Original: Ganga Snanam (கங்கா ஸ்நானம்)
In English: Saravanan Karmegam
Chinna Swamy was standing on the banks of the river Ganga, watching it flow, swirling and eddying. The banks looked as high as three quarters of a coconut tree. The blue light coming from a nearby storied house was falling on the water dimly. The thoughts oscillated between water and his home, rendering him almost oblivious to either Ganga or Kashi.
His wife asked him something.
“….”
“Listen here”
“Mmm”
“The width seems double the Cauvery River in Kumbakonam. Doesn’t it?”
“Mmm…it looks so."
He felt someone laugh. His back shuddered once with a deep chill.
“You are still unable to forget that. Aren’t you?” She glanced at his face as she was washing her legs in water.
“Mmm”
“You haven’t bathed yet. How long more would I stand here?”
He climbed down the steps further into the water." “It’s said our Karma would never leave us, even in Kashi. Now you see... That scoundrel is standing right in front of me.”
“Let him stand. Let him. He must have bathed in Ganga yesterday. My mother Ganga would have washed all his sins away. Why should we remember all those things now? You please take a bath now,” she said, getting into the river, and chanted, “O! Mother! My Mother Ganga!” and bathed with her heart full of happiness.
“It is easy said not to remember anything. Now, in a short while, I have to face him. What if I am destined to share some words with him? A very thought of it gets me astounded. It is that the remaining thousand rupees, apart from the three thousand rupees, have brought us here. Right? Would we have dared visit this place if it had been only for the sake of my sister? Or would that have been so destined for him to visit here before us? What is God doing in this? He is just playing with my destiny?”
“I too don’t understand all these that clearly. But we can think of it after taking a bath. We can inform our landlord and leave from there with our luggage to find out some other place to stay. You please first take a bath. Mother Ganga would offer us some solution”
A boat went past them with its steady noise of rowing.
Chinna Swamy again felt someone laugh. He too felt laughing. He stepped into the water, got into it and bathed fully.
"Gosh, the water is as chill as crystals,” he scooped a handful of water and gently dropped it through his fingers. His body shuddered once. The tenderness of water coupled with the weird circumstances that tend to mock at his situation. Would anyone ever believe this coincidence?
**
The train reached Kashi at about eight in the night. Our travails with the crowds in the train, layers of coals, dust, dirt of three days, reek of old butter from the co-passengers who boarded the train at Nagpur, and rushing crowds in louse-ridden shabby shirts and Veshti—all disappeared the moment we set our feet in KKashi,and an inexplicable peace and an innate desire to see the River Ganga overwhelmed our hearts. A man from a Tamil priest who settled in Kashi a few generations ago had come there to receive us.
As we sat down, keeping our luggage in the house, the owner came to me and asked, “Where do you hail from?”
“Savukka Natham”
“From Thanjavur district?”
“Yes”
“We are also from Thanjavur district. But we own nothing there now. We had long become the men of this city, Kashi, since the day my grandfather settled here.”
He went to Vaitheeswaran Temple last year to have his second child shave off his hair.
“You went there from Kashi?”
“Why not? Even if you go to the seven heavens, we can’t get rid of our family deity. Can we? Kashi is a place where we had settled. But my family deity is still the god Vaithyanathan”
Chinna Swamy couldn’t help laughing when he was washing off his three days of dirt, thinking of the house owner’s longings for his native, which reared him up on its laps three generations ago.
“Last time I visited Vaitheeswaran Temple, Sirgazhi, Kumbakonam, Thiruvarur... not a place left. Somewhere near Thiruvarur, a man did come here a day ago. Right?” He asked an assistant standing near him.
"Yes, he is from Vilancheri. Do you know it?” The assistant turned, adjusting his thick glass eye frame.
“Vilancheri? My sister has been married off there. We had come here with the help of money she gave me.”
“Then you must be knowing this man as well.”
“Who’s that?”
“He came here yesterday early morning, probably from Prayag. His name is Duraiyappa. He has gone to the temple to see the puja.”
“Duraiyappa…?” Chinna Swamy’s head span as if a thunderbolt had descended on it.
“Yes”
“Dark man, cleft chinned?”
“Yes”
“On his forehead, on its right, is there a scar?”
"Yes, it is the same man. He’ll come back any time after watching Puja given to God, Visweswaran.”
“O.K”
Chinna Swamy grew restless and felt someone laugh. It seemed Duraiyappa himself was laughing at him. A devilish laughter. ‘How come this scoundrel is here? How could he opt this time to come here? That too, when I am here at the same place where he stays.’ A barrage of unanswered questions hit his mind. His entirety shook a little. “This bloke? Now? At this place?”
He came out of water, towelled his hair, put on a new silk clothe, got into water, washed his legs again, smeared some Thiruneeru on his body, and sat in prayer. His wife was changing her sari.
“I have to, now, face this chap. Whose mischief is this?”
