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Beyond a Span
by Shanthi Gopalan
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The cover image and text of this e-book 'Beyond a Span' is the copyright 2002 of the author and Magpie epublishing. The cover page image and library image are copyright 2001 of Magpie epublishing. The name Magpie epublishing and the Magpie epublishing logo are copyright 2001 of Magpie epublishing.
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Table of Contents
The Beauty Salon - in the city
The Tuberculosis Sanatorium - in the city
CHAPTER ONE
Lifeline - in the village
Royan sat on the sandy ledge with one leg on the rim; barely an arm's reach away from the sea, the sand hauled and tucked in by the scurrying wind at the base of the inclined thatched fence.
The tiny house it girdled (it had only three small rooms) was not wholly thatched like other homes but liberally laid with bright red cinder blocks which showed the scars of the ravaging hot Sun, the saline wind and the grating monsoon rain.
The Bay could go with ease from a windless dusk to a black rage and then the wind picked up prior to the menacing deluge hauling the razor-sharp salty spray with it. It shrieked as it turned the corners of the small, mostly thatched houses of the 'kuppam' (fishing hamlet), cracked its knuckles against the roof, and found the tiny cracks in the fence to whistle and moan, occasionally dislodging the barriers. Rana then had to hurry with an old, heavy hammer (Royan could not even pick it up), thumping it on the floor to fix its iron head onto its wooden handle. Then with a coir mat on his head and a cocoa tin full of rusted nails he would re-nail the vertical planks.
White fury brought after it an absolute silence, blue with ancestral mists- the 'kuppam' empty and soundless, and followed by a bright, burning morning.
Royan watched keenly the army of ants; red, nasty ones, moving in trim ranks across the wooden supports of the corroded chained and padlocked door — intent upon some vital goal, the apple-green of the door in the fence forming a perfect backdrop to the red of the ants.
From time to time he dropped tiny pieces of stick in their path on the sand; watching how they went around them effortlessly and observed how after some time, they seemed to expect them, planned ahead, and revised their route.
"Very clever," he mumbled to himself, rubbing his stomach where the sorrow seemed to exist.
His ears longed to hear the 'dhak, dhak, dhak' of his Aatha's pounding. It was here in her copper vessel, pyramid shaped, its sides carved with two exquisite lotuses with two perfect leaves on either side, that she crushed the betel leaves with the big brown areca nuts and a tiny piece of tobacco. She used a zenithal stone for this purpose, its edges flat due to years of pounding. She then squeezed the mixture in her palm into a small ball and placed it between her teeth and cheeks. For the whole day, she spoke through it, sucking at the crimson juice that sometimes overflowed the corners of her mouth. After a long time, through the opening between her two fingers, she finally spat it out in a flawless jet into the nook in the courtyard.
If she misplaced the copper vessel, the onus fell on Royan or Preti to search it out for her. To look under the coir cot, sagging with the weight of those who had hunkered down on it over the years; where the droop, two large semi-circular sags, accurately mimicked the rounded bottom of Aatha.
Or on the bathroom shelf, full of odd things, a tiny sliver of mirror for Rana to shave when the mirror in the hall was occupied by Minny or the girls, tooth brushes that Rana bought from the shop in the town for the four children, three girls (his princesses) and one boy (a 'blackie' fished from the Sea), tooth powder for Minny and himself, and neem leaf powder for Aatha. She never agreed that any of the modern pastes and powders augured well for the pure 'white pearls'.
"Your teeth still reek after vigorous brushing with the useless foam," she commented, showing her still strong teeth though stained by pan, in a big grin. "Look at my teeth. I am going on seventy-something."
Royan felt that she was not sure of exactly how much seventy-plus she was.
"Aatha be careful. Your lips will tear," he goaded her.
"Neem stick is very good for your teeth." She said, as she brushed her frayed pepper-salt hair straight up and arranged it into a prim puffball. "But, now I have only the neem powder. The bastards cut down all the trees lining the main road. We used to break off the branches and bring them home. We just cut them, munched them and spat out the juice. That's all the brushing we needed."
