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| Sundara Ramasamy |
To read the Tamil Version of this short story click here
English Translation of Classic Tamil Short Stories Series - 7Translated from Tamil: Saravanan. K |
As usual, Rathna
Bai wrote a letter in English to her bosom friend Ambujam Srinivasan who was
residing in Delhi. She concluded the last paragraph of the letter with these
words: ‘If you see this silk saree, you will snatch it away from my hands, hold
it on your chest and jump elated,’ it is mine..aiyo..it is for me’. No doubt
about it at all. Without any qualms, I could address the person as true artiste
who has made it by blending Ratha’ s beauty and Kannan’s flute music. The one
who knows how to strew this array of dreams with the mixture of colours must be
an artiste anyway’. When she posted the letter, Rathna Bai could not
surmise that the letter had contained the seeds of problems as well. Ambu wrote
in her reply, “Rathna…Your English!..How many times I have wondered! Became
spell bound, not being able to express what I felt! We had studied together.
Hadn’t we? But from where did you get this language? Are letters fit to be
memorised? I do it. Sometimes, he repeats the remaining half. When I feel the
elegance of your language, I could feel Bharatha Natyam coming through the
mind. I am also a college teacher…That too in English. Very thought of it makes
me ashamed….it is alright…what sort of spectacular is there in that saree? Get
one like that for me too. Two for my colleagues too. When I went to them to
show your letter to make them feel inferior- Don’t be afraid; I did not show
the complete letter; only some portions- this request came from them.
Unnecessary trouble for you.”
Having completed
reading that letter Rathna Bai murmured within herself, “Yes..it is a trouble.
She remembered and brought forth before her eyes Ambujam’s well-built body and
her reflex behaviour of frequently adjusting the edges of her spectacles with
the tip of her left-hand fingers, and muttered, “My dear Ambu! It is a bigger
trouble than I think”. “It is a complicated trap…it is a complicated trap” her
mouth mumbled in English.
Milton had gone
disappeared. Such disappearance occurs these days after every meal!
Not yet even
attained the age of seventeen! Within this age, this habit! Adding to the woes,
a small shop has also come nearby. “It is ok…from where does the money come? It
seems that he must have stolen it from his father. When father could steal it
from mother, then what could be wrong in that? Rosy and Mary had gone for
tailoring class. Both of them were not good at studies. Despite being daughters
of Rathna Bai teacher, the reputation they could earn at school was nothing but
insults for being poor in studies. Both elder sister and younger sister were
failing consecutively each year. “Shame …shame”, Rathna Bai muttered. “Are they
my children? No…not at all. They are Jonson’s Children. Daughters of a hunter.
Children of a man who plucks out the aching tooth painfully without making it
numb with an injection! His ever-permanent reddened eyes with the colour of
blood! His hulking hands! His dark hair on chest and hands like the one that
grows on bears! O…God! Why do you ingest such a loath into my mind?”, Rathna
Bai helplessly prattled. “How did I become this unlucky? Mother used to say it
was all because of the people’s jealousy in their belly!”
She was told that
when her mother Meera Bai took her out along with her, every man and a woman
who happened to see her would burn with jealousy in their belly and Rathna
Bai’s beauty had induced an intolerable feeling of jealousy in them. This was
how Meera Bai used to argue.
“How long could I
linger to write a reply to Ambu? One more letter has come. “Have you forgotten
me Rathna…? Isn’t holiday? Is it? Or any misunderstanding?”
Rathna Bai got up
and went upstairs. An old man was sitting on the floor in the terrace. Bald
headed. He was wrapping his neck encircling his cheek with a dirty towel. His
constricted, recessed eyes were sunk in the swelling of cheeks. The face was
totally red in colour. When Rathna Bai appeared in front of him, he showed the
door which was kept closed in upstairs and signalled, ‘Please tell him to
attend”. Rathna Bai’s face burst with anger. She knocked at the door so gently
with the tip of her fingers. The door was not opened. She forcefully pushed it,
opened it and entered. Jonson was lying there on the floor utterly untidy with
his lungi open, head on the big iron wheels of the tooth filing
machine near the chair which was used for patients to sit. “What a disgust! Are
you not ashamed of it?”, Rathna Bai was yelling at him. “I will kick you with
my leg”, she shouted. A mild mumbling came out. “I need some money. It is
urgent. I could return it in ten-fifteen days or so.”, she told. The same mild
mumbling rose again. “I have come to you seeking a help from you. I have become
mad. Ain’t I? Have you ever moved even your little finger for my sake?” she was
speaking in English. It looked as if one character in a drama was animating. It
appeared to Rathna Bai that the old man had got up from his place and standing
behind the door. “Why should it appear to me that such thing had happened
behind the closed door? Was it because more senses are working to their limits?
