The Summer of '82 - Chapter 5

A few days passed. The wound on my forehead had healed, but the mark of the stitches remained. The doctor told me it would take sometime for the mark to fade away into the skin. Kannan and I raced through the fields south of the house to the narrow gauge railway line that passed through the village. The railway line looked like coming from eternity and going towards eternity. In the hot summer sun, we would walk on the steel rail with arms outstretched trying to balance ourselves without stepping on the gravel below.

‘So, when do we see the ghost?’ I reminded Kannan as I took one step further.

‘I thought you had forgotten’ Kannan replied.

‘Come on Kanna, dont you want to see a ghost. It would be so much fun. We can try to scare him instead!’ I was ecstatic.

‘I told Das, about you wanting to see the ghost’ Kannan replied.

‘And what did he say?’ I was curious.

‘He says there is no ghost. Namboodiripaad wants to make money through the pooja he will conduct’ Kannan replied.

‘You mean there are no ghosts’ I was disappointed.

‘Not according to Das’ he said as he jumped down on the gravel. He kept his ear on the rail. He motioned me to do the same. We could hear the beats of the train at a distance. On the horizon, we could see a speck, which grew bigger and bigger. The engine blew its whistle and we scampered to the side and hid behind a shrub as a train chugged past us. There was a constant fear in both of us of being spotted by some of our relatives who knew us. The rail line was beyond limits for us and being noticed by someone who knew my ammamma was the biggest threat we had.

The train was quite slow. Kannan said that the bridge a kilometer to the west was built recently, so the train would slow down when it came into our village. The train had people of all different kinds looking outside iron framed windows. There were old people and young men and women with children. Women in burkha’s, looked outside the train hiding themselves from the beauty of the landscapes. As the train slowed down, a man emerged on the door of one of the compartments. He had a sack on his foot. He then looked at the landscape, then took out a red kerchief and waved violently. He then pushed the sack out of the train, as the train continued its journey into eternity.

Once the train had passed into a distance, Kannan and I looked at each other and then rushed out from our hiding. We ran to the place where the sack had landed. The sack was a bit wet, with markings of two circles and a cross overlapping it. We were panting, searching for our breath, when the sound of a jeep was heard at a distance.

The jeep screeched to a halt where the road ended, ten feet away from the rail line. Three men got off it and started walking in our direction. Kannan pulled me across to the other side and we hid behind a short retaining wall that mentioned we were 1082 kilometers away from Bombay. With the sun shining directly at us, we could hardly figure out who they were from that distance. One of them took off a knife from his lungi and cut open the sack. He then motioned the other two people to haul it. The sack looked heavy and it leaked a powder on its way. When the three men were gone beyond the limitations of our vision, we ran across the line hurling stones at the jeep that had left its mark on the muddy road.

The rest of the morning went in figuring out the content of the sack. The Famous Five books were fresh in my memory and I would have loved it if we could unearth some kind of criminal mystery and be famous for our quick wit and smartness. Who was the guy who pushed the sack out of the train? How did the three guys know that this man had pushed the sack from the train?

‘THE RED KERCHIEF!’ I shouted in excitement. ‘He had waved the red kerchief before he pushed the sack out of the train’ I jumped at my discovery. But that was the only clue we had. Probably this happened every day. If it did, we would be on our way to get the National award for bravery from the President, for unearthing a smuggling racket!

Our shadows had shortened and the stomachs growling, when we decided to get back home. The path back home was lined with Dandelions and ‘Touch me not’s’ which we kept brushing as we walked, closing its leaves to our amusement. The touch-me-not’s gave us a great sense of power, to control the fate of a plant merely by our touch. Back home, Shaiju, Sita, Suma and Kittu were sitting in the verandah tearing the newspaper into small bits.

‘What are you guys upto?’ I asked Shaiju.

‘Watch this’ he replied. He took the entire little bits of paper and went to the road. The road was empty, and Shaiju sprinked the little tits-bits of paper around. He then came back with a wide smile on his face.

Kannan and I looked at him with bewilderment over the compound wall. ‘What?’ we asked in unison. ‘Wait till the next bus passes by’ he said, the smile still plastered on his face.

We heard a truck at a distance. All the other kids waited with bated breath. As the truck passed by, Shaiju’s eyes lit up and the kids ran after the truck. The little bits of paper on the road, was sucked up in the air like magic and followed the truck to a small distance, after which the tiny pieces of paper looked like snow flakes showering from the heavens as everyone danced on the road enjoying the surreal feeling.

‘Kids, get off the road’ the voice of Das was heard. Shaiju looked at Das ‘Did you see that, Dasetta*? Wasnt it beautiful?’ Das smiled. ‘Yes it was, now you kids get off the road. It is a not a nice place for you kids to play’

The kids very obediently stepped aside the road and walked home. I looked at Das and waved out to him. Das approvingly smiled back. I was very happy to see Dasettan smiling at me. There was something about him that made me seek his attention. Kannan tugged my t-shirt and then pointed me to a jeep that was parked a few meters away from Das’s house near the bridge over the canal.

‘Look at that’ he said.

‘It is a jeep! So?’ I replied.

‘It is that same jeep, we saw at the railway line!’ he was sure about it. ‘No it is not’ There were so many jeeps in the village that looked the same!

‘KLX 483, that was the number of the jeep’ he said. I looked closely. ‘There is only one guy in this jeep, in that jeep there were three!’

That was when two men emerged from the canal. Both of them got into the jeep and sped away. As they passed Das’s house, one of them put out their hand and waved out to Das. Das waved back and then disappeared into his room.

(*etta - big brother)