Or in the numerous nooks in the house, quadrilateral or orbicular shaped, mysteriously ancient, magnificent with grime, where one lit tiny mud lamps on the day of the 'festival of lights'; nooks that were oily and smoky, nooks that whispered tales of the centuries past.'
Or in the tiny courtyard where the sunlight and the shade played their hide and seek, where Aatha seated on her throne of the coir cot, cleaned the chicken (very rarely) or the fish (often enough) or sieved the rice for the dinner. They cooked fresh food only at night because the men left for fishing early in the morning. As the plump breasts caught the evening light, the wings, or fins or hard scales fell on the carefully laid basket underneath.
Sometimes she muttered "My tragic friend, my sad friend," to a dead chicken.
"Aatha why do you mutter so?" asked Royan.
"Look at its feet, they are more grey than pink — too young, too young to have its neck broken," she said.
"Then why do we cook and eat them?" He laughed at her misplaced pity.
"If we don't then somebody else will." She mumbled with a big sigh.
No matter how long they searched for the betel nut vessel, she never agreed to pound in any of the other vessels.
"My papa gave it to me. It is centuries old. He used to say that it has a lot of healing qualities. The only thing I have in his memory."
To Royan it was stunning to hear that she had a papa!
"Oh, Aatha, you are yourself hundreds of years old; look at your skin. How can you have a papa?" he asked her.
How can she? She was too old. Her big earrings called 'Lolack' were enormously heavy — tearing her earlobes and now the earrings hung on to her shoulders, sinking gradually each year, like a collapsed 'kattu-mara' (catamaran) on the shore. The tear was painful to watch, and at times her earlobes rubbed her shoulders when she shook her head for 'yes, yes, yes'.
"Royaaaa…," she called out for him whenever she got a letter from her sister living in the fishing village of a faraway city. She could not read or write but neither could her sister. Her sister asked someone to write for her and Aatha made Royan or Preti write her reply to her sister.
She closed her eyes as she listened to them reading the letter, a trickle of perspiration sneaking down her face on to her naked, brown shoulders and for a perceptible fraction of a time looked as if she had dozed, then suddenly...
"Read that portion again where her son Marayya, who is in the army…"
Or, crinkled her eyes and said, "This letter is written by Royaa — my son. Write this last." Or "Preti, my grand daughter; you should see her now. She's grown so tall." This last was spoken with great pride in her voice.
Then after they had finished writing, her shoulders sinking in, portraying a rare lack of confidence, her earrings almost touching the ground, she painfully wrote out her name, childishly, clumsily, 'Kavi', much to the mirth of the children.
"Aatha, your name prances about in the letter," they teased her.
It was when she did not get the regular letter for the month that she became nervous. She stood outside the thatched fence in the hot sun waiting for the postman to come. Her face was morose when she did not receive any mail and full of joy when she got a letter!
When there was no letter for a long time, she would mutter, "What has happened to her? I hope she hasn't gone without letting me know."
"Where will she go without telling you?" asked a curious Royan one day.
"Oh, nowhere special; only where everyone goes after they are fed up of everything." Her voice subdued.
For all her reticence in writing, she defied all logic when she learned to speak (when she was very young) in five languages, with the visiting fishermen from other districts, and knew every dusty unkempt lane, every shop in the town, the owner's names, and every fishing family in the nine 'kuppam' including all its members, right down to the smallest baby, and its pet name.
Aatha, Royan (and sometimes Preti when Minny allowed her to) often sat on the cement seat as they waited for the bus to take them to town to buy baskets or other household trifles. While Royan and Preti played or fought (he always ended up pulling her hair or she showing faces at him) Aatha leaned her umbrella on the seat, took out her crushed betel nuts and munched them. She told them that a long time back the cement seat was full of dried bird droppings from the canopy of the neem trees, which were so thick and dense when she had come to the 'kuppam' as a young bride.
She had come to her new home by train, in those days there were no buses to the hamlet. The train was the umbilical cord that connected them to the far-removed outside world. There were no shrill whistles but bells, just like the church bells, that were rung languidly, lazily by the 'bell-ringers' reporting the comings and goings of the couple of trains.
