pratyush call you or something?”
That was a sudden call back to life.
“No. Nor did I.” I completed the answer with more than what was actually needed to avoid further questions.
I know Amma’s already shattered heart would have been cut and bled.
But at the point of time, I have reached a stage where nothing actually mattered. Maybe I have learnt the art of just existing.
Few minutes later power came back and Amma and Ammama drifted into the living room because they were 5 minutes late to their routine serial.
I sat over there. The rain has stopped and everything around felt a little bit more lighter. I sat in the peace of nothingness.
The bedroom was cold as air conditioned since the windows were kept open after the rain. The room has 2 cots, one was ocuupied by Ammama and the other by Amma. I went upstairs to carry my bed from my room to where Amma was sleeping. I was fed up with the solitude of nights. The wall of the room was damp with fungi living cracks. And the room smelt like my mind- long shut and clogged. On the walls hung the photos of Amma, Achan, Chillu with Pratyush and I on our wedding day.
A photo as damp, dull and dusty as the room was.
I dragged the mattress, put it on the floor and lied down.
The mosaic floor has long absorbed the coldness of the people in and seem to transfer in onto my system. I felt numb and hurt in its intensity.
My only effort for the night was to reconquer my sleep.
I silently chanted,
“Arjuna Falguno Parthah
Kiriti Shvetavahanah Vijayah
Bibhatsur Jishnu
Savyasachi Dhananjaya”
This was a shloka that Amma has asked me to chant everytime I feel scared as a child. Growing up, chanting this has become a daily routine.
Eyes force shut.
I could hear water drooling down the rain chain, drop by drop. ‘Trick-trick
trickle’
I didn’t know when I slept, but I did. I slept like a corpse until I felt my bra band harvesting sweat that seeped down my neck.
Reddening fumes. Deafening silence. Logs burning red hot. Or are they smelting? Smelting into an ineffable ecstasy of the unknown.
But this time it wasn’t as vague as it used to be. It was pretty clear, probably an HD vision. Behind the reddening fumes, the deafening silence is now replaced with the Thotam pattu.
Through ignited, fuming logs I could clearly see the ferocious red face with painted eyes and metal canines and sweat mixing it all up like a fine palette.
The logs smouldered and smelted into ember. Through it danced and ran, the crowned, painted man. Not once, twice, nor thrice!
It was ecstatic.
Deep down the rhapsody, under the turmeric reds, beneath the frantic in the rapturous thaalas of the rhythmic chendas, I saw a cold, smileless face.
Raghuvettan’s.
I could see 2 hinghly contrasting figurines all rolled up in one.
It was a soul watch.
Waking up the next morning, I couldn’t make sense of what has actually happened! I had no idea.
It was May and the Theyyam season was over.
“Whom should I go to unpuzzle this?”
“Was there any connection between this vague dream that I saw often and my meeting with Raghuvettan the first day I put my legs on this land?”
“Did that obscure phantasy suddenly perfected after my encounter with the man the other day?”
Or “Was him or his god pissed off with me that he didn’t smile at me the other day and that dream kept on lingering my days and nights?”
So many questions.
No answer.
No one to ask.
……………………………………………………….
Monsoon continued. The land grew greener and darker. The house grew warmer with the camphor fumes. The walls played DIY with algae.
Ammama’s dentures got looser. Amma’s silence a little lesser.
I am in peace with life, a little bit.
Peace and then chaos! This has to be the sequence.
So, I have to return.
I dragged down the backpack from the Almirah top and filled it with my clothes. A few new ones stitched by Ushechi smelt of sewing grease.
And a whole load of cut mango pickle cans had to be filled in but my backpack ran out of space. Amma wrapped those cans with my coffee brown Sherpa sweater to avoid breakage of cans( though her real intention was to deceive the customs people) and filled it in my Achu’s old office briefcase.
A briefcase and Achu were the most inseparable combo I have ever seen. Even an Alfaham-Kuboos combo could get replaced with Porotta and Shawai, but the former cannot be.
When Amma suddenly slipped in a 5 Rs coin onto my hand to place in the thaalam in the pooja room as was the ritual before anyone leaves anywhere, I deftly asked her,
“Amme, what about our Raghuvettan?”
“Kallu Edathi died. Raghu hasn’t been the kolam for the last Thira.”
Of many questions that trouble me, one is answered.
“Why didn’t Raghuvettan smile?
‘……………..he didn’t. I don’t think he will.
Ever again!’
By Veena M
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