The Summer of '82 - Chapter 3

Our immediate neighbors were a small dilapidated house on the west and a mansion on the east. On the south was a palm tree plantation beyond which were vast rice fields that spread to the horizon lined with coconut trees. Most of our afternoon used to be spent at the canal that ran in the centre of the vast fields. The water was shallow and we would put our paper boats in it and chase it till the point where the canal disappeared under the highway road. This activity usually was limited till the rains, after which the canal would become very rough and would sweep away anybody who came in the way of its ferociousness.

In the nights after listening to the Bhagwad Gita, we would look on the jackfruit tree that hid itself in the dark, which housed so many glowworms blinking in unison as if it was Diwali. The sounds of the crickets and the occasional croak of the frog would be interrupted by a drunk man passing by swearing on his dead ancestors in the darkness.

That particular summer, we had company. In the night, from the dilapidated house, we heard sounds of laughter. Ammamma/ Grandmother told me that the owner of the house had given it on rent to young students who studied in the ITI close by.

The days were moving on in a slow pace. My parents and my siblings left for visiting our relatives, but i stayed behind, courtesy, the stitches on my head. As the clock ticked away in slow motion, I would keep my eyes glued to the gate for Kannan and Suma to arrive. Looking at the gate with longing, I did not remember when i went to sleep. I was awakened with a hat trick of sneezes. Suma had taken a grass blade and tickled my nostrils. Both Kannan and Suma laughed their hearts out. Suma and Kittu went into Kittu’s room and started playing with their dolls, while Kannan and I ventured out into the neighborhood.

‘Where are we off to?’ I asked in expectation. ‘If ammamma sees us sneaking out, we will be in for trouble.’

‘I saw Ammamma leave with a sack of rice to the mill’, he said. ‘It will take her at least an hour or two to come back. We will be back home by then.’ He assured. We went to the boundary that separated our plot from our neighbor’s. The Cacti was tall that acted as a natural fence, but the gap between two of them was big enough to sneak both of us in by crossing it carefully, sideways, taking care that the thorns did not prick our butt or belly.

Once across, we made our way through the dry leaves crackling beneath our feet to the house. The house was hardly cleaned. The ceiling and the beams were filled by cobwebs from days of yonder. The only place that was clean was the wooden ladder that led to the first floor, probably because of constant use. The walls were damp with the thin white coat peeling off randomly at places. The wooden ceiling was sagging, threatening to fall off any moment. The external wall had slogans painted with fresh red color with the symbol of a sickle and a star, D.Y.F.I Zindabad written and a poster with a smiling moustached photograph accompanying it. Kannan climbed the wooden ladder, the stairs creaking with each step. I followed him holding to a rope that hung from the ceiling above, lest the ladder gave way, one could hold the rope for support.

The ladder opened into a balcony. There were books lying on the floor and a circuit board lying on a stool that was placed sideways, nearby. A soldering iron was plugged into a socket hanging from a broken switch box. The rod glowing red, jutting precariously from a platform made of thick engineering books. A man with thick moustache and a hairy body wearing a lungi sat on the parapet with a cigarette dangling between his lips. His eyes shifted to Kannan and then towards me.

‘Kanna, who is this?’ he asked Kannan. ‘He is my friend from Bombay, Shibu’ Kannan then turned to me and introduced the huge man ‘This is Das, the great’ he said. It was apparent from the way he described Das and ran around him, that he had made Das, his hero, his idol. Das was a man of very little words. He allowed me to look at him as he skillfully soldered the chips on to the circuit board. I tried to read the books on electronics and tried to differentiate between an ohm and a lamda. Das would work silently, continuously smoking cigarettes. He would light the next cigarette before the first one was finished and the steel tray that doubled as an ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts.

‘Why do you smoke so much?’ i asked Das.

‘Some people need oxygen to live, I need smoke’ he said as he turned around to pick up a tester.

Later, when we were back at our house before ammamma came back, Kannan was excitedly telling me about Das being one of the student leaders and how people in his college followed every dictum he issued. He was the leader of the S.U.F.I. wing in his college. Kannan animatedly spoke of a hartal when the police lathi charged and he took the baton from the police and hit many policemen. He was arrested, but he became an instant hero in the party and he is now the rising star of the political group. Kannan was sure, being in the good books of Das today, will earn him a handsome position in the party when he is grown 3 more years.