The women working in the fields stood up to watch the wonder of a 'train' with their 'aruvals' (cleavers) in their hands. Shepherds watched them in open-eyed wonder, and some even waved shyly.
From the station they had traveled by bullock carts to the hamlet, the young bride, her parents and the entire dowry that she had brought. One goat, two chickens, a trunk full of saris, three sovereigns of gold ornaments, and a sack full of rice — enough to feed the boy's family for two to three months!
They ate tamarind rice from home on the journey, fried rice mixed with sugar, packed for the two whole days it took to come here, as the train slowly huffed and puffed — not like the fast trains now!
Grandpa's whole family, and almost the entire 'kuppam' were there to receive the new bride (grandpa was a three-time panchayat leader!)
They went in a big parade, the music of two blaring 'nadaswarams' (a flageolet like organ) accompanying them, the fisher folk dressed in their best finery and all of them carrying the bride's dowry on their heads or in their hands.
The cement seats were built for them to wait by the main road when the bus service was started. Later, after the traffic grew, the neem trees were cut down to broaden the roads; at the same time the shade over the seats and the bird droppings disappeared.
It was always when the 'kuchchi ice' fellow came, with his white wooden box full of ice creams tied to his cycle (mostly on Sundays ) that there was such flurry of activity in the 'kuppam', much jostling and craning of necks. He had such a mouth-watering variety of ice creams, milk, rose, pista, and kulfi, and special ice creams with milk and plantain mix. But the most in demand was the 'kuchchi ice', a long stick full of the huge, but regular mass of ice cream, faintly domed at the top, melting fast but lasting blissfully long enough for you to nibble at it as you tightly grasped the stick between the thumb and the forefinger. When the other kids (including Preti) licked their sticky fingers, preparatory to wiping them on their clothes, only then did he, Royan, hold the 'still alive' miniature cone up for everyone to see and pop it gently into his mouth as they stood watching him longingly.
Minny often bought ice-cream for the girls, Preti clamoring for it; while the babies stood quietly, craving written large in their saucer eyes. She had never bought one for him, muttering if he dared to ask for one,
"Oh, your 'Aatha' will be ready to buy for her 'darling'. Go and ask her. I have no money."
And Aatha always found money for him. She searched under her pillows, in the betel nut tin box or at last brought it out from her cloth bag tucked into her hips —counting the money painstakingly, one rupee, twenty-five paise, from the amount especially reserved for her betel leaves and areca nuts.
At times, when Minny was in the market, she called Royan and awkwardly untied the knot in her sari end, and brought out one or two crumpled rupee notes. She must have sold some fish from the auction those mornings.
"Go; get some 'kamerkets' (chocolates made of jaggery or palm sugar) from the shop near the main road. Get some for Preti and the babies too," she whispered to him, as if she was scared that Minny could hear her all the way from the market out there!
When she was a little less old and went regularly to the auction, he always accompanied Aatha to the fish market and played about in the heat and the grime. He only returned home with her after the sale for the day was over.
The fish market was a blustering, boisterous place which had an extensive shed with a leaking aluminum roof, cracked with fissures. There were rows of wooden stalls divided into shops, constricted and diminutive, with wooden boards and planks.
The stalls were filthy with not enough water to keep the place clean and flies had a field day with the whole market to feed on. The fish were kept in hampers or spread on pieces of bamboo or thatch or on ice-blocks for those who could afford them. The poor spread their wares in the narrow lane leading to the market and the traffic went by precariously close, heaving and retching the poisonous fumes from their under carriages on to the women and their wares.
Full of smells, the age and the dust, the sea and the salt, the fish and the gutter; the market was his childhood and innocence.
He and the other kids played about in the sparse pathways between the stalls and in the streets when there was a lull in the influx of traffic. They played eternal matches between India, Australia, England and South Africa to the accompaniment of the pounding feet strolling between the stalls, dreamily swaying the precious half-broken cricket bat in the air, precious that was by their own measure.
The smell never bothered them, and their spirits were raised by the chaotic nature of this 'fish paradise'. They loved to run around the place, splashing the muddy puddles as they played 'Catch'; while the women folk anxious to earn their bread for the day chased them away verbally.
