Rising Heat, page 9
In the evening, after school, they went to the bus stand to ogle at all the girls from the Girls’ High School before having a cup of tea at Modern Café. After that, they took their time cycling back to the colony. There, they spent an hour or hour and a half sitting on the temple plinth chatting. The bus stop was right across from them. This bus stop to Aattur used to be beyond the goat farm. Once the colony was constructed, they moved the bus stop to across the temple. This became a prestige issue for the villagers. Kattaiveeran, who had already protested the spread of Hindi, took the move as a challenge to his status and decided to stand with his wooden leg in the middle of the road to protest the move.
‘I will see which bus driver dares drive past me. I have already lost a leg. I don’t mind losing my life too.’
Kuppan moved over to the stop near the colony and started mending shoes there. Chinnatha set up her palm shelter there as well. They were trying to make the best of the situation for their livelihood. Sometimes Ramayi came by and sat there. If she saw him, she smiled with her lips parted as if to ask, ‘How are you, little master?’ without actually saying the words. That was all.
These lads would chat, and chat and chat some more. But if they tried to remember what they talked about, nothing came to mind. Their conversations were mostly about the girls who came to the bus stop.
‘Did you see the yellow half-sari today? What a beauty! Isn’t she perfect?’
‘Sure but when she stands showing her side to us, what a pose that is! That’s what’s bewitching.’
‘She’s just showing off that she is wearing a bra, da.’
‘Stop that. Don’t you guys talk like that about my girl. I’m going to go over and talk to her in person one of these days, just you watch.’
‘What are you going to ask her—if it’s a Mody’s or Naidu Hall brand?’
Gopal would raise his hand to whack the boy but he would pull his head away from him. Gopal had started falling in love with that girl seriously. The other three had no particular person they were interested in; rather, they were interested in all the ladies. If there was a guru of nuances, that had to be Murali. He was two years older than the others. Words that the boy felt too embarrassed to say spilt from Murali’s mouth unabashed. The boy would feel uncomfortable and laugh squiggling like a worm in response. Murali kept mocking him, calling him ‘a coy girl’, and eventually made him come out of his shell. At exactly seven in the evening, two girls would come to the bus stop after their tuition classes. It was only after they left that these boys returned home.
The boy needed all this badly. He believed he was truly happy only when he was with those boys. He could forget all his worries and feel light enough to fly. When it was time to go home, his heart raced with anxiety. A fright consumed him, as if he was going to hell. Sometimes, he would say he was going out to study but would go to see a movie instead. That there was no power connection in his home worked to his advantage. Gopal watched movies pretty often. Murali and Kathir couldn’t just step out of their homes without permission. So, they skipped school once in a while to watch movies. When the movie Alaigal Oyvadhillai was being screened for the second time, they watched it in the morning show and the consecutive matinee show. Kadhir was very fond of the actress Nalini in the movie Uyirullavarai Usha. When it came to staying on top of all things related to movies, Murali was unbeatable. Like how the actresses Radha and Nalini often times fought with each other. Since his family subscribed to a lot of magazines, he read up about the movies and shared that with the rest.
Even though the problems at home weren’t going to be resolved this way, the boy found calm in being able to forget about all that and just be carefree for a little while. Appa did not work like before. It seemed that his spirit would come back only after Akka was settled. Recently, he had done some odd jobs like mending fences and trimming lawns at the colony homes. Amma too supplied buffalo milk to two or three homes in the colony. But the household was still leaden.
One day, Appa, Amma and Sevathaan left for Kattur before dawn to see a groom. Even though the village had largely stopped talking about Akka, no relatives came forward seeking her hand in marriage. Who would agree to marry a girl who had tried to elope? ‘Will someone walk into a pit knowing very well it is deep?’ they would say. If they decked her up in gold, maybe some guy would come forward, but there were no means for that either.
The trip to Kattur was followed by a big fight at home. Even though he didn’t know all the details, the boy gathered the essentials from the conversation.
‘No matter what you say, I will not agree to push our child into a pit,’ Amma yelled.
Appa and Sevathaan spoke calmly. ‘Who wants to push anyone in a pit? Don’t you think we would know the difference between a puddle and a lake?’
‘Oh yes, do I not know how all this works! A lame or a maimed lad is still okay. If it was his first marriage, we could give her away. Even if he is the heir to a large inheritance, I won’t agree to giving our daughter in second marriage to someone.’
‘Don’t talk foolishly. Your daughter is not the epitome of character. Who will come forward to marry her after what she has done? If you want, you go find someone nice whom you approve of.’ Appa was livid with anger.
‘What is wrong with him? It has been a year since his first wife died. He has no children. Must be only about thirty or thirty-two years old. The man looks young and seems to be a quiet and polite type. Maybe he is not like us in status. At least we aren’t without a square meal a day, seems like that itself is a bit of a struggle for him. But so what? Does he not go out and work? If he was even a little more comfortable moneywise, don’t you think people would have been lining up outside his house to get him married to their daughters?’