Ammamma entered the gates, with another man in tow. He was an elderly man. Fair and plump, he had bhasma on his forehead. With one hand holding the long umbrella and the other hand holding the mundu, he walked very fast. Ammamma took off her slippers and handed a stainless steel container in my hand. ‘Put it in the kitchen’ she told me. I obediently took it and left for the kitchen. He asked for water. ‘Get the boiled water from the pot’ she shouted. They both began speaking in hushed voices. I peeped through the window grills and i saw my ammamma take out some money from her purse and give it to him. The man was ready to leave.

‘Didnt get the water’ the old man said to my ammamma. I thought he purposely did that to make me feel like an incompetent grandson. His face was arrogant when he said that.

‘Shibu!!’ she shouted loudly ‘Where did you get lost?’ I stumbled out of the door and offered him the glass of water. He looked at me intensely, piercing into my eyes. ‘Is he Parvathi’s son’ he asked ammamma. She nodded in agreement.

‘He has got her beautiful eyes’ he said proud of my inheritance. ‘Do you know me?’ he asked me. I shook my head. ‘How would you?’ he was now nostalgic ‘I had taken you in my arms when you were six months old. I used to carry you and sing lullabies when you would cry.’ I could sense, he now had become melodramatic. After a while, he left. The last thing i heard him tell my ammamma was that being a daughter of the village, it was her duty too, to contribute for the yagna in the temple.

Kannan took me aside and told me not to believe a single word he said. He said, he was Narayana Namboodiripaad, the high priest of the temple and it was his habit of forcing people to donate money for the welfare of the temple. He said with a tense voice, that there were rumors of a lurking spirit in the village around the temple. People had seen shadows on moonlit nights without an owner. Also, very recently, when the temple door was opened for the early morning pooja, the deity had been smeared with a black substance. The Panchayat was called and an astrologer summoned to find out what was going wrong. The astrologer did some calculations holding some sea shells and then told that an ancient priest who had died of a sin is responsible for the unholy happenings in the temple and a yagna has to be performed to drive the ghost away from the village. Kannan felt that Namboodiripaad wanted to make money out of the yagna, and he was swindling the innocent villagers with the power of superstition.

I was intrigued by what Kannan said. A ghost! I was living in a house that was close to a temple haunted by a ghost! I was thrilled. ‘I want to see the ghost!’ i earnestly told Kannan.

‘What?’ Kannan was a bit startled. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘Have you ever seen a ghost?’ I asked him. He shook his head.

‘Neither me...’ I was now excited. ‘What if he is a friendly ghost?’

‘Ghosts are never friendly’ he replied.

‘Says who?’ I was stubborn. I really wanted to see a ghost! I had heard of ghosts in films, in books, but never seen one in reality. It used to be an illusion of a lady walking on the street with a lit candle in her hand, her hair open and spread over the shoulders. But that was how they were shown in films. I wanted to see a real ghost.

‘You are mad’ he said. ‘What if the ghost kills you?’

‘I dont think ghosts can kill’ i was pretty sure. ‘You said the ghost was a shadow without an owner, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Then how can a shadow kill a man. A shadow can only kill a shadow, Isn’t it?’

‘Right.’ he said, giving my logic some intense thought.

‘So when do we go to see the ghost?’ i was now very enthusiastic.

‘No... wait’ Kannan fumbled. ‘OK, I have an idea’ he said ‘We will tell Das. I am sure he will help. He does not believe in God!’

I was game. I felt fear in Kannans voice but as long as i saw the ghost, i had no problem. I just wanted to see the ghost.

‘Shibu! Will you go to the mill and get our sack of rice?’ Ammamma yelled out. Kannan and I left for the rice mill.

The Summer of '82 - Chapter 2

My grandmother was 72 years old that year. Her face filled with wrinkles of knowledge, she worked in the fields along with other younger farmers. She used to walk with a little stoop, but I had hardly any memory of her with an illness. The village of Pariyaram, in those days had rarely seen electricity. Though the entire village had poles holding the electric wires upright, it hardly used to reach the house in a way it reached us back home in the city. As the sun set behind the mountains, the bulb would emit a dim glow that we used to mistake it for a man smoking a bheedi without the smoke. The dusk used to bring with it the aroma of camphor and the hymns of the Mahabharata recited in a very peculiar fashion. All the kids would gather around grandmother and she would tell us the story of how Arjuna was reluctant to fight his brothers, when Krishna, in the midst of the battlefield recited him the Bhagwad Gita.

