Rising Heat, page 8
Through all this, Thatha didn’t say a word. Periappa tried to weasel his way out. ‘What if they live with the youngest?’
Appa continued.
‘All that won’t work out. Say something realistic. He has used up all his money to buy bullock carts and is struggling to make ends meet. There is no point in asking him to keep them.’
Periappa refused to accept that explanation. Appa did not relent. ‘Anna, let me say this, listen to me. I have already made an agreement at Kakkankaadu. That will come through in about two months. They can build a shack on that land and live there.’
Periappa was pleased that the burden was off him. His face lit up with relief. He heaped praises on the idea.
‘That is the right solution! I myself am not comfortable living with my in-laws. I am trying to figure out if I can come away and live somewhere else. The youngest one also wants to do something like that. No matter what, how long can I live at the mercy of my brothers-in-law, tell me?’
‘You say it will take at least two months for the deal to come through. It will take another month to build the shack. Until then . . .?’
Paati raised the question and went into deep thought. Thatha sat fidgeting with his feet.
‘Until then, just stay here.’
‘No need. Apparently, there is a house available in Kaliammodu. I heard about it yesterday. We will lie there for three months. The rent is ten rupees. We can afford that. What do you say?’
Thatha’s face cheered up. There was no opposition to Paati’s statement from anyone.
Chapter 5
Akka was going to work at the colony regularly. The houses were getting completed at a brisk pace. They were to be auctioned and occupied soon. Those who had come from afar specifically for the construction work were leaving one by one. Work was dwindling. Akka, who had gone to work as usual that day, did not return that evening.
No one thought of her till it was seven in the evening. There was a lot of work to be done. The buffaloes had to be tethered, leaves to be plucked, goats to be herded into the pen. Paati had gone to work somewhere earlier that day and was cooking dinner at that time. Thatha was lying on the cot in the front yard. It was six or seven months after the deal on the land had been completed. Thatha and Paati had built a little shack and moved in to live on the land by themselves at first. Two or three months later, the boy and his family moved into the house after repairing it. Amma had absolutely no interest in moving. But since she had no other choice, what could she do?
The coffee that was made for Akka sat on the stove untouched. Amma, who was gathering utensils to wash, noticed the coffee and asked, ‘What is this? Has the princess not had her coffee yet?’ Only then did they notice that she hadn’t returned home. Appa, who had gone to drink toddy in the evening, hadn’t returned either. Amma grabbed the boy and burst out an instruction to him, ‘Go and fetch your father.’ Appa rushed back, wondering what had gone wrong.
‘She kept saying work was getting over, work was getting over. Maybe they have all gotten together and gone to watch a movie?’ he asked.
‘Has Komuri ever gone to a movie without informing us? Instead of sitting here and talking pointlessly, won’t you go and look for her somewhere, check what is going on?’
The pain from the fire in her belly spread through Amma. She couldn’t verbalize the doubt she had in her mind. Would she have eloped with someone? Appa went to Porasa’s house to find out who all worked with her in the colony. Porasa also went to the colony to work.
‘Two, three people have rented a place in Kolunjikkadu. It is with them that your daughter works. They call their mason Mani.’
He took his cycle and went to Kolunjikkadu. He had to find her without arousing doubts in others. Otherwise, the news would spread rapidly, with generously added embellishments. Luckily, the house that he went seeking was set inwards and away from the rest. There were three big grown lads there, all of the same height. The radio was blaring and they were lying like mounds.
‘We came home in the evening right after work. We don’t know anything.’
As he pushed his cycle and moved away, he heard their stifled giggles. If he turned around immediately, they might run away and hide, he thought to himself. Without turning around to look at them, he went straight to Sevathaan’s house.
Ever since he had helped purchase the lands, Sevathaan had become very close to Appa. He got more than a thousand as the brokerage fee. Still, Appa had a lot of trust in him. ‘He travels around a bit. He should know more about a lot of things than us.’ Sevathaan boasted often that he could meet minister Kandhasamy at any time and ask him for anything he wanted done. Perhaps because he didn’t think anyone was going to check the veracity of his claim. He made his rounds wearing a towel on his shoulder with the party-colour stripes, and soon gathered some supporters.
