The Obsessions...Chapter 17

The Scars of Yesterday

I looked at the watch. It was 4.30 A.M. We did not know hours had ticked along. Abdul Khader left for his morning prayers. I felt tired of sleeplessness. I stretched my back on the bed and closed my eyes. The transition from the past to the present was not that easy. I kept my thoughts blank and fell into a sleep.

Next morning, the sound of chenda and shouting by boys woke me up. The Onam special Pulikkali was going on at the Paradise front yard. It was 11.00 A.M. I took a shower. Gopalan had kept my breakfast hot. I ate with a good appetite. The scanning of the past in my mind and sharing it with Abdul Khader left me a little relieved.

The evening was sultry. I had a cup of tea. I walked to the beach. The sea was my companion at times when I felt lonely. By looking at its vastness, I tried to keep my mind calm.

“Sukumaran sir” It was Abdul Khader. “Your story of the past has really made me emotional. You have gone through a lot of turmoils”. Abdul Khader sat near me on the sand.

“That is alright Abdul Khader. It is not complete yet” I said. I glided into the past once again, with Abdul Khader giving me a patient hearing, the sea sending calm waves to the shore.

I started to lead my life as a Gulf returnee with my wife at our apartment. It was difficult to pass time as nothing would replace my busy and fast life at Dubai. Hours seemed to stay still and days refused to move forward. We visited friends and relatives and made tours outside the state mostly on pilgrimages.

Devu, my cousin, the daughter of my cheriamma complained “When you were at Dubai, you had contacted me regularly over the phone and once you reached your native land, you have stopped calling me. And why did you take these many days to come here?” The words were so affectionate that I enjoyed her complaint. In fact, I wanted to go for the village festival but was unable to take part. She was staying alone in her house. That house was hers and I was only a visitor, the house where I was born and brought up under the affectionate umbrella of my grandfather. It was my first visit to my erstwhile home since I returned from Dubai.

I entered the sitting room. My eyes fell on the framed photographs hanging on the wall, those of my father, elechan and cheriamma. There was a time when they filled my life, in every happy and sad moment. Now I was alone and only their thoughts were with me and their memories followed me along with my shadow.

Devu was two years old and I was twelve. During every school vacation, I went to my cheriamma and elechan at my father’s ancestral home. I always felt full with their love and I never wanted to come back at the end of the vacations. Devu was my darling baby sister. She never allowed me to go out to play with friends. She wanted me to be with her always. I used to carry her round and pluck flowers from the big plot adjacent to the house. While I took bath in the pond, she used to sit at the banks with both her hands supporting her jaws. There was love and affection only, those days. It was my golden era. When I returned home with a heavy heart, there were my grandfather and grandmother to shower their love on me. I was bathing in an ocean of never ending love.

My eyes became moist as Devu brought me tea. I sat outside at the verandah on the easy chair. Devu sat near me. She had become older than the last time when I met her. She had put on weight and there were shades of cheriamma’s mannerisms in her. She gave me a complete account of births, marriages, deaths in the village and whereabouts of my old friends. My cheriamma used to do the same when she was alive.

I got out of the house. I wanted to walk along the lanes abandoned by me due to my selfish limitations in my life. Now that I had retired, I did not have anything to do. Now was the time for me to visit places, meet persons whose images seemed to have faded in my life, but were still there intact in my heart in all their clarity. I walked straight. The lane looked deserted. I did not see children playing. But I heard from each home the loud noise of television sets blaring out dialogues and music of movies crowding in the satellite programmes. I trod on till the end of the lane where it meandered into narrow field paths. I stood there. I looked to my left. Dry grass lay in the slopes of the irrigation canal. Buffalos were walking on the banks. I looked to my right. I gazed as far as my eyesight permitted. I visualized the rock, the farm house and the two old figures living inside and suddenly I saw smoke afar, which reminded me of my grandfather. He was getting transformed physically and was going up in smoke, that day, the day he deserted me to my fate.

I retreated. To my left was the Great Tailor’s house. As I walked forward, I saw Ammu standing at the gate of her house. I could recognize any one, that was my capability. She stared at me. It was evident that she did not recognize me. I smiled at her and asked her “Do you remember me?”

She saw me smiling continuously and she recognized me.

“Devu told me you have returned for good.” She said. She was the shadow of yesterday. She had lost all her charm with wrinkles on her face. Her hair had grayed. Only her smile had not lost that captivation.

I smiled again and walked along. The universal law of ageing was applicable not only to me, but to all. I pondered over that. I walked along the pond banks. There were a few bathing in the pond. They stared at me, but I did not dare to glance at them. I thought of the five decades that had mercilessly and eventfully passed during my toils and turmoils. Youth had abandoned me, as I had entered a phase, the phase of every finale.