‘There is no need to think any further. Let’s settle on this one. If not, where else do we go looking for a better alliance?’
‘You want to dump her into a pit so you can spare yourself the efforts of seeking a better groom. Instead of that, why don’t you spend two rupees on poison and kill her?’
Amma yelled with bitterness as tears poured down her face. From inside came Akka’s whimpers.
‘Have the mother and daughter discussed everything beforehand and planned their moaning? If you argue against this, I will chop you both up and make a pickle out of that. If I need to go to jail, so be it!’ shouted Appa as if he was possessed. Sevathaan slowly walked away from there. Once he left, the discussion stopped. That night, Appa sought advice from Thatha and Paati.
‘If the boy is good, then give him the girl. Forget about wealth, bloody wealth. If the boy is good, he will make the money needed. This would be his second marriage, but the first wife isn’t around, right? Then what is the issue?’
That was their response. The sky was lit up by the moon. Thatha sat on a cot, speaking emphatically. His back alone was drenched in the light of the moon. When she heard him, Amma grumbled under her breath.
‘What do the old man and the old woman have to lose? It is I who is stuck in the stinking sludge of a murky mire. Should my daughter suffer like me too?’
In a flash, Appa rushed from the exterior plinth, grabbed Amma’s bundled hair and punched her on her back till his fists hurt. ‘Yes, beat me up, da, beat me good! Finish me off and carry the funeral pot for me,’ cried Amma. Appa returned to the plinth with his tired hand.
‘I brought this one who spent her time collecting cow dung at her father’s house and gave her a living. Look at what she has to say. She has found her tongue, hasn’t she . . .’
All of Amma’s efforts to oppose the wedding were futile. Arrangements for it were made with grandeur. Five sovereigns of gold jewellery, five thousand rupees in cash. The entire expense was borne by them. The wedding took place in Kattur. What if they had it in their village and something unforeseen happened? This way, even if some gossip happened to reach the groom’s party, they could still manage it. Sevathaan did mention that he had given them a vague cover story on that incident. The groom’s people had also figured out that there must be something off about this bride that they should offer her as a second wife. The day was fixed. The invitations had arrived. The process of inviting kith and kin formally was going on in full throttle.
Even amidst all the din, Akka sat staring vacantly as though she had lost something precious. Was she accepting all this as her fate? Was she wondering if she should have continued on with the man with whom she had run away? Or was she glad she had escaped from him? She didn’t speak a word about any of that. About being with him, going away with him—nothing. After she was brought back, Amma watched her closely to check if she got her period. The doubts never went away completely even though she asked her about it.
She may have felt a little sense of relief, in some sense, escaping the pain of being the centre of doubt and disbelief. Everyone was happy in some sense. After all, the devil had been defeated. Who was going to keep her home and feed her otherwise? For how many more days could they shut their ears, unable to bear the ridicule of the village? Happiness set in, as if all their problems were going to be resolved with Akka leaving home.
Chapter 6
There was a lot of noise by the cemetery. Like crows returning to their nests in the evening. The boy was sitting on the platform by the lake studying at that time. He could not recognize any of the voices or comprehend what was being said. The noise reached him over the tall and dense vadhanaram trees. He shut his book, tucked it under his arm and began to walk towards the trees. He asked Papayi Paati, who passed by half-walking half-running after delivering firewood to the colony with an empty basket upside down on her head, about the noise.
‘Not sure what is going on . . . Looks like something is happening at the cemetery. Even your father rushed over there from the Veera forest just now.’
When drunk, his father didn’t know what he was doing. He spat out anything that came to his mind. ‘No matter how big a tusker of a man, I will bring him to his heel!’ he’d bellow. Did he say or do something that shouldn’t have been said and get into trouble with someone? He walked faster. The lands had been recently tilled. His feet sank a foot and a half into the loose soil. From a distance each footprint looked like a bandicoot or a rabbit in a mound of turd. He ran, pulling his feet in and out. The red earth stained his feet. He reached the shore, regained his composure a little and ran through the next forest.
The book that was under his arm kept slipping and falling down. The voices at a distance seemed clear and unclear at the same time. Like the cacophony that followed the end of a movie show when people exited the movie theatre.
The Aattur cemetery was right along the cart track that branched off the tar road to Chinnur. Adjacent to it was a liquor shop in a tent-like structure. That is where arguments, fights with weapons and family issues often erupted from. There were also times when big fights ended anticlimactically, with the people involved in the fight simply dusting the mud off their clothes and walking away with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Maybe today’s was like that too? He stood on the mound at the well in the Veera forest and saw that the liquor shop was deserted. There was not a soul there. The road, though, was swarming with people.
‘Let me see who dares set foot in here today!’
‘As if this place was begging for you all to move here . . .’
‘I will chop you all up into pieces . . .!’
A crowd stood blocking the road. They stood at the mouth of the path that led to the cemetery and spoke moving their arms up and down. Only four or five of them were from the village. The rest were from the colony.
