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| Piramil |
This is an English translation of Neelam, a Tamil short story written by Srilankan Tamil writer Dharmu Sivaramu, popularly known as Piramil in literary circles. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
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He was a painter. That too, a Chennai based painter.
He used to display his paintings on exhibition occasionally. Some of them would
be sold for a handsome amount. The petty traders of paintings having some rudimentary
understanding about the famous modern painters of the west used to come to visit
his exhibition. Like feathers flying in air in rooster fights, their visits would
usually end up with throwing up myriad observations around his paintings.
That said, he had an office to work which was no way
associated with his profession of painting. He had a family too. He had some fan
following as well. His head hung heavy as he was repeatedly preoccupied with the
observations of some of his high profile followers. The heaviness was so unbearable
that he wouldn’t even look at the human excreta and the wild flowers blossomed amidst
them along the short cuts he would take for catching his bus.
One day evening he left his office late, and while on
his way home in the bus he realised that he had missed his usual bus stop and
got down after two stages from his usual stop. The externally visible reason
why this had happened was the thick crowd which didn’t allow any passenger to
come out easily. But the internal reason was his hot discussion with a fellow
passenger on J. Krishnamurthy’s book which he had come across in a television
programme recently.
‘Computers can handle all the human creations such as
writing fictions and poems better than humans themselves’ – this was the
genesis of their hot discussion. ‘If so, what else are you for?- It was the
Krishnamurthy’s question. Our painter was beating the bush around trying to
convince his fellow passenger that nothing was said about computers that were capable
of drawing paintings.
His fellow passenger was still stubborn, voiced his opinion
in a rather emphatic pitch. “Computers
can perform all the tasks ranging from drawing paintings, sculpting to music.
In japan computers manufacture cars” he said. It appeared that his eyes behind
his spectacles were gradually bulging up. Along with his roaring assertion, a
tinge of light was reflecting in his spectacles penetrating the crowds in the
bus through the available gaps.
“But…you see…while human beings can feel the beauty of
the moon silently, the computers can’t”- our painter asserted his view. “Here
comes the terminus” he added.
The crowd got dispersed in seconds. The painter also
alighted from the bus. He searched his co-passenger and found him missing.
Suddenly our painter felt that he was standing in an alien
planet. He felt an interrupting realisation silently running through his mind that
he was an unknown existential reality who could be found without place, time
and self. The bar of light from the street electric poles was falling on the faces
of people dispersing. Two pieces of square shaped glasses on the two dark
skinned faces were glistening in the light.
He started walking as the streets were moving behind him
in form of huts and disorderly burrows of rabbits. Suddenly, he saw the world
coming in front of him in its actual form. Mammoth clouds were found moving as
if showering the world with the secrets that were buried in them, in silver and
mercury. A rustic voice from an unreachable distance was heard and disappeared as
an empty sound like lisp of nature that lacked meaning in it.
Another voice “kooooooo” was heard all of a sudden
behind his back sending a chill into his spine. A fear of death, for a moment,
though unwarranted in that deadly silence. In utter shock, he turned back. A
small, rustic boy in his fifteens was standing there, smiling at him in the
moon light.
The boy didn’t allow our painter to speak. “By this
time…yes, by this time. Only a little distance ahead.” he said. He pushed the painter
back, asked him to follow him and walked on. Before the painter could recollect
anything that were strutting in his mind, the boy showed him a big, dark crater.
The night grew thinner under the patchy moon light and the crater grew into a
mossy pond. The boy swiftly jumped into the pond and disappeared under water.
That moment, our painter thought that the appearance and
disappearance of the boy were a manifestation of life form of some supernatural
element. Before he came out of his thoughts, the boy appeared again from the pond,
fully wet, and carried something in his hands.
It was a spectacular magic in blue! The Blue Water Lily
was just blossoming in his hands. The painter received it from his hand which
he extended to him with due care.
It was Blue Lily. It would blossom under water only
during night time. Who would know the beauty of its bloom? Someone standing on the
bank was muttering that someone had seen it somewhere, sometime ago. ‘Was it
that fellow passenger standing on the opposite side, watching him after
commissioning the boy to do all this?’
The painter turned his eyes to the boy. The dense moon
light falling on his wet face was giving his big eyes, his nose line running from
his forehead without dents an appearance resembling a face that had been chiseled by
the nature with extreme care for thousands of years.
The painter asked the boy, with an explicit obeisance that
had overpowered him, “Who are you?”
The boy didn’t reply. The voice heard at a distance
that lacked meaning in it, did now become a spectrum of patterned sound and emitted
the word, “Krishnaaaa”.
By the time the boy responded with a ‘khooooooo’ and
ran towards the sound that called him out through the expanse of space lying
under moon light, the Blue Lily lying in the painter’s hand bloomed its bluish
petals all through the sky.
***End***
Source: “Neelam”, a short story written by Piramil.
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