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| Ma. Aranganathan |
This is an English translation of “Siddhi”, a Tamil short story written by Ma. Aranganathan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
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The number of playgrounds was less there. The area where he
lived was actually owned by the police department. A policeman who was watching
him attentively for a long time stopped his running one day and commented,
“Thambi, you must obtain permission to practice running here. Nevertheless, you
are a talented runner. You’ll succeed one day” and spent some time talking with
him.
Though sports didn’t command much of a reputation in that
country, the people were aware of players through television news. As they were
so accustomed to accepting their life laden with difficulties without making
any ostensible complaints, sports had failed to attract their attention. The
people remained content with playing local games, which they had been
comfortable with for a long time. Their knowledge about ‘Olympics’ was nothing
beyond passing information. The soil of that land did appear something unique
in the world, and it was where he was running.
“What are you studying?” the policeman asked him but
continued talking without pausing to listen to his reply.
“You must be properly counselled before taking up running. I
was also a runner once but didn’t continue it. You have got a better strength
for your age than what I had those days. We can do one thing. Will you listen
to my words?”
He bobbed his head.
“Go to this address and meet the old man. Good will
happen.”
He thanked him in a lowered voice. He had to get his hair
trimmed that day; it was quite likely that the money would be spent otherwise,
which would turn into a disaster as it was nearly impossible for him to get
some dough again in hand. In such a critical situation, the reply and thanks he
extended to the policeman couldn’t have been very satisfactory. Despite it, the
policeman gave him an address and encouraged him to pay a visit to the old
man.
He got himself ready the next day and went to the house as
far as two miles away from his place. It was a big, palatial bungalow. One had
to walk down the path where trees were thickly grown, lying beyond the
building’s compound wall, to have a full view of the building. The moment he
stepped onto that path, his legs grew reflexively ready to sprint given its
neatly extended stretch. He had a momentary thought it would be appealing if
the house had such a clean stretch of path running around it. The old man was
sitting on a three-legged stool in front of the entrance surrounded with shrub.
The old man wasn’t prepared to receive him. But the boy’s
gait seen from a distance might have reminded him of something. He wished to
have a closer glance at the person walking at a distance. He even wanted to
inquire of that boy why he hadn’t met him earlier. Their conversation was very
cordial and simple. “Our country has gone into ruins. Isn’t it the duty of
youth to save its honour?” the old man asked him, loudly, though. He tried to
make him laugh through wry jokes that one had to start running well before he
could walk.
The old man must be about sixty years old or so. He had
devoted his entire life for the sake of sports. Other mundanities of this world
could be easily executed with the help of machines, but not sports, he strongly
believed. The picture, which had once been published in almost all newspapers
of that country, must be his. Quite possible that he had no good number of
students. Most of them must have joined the police department.
“I have devoted my talent in sports for the sake of this
country,” said the old man.
His eyes were glittering. They truly reflected what he spoke.
He didn’t appear to be a man telling lies.
The boy learnt the ropes of sports during months-long
training under the aegis of the old man. He would get up in the early morning
before sunrise and start his run on highways. He would ask his brother to get
onto his shoulder and run for miles carrying him on his back. The old man had
arranged for his diet. A diet plan was made by carefully omitting items that
mostly contained fat, which the boy used to relish more, and he followed the
plan so scrupulously without failing a time. Movies and documentaries
pertaining to sportspersons from other countries and competitions held
elsewhere were shown in the house. Eventually he was made the best athlete of
that country.
On one occasion, when he was watching a wrestling match, the
old man explained to him about those two countries that participated in the
competition. His talk was replete with information that sounded like an
emotionally charged elucidation on various countries, peoples, and races that
the boy hadn’t ever come across in his life. It was almost like a well-executed
oration.
He delved into those videos again. The roaring reception of
people shown on screen during the games was not new to him. But while watching
the scenes of frantic yells from the audience while seeing a foreign boxer
profusely bleed from his nose after being severely smacked and a visitor
throwing away his burnt cigarette butt onto the floor and savagely crushing it
under his feet, he felt some inscrutable alarm settle in him. Later he could
understand that it was nothing but his fear.
That night, he was introduced on television channels as the
“rising star of hope” in that country. Though many told him that his picture
had come out well, he thought it was not true.
His daily routine of running on highways did continue. He
considered running on highways way better than running on playgrounds. As he
saw trees on both sides of the road going past him and his legs striking on the
ground one after another while running, he felt all those things that he
presumed obscene till then were leaving him at once and he was evolving into an
immaculate self-made soul travelling to an unknown point. His run bore an
element of manifestation that the sky, land, and other living organisms around
him were in no way different from his existence.
That day, due to the early sunrise and increased movement of
people on suburban roads, his run had to be terminated after twenty-two miles.
Sometimes, as he opened the gates, he would resume his run on the path within
the compound of the old man’s house whenever he couldn’t run on highways. His
run would end only when the thoughtful old man ventured out of his house after
a couple of hours to stop him. He used to see the old man scribbling something
on a daily report card calculating the distance he had covered. The old man
would be patient enough to explain everything to a man who couldn’t even
measure out the distance from his own run and would share his happiness with
the runner that the latter didn’t have to run that much of a distance as he had
already beaten the world record during his runs on highways. He considered it
essential to teach him yogasanas taught in eastern countries. The trainings
offered in the name of yoga had, of late, started gaining popularity in that
country.
The old man declared intrepidly when the reporters met him
that his student had passed a full marathon and his country would regain its
glory.
When the news of him successfully completing twenty-seven
miles spread on television channels and newspapers, other countries in the
world turned their attention towards him. He became one of those men considered
fit enough to participate in the Olympics. His personal details were widely
discussed. His name was pronounced in different ways. In Soviet Russia, his
name was wrongly pronounced as ‘Carbo.’. In European countries he was known as
‘Cribbs,’ and in the east he would have been known as ‘Krish.’. In the south,
he might have been known as ‘Karuppan.’.
That day, his name was to be announced officially as a
participant in the Olympic Games. A meeting with media people was organized in
the stadium. The old man was sitting a little distance away from the crowd with
a cigar in his fingers, though it was a rare sight to see him smoke. The
interview went as mentioned below.
“Will you be happy if you are selected as a potential
competitor in the game?”
“Running makes me happy.”
“Would you bring laurels to our country?”
“I feel so good when I run.”
“What is your opinion about the player who won in the
previous Olympics?”
“Everyone who runs would, nevertheless, be happy. When I
think about all of them, I feel resolved.”
“Will our country take strides in sports?”
He remained silent. The old man was sitting with his head
bowed down. The question was repeated.
“I know only running. What I get from running is the reason
why I run. I run for myself. It is all due to the greatness of running. I know
nothing other than this.”
The cigar held in the old man’s fingers was now lying on the
ground. As his face contorted with thick wrinkles of many ups and downs, he
crushed the cigar under his feet and pushed it away and rose with a lethargic
limber up of his arms. The interview was over.
It was the time when the darkness grew thicker with a tiny
moon in the sky. He went near the old man who was standing near the car outside
the building. The old man was staring at the emptiness afar for some time and
then opened the car’s door with a gentle shrug of his shoulders.
He told the old man, beseechingly, having his eyes fixed on
the small mountains standing afar.
“How would you feel if I could run under this splendid
moonlight? I could run very comfortably till that mountain in the morning.”
The old man stuffed himself into his car and shut its door
and then said, sticking his head out of the window, “It would be fantastic. You
can run now if you like. You can even run to the cliff, jump down from there,
and die. Get lost” and left driving away in his car.
***Ended***
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