Exhausted legs (ஓடிய கால்கள்) by G. Nagarajan

This is an English translation of “Odiya Kalgal” written by G. Nagarajan. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam. 

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The heat of the sun had started scorching him almost half an hour ago. Lying on his back, he tried to move his body and head to avert the heat. Turning the head wasn’t very difficult as the movement in neck didn’t pose any problem. It was only his body that went stiff as if the entire torso below his neck had been tied up tightly. A mere try of forcible turn on one side sent a piercing pain in both knees, forcing him to yell out a sharp cry in an attempt to lessen the pain.

The body lay motionless for some while - The body that had gained the strength of a diamond over a period of twenty years struggling in dust and rocks, supporting his two hands that wielded nothing other than some rudimentary tools of humankind in its fight with the nature obviously for the return of nothing. It had lost its softness, become dark and acquired a rough protective skin instead, as a small seed he seemed to have earned in the course of his struggles with life. On his arms and ribs were there bars of swelling that looked unusually odd. Streaks of clotted blood looked like ruby. His body bore some black lines here and there especially on his chest with four or five centimetres width; a dirty dhoti below his waist. If your eyes are sharp enough, you can see his knees were swollen a bit and visible above the dhoti. They were just immobile. The round shaped sun light in a size of one rupee coin fell on his hand. Though it played a truant game, the scorch on its face burnt like a copper sheet. The body moved the neck, got the eyes opened. His body shook with a big sigh; the tongue dried up; and it emitted a sharp, shrilling yell “water”. The body became him. 

“Umm….ater…” the meek sound entered his ears. He turned and saw a policeman standing beyond the grills of the lock up room. 

“Ayya….please some water” his body implored. 

 The policeman ran to the station telephone that gave out a long ring, and was glued to it for some time. He, then, lit a beedi and sat on a chair. 

“Ayya, please give me some water. Do you want me to die without water?” he pleaded. 

“You…motherfucker!” shouted the policeman, threw out the beedi, and jumped off the chair swinging his baton in circle. 

“Three of us would have been sacked today. Who could catch you if it was late even by half an hour? Market gets busy today.  You don’t enjoy the privilege of a regular briber to get us lenient today. Do you?”

A very pricking fact indeed. He was a prisoner, a prisoner who tried to escape. He fought with the powers regulating the law and order. This was the result of not having enough freedom. He forgot his dried-up tongue. Yet, his memory didn’t fail him. It was an eccentric peril that happened between nine and ten in the morning. They took him to the hospital that night, obtained a medical certificate and brought him back to the lock-up. He would have got up at half past eight in the morning and understood that he had been kept one among the ten or twelve prisoners in a corridor behind the police station. Others had got up much earlier. Seven or eight policemen were busy walking across in the police station. 

Those who were in the police station were going out, and some new policemen were coming in, changed their dresses, puffed cigarettes, had some light hearted fun with others, and sometimes were critical of something, talking and laughing aloud. All the prisoners who were around him were either talking among themselves or with people who came from outside or with police officials. Sometimes they were found arguing with them too. The policemen and prisoners were busy brushing their teeth, washing it off, cleaning their mouths after eating the snacks standing aside so unconcerned with the big tub near the corridor which was replete with water and the water flowing out of pipes. He grew jealous at seeing them. But his jealousy was the result of inebriation he hadn’t yet got over. He wasn’t gifted with patience. It didn’t rather appear to be an essential character he must possess.

His curled body that lay under a roof in the corridor suddenly got up, sat and he paced to the spot as if attempting to separate the police station from the corridor. The joyous city outside was in its usual mirth. He crossed the doorway and stepped into the police station. A boy carrying an empty tea glass holder brushed against him and raced past the police station. He just followed the footsteps of the boy. Neither he nor the boy was stopped by anyone. He just escaped from the B-4 police station. Like an arrow shot through the air without turning to either side, he sped away, walked fast that bore a near-resemblance of running, completely indifferent to the sounds made around which reminded him of his furtive escape with the stolen paddy grains tied in his waist pouch when he was a small boy. 

Then? A hand grasped him from behind as he ran fast, then had a head on collision with a truck, was then caught, kicked, tied tightly, brought to the police station, and beaten to pulp with batons, belts and shoes. Finally, while lying on his back, he was hit on his knees with batons by two policemen who would have lost their jobs had he not been caught. All these thoughts stood outside the boundary of his memory, and seemed to be struggling to find a way to get into it. 

He just felt to speak with someone. 

“Ayya, please give me some water.” He reiterated his appeal once again. 

“You need water!” the police man who was on duty went out, without overtly bothered about the trouble of going out, ran to the corridor with all his enthusiasm, filled a bucket with water and threw it on his face and body. Though the splash of water caused a burning sensation at some places on his body, water seemed soothing for him. 

“Hello yettaiya! (Colloquial term for Head constable), who do you bathe now?” a young police man came in asking the former. 

“The one who escaped in the morning. It’s for him” 

“Is it that mother….cker?” the young police man stared at the prisoner intently and took off his belt. “Yettaiya, open the lock-up for a minute” he spoke as if giving an order. 