I stopped at the famous gate where invariably she would have been waiting. The gate was open but there was none at the verandah of the house which once used to be populated very much. I walked along the sandy path to the house, the same house. There was no change. I stepped up to the verandah and knocked at the thick, black painted door.

“Who is it?” a coarse voice came from inside.

I introduced myself.

“What?” there was a shuffle inside and she ventured out.

“I know you have retired” she said

“Devu told you?” I smiled at her.

“Yes” Her voice was a little shivering. When she smiled her teeth was not white and they did not sparkle. There was no sandal paste on her forehead. She was not wearing a yellow sari. The foregone seasons had carved a new figure to her physique. The front teeth were missing. Her face was full of wrinkles. Her neck muscles sagged down. Her bosom was flat.

“So, you have settled down there, right?” she asked. “I am happy that you came to my house. I have not seen you for ages” She became silent. It was evident that she was traveling back in her mind. Back to those days which would never come back. They had all slipped into oblivion. One could shed loads of tears reminiscing those days when everything was beautiful, romantic and melodious. She brought me a glass of buttermilk. I sipped it. It had the same taste of yesteryears.

“Now you can come to this place frequently.” She smiled.

“Yes” I said

I said good bye to her and walked back the sandy path to the gate. I looked back. She was standing stooping, one hand holding on to the door frame and the other waving to me.

I drove back on the bumpy roads, my feelings down in the dumps. The writing was on the wall. Time will only reveal it. I arrived at the village of my college friend, Ram. The canal banks were not maintained well. The car jumped on its springs intermittently as I turned right to the agraharam. The buildings had become old, and all of them lined on both sides of the street, as before. The well was still at the centre of the wide street. I walked towards the well. The street looked deserted. There was none at the well. I knocked at the door of the house towards the right side of the well. A middle aged lady opened the door. Her grey hair covered her ears. The forehead was smeared with kunkumam and sandal paste. There were dark shades below her big eyes. Her ears were supporting a thin frame of her spectacles.

“I am Ram’s friend. Do you remember me? Years back I had visited this agraharam. You are Alamelu, right?” I asked her. I was surprised to see her there after so many years.

A cloud of gloom set on her face. But suddenly her mood changed and she smiled. Her teeth had lost the glow, the lower ones were stained.

“Yes, I am Alamelu, I do remember you, How can I forget?” her voice was little choked.

An elderly man, about seventy years old, came out from the room on the right of the verandah. “He is my husband” she introduced him to me. I folded my hands and wished him. “He is Ram’s friend” she said. Her eyes were getting moist.

Her husband left the scene and climbed up the wooden stairs.

“How come, Ram and you are not married” I asked with a note of disbelief.

“Well it is like a film story. Boy and girl love each other. Boy’s parents object and boy marries another girl”. She said humourously. But her words were tinted with the pain she had accumulated in her heart.

“My husband is my maternal uncle. After I took my B.T. degree, I managed to get a job in the high school here as a teacher. I have retired now, but I am continuing my profession by taking tuition classes to students of the school. Soon after my marriage, my father died of heart attack, and my mother followed him after one year. She had stomach cancer” her words, then, were without any emotion.

“Ram and family sold their house and left this place many years back. I do not have any information about them and I never cared to know about their whereabouts”, she sounded stubborn in her words.

“And your children?” I asked.

“God had played with me in my life from the very beginning and He continued His authority and decided that we should not have any children. So we do not have any” she said. Her words were full of pathos. My heart grew heavier. I knew how much Raman had loved her.

She brought murukku and mixture. The coffee in the steel tumbler was very hot. I had to blow the heat off while sipping the tasty coffee. My tongue was coated with the stain of coffee and thick milk. She asked about me and my family. She wished me all luck while I said good bye to her. I looked back through the rear screen of the car. She was standing at the door of her house. She again stood in front of my mind’s eye with her half sari and the jasmine flowers in her hair which flowed down to both sides to her shoulders. A thin mist of tears formed a curtain over my cornea and the dream girl of my dearest friend, vanished.

The car passed through the narrow roads. The bamboo fencing on both sides of the road had been replaced with masonry walls. The population had seemingly become affluent. At the right angle turning of the temple, the curve was flattened a little and a new boundary wall stood there guarding the God. The road beyond the temple was of concrete for a short distance. Only dry sand was there on the river bed. Small pools of water lay scattered where half naked women were applying soap to their smooth thighs with their big and long breasts moving in the air like pendulums.

I stopped at the junction of the roads and walked towards the cycle shop. I knew that my cousin Govindan Nair did not own that shop any more. But I wanted to see that shop again. I once again wanted to see him sitting there, always smiling and feeling very happy at my arrival. I looked opposite to the shop at the tea stall from where he used to get us tea and dhal vada. I walked further and went inside the tea stall. I had tea and ate the usual tasty vada. Govindan Nair filled my thoughts, as my journey continued.