White Deaths (வெள்ளை மரணங்கள்) by Ashokamithran

 

This is an English translation of “Vellai Maranangal”, a short story written by Ashoka Mithran.

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White Deaths (வெள்ளை மரணங்கள்) by Ashokamithran

This is an English translation of “Vellai Maranangal”, a short story written by Ashokamithran.

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That tall shelter of three hundred feet in length and forty feet in breadth, thatched with clay tiles, must have been constructed for the ‘White’ soldiers who had been put up there during the First World War. After disbanding the military, this long shelter must have been handed over to the Nizam Railways. It was then divided into 12 houses, and the last one was given to my father. Those houses were functioning as a ‘running stop’ for railway guards and ticket examiners. My father would go to his office at ten in the morning and come back only after his superior officers leave for their homes. Sometimes, he would bring some bundles of files home and take notes from them.

Our house had three entries: the main entrance in the front, one in the backyard, and the stairs on its side. So, these three doors should be kept locked if we want to have a peaceful sleep every night. We had some big-sized padlocks, otherwise known as Aligarh locks. The shelter had been built running east to west. If we opened the side door, the harsh rays of the sun would fall onto the floor till noon. The dust, husk, tiny stones, and clay balls should be handpicked from rice, dal, mustard, and dried chili before using them that day. Rice and dal ought to be threshed, and for that, a winnowing basket made of bamboo stalks is needed. A fresh basket cannot be used for threshing before getting it conditioned. This winnowing basket must be plastered on both sides with a wax-like paste made of paper, fenugreek, and water ground in a grinder and then dried under sunlight. The women at home would be very busy all day long at the entrance on the eastern side.

I and my elder sister would leave the house, totally unbothered to extend help in household chores, to roam around the open barren land that lay sprawled over miles. The land didn’t have an even surface. Its surface was bumpy and uneven, and its soil was not fit for agriculture. In that open land was a peripheral wall at a man’s height with its only door remaining locked. A recently built shelter stood in front of it. It was a workshop allotted to the jobless Christian elders to earn something for their living by way of doing any job they were good at. At noon, a free meal of some gruel would be provided.

The patch of land that lay beyond this shelter always remained a mystery for me and my sister. Someone had been guarding that sprawling land with a peripheral wall. Who could that be?

The lock hanging outside was big and looked very old. Would it have a key to open it? The key could have been lost as it was not used for years. My elder sister wouldn’t be able to accompany me all day as I came out to roam on this open land. I would go alone to those hillocks and wander. Every hillock had a silky surface that had made climbing on it difficult. Moving from one hillock to another, I lost my way. Panic-stricken, I started running aimlessly. I found a railway track lying at some distance away from the hillocks. I would be able to reach the railway station if I went along the railway track, I thought. I know how to reach my home from the railway station.

Only after going near the railway track could I see another rock standing there with steps. Sooner I gained hope that I would reach my home, I summoned up some courage. I climbed on the stairs and found a Hanuman temple at the top.

The statue of Hanuman had been carved out of a single rock and was smeared with saffron paste all over. If Hanuman was seen anywhere around that area, people would smear Him with red-oxide paste all over His body. A priest was there. I grew hesitant to speak to him. He gave me some Tulsi leaves and holy water. I climbed down the rock, walked along the rail track, and reached my home in half an hour.

Now, these two places had become a point of mystery for me. First one, the place with a peripheral wall of a man’s height. Second, the Hanuman temple. Why didn’t our father take us to this temple? Is he aware of this temple?

I just told my elder sister everything I had seen. She asked me to take her there today. I said, “I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“I like Hanuman.”

“You’d like that temple. I don’t know the straight way to reach there. I only know how to reach there by taking a roundabout way.”

“I am also coming.”

“O.K. We’ll go tomorrow.” 

The next day I came back from the school by four. But my sister was late by half an hour; she came at half past four. We had some curd rice and a coffee, hurriedly, and headed out. Mother became angry and shouted at her, “A cart full of utensils lying to be washed. Where are you going now?” My sister mumbled something inaudibly and came out of the house. We paced fast, running and walking briskly, and reached the rail track. Finally, we were at the Hanuman temple.

Four or five people were there. It must be an auspicious day, we thought. We went around the temple, boldly though, as we were a confident duo. Though the village had no wells around, we found a small well there. The households had water taps. Those who had no water taps in their houses would fetch water from the water pipes laid on the streets. But how and when a well had been dug in this temple, we grew perplexed.

Akka struck up a conversation with a woman there and came to know that the name of the temple was Laxman Jula. After that, Akka would go out herself to visit this temple and often get scolded by her mother for her impudence. But we grew unintimidated. I was unable to visit the temple quite often as the circle of my friends for playing became bigger.

One day, Akka told me, “There is a shortcut to that temple.”

“How?” I asked her.

“Beyond that workshop, if we jump over the tall compound wall, we can reach a small pond. The hillock on which the temple is sitting is very near to it.”

I had gone to that pond many times. If you throw a broken clay piece at a particular angle, it would jump off the water surface a couple of times before drowning under water. However, this wouldn’t happen in every attempt. After spending some time in the pond, I used to go to the hillocks. It never occurred to me to venture straight after crossing the pond. But my sister did. 

I made up my mind that I must find out the shortcut the very next day. Akka was busy with grinding flour. For some obvious reasons, I also grew uncomfortable with my sister wandering alone in that barren area. It was a wretched stretch of land! One could find only a skeleton number of shepherds and cattle herders, that too occasionally. To graze the cattle, a good amount of grass was needed. Wasn’t it? The land would wear a green cover not more than ten or fifteen days immediately after rain. Other days, it remained a parched, barren land.