‘If there was someone who could stand next to Thalaivar, it would only be me. Just so you know, he would put his arm on my shoulder casually while he talked. Even minister Kandhasamy has to stand a step lower.’
He would say the same thing a few times. He would then change it slightly and say the same thing in a different way a few more times. The women would gather around and listen to him so intently that they wouldn’t have noticed if a fly wandered into their gaping mouths.
‘Which Thalaivar did you stand next to?’ asked one of them once.
He reacted as if they were mocking him. He turned around to give a dismissive look to the woman who posed the question and then responded, ‘There is only one Thalaivar in my mind. Maybe you have others.’
The questioner got teary with emotion. She slapped herself on her cheeks in penitence.
Once, he paid money to screen a Thalaivar movie for the people of that street—either by selling his wife’s jewellery or by pawning it.
Kattaiveeran, or Veeran, would say, ‘That bottom-feeding dog. He can’t get close enough to see even the dust on Thalaivar’s feet. Look at how he boasts! Don’t I know how he is jumping through hoops trying to meet Kandhasamy . . . mm?’
Appa seated himself on the plinth outside Sevathaan’s house. Sevathaan hadn’t returned home yet. He had gone out on some work and got back only a little while after Appa got there. He came back looking very tired. Appa hesitated, wondering if he should tell him.
‘I am just coming back from an event by the minister. That’s why the exhaustion. You tell me, Maama . . . Whatever it is, tell me.’
He told him about it hesitantly; Sevathaan’s face grew red.
‘What kind of lads are those?’
‘Who knows all that. I left just as soon as I got there. They cackled away standing behind me.’
‘Oho! Let’s go break their knees. Let’s report to the police, Maama. Only if the police show up will they know not to mock us.’
Late into that night, he cycled to the police station to file a report. He stuffed fifty rupees into the hands of two officers and brought them along to Kolunjikkadu. The policemen took the lads to the station. It took just a few blows at the station for them to confess everything.
Akka had gone away with a lad called Kannan. The two of them had been courting each other for over a year. He was from a village next to Therur. They gave them his address. Appa and Sevathaan went looking for the address in a car they arranged for, along with the two policemen.
Appa was absolutely stoic. He had brought her up with so much affection, she being the only daughter. No matter how many sons one has, when it comes to daughters, there is always a soft corner for them. A daughter will never stop taking care of her father and mother. Even when she is married and in her husband’s house, the joy she feels from a visit by her parents is unparalleled. He wiped his perspiration with his towel. The more he thought about it, the more he found it unbearable. ‘A son must be smacked when being brought up while a daughter must be protected, they say. I brought her up with so much care but now this donkey has run away with some stranger leaving everything behind. Did I bring her up so carefully for this? I should have never let her leave the house. I let her go to work since others were doing it too and now she wants a husband. The body isn’t satisfied with just food apparently. It is not a daughter I begot but a prostitute. Let me get my hands on her. I will chop her up and bury her. The whore of a daughter.’
‘Daughters should be married off at the right age, Maama. If sons roam about, that’s different. What do girls know? If a lad is a little good-looking, that’s enough for them. One tap on their hips and the girls will easily cave.’
‘Maaple, she is not that sort of a girl. We never ever imagined that she would run away like this.’
‘Maama, who thinks of their father and mother when transgressing? It is as if they are under a spell. You can’t blame anyone for that.’
Sevathaan chatted on fervently. He was happy that he was able to show off his prowess. And everything happened to his benefit. When they woke up the residents of that address at such an odd hour and they saw the police, they were completely shaken. There were three or four little children. Must have been that Kannan’s younger siblings. After a search that resulted in turning the house upside down, they gave them an address in Ellur saying that was where they went. The car left for Ellur. Sevathaan chatted with the policemen throughout. They joked about ‘cases’ of eloping like this. Listening to it all made Appa remorseful. ‘What an awful fate this is! I should have just let her get away and be however she wants. I want to leave her alone and run back home.’ Appa hung his head. By the time they reached Ellur and found the place, the day had broken. The occupants were shocked to see Appa and the rest. Akka looked up at them and turned her teary gaze downwards. No one asked anyone anything. They grabbed her and put her in the car. The policeman took that lad and two others who were with him in another car and followed them.