The street vehicles almost made tire marks on the fish laid out to be dried and sold. And in the road tracks left by the buses, lorries, and cars did they not 'drive' their wheels, something that they considered as their own invention from the hoop?
Aatha fussed over him when they came home, running around heating water, making him wash himself, bringing his hot dinner to the courtyard, and lying down on the coir cot near him at night in the court yard, laying her shriveled, thin hands on him.
Royan did not realize it for a long time, but all this fussing seemed to spark the action between 'Aatha' and Minny; the prolonged fights. He understood now that he was the reason for their fights back then.
"Oh, the 'Great One' has come. Run about and serve him," she screamed at 'Aatha' one day. "Then come around moaning about the pain in your legs and hands and start wailing for the doctor." She shouted the latter as she went in and hurled a dash of ground garlic, chilly and pepper into the pan of fish curry on the stove which then spluttered, snarled and snapped into fiery fumes. And the pressure cooker was threatening to blow.
Slowly, the battle became almost regular, Aatha a fierce warrior, hot-headed, Minny the cold, calculating, combatant with a slow fuse, only pausing when Rana came home. He would not look at either of them if they yelled at each other and went away to the 'net room'. So they avoided fighting when he was at home. But the feelings were there in their long faces, bitter and biting dialect, snorting and popping in the air, scaling and hiding in the ceiling, windows, doors as the frenzied fracas erupted in the tiniest fraction of a moment, again and again. Minny was paying back a long-term debt.
It all ended only when Aatha wound up and closed shop. She never complained that she felt sick. She hated fuss.
Just lay down on the cot, her breathing short and jerky. Just shook her head — a big 'no', every time Royan asked her, "Does your tummy ache? Do your feet ache? Or is it your head?" his little fingers soothing her tired face. Her lips parted, but she said nothing, except — "no doctor. No doctor."
She was anxious about the expense that Rana had to go through every time she complained.
How well he remembered that day, though it seemed quite long ago. It was the day he learned about poignancy, about loneliness. Something new about a feeling called regret.
She had jaundice for a long time. The doctors in the town were positive that it was jaundice though the fisher folk commented that it was not jaundice because neither her eyes nor her body was yellow, though she threw up a lot. They had their own logic about everything.
Even when she was so frail she argued in a thin voice with Rana to take the children to the gala in the public grounds near the main road. Preti and Royan were craving to go but Rana refused because Aatha was so sick. How he remembered that day! Every single thing that happened was etched in his memory…the joy and its aftermath…when he learned that pleasure always came with its own penalty…the day when the real world impacted on him.
He was dressed in his cotton half trousers and shirt, once full of bright prints though now washed out a little (only a little); his hair parted neatly on the side, oiled and combed to a shiny, black perfection by Aatha.
She had gotten up from her sick (coir) bed in the courtyard, moaning and groaning and sat on the bed to oil and comb his hair, clutching his cheeks in a vice grip with her weak hands…his spit dripping and he shouting. "Oh, Aatha! No! It pains so."
"Aatha has to do it flawlessly. She has brought up two boys like that," teased Rana as he playfully hugged her shoulders and hastily withdrew when Minny appeared on the scene.
Fat Preti wore her frock that was almost a full skirt, covering her legs nearly down to her toes, and assuming an odd shape. Her long hair was plaited and tied into two tight figure of eights, (which he found easy to pull) her pink ribbons dangled, her big, black eyes full of home made 'kajol' eye-liner.
Minny made the 'kajol' at home by burning saffron with castor oil in a coconut shell. The tiny fire burned slowly, fascinatingly. He was full of curiosity, and wanted to do it just once, when Preti did it every time with insufferable pride on her face. But Minny would not allow him near it…
'Women's matter' she called it and many other matters.
She had only to say that to exclude him from almost anything that went on at home.
He remembered that they both took turns to ride on Rana's shoulders to the gala. They held on tight to his black, curly-haired head (that smelt a little oily and unwashed) shouting and screaming all the way.
The other memories; those merry-go-rounds; the huge giant wheels; the roller coasters and the Tora Toras and the wonderful incomparable music that wheezed and ground away and was usually just a tiny bit sour at the end.