Or was it because of the arrogance of imagination? Have all my astuteness,
gentleness, elegance and divine playfulness been plundered by boorishness? She
went to the door, opened it imagining that if the old man was standing at the door,
her actions would be turn partly fortunate and if he was not standing there all
the things would remain unchanged. The old man was found sitting at the same
place.
Rathna Bai entered
again and shouted in high pitch, “Do the things I say fall in your ears? The
same mild mumbling rose again. Once the face turned a bit, the saliva was seen
flowing at the corner of his mouth. “Just an animal…Animal….worse than an
animal” her mouth mumbled. She opened a small wall-embedded shelf, took out two
tablets from a bottle and came to the old man. “Swallow this and sit here”
telling him this, she came down through the stairs.
Rathna Bai thought
what would happen if she could finish off everything at once now itself. Her
mind was filled with the thought of writing a letter to Ambu today itself and
how she should form appropriate words for appropriate situations. Closing the
entrance door, Rathna Bai came inside. She closed the staircase door as well
which connected upstairs with the hall. Now, it became fully dark. She switched
on the light. Lathered the soap in both the hands and removed her bangles. She
looked at her face in the mirror, pushed the grey hair inside, pulled black
strands out and threw above the head. “The time sits on the horse and attacks
me”, she talked to herself in English. “Do you know that I was an extremely
beautiful woman twenty-five years ago?” she asked as if she was addressing a
court. She kept the bangles in a hand bag, came to the street and
walked.
Twenty five years
ago, Rathna Bai walking along with her mother in the street was actually a very
important event in the life of young men of that time. Getting disappointed
after waiting to see her and seeing her unexpectedly without waiting for her
were important news of the young men’s world. Meera Bai would be
walking along with Rathna Bai without a gap between them with the face brimming
with pride as if telling how her paragon was looking like and at the same time
with the face full of worries as if telling that how she was going to save her
treasure from all of them. Very often, she used to tell the people that some
doctors and engineers had sent their proposal to marry her daughter and it was
she who was not yet made up the mind to take decision in this regard. Whether
it was true or not, no one knew. Nevertheless, Rathna Bai received so many love
letters by post. Rathna Bai’s mother used to receive them from the post man.
She would open them and read it. Being happy, she would keep them in her
custody privately. In our village, many young men from well-to-do families had
written love letters to her. Since it was a widespread news that Rathna Bai was
having a strong penchant for English Language, every one tried their best to
write those love letters inserting all possible hard vocabulary they were aware
of and appended along with it some English poems they knew. Meera Bai Teacher
was calculating relentlessly in her mind that which selection could be a
brilliantly prudent one among all those boys who had written love letters. This
had grown into a serious problem in her mind without the knowledge of her
daughter. However, as the days passed by, the enormity of this problem had
started decreasing. The reason behind it was many of the boys who wrote love
letters to Rathna Bai had either got married to their uncle’s daughter or
aunt’s daughter or any other girl from relatives arranged by their parents
after their studies and got settled either in Bomaby or Calcutta. If Meera Bai
happened to see any one of those boys returning to our village along with their
wives during vacation, she used to tell Rathna Bai that night, “The son of that
Peacock House owner was going with his wife. I saw that. It would have been
better had he married a black monkey”. “Shameless fellow” she would spew out
irritation. “Mother! It is his wife. It is none of our business to be concerned
about how she looks. I don’t like gossips”, Rathna Bai would tell her.
“Only because of
your short wits, no one came forward to marry you.”- her mother would
burst out in anger.
“It is not your
problem. It is mine”- Rathna Bai would reply in English.
Rathna Bai could
not pursue English in M.A like many of her close friends. “What is the use of
us studying this? It should be you who must have studied further” her friends
used to tell her.
“Why are you
getting bothered by the shouts of creditors? They would shout; You should
study. I will take care of your education” Meera Bai Teacher said. Stubbornly
she pursued B.A and became a teacher.
‘The day I could
not study M.A was actually the beginning of my tragedy.’ Rathna Bai had to
utter this English sentence many times later. Now her face had started showing
the signs that she was ageing. Unable to bear with the queries from her known
friends, ‘have you found any match?’, Meera Bai Teacher reduced the frequency
of venturing out. Now she could feel that those queries had a mild sarcasm in
them. “Hasn’t any doctor become lucky yet?”, her colleagues were asking Meera
Bai. “You have made my marriage as a social consciousness. It is the biggest
harm you have done to me” Rathna Bai told her mother.