He had a medium complexion. He let his curly hair spread all over his head and cover his ears. Must have been about twenty-five years old. He had a pretty face. The kind suitable to dance around with an actress in a drama show arranged typically during the temple festival. To the song ‘What’s that glance that you are giving me?’ That face shrunk to the size of a coconut kernel. Akka sat motionless. Her face never looked up. Appa kept looking at her as if he would burn her down with his looks. She did not look at him at all. Appa also did not open his mouth to say a word.
By the time they reached home, the entire village was waiting for them. Who on earth would have spread the word? In fact, they had returned the car in Karattur itself and taken a bus home. ‘No one in the village will know about this; let’s keep this whole affair under the rug for some time and then get her married off to some guy in a few days,’ Sevathaan had said. ‘The lad was severely beaten up,’ he said, and chuckled over and over again.
‘You should have seen how they made him stand naked and beat him up. Each of his balls was swollen like a pumpkin. Bloody boys from the low caste of percussionists. They think we wouldn’t come after them if they run away with our girl. From now on, he will never look at another girl for life!’
A stinking laugh. He blinked his eyes, flared his nostrils and repeated it to everyone. He described it as if he had done it by himself. Getting a car, going to Thenur, and then to Ellur. He patiently opened up every little detail for everyone to relish, like a Thalaivar movie. It was as if he was saying, ‘If anyone else has issues like this, come to me.’ If Appa had heard any of this, he’d much rather have left Akka to her fate with that lad instead of having to put up with Sevathaan’s fetid words. Filthy words spilt out of his mouth, words writhing like worms.
Appa did not have the strength to face anyone in the village. Instead he moaned in front of his daughter constantly. ‘It is but our fate that she should leave home and elope with someone. And that anyone and everyone should talk about it.’ The boy felt bad for his father but he didn’t know what to do either. On his part, Appa avoided any sort of gatherings at any cost and stayed cooped up in the goat shed. Amma, on the other hand, would talk out of turn about something or the other and somehow end up bearing Appa’s wrath. They both argued a lot.
‘Brainless corpse, all this is because of your doing. You are the one who took her to the cinema, to cut her hair, to do this and that. What age do you think we live in that you should wear bra and blouse and saunter around like a horse? Here, we barely have a piece of cloth to cover our buttocks but the mother and daughter find ten different things to adorn.’
‘Yes, you penny-pincher! I’m the one who spoilt her. Why didn’t you buy her bras and blouses and keep her with you at home all the time? You don’t have it to earn enough for your family. Didn’t you enjoy the money that your daughter brought in by doing cement work at the construction site? Don’t you blame me for spoiling her!’
That was it. After that, he would just fling anything he could at her and beat her. He would grab her by her hair and drag her and kick her, calling her a whore until he grew tired. That was followed by him drinking himself out of his wits. Who could reason with him? Annan was never around at home. The boy sat in a corner like a mouse. Amma would not get up for two days after that. With her hair unbraided and unkempt, she’d live on her cot. No one even cleaned out the ashes from the stove at that time. Annan would eat at the movies and the boy at Paati’s house. She would feed him, grousing about how well the family used to be and what it had come to, and lay out some food for Appa too. If he was inebriated, he wouldn’t touch it.
Akka didn’t talk to anyone. She didn’t step out of the house either. No weddings, no festivals, no events, no nothing. The whole house bore the shadow of death. The boy too could not mingle with any of the other kids in the village. He was too worried that they might say something derogatory about his sister in the heat of their silly squabbles. Even while walking by himself, he imagined someone whispering behind his back or laughing mockingly at him. When having a normal conversation, if someone smiled at him, he could only assume they were jeering. He couldn’t focus on anything. He couldn’t be at ease anywhere.