‘Where else can we bury it? Please tell us where.’
‘Put it in the ditch in the colony, who cares?’
‘I’ve been watching all this since morning. They come and they go as they please. They dug a hole here too. I was waiting to see how this pans out . . .’
The boy pushed through and went into the crowd. There was a corpse lying on a wooden hearse. It was of an older person. Seemingly in deep meditation, taking in all the noises around it. A coin was placed on a dollop of sandalwood paste right at the centre of the forehead. The coin sparkled in the sunlight. The whole fight was about the corpse. The cemetery belonged to the people of Aattur. Could corpses from the colony be interred here? Where did they come from anyway? And what kind of people were they? Were the villagers fools that they would compromise the sanctity of the cemetery?
‘We have already brought it here now. Where can we take it now? Please let us this one time.’
‘Today you will plead to get your way but tomorrow you will demand that this is your right. Don’t we know how you colony people think?’
Appa, Thatha and the panchayat head were all there with hoes and staves in their hands. Standing across them was a crowd of about forty or fifty people. They were all talking softly amongst themselves and standing along the side. There was a certain wrathful glow about Appa’s face. Every person standing across from him was from the colony. He seethed with the urge to chop up every one of them in front of him. The owners of the corpse kept pleading and requesting politely for permission. On their faces were the shadows of fatigue, more from the sadness of loss than from the scorching sun.
‘Where can we take the corpse that we have brought with us?’
‘Take it to your village. You have all moved here just now. This cemetery has belonged to us for generations.’
‘Let it be so, sir. But do we need to have this discussion with the corpse lying in the middle of the road?’
‘Why should we even talk to this fellow? What is he to us, a Maama or Maaple? When we say take it away, just take it away.’
‘If you had said something when we were still digging the grave, we wouldn’t have come back with the corpse?’
‘Who did you consult before digging the grave? We were waiting to see how far you’d go before asking us.’
When he saw his father, the boy wanted to grab him and take him away. He couldn’t bear to see the spectacle his father was orchestrating, complete with a staff in his hand. His grandfather stood leaning on a staff in his bare komanam. He couldn’t follow all that was said but he had gathered enough to know what was going on. Suddenly, a couple of women surrounded the hearse. They tousled their hair and began the funereal wailing. Their matted hair lay in clumps, much like inverted palm sheaths, as they slapped their faces and cried.
‘If we lived on our land, we would have at least a handful of people to support us. We have moved away from our land . . . We are left at the mercies of their rules . . .’
The village landlord, who was one of the important people in the village, and who leased his land to smaller farmers, was uncontrollably furious. He ground his teeth, stuck his tongue out like Muniswamy, the fearsome-looking god who frightened offenders, and pushed his way to the front.
‘You think you can seduce us by putting these women in front of us? These headless whores . . . we will chop up every single one of them.’
Instantly, the wailing stopped and the faces of the women displayed fear instead. Somebody pulled them away and they disappeared from the scene. The crowd lingered on, waiting for the problem to be resolved. Some moved around to sit on the rocks or get some tea from the tea shop. More people from the village joined in. Over time, everyone, from the oldest to the little ones, had assembled there.
The son of the deceased was an officer at some urban bank apparently, and he had moved into the colony only two or three months earlier.
The villagers gathered around the hearse as if they were in a village meeting. The people from the colony stepped away to talk privately, and only two or three men came back to speak to the villagers. One of the men who resembled the deceased must have been the bank officer. He spoke in a feeble voice amidst all the clamour.
‘Please listen . . . we haven’t come here to cause any problems. We do not know all the ways of this village.’
A voice interrupted him. ‘Learn now then.’
‘Who is that now? That man is saying something, isn’t he? Let’s listen to what he has to say.’ The village landlord thwarted the interruption. With all the people gathered there, the scene was a perfect opportunity for him. He removed the towel that he had wrapped around his head and put it like a garland around his shoulders. He waved his hand as he spoke and moved forward.
‘You talk.’
‘This is what it is—I belong to Asalur. I don’t know the traditions of this village. They told me this was the cemetery for the village. That’s why we brought the body here. Now, if you tell us to take the corpse away, where are we going to take it to? You have to advise us on what other options we have.’
‘What else can I tell you? Taking it away is the only option.’
‘If each of you says something, how’s that going to work? Four of you come and meet with four of us. We will sit down and resolve this.’
‘Sure! Go, get some puffed rice and peanuts. We will relax and talk about this,’ snapped the landlord.
The crowd roared with laughter and claps. The officer was on the verge of bursting into tears. The village landlord was raging in fury, as if the officer had personally hit him below his waist. If only he held a bunch of neem leaves, he’d look fully possessed.
‘You want to sit down and talk? What do you think is going on here? Who is going to talk to whom? Your devious manipulations won’t work here. Remove the body now!’
‘Ayya . . . if this was your father or son, would you allow the body to lie in the middle of the road like this?’