I went past the workshop and reached the compound wall that stood at a man’s height. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw its door kept open. I peeked into it. The area behind the door was very big; it must be many acres. The place had some buildings in various sizes, big and small. Since it was kept locked for ages, the place was filled with wild bushes all around and some cactus plants showing up here and there. I walked carefully as I wasn’t wearing sandals. A couple of minutes later, I could make out that it was a cemetery. There were some cemeteries, smaller in size, near the Mother Mary Temple in my village. They would be visible clearly when seen from the streets. Those cemeteries, though suffering from the wild growth of bushes, had a walking path that was clear. But here there were no signs of such tracks that once existed.

The epitaphs on the tombs were in English. They looked many years old. On one of the big tombs, there were twenty names inscribed on it. They must have dug a very big grave to bury all those bodies in a single day. Suddenly, a fear engulfed me. I was caught up in that cemetery that evening, alone. I must get out of this place immediately. Ignoring the pain of thorns pricking my feet, I could manage reaching the entrance of the cemetery only to find it locked. Overwhelmed with terror again, I knocked on the door violently. I screamed, “Open the door…Open the door.”

The door should have been locked only some while ago. Luckily, the man who locked it hadn’t gone away far. The door opened. A short man with an uneven face was standing there.

“When did you come in?” he asked.

“The door was open.”

“If it is open, will you come in? Is it a place for you to loiter?”

I stood silently. The rough facial features of the dwarf man evoked some amount of fear in me.

“Get out…Get out of this place.”

“What is this place?” I asked him, hesitantly.

“It is a Christian cemetery. Many people have been buried here. Now, you get out.”

He closed the door with some effort, latched it, hooked the lock, and pressed it down with both hands.

“You have no keys?” I asked.

“You are still standing here? Now see all the ghosts roaming here will come to you. Go out from here.”

The short man walked along with an asymmetrical gait on one side. I went to the Laxman Jula. The route I took was really a shortcut. This time, the priest who was offering prayers at the temple picked some amount of saffron paste from the Hanuman idol and dotted it on my forehead. “As long as it stays up on your forehead, no ghost would approach you,” he said.

I was immensely astonished at all these. Just a while ago, that cemetery warden told me that all the ghosts would come to me. And now this priest is telling me that no ghosts would ever dare to approach me as if knowing what had happened in the cemetery.

I told my sister everything that night.

“That place remains always closed. Do you know what it is?”

“What’s that?”

“It is a graveyard. So many white men have been buried there.”

“Did you see that?”

“Yes. The door was open. I went in. There were many tombs looking like Tulsi stands. A couple of them were big in size. All had some names inscribed on them.”

“Will you go there tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. There might be a lot of ghosts roaming around.”

“Who told you?”

“A short man”

“Then, he might be a ghost himself.”

I felt my stomach rumble with discomfort. I resolved that I mustn’t go back to that place again. I couldn’t sleep and had dreams of different kinds that night.

The next day, I couldn’t pay attention to the subjects in the school. I was whipped for my poor response to the question asked by Bengal Tiger Vathiyar. Though I enjoyed a reputation of being his favourite student, he would prove his name by pouncing upon me if I ever failed to pay attention to his lessons.

Watching me eat the curd rice without speaking anything after coming home, my mother grew apprehensive and asked me, “What happened to you today?”

“Nothing”

“No…Your face looks gloomy.

Doesn’t she know that I also don’t know anything? She seemed to have understood that there must be something secret of sorts.

I headed towards the workshop. I looked back to ensure if someone was following me. No…no one followed. I went fast near the locked door and pulled its lock. It opened. I pushed it a little in with an effort and closed it once I was in.

The dead leaves were strewn all around. I wouldn’t be able to see even a snake if there was any. My bare feet made a lot of noise. I went to the spot where the biggest tomb was standing. It was where twenty people had been buried. All were between nineteen and twenty years of age. The epitaph under their names was read as, “The cholera devoured those who came to sacrifice their lives on the war front.”

I couldn’t understand the poetic beauty of the sentence that day. There must be nearly 200 tombs in that graveyard. Those many white men had breathed their last in that village. There wasn’t even a good road to reach that place. So, those bodies must have been carried from somewhere.

Sometimes, my mother would be weeping aloud suddenly. My elder brother died of some excruciating stomach pain when I was just two years old. Even after ten years after his death, my mother couldn’t come out of her depression. Here, so many men have been buried. How depressed their mothers and fathers could have been! For them, it was a foreign land. Their parents couldn’t have been with them when they died. All were English soldiers. It was quite probable that some of them might have lived in the rooms where we are living now. Presently, there must be only seven or eight physicians in the village. How many physicians would have been there during their times? The absence of adequate medical facilities might have caused their deaths.

Even for my age, I felt like crying. I was standing there, still crying.

Someone patted me on the back comfortingly and said, “Please don’t cry. I will also cry.”. I turned around and saw my Akka standing there.

“How did you come here?”

“Don’t I know where you would like to go?”

“This door doesn’t have locks.”

“No. It does have.

“But it doesn’t lock.”

“It’s O.K. Let’s go to the temple.”

We came out, latched the door, and pressed its hook. But it remained unlocked, open. The next two subsequent days, it was frequently opened. The rust inside the lock did remove the dirt outside.

We went to the Laxman Jula and came back taking a roundabout way.

“Let’s not come to this place again,” I said.

“I too don’t want to come here,” Akka said. “Do you know one thing?” She asked me.

“What?”

“I had already visited this graveyard before you.”

                                                                   ***End***