| Ashokamithran |
This is an English translation of “Avanukku Miga Pidiththamaana Natchathiram”, a Tamil short story written by Ashoka Mithran. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
***
Sriram was twenty one years old. His B.A exams were recently over and the results were to be out in the month of June. It was April now.
Ramasamy Iyer was his neighbour. He was a clerk in a pharmaceutical company. He had five children. First three were girls, the fourth one was a four year old boy and the last one was a girl, a toddler of nine months.
Sriram had subscribed to an English daily. The newspaper would be distributed at his house at about six every morning. Since his regular newspaper man had to attend a court case that day, he had deputed his son to distribute the newspapers. When Ramasamy Iyer got up in the morning, he saw a newspaper sticking out the window grill. He didn’t know whose newspaper it was. After washing his face and drinking coffee, he started reading that newspaper so attentively.
A tamarind vendor was on his way selling freshly collected tamarind for an unbelievably cheap price. Ramasamy Iyer came out of the house, approached the vendor to buy a Mananku1 of tamarind. The vendor weighed two veesai of tamarind each time. Some wrapper sort of stuff was needed to take all the tamarind balls into the house. Ramasamy Iyer was holding a newspaper in his hands without knowing to whom it belonged. When he was taking the third tamarind ball in with the newspaper, he saw Sriram speaking to someone, enquiring about the newspaper man. Ramasamy went into home swiftly, threw out the tamarind ball, wiped the newspaper with the best of his efforts, came out and asked Sriram whether the newspaper he was holding in his hands belonged to him. Sriram nearly snatched it from his hands and opened it. The front page of the newspaper carried a full scape advertisement of a movie. A blow-up of an actress, often praised as the most beautiful woman in the entire South India was printed in the advertisement. Her beautiful face was found grotty with the half-cleaned patches of six veesai tamarind smeared on it. Sriram had an insurmountable crush on that actress. He reproached Ramasamy Iyer for his depraved intention of picking up someone else's newspaper. Ramasamy Iyer told him that he didn’t know anything and he found the newspaper inserted in his window grill. Sriram mumbled something inaudibly and started reading the newspaper. The face of that actress looked awfully ugly. Sriram muttered audibly, “fool”. Ramasamy Iyer heard it and asked him “What did you say now?”
“I said nothing about you. Fool”- Sriram repeated it again. In the next fifteen minutes that followed, Ramasamy Iyer came out with his opinions that Sriram was a fool, scoundrel, cheat and rogue. Sriram responded that he also had similar opinions about Ramasamy Iyer. That day, Ramasamy Iyer went late to his office by one hour.
A couple of days later, Sriram saw Ramasamy Iyer carrying a bunch of neem leaves in his hands. Sriram’s mother told him that Ramasamy Iyer’s son had small pox. Sriram had planned to go to the Employment exchange, Book store and then cinema. Soon after he left his house, he wrote an anonymous letter to the Health department and dropped in the post box.
The day was completely hectic for him. When he returned home, it wasn’t fully dark. He felt that something was not alright with him, but couldn’t understand exactly what it was. His heart cried for peace.
When he was drinking the coffee kept in the flask in slower sips, his mother told him that someone had informed the Health Department about small pox, some persons came to Ramasamy Iyer’s house when he was not there and took his son along with them to the cholera quarantine hospital. Iyer’s wife cried inconsolably, begged everyone who came there to spare her son. But they paid little attention to her words, nor tears and left with her four year old boy. No one could do anything. ‘It is the law here’, they said. Ramasamy Iyer’s wife wept hysterically, running behind them in the street like a mad woman.
It caused immense pain in Sriram as he didn’t expect all these turn of events.
Soon after Ramasamy Iyer came home from his office, he ran out of his house without even removing his office dresses. Sriram saw him running towards electric train station. The quarantine hospital which was housing the patients with infectious diseases was ten miles away from the town.
Sriram was restless. He couldn’t even relish the food provided to him. He was watching the people walking on the street standing near his house compound wall. The time was past ten. The bustles of the town began to settle down. The railway station was at half a mile distance from his house. Sriram could vividly hear the sounds of trains passing through the station, the clangs of bell in the level crossing, and the sound of wheels rolling on rail tracks. This regular affair of the town going silent every night had never attracted his attention before this. The corner house boy studying in the medical college had also put off the lights. The parallel rows of houses were looking like dark shadows in the night. As his eyes got heavy, Sriram lied down on his bed. As he was unable to sleep, he got up, and came to the street again. He was wearing only dhoti. Everywhere it was dark and everyone was asleep. He was waiting alone in the street. At last, the one which had been keeping him under persistent fear, the one for which he was totally prepared to sacrifice everything in his world just to avoid facing it, did now appear in the corner of the street. It was Ramasamy Iyer. Arm supporting her, he was bringing his wife whose her throat seemed to have gone dry due to unrelenting sobs of pain. Sriram couldn’t have seen Ramasamy Iyer’s wife not more than some odd ten times during the past two years despite being their neighbour. She was such a woman who usually preferred to stay inside her house. Sometimes, Sriram used to think she must either be a dumb or handicapped woman. A woman of that unassuming nature was now coming in front of him, all the way crying throwing away all her inborn traits of being a passive woman. He learnt that she had begged everyone holding their legs and cried hysterically like a mad woman.
Ramasamy Iyer and his wife entered the house. Their children who were sleeping till then without knowing anything that was happening around them, woke up suddenly and started crying in unison. Their mother wept along with them. That boy was her son, only son. He was just four years old. He would never leave her even for one hour. Now he had been thrown into some unknown area on the pretext of diseases he got infected. His mother wouldn’t be able to attend his needs when he needed her the most while lying sick. When he became thirty, she wouldn’t be able to provide him a mouthful of milk. They would throw him amidst thousands of lepers and cholera patients in an unfamiliar place. Not a single soul would be available to comfort that child. He would shake in fear. No one would be there to attend his natural calls. A heavy thug with big moustache would only be present to intimidate the boy. “O! My God! What sin have I done? Why do all these happen in my life? Why do you torture my boy without showing mercy?”
Sriram couldn’t sleep that night. The boy died after two days. Since he was infected with small pox, they took his body directly to the burial ground without showing his face to his parents.
After one month, Sriram summoned up his courage and entered Ramasamy Iyer’s house. Ramasamy Iyer was sitting on a recline chair. Sriram told him softly, “I want to tell you something about Raju”. Ramasamy Iyer’s son’s name was Raju.
Ramasamy Iyer looked up to him, and asked, “What?”
“Do you know who had informed the authorities about his small pox?”
“Hell with him. It doesn’t matter now. Does it?”
“It was I who informed”
Ramasamy Iyer looked at him sharply for a while and called out to his wife, “Kamu”
His wife came out of kitchen. She was looking completely changed in the past one month.
Ramasamy Iyer, pointing at her, told him, “Tell that to her”
With heart filled agony and guilt, Sriram felt falling on her feet and washing it with his tears. Swallowing up everything that rose from his heart, he told her, “It was I who informed about Raju”.
He looked up to her, waiting for her obscene curses, and even prayed for it. But to his dismay she appeared as if she had regained all her old equanimity.
She didn’t speak anything.
****Ended***
1. Old unit of weight, one Mananku is approximately equivalent to eight Veesai , i.e appx 12 kg (One Veesai - appx 1.6 kg)
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