Elder sister kept whining about visiting Kashi quite often. After three years of family life with her husband in Vilancheri, she returned to her parent’s house in her fourth year. Thankfully, father and mother were not there to see all this amusement. Her husband became bedridden on the seventh day of her leaving him. On the eighth day, he died.
She returned to the place from where she left like an unfamiliar man stranded in a forest. Yearnings and diseases started fast eating up the woman who had lived three years in confinement and faced the ignominy of an unlucky woman who wiped off every fortune from home. She asked me to sell her husband’s land. Now I had four thousand rupees in my hand—the price of it. She remained conscious till the day before her death and told me:
“Chinna Swamy, Duraiyappa isn’t aware of my pathetic health condition. Had he known it, he would have paid a visit here. How much do we have to pay him?”
After due calculation, it stood at three thousand and forty-seven rupees.
“Don’t ever beg to condone this amount. You have to pay him off without leaving a paise. You understand it?”
“First, get well, Akka. There is no urgency for it now.”
“No. I won’t make it anymore. I know my condition, Chinna Swamy. I thought of going away from this world after seeing that debt being paid off. It didn’t happen. You do it now.”
“O.K”
“Some amount of thousand rupees will be in balance. I dreamt living in the fantasy of visiting Kashi with that amount. It didn’t also happen. You and your wife go to Kashi and bathe in Ganga, bearing me in your hearts. And you can use that amount for travel expenses in train and other lodging requirements. You must not bear a penny of expenses from your pocket.”
The next day, there reduced the total count of my family by one. ‘Is it for what you were born, lived, and died meaninglessly, just to pay off the debt your husband had left?’
After a month, Chinn Swamy left for Vilancheri with the remaining three thousand and some odd sum. When he reached Vilancheri, it was already dusk. The wind was chilly. One could keep watching admiringly Duraiyappa’s house veranda and doorway. Exclusively shiny, smooth surfaces! Duraiyappa was leisurely reclining in an easy chair.
“Mama”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s me”
A hurricane lamp was dangling above head in the main hall.
“Me? Who’s that?”
“Chinna Swamy”
“Oh! Our Chinna Swamy”
“Yes… Mama”
“Please come in. Come in. When did you come?”
“Just a moment ago.”
“So pathetic… Sundarambal is no more.”
“Yes…mama. That’s all her luck to be here.”
“Any serious ailments in the body?"
“No ailments in body. Just unfulfilled desires.”
“Pch…Hell with the chores! Neither he nor you are lucky enough. The villagers were chomping on it for quite a while about it. May I know the reason behind your troubled journey to come here now?”
“I came here to settle a pending matter, Mama”
“No big deal about that pending matter. Does it?”
“Akka summoned me the day before her death, and asked me to calculate the amount to be settled. She wasn’t comfortable going with this burden”
“Pch…debt…what a big deal about it? Any big deal about this big debt or what?”
“It stood at three thousand and forty-seven rupees at that time”
“Mmm”
“It is one more month added now. Right?”
“Yeah…I would be able to purchase a village with that one-month interest amount. Wouldn’t I? You fool”
“Can we calculate it now? I have come ready?
“Have you brought the money?”
“Yes…I have brought”
“Why to take trouble now? I am very tired. I have been standing in the field since morning. Feeling hungry. Sleepy too. Isn't it a good idea if I receive it in the morning?”
“O.K”
‘Is it for this petty matter you took trouble of travelling this distance by train and bus?”
"Isn't it my duty to undertake that trouble?”
“You, a fool! Had you written me a letter, I would have come there to collect it. Why this unwarranted troubled journey?”
“It wouldn’t look good. Handing it over to you in person is respectful. Isn’t it?”
“O.K…O.K…We can settle it in the morning. You may leave now”
“Then keep this cash with you now. We can settle it in the morning. I am going to sleep here. The wind is cool here”
“You want me somehow move away from my seat. Don’t you? It’s O.K. Give it to me”
Chinna Swamy gave him the bundle of cash. Duraiyappa kept it in his safe, locked it.
“Please come in washing your legs. Let’s have dinner together”
After dinner, they were chit-chatting till midnight. The village used to go to sleep by half past six. The place became quiet without the bustle of the village except the chirping of crickets. The bells hanging in the necks of bulls sounded somewhere. A child was crying elsewhere.
Duraiyappa gave Chinna Swamy a bed sheet and a pillow and went in, locking the door. Chinna Swamy lay on the veranda, with his thoughts growing perceptive. “What big of a man Duraiyappa is! He is really a great soul! How respectful he is! How lenient in negotiating hard things! When Chinna Swamy got off the bus that evening at Vilancheri corner, he heard someone praising Duraiyappa’s ‘offering food’ to everyone. One could get food at Duraiyappa’s house, no matter who he is and when it is. He is popularly known as “Annadada”- the man who offers limitless food to everyone—throughout the district. In every train journey, one would be able to meet at least one passenger who would praise it. What a deference! A beauty of politeness that comes handy to the great souls’
The cool wind that was blowing a while ago also stopped. Chinna Swamy fell asleep.