Or the dreamily plunging dappled horses and the other riders like him all in a trance.
But smart-ass Preti was terrified of the height and refused to ride in them. She would only sit on the Swan, nearly as safe as the solid ground, a ride for timid riders with sober, terrified faces.
But not him, he still smiled to himself as he thought how the heights thrilled him. It electrified and titillated him and made him delirious with joy to see the Sea from that imposing height.
He sat alone in the Tora-Toras, while Rana had to stand guard for Preti, and Nora came to stand near Rana. Both their eyes were on him when his seat came down and then went up, swinging and rollicking with the force.
Nora sang to him as she often did in her throaty, crude voice.
'Heights bewitch you.
You are captivated by heights.
Stride by stride you'll reach the top.
But after reaching the pinnacle,
Don't say you're terrified of heights.'
And then they had a 'kuchchi ice' each.
"For the babies' papa?" asked Preti in a thoughtful voice.
"Oh, you'll have only 'kuchchis' (sticks) left for them if you buy some here and carry them home!" replied Rana.
Royan laughed at the joke loud enough to taunt her, while she made faces at him.
Nora walked with them for some time.
"How is Kavi?" there was concern in her voice.
"She's my worry. Neither goes to the doctor in the town regularly nor allows me to bring one to see her. Worried about the expense it means to me all the time." Rana was clearly disturbed.
She sighed, "Kavi was always like that. I'll visit her tomorrow." There was reluctance in her voice.
But there was to be no tomorrow for Aatha. When they neared their shack they could hear the disturbance. There was a murmur of voices drifting in the air from the crowd that stood around their house. Rana, perceiving from afar that something was wrong started running, dropping Royan and Preti down with a thump from their perch atop his shoulders.
They stood up and ran after Rana, Royan's carefully combed hair in a mess and the 'kajol' in Preti's eyes running down her cheeks in black streaks as she screamed "Appa, Appa'" after him.
They did not allow children to see bodies. So he always remembered Aatha with her long 'kadani' dangling from her ears.
But it was as if she had vanished with a wave from a cruel magician's sleight of hand.
Vanished and went forever to the brooding funeral ground, far away, on the other side of the main road; where the fires burn like flickering fire-flies from far-off and which also bordered the graveyard for the Christians among them. A place where the flat tombstones lay so close together that they seemed to embrace the ground with their still, solid, grey tombs.
He had peeped at them on his way to their 'Sesame' Casuarina grove.
Later on Preti looked like a devil to him.
Her eyes full of black smudges; she wept more for the heart-broken Rana (Rana cried like a baby!) than Aatha.
He did not cry.
He just locked up Aatha within him.
He started crying only much later…on those lonely nights, outside in the courtyard, when he had only the moon and the hidden sea for his company.
Oh! He had thought Aatha to be such a bother when she was alive; always after him to do this or that for her.
She had once told him with tears running down her withered cheeks how she had lost her husband and her first-born son Royan to the 'periya puyal' (hurricane).
How they found him, the second Royan, abandoned in Rana's 'kattu-mara' and how with just one slap on his black bottom from Nora he had screamed his lungs out.
Unfolding the mystery of his being with swiftness he could not digest.
He was an unwanted baby abandoned in an illegal way. Many did not want him and advised that he be taken to the police station nearby. They were a closed community, wary of anything strange, including a baby.
But when Nora cleaned his umbilical cord he cried so pitifully that Aatha cried with him too and wanted him for her.
Thus he was adopted into this close-knit community. Why then did she leave him? Why did she not let him know she was leaving?
Sometimes, he wondered, did she tell her sister? That she was going? Was she fed up of everything?
Rana had also told him about the 'periya puyal' and how Aatha was inconsolable for days after her husband and her first-born 'Royan' died in the sea and how many others also perished with them.
Then, all the nine hamlets mourned and were like one huge funeral house.
Aatha had sat on the hot sand and lay down when it became cool neither eating nor sleeping, speaking not a word. That was what worried them, whether she had lost her strong voice forever!
On the third day, she cursed the sea…the groans merging into long shrieks, shrieks blending into high screams. She got her voice back and the will to live.
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