‘How many days did he read the Bhagwad Gita in the battle field?’ Shaiju would ask innocently. Grandmother would then close the book and tell him that the Bhagwad Gita was recited by Krishna, to Arjuna, and it stands the test of time and rings true even in today’s world. In the midst of this story, my cousin, Kittu, would squirm and ask her to tell the stories of her childhood when the British ruled the land, she would tell us how they were to sing praises of the Queen in school. She would remember those days with fondness when she bought her first Saree for 8 annas. 8 annas! We would scream in despair, we hardly got two toffees in 8 annas!

My grandmother loved telling stories from her fond memories. Her husband, our grandfather, had died in an accident. Our house was on the main road. It was very narrow, but was one of the main roads in the country then, now called the NH17 highway. He was returning early from the temple after his bath when a car hit him. He died instantly. Those days in Kerala, my grandmother used to remember, there were so many women who had more than one marriage. Surprisingly, very distinct from other cultures, the society in Kerala was a matriarchal one. The women in the family wielded the power. The men usually shifted into the woman’s house after marriage, unlike now. And in particular castes of the carpenters, who used to travel for years building temples and palaces, when they would come back to the house and see an umbrella outside their house, they would know, their wives are theirs no more, and that they are married to another man. But my grandmother never married again.
When we asked her ‘Why?’ She would smile and tell us, ‘One day you will know, Why!’

Our house in Pariyaram was a huge one, with small little rooms. Each room had another room within, which my mother used to tell me, were places to store food, since agriculture was our main occupation. In many rooms were secret chambers which were to store and hide grains when the British would come in demanding for taxes. Later, after Independence, it also became a place to hide people during the Communist struggle.

Communism ran high in our family. My grand mother was a strong supporter of the communist. It was strange that a village so remote, where electricity used to reach in trickle, was completely opinionated in its political stance. But as children it hardly mattered to us. We would enjoy sitting on the compound wall as huge processions of people wearing mundus (south indian dhoti’s) would march with red flags shouting loudly DYFI ZINDABAD, and we kids would jump up and down echoing Zindabad Zindabad! Shouting along with them used to give us a sense of power. The procession would last for more than 10 minutes with a sea of people walking in a line, their faces smeared with seriousness and determination.

Kannan, was our next door neighbor. Two years younger to me, he would tell me about the politics in school. He would tell me that SYFI was the student faction of the DYFI party. Apparently, there were more than one communist party in our state, which were led by two different leaders. These parties would help the students in their elections in school. He supported SUFI which stood for Students United Federation of India, because they used to give them 5 Rupees for shouting slogans in the procession other than tea and biscuits while the SYFI only offered Tea and biscuits. Kannan would be scolded and punished by his maternal uncle for all his pranks in school. Kannan being a staunch supporter of the communist party, it was not liked by his uncle who supported the Congress. He would whip his legs with a twig saying that he would land up as a naxalite, if he continued attending the rallies of the SUFI. His mother and sister would sob in the corner of the house as he scowled in pain.

Kannan's father had died an untimely death. One day when he was coming back from school, plucking a bunch of flowers on the way for his sister, he was shocked to see people crowding the gate outside his house. He ran into his house and saw his father lying still, wrapped around with a white cloth, with cottons stuffed in his nose and ears. He had taken his own life. His uncle had taken the responsibility of the family then. He left the army for the sake of his sister and decided to stay in the village and take care of her and her children.

His upbringing in the army bought in a martial rule. There was a strict discipline in the house and Kannan hated him for it. Suma, Kannan's sister and Kittu, my first cousin were best of friends. My parents were very fond of both Suma and Kannan as if they were from our own family. They were like family to us. Their relation with our family ran a few generations back. Kannan's grandmother and my grandmother were best of friends. They used to work for my grandmother in the fields, but the relationship of friendship surpassed that of the societal caste system and they became best friends. They were always together through thick and thin of things, and Kannan's grandmother considered us as her own grandchildren.