Morning he had a breakfast with four crispy dosa, some curd along with the last dosa, and a coffee that prompted one to wonder about its taste, a salubriousness fighting the sunlight in the hall after meals, the floor that knew no sun light- A sort of coolness filled in Chinna Swamy’s heart.
Duraiyappa came with a deed document, sat in front, put on his spectacles, and closely scrutinised the document. After a diligent calculation, he looked up to Chinna Swamy and said, “So, can we now make the entry as settled?”
“Mmm” Chinna Swamy said.
“O.K. Take out the cash”
“You are keeping the cash with you” Chinna Swamy said, smiling at him mildly, wondering Duraiyappa might have confused it with something else.
“You say money is with me?”
“Yes…mama. You kept it in the safe yesterday night.”
“What did I keep?”
“Don’t be funny, Mama…I gave you three thousand and forty-seven rupees. It was bound with red-coloured, thick papers as a bundle”
“Don’t be silly Chinna Swamy. Don’t be silly like a kid”
“Am I silly? You play funny Mama”
“Mama or son-in-law…does it matter anyway? Take out the cash. I get late for the field. Don’t get me late”
“Mama…please check your safe once again”
“Again playing funny! Haven’t you brought the money with you?”
Chinna Swamy started to feel his stomach rumble. At the same time he preferred to believe that mama was still playing pranks with him.
“Please bring it mama…”
“What nonsense are you up to? You keep telling to bring it. Is it the time to play pranks?”
“Mama…I am telling you the truth”
“It’s alright. I get to leave now. I have works to do”
“Mama…Mama”
“Leave your Mama now”
“That red-coloured bundle Mama?”
Chinna Swamy stood terribly stunned. He felt his abdomen growing heavy as if a big stone had fallen into it.
“You came by train or bus?”
“Bus”
“Where were you keeping the cash?”
“In my bag. I brought it very carefully and gave it to you. You told me we can settle it in the morning, gently sulking that I was trying to move you away from your chair, and you kept it safely in your safe”
“You a sinner! How skilfully you could narrate it as if really happened?” Duraiyappa yelled in high pitch, his face looked pale as if slapped by some demons. “Come here to see da…my entire body coils with shame,” he shrieked and went it, opened the safe and exposed its interiors. Opened other iron boxes and wooden boxes. Look well…see it with your own eyes”
Chinna Swamy was standing still as if severely smacked on his head. He ran to Durayappa’s wife; then ran out. He took his complaints to the accountant, village headman as his tongue dried up, lips shivering and the body trembling. The men of that village came there. Duraiyappa was sitting like a mad man reclining in his easy chair. The almirahs in the hall were kept open. Clothes and utensils were found strewn around the floor.
Everyone blinked knowing nothing of what happened.
“Mama…what is this all? He is saying something” village headman said.
“I first thought he is playing funny. But he kept pledging it is true again and again. It is nothing short of a big thunder-like blow on me. So simply sat down, totally beaten. You can very well rummage the whole house”
The village headman and his men enquired everyone and everything again. Chinna Swamy cried helplessly. They searched everything again.
“I never thought that you would betray me like this, Mama” Chinna Swamy sobbed, silently, as his voice grew heavier.
“You, the sinner! Let your mouth rot. He is our Annadada da! He is a saint-like man! He has offered food in heaps like hills. Never raise voice against him” the accountant admonished Chinna Swamy.
A train was passing on the Ganga Bridge at a distance under darkness. Chinna Swamy came there from a distant place, and got entangled with the men of Vilancheri Village, complained to everyone, cried in front of everyone, begged almost everyone and at last grew stoic at everything around him- But what did exactly win at last? Duraiyappa went to the court. The travesty of judgement came with a compromise—that Chinna Swamy had to settle the amount without interest. When Chinna Swamy refused to accept the verdict, he was intimidated by the judge that he would pass the judgement making Chinna swamy pay full payment with interest. At last, accepting this compromise by way of settling it with his own money…
‘It had been four years now since all this drama was orchestrated. Now I had come to Kashi to fulfil my elder sister’s second wish. But on the very first day, the God is testing my nerves by sending Duraiayappa to the same place where I am staying. Chinna Swamy delved into thoughts.
Chinna Swamy’s wife was still sitting in prayer. Would anyone believe it? Let alone what had happened. Would anyone believe what is happening today?’
“Can we leave now?” His wife asked him, rose.
“Mmm”
Chinna Swamnmy rose. Climbing on two steps, he stopped and said, “Wait, I couldn’t pray. My heart was just resenting Duraiyappa for his deeds”. He then got into the water and bathed again.
“Do have an ablution to wash away his sins as well” his wife said.
When he came out of water, she said, “Don’t dig out the old things when you meet him. If he had come back, do strike up a casual conversation, thinking that you have washed away his sins by performing an ablution. If he hadn’t come back from the temple, we will pack up and leave the place immediately before seeing his wretched face”
“Let’s see what is waiting for us” Chinna Swamy turned north, glanced at bathing bays emitting lights and climbed on the steps.
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