“These days I am
unable to understand what you talk. You talk like a stranger”, Meera Bai
Teacher told her.
When Rathna Bai
went to school every day, she used to see Jonson on the way. He used to stand
in front of the dental hospital happily, putting on his lungi. When she was
going to her school in the morning, he could be found trying to start his old
model small car. Four or five children would be pushing it from behind. Once
the car started, all the children would open the car door and get into it
falling on each other. The car would take a round and stop in front of the
hospital. “That deed- the simplicity found in it-the way those poor children
treated you with affection-I loved you for all these” Rathna Bai told this to
Jonson in English on the night of the day their marriage took place. “Your
English is more beautiful than you” Jonson told her.
Within weeks,
Rathna Bai could understand that it was impossible to share her life with
Jonson any more. He drank liquor every day. Whenever he had opportunity, he
went out with his friends for hunting. Rathna Bai was so sure that sentiments
like wife and house did not find place in his blood. “I am a scoundrel. You
can’t control me. If you are an aristocratic lady, you go and stay with your
mother”, Jonson would shout at her under intoxication.
“I have got
cheated as I thought that you are a simple person. How life gets so horrible!”
Rathna Bai would say.
“I hate your
English” Jonson would shout.
She received an
unexpected news from the bank on that day. They will give credit on gold
mortgage only on Wednesdays. Rathna Bai went to cloth store. She thought of
selecting some silk sarees and giving a small token amount as advance so that
she could come again to collect those sarees after paying off the remaining
amount once she got the money from the bank. When the sales boys came in front
of her, she told them, “I need that same type of saree which I purchased that
day”. She was feeling guilty. She talked to herself, “O God! Why am I talking
like this? Have my senses gone awry? The sales boys looked perplexed. They came
one by one and looked at her closely. “Who gave that saree on that day?”, the
shop owner’s tenor changed. Ratna Bai thought herself in English, ‘How can they
display the saree which I have not purchased? Punishing them beyond this point
won’t be in good taste for a lady like me’ and told them, “Please show some
good quality varieties”. ‘I have lost my senses. Have I started believing
imagination as real? The boys went inside the room to bring silk sarees. “Truly
speaking, I shouldn’t have written like that. That too My dear Ambu”, Rathna
Bai was speaking to herself. I happened to read that English poem
inadvertently. It was a wonderful poem. Every word of it resembled like gem
stone fixed in a diamond stud. Some of the words in it had caused an
inexplicable spell in Rathna Bai. It appeared to her that if she described a
silk garment by using those words, the description would be marvellous. She
could not control herself from immediately writing about that description on
the day and at that time itself to Ambu. “It is a dangerous trap anyway” Rathna
Bai muttered. “That said, why am I telling that I had purchased a saree which
actually I had not? Why? Rathna…tell…why?” Rathna Bai was asking it herself.
They displayed the sarees at the counter. “Which one to be selected?
Ambu..which one you like? Which ones your friends like? Will my selection make
your friends say, ‘your friend is a genius in English. We do accept. But in the
selection of sarees, she is still a poor wit?’ Or will they say that her taste
in English has got deeply reflected in the selection of sarees too? If I want
them to speak the latter sentence, which is the saree do I have to select? Why
do English words come to me fantastically today? Has the time arrived to write
a lengthy letter to Ambu?’ Rathna Bai selected three sarees. She gave a small token
amount as advance to the shop owner, told him she would come on Wednesday
morning to give the remaining amount to pick up the sarees. She left the
shop.
That night, Rathna
Bai wrote a lengthy letter to Ambu. She wrote in the last paragraph, ‘I have sent
the sarees. For you and your friends. I have even imagined that you and your
friends are standing in front of the college (its outer wall was erected with
stones). Let me tell you one thing. I would get badly angry if you send the
money for your sarees. All you have to give me is only your photograph in that
saree. Do not become skinny with the guilty that your friend has incurred loss
because of you. Here, the children keep on failing anyway. There is no dearth
of tooth ache too.’. Rathna Bai kept reading her letter seven or eight times.
She liked it very much. “Language is a wonder. O God! Thank you so much” she
said. “Or else nothing is left for me” she uttered. She stood in front of the
mirror once again and read that letter with a tiny nuanced expression.
Rathna Bai, no
longer remembered that she had to go to the bank on Wednesday
morning.
*** End ***
Translated
from Tamil by Saravanan. K
Source: www.azhiyasudargal.blogspot.com
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