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| Stark & Bleak World - 1, by Rajan Krishnan |
The Yin as Provider
The men of our village never used to take the morning meals from their homes. Who’s interested in an insipid breakfast anyway! Leftover of the previous night’s rice preserved in water to be reclaimed next morning and spread with green chillies smashed in coconut oil and salt. An apology for the morning bite. The men preferred to go to teashops for their daily share of appam or puttu and for an update in news. They couldn’t do without politics. Somebody would be reading the newspaper aloud. Hairsplitting arguments soon filled up the air. Over an entire range of issues ranging from local to international. The arguments and discussions went on till noon. The stomachs, however, remained half empty. For their children, the government provided the mid-day meal if they were in school. Even the tiny tots posed no major concern for the men folk. Babies were usually left on mats under the careful gaze of their mothers who simultaneously had to make a living working with the “ratt” (a simple manually operated device for spinning coir from coconut fibre. Four women make the workforce for the production) . If the attention became lax, water could become a death trap for the infants at any moment. However, such an incident never happened.
The tortoise moves around in water, it zigzags,
But its mind is always on the banks of the river where its eggs are laid.
More often than not, the credit at the teashop accrued by the men was settled by their wives. The men were unemployed for most of the time barring short periods when they worked as agricultural labourers. The households were run by the women. The making of coir ropes went on till five in the evening. The final product, bundles of coir arranged like a female wig were to be carried to the market as head-load. The provisions were to be procured on a daily basis. Returning from the market, the lady herself had to prepare dinner for her husband and children. She would feed her siblings first; else they might fall asleep and wait for her elusive husband. The frail bodied, ill fed, over worked woman was all patience embodied. She was still waiting. She had not eaten. And the wait continued.
Would he be drunk?
She couldn’t throw her worries off. The money for buying booze belonged to her piggy-bank. The man couldn’t care less. He wouldn’t like the idea of anybody waiting for him so long. The life be damned. He would curse her and drop down to the floor like a water-balloon. His wife still sat there, condemned to take everything in her stride.
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| Stark & Bleak World - 2 by Rajan Krishnan |
Riding on Money
Sarvadamanan was my childhood friend and classmate. His name was very rare and we didn’t know what it meant. Neither did we bother to. Everybody called him Sarvar. I had a rough idea many years later – one who conquered everyone. Still later I got the exact meaning – one who conquered all enemies of oneself, headed by lust, anger and greed. One day Sarvar came to class bursting out with joy and invited all of us for a shopping spree. There were so many objects of desire exhibited neatly at the shop nearby run by a cunning old man . He always wore only a thorthu (bath towel) around his waist and that was his only dress even when he ventured outside the village. Anybody who had five paise could try his/her luck on a lottery too. If one were lucky to get a small piece of paper with a number embedded in layers of packing, one would be the winner and rewarded instantly. Sarvar bought us sweets till we had enough.
Go ahead and buy whatever you want.
It was a boon. We could possess anything with a mere wish to that effect. Ideas turned realities. We exhausted the whole lottery. We had our hands and minds overflowing. Our first brush with money. An electrifying experience. The source of Sarvar’s sudden richness was none of our concern. He was an angel to us granting our entire wish and we wanted him to remain as one. Strangely enough, our wish list kept on getting appended. Back in the classroom, we just couldn’t contain ourselves. At last the bell rang and as we rushed out, Sarvar’s elder was waiting there with a cane. He started beating Sarvar with all his might.
“Where is the money?” he demanded.
Sarvar had stolen ten rupees from home. His pocket was searched in public and the balance amount was confiscated.
You dirty swine, take this.
Sarvar’s brother raised the cane again to beat him. Sarvadamanan dashed straight to his house. It was a run for life. His brother chasing close behind.
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| Stark & Dark World - 3 by Rajan Krishnan |
We didn’t have any idea how Achiamma landed up in our midst. She was a higher-caste woman. She was staying in the village with her two daughters. Nobody had seen her husband nor was anybody interested to know about him. Achiamma was an ageing woman, fair and plump. Her hair was still black and she wore a big, circular bindi on her forehead made out of sandalwood paste and camphor. Lips were thick and slightly stretched outwards. They always remained red due to her betel-chewing habit. When she walked past, one got a feeling that the ground nearly quivering. Achiamma worked as a domestic help. She had two daughters separated by a time gap of more than twenty years. It so happened that both mother and daughter were giving birth to their newborns almost at the same time. The husbands were conspicuous by their absence. The younger daughter was named Haimavathy. She was taken to the homes where her mother worked and thus she was introduced to us. We never bothered to take her in our playgroup, the major reason being her undercloth. Her only dress was something like a G-string which covered her genitals and posterior. Not exactly cloth but dried layer of plantain stem. The oddity perhaps prompted us to keep her out always. We didn’t treat her as one among us. Haimavathy’s sister’s son was her only companion. He had beautiful eyes and curly hair which strikingly resembled one of my distant relatives.
“See his looks”, I once accosted my mother. “Uncle Sadanandan comes to mind.”
Mother kept mum. She didn’t want to reply. Nonetheless, I had a few more doubts to be cleared.
How could Achiyamma beget a daughter at her old age?
Keep your trap shut.
I did. But I got the answers later without anybody telling me.