Kannan's mother, after her husbands death got her husbands job in the village office. But it was never easy for her. She had left school when she was in the Tenth standard, because she was getting married. So, after her husbands death, she had to go back to school, clear her exams and then go through college, after which she got the job of her husband so that she could support her family. She had a magic smile on her face that hid the pain in her eyes, and she lovingly cooked food for all of us when we came back from play on Sunday afternoons, completely exhausted. We would lie on the floor putting our head on her lap and she would stroke our hair lovingly and put us to sleep, as she fanned us with a newspaper on another hand. Their house, then never had electricity, and in the sultry hot summers, there was no house that was cooler than Sarla aunty’s house. The house was small, made of thatched roof and the floor smeared with cow-dung, that used to cool our heels, the moment we stepped in, from the hot courtyard. The doors were small in size and the elders had to bow down before they could enter. Directly opposite the entrance was the deity of Krishna in all its glory. My mother used to tell me that it was to make people bow down to God when they enter the house, that the door was so short. It was easy when I was 12, i could run past it without any effort, but later, as i grew older, there were many a times i banged my forehead on the lintel and fallen down with a swollen head.

This time, as i ran into meet Kannan’s grandmother, my forehead hit the lintel with such great force, i hardly remembered anything after that until I opened my eyes, to see myself surrounded by everyone in the family. Kittu, Kannan and Suma, Shaiju and Sita on either side of the bed. I had been asleep for an entire day. I was later told that i had lost a lot of blood and I was to take a lot of rest for an entire week.

The Summer of '82 - Chapter 1

I woke up in a startle. It was dark when i looked around. Far on the other side of the room, i could see two neon needles. The shorter one was close to the number 5 and the longer one marking the number 2. Under normal circumstances i always woke up when the shorter needle pointed to 9, but today was an exception. Today was the day when we left for my hometown, Kerala. My heart was beating with a loud thump. The larger needle hardly moved. It moved taking its own time. A light peeped out of the door, with hushed sounds. With sleep no longer holding my eye, i got up and moved to the light.

My mother was awake, there were a 100 utensils spread over the kota platform, with two utensils steaming on the burner of the gas stove. She hurriedly like a master craftsman cut the vegetables, dropped it into the steaming vessel, took out a handful of salt and dropped it into the other vessel, while my father sat next to the table spreading little cut banana leaves and putting rice on it with pickle. I looked in awe at my mom working with breakneck speed. She was super-mom to me. When she saw me awake, she rushed me to the wash basin, put tooth paste on the brush and left me on a short stool, so that i could reach out easily to the basin and spit at my own will. I loved the taste of the paste and i kept chewing on the brush as the clatter of the steel utensils against each other made an irritable sound. I felt a tug on my shorts. My sister looked at me with sleepy eyes. She was awake too. After i chewed my brush for five minutes, i hoisted her on the stool and put the paste on her small little funny brush and she started chewing on it. My younger brother was fast asleep. He slept like a log. My father used to tell me that even if there was a bomb blast, he would not wake up, such was his deep slumber.

As i walked into the kitchen again, my mother thrust a glass full of milk in my hand.
‘Here, drink this full’ and kept another glass of milk and covered it with a smaller plate ‘and this is for Sita, make sure she does not pour it down the washbasin’ she said ‘And wake up Shaiju, he will take ever to wake up, we might miss the train.’
My father got up and went into the living room where he snored. ‘SHAIJU’ he called out. It was a short shout, a shout that sounded louder than when he talked and a little lesser than when he was angry. It had its desiring effect. He shot up from his sleep, sitting upright, blinking his eyes as if he was never asleep. He woke up and walked briskly to the stool and pulled down Sita and hoisted himself on to it. Sita, in the midst of her brushing started crying, dropping the foamy toothpaste all over the floor. My brother and she were always at loggerheads. There was an invisible love-hate relationship between them. They would fight during the day and even in the middle of the night, i could hear them talking and shouting at each other, though their eyes were closed.

My dad intervened and my brother had to give up his throne to the wash basin while my sister had a smile on her face that pronounced victory over him. Sulking, he stood on the side mumbling in anger. This was not unusual in our household. My sister was the youngest, and the apple of every eye in our family, I was the eldest, elder to Shaiju. My brother was stuck between both of us. He always felt lost most of the time. Being the middle brother, he always felt that he was loved lesser than my sister and I. He would never challenge me and if he had a fight with me, my sister would face the wrath of his anger. Our relationship was a complex one, but in those days, the complexities never mattered to us. Our life was completely immersed in the present, not knowing that these were the years that mattered the most, in developing a growing mind.

Later as we sat in the train and the landscaped moved past in blurred color palettes, we thought of the wonderful days that were awaiting us, the mango trees, ripe jackfruits, the open rice fields, elanneer (fresh coconut water) and our adventures into the near by forest which we had named ‘Rakshasvan’ mainly because of the weird noises which came from the south at the advent of stars in the night.