At home, there were fights all the time. The ever- cheerful Akka was now shattered to unrecognizable pieces, spilt like water tossed towards the sky. She no longer grew her eyes big over little things and talked exaggeratedly about them. She didn’t so much as look up at all. She lost weight and was down to her bones. She looked at food like it was medicine. If insisted upon, she ate just a few morsels. When Appa and Amma fought, she hid her head between her knees and whimpered softly without anyone noticing. Like a large river that stopped flowing suddenly, the whole house was enveloped in a sudden silence.
He too didn’t like being at home. He did not want to go back home at all, but no matter where he went, thoughts about home dominated his mind. Whenever he was away, he constantly wondered if something was happening at home. He couldn’t stay still in school. Just how did Annan not pay any heed to anything happening at home and go to work every day? Would he too reach that state of mind of not getting affected by anything around him?
Paati only added fuel to the fire. If Akka didn’t respond when she called for her, she would panic and bring the whole house down. If Akka went someplace outside for a few minutes, Paati would go looking for her. She would constantly check on her. At night, she slept right next to Akka. What if she resorted to some untoward action? Periappa and Chithappa and all visited quite often, with the gloom of attending a funeral wake. They too moped around with their doglike long faces as if there wasn’t already enough seriousness in the house, and behaved as though there was nothing else in this world they knew to talk about except Akka. The boy felt so angry that he wanted to spit on their faces and drive them out.
In spite of the commotion all around, he was still going to write his tenth-standard board exams. Just thinking about it frazzled him. Whatever he studied, he forgot the next minute. Seeing the other boys study day and night made him want to bawl loudly.
They were busy finding a husband for Akka. It was a hushed, low-key affair, for, if word got out, there were people who would make it their business to spread rumours about Akka and stop any progress. Maybe it was payback time for Appa’s past arrogance. Sevathaan helped look for a groom. These days, Appa and Sevathaan were very close. They went together to the liquor shop every day, drank a lot, came back and talked nonsense. All that drinking didn’t even agree with Appa. Yet, he drank too much, shouted all night and vomited his guts out. He didn’t eat properly. He was becoming skinny like a stick.
Meanwhile, Sevathaan was becoming insufferable. He would invite himself over as the rooster crowed in the morning. Even at that hour, he was heavily inebriated.
‘This Kandhasamy fellow, is he even human? That rogue that licks leftovers! Is it enough to be born in a farming family? Doesn’t one need to know how to make a living from farming? And he has the post of a minister on top of all that. Did he not go outside the caste and marry someone from a lower caste? No wonder his mentality is like that too. Let’s see . . . He has to come to me someday. Adey . . . what do you take this Sevathaan for? If I give you one on your cheek, you will go flying all the way to your village. You better be careful!’
He would talk dramatically, as if Kandhasamy was standing in front of him. About three thousand rupees were spent in the fiasco of looking for Akka. Sevathaan would have surely pocketed at least five hundred from that. In addition to being a land broker he made himself a marriage broker too. Sevathaan bothered the boy very often, saying ‘Maapille this’ and ‘Maapille that’. But because he was helping with finding a groom for Akka, he had to be tolerated. As soon as he arrived, Akka would look up, roll her eyes, give him a look and turn away. Appa’s drinking, Amma’s fights, Akka’s silence, Annan’s indifference, Sevathaan’s annoyance all pushed the boy further away from home. He felt like being outside was a lot more peaceful. He remained functional by staying away from home as much as possible.
And he got a set of friends that worked perfectly for that. About fifty or so families had moved into the colony. And more kept coming. When he passed tenth standard and moved on to ten plus one, three boys from the colony joined his school: Gopal, Murali and Kathirvel. Gopal’s father was an officer. Murali’s father worked in a thread mill. Kathirvel was the son of an elementary school teacher. All four had bicycles. They went to school together, came back from school together, chatted and roamed around together.