“Don’t take trouble Santhanam, they have almost shredded him. He is lying like a corpse and yelling out for water” 

“Mother…cker! He would have left three families stand on the street by now. Please open the lock-up yettaiaya”  

Yettaiya gave him the lock-up key. The prisoner was watching the enactment of that drama without flinching a move. His face just turned towards the opened door. That was it all, a flash of whip with the leather belt hit his eyes. A sense of alertness ran high in the prisoner. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth lightly, and lay motionless. His knees developed a sudden unbearable pain. He couldn’t either lift or turn his hands. He could only move his left hand of which the wrist hadn’t yet been broken. His face and shoulder blades were repeatedly smacked. Spittle on his face. Nothing of it had any impact on him. He didn’t move an inch. Eventually, his knees were targeted with rash beatings. He gave out a helpless yell, “aiyo…aiyo”. Tears came out, sneaked through his closed fists covering his face. The young police man fixed his belt on his waist, visibly satisfied with his efforts of showing the prisoner a hell. 

The prisoner wasn’t aware that there was one more policemen yet to come. Out of three who would have lost their jobs, only two had paid him their visits. Third one was two-not-six, aged about forty and wouldn’t get involved in any petty scuffles with others. As he had possessed a qualified, graded electrician certificate, Grade A or B, he was earning some extra income through legal means. He never allowed bribery in his dealings. But at the same time he wasn’t contemptuous of people who had bribing as their ethical way of life, nor betrayed them. He would never open his mouth to slander others. Without any ‘black mark’ on his career, he could complete his twenty years of service. Today, he had the test of his life. 

Beatings, kicks, disgrace, inebriation that hadn’t yet died down, a sort of unsullied peace lying under all these and a smugness of having borne all these tortures- all these seemed to have induced sleep in the prisoner. He was blissfully unaware of the lock-up door being opened, entry of two-not-six into the cell, his close examination from head to toe, and his mild kick with legs. Two-not-six bent down, arched lower, examined the prisoner’s motionless body closely and pulled the prisoner’s jaw. The body moved straight without showing any signs of movement in it. Two-not-six glanced at the body fixedly as if the body and the direction it was lying had some untold importance. He, then, silently went around the body once, diligently surveyed its various parts and then resumed his works. 

The prisoner’s body couldn’t shield itself from the teasing of innate feelings and brutish attacks for long. Very soon, it went stiff with the overwhelming fear. Every part of it shivered separately. Every nook of the body had felt the impact of vicious whacks that had made his nerves go frail and stopped them functioning at its commands. Crackles devoured the muscles; a sheer shock almost akin to heart jumping out like a ball with the poisonous bites of a scorpion; ears that got blocked; the pulls of dermis preventing the eyes from opening; a meek moan from the bottom of throat pit that came with froth seeking water- Two-not-six didn’t bother to watch all these. He just switched off the lights. Two-not-six was immensely happy that his electrical knowledge which would otherwise have helped him earn a good amount of money during off-duty hours honourably, and solve electrical problems in police stations to earn a very good reputation, had now helped him to avenge a prisoner who would have caused an irreparable damage in his career with his attempt to escape. 

                                                                    ***End***     

The man in Terylene shirt and eight cubits long Dhoti (Terylene Shirtum Ettu Muzha Vettiyum Anintha Manithar) by G.Nagarajan

 

*This is an English Translation of “Terylene Shirtum Ettu Muzha Vettiyum Anintha Manithar”, a short story written by G. Nagarajan. Translated by  Saravanan Karmegam. 

G Naga Rajan 

   

The brothel agent warned her not to keep the door open and stand at the entrance as he received a reliable information that there might be a police raid. ‘There is no information about Kamala who ran away from the brothel home a month ago. Sarasa, who had gone home for Onam hasn’t returned yet.’ After locking the outer door, Deivanai, sitting alone on mattress on the cot under tube light in the room adjacent to outer veranda, was sulking at it.

Intituitvely thoughtful of something, she climbed up the steps in the outer veranda, reached upstairs, and switched the light on. That room had some more comforts than the one downstairs. Paintings from other countries decorated its walls. One very big cot made in Chettinadu ¹ with a mattress laid on it, that could accommodate two persons had been kept along the wall. That room, normally reserved only for ‘night bookings’ was lying empty for about a month without getting clients. As luck would have it, Kamala could garner some ‘night bookings’. 

Deivanai lifted the mattress slightly up, and took out a long half an inch thick binding rope lying beneath it. It was the rope used by her mother to bind her beddings when she had left her town. Standing in the middle of the room, she stretched it, pulled it with force at different places as if examining its strength, and looked up at the ceiling of the room. An iron ring was hanging in the beam. It was dangling just above the cot’s edge, but an inch away from it. ‘Is it possible to reach the ring with the rope by standing on the cot?’ She couldn’t see the ring clearly as the upper part of mercury lamp hanging in the middle was covered with a curved tin sheet obstructing the view. She went down in haste, brought a long bamboo stick used for drying clothes. She climbed on to the bed, and examined whether she could tuck the end of the rope into the ring. That time, the sound of knocking on the door was heard downstairs. Leaving the rope and stick on the cot itself, she ran downstairs. Before opening the outer door, she stood, hesitant for a second as she felt that no one had actually knocked at the door. She could hear only the sound of Poongavanam’s house door opening. She looked through the gap in the door to see if anyone was standing outside. She felt that no one was standing there. Deivanai went upstairs.

She resumed her attempt to tuck the rope inside the ring again with the help of the bamboo stick. Her shoulders started aching. Sweat began to appear on her forehead, flowed down erasing the Javvadhu vermilion on forehead before flowing down further. An idea came over her mind. She dropped the stick and rope on the floor immediately and ran downstairs. She found out a half feet long rusted nail near the window in the back yard. She came again upstairs with the nail. She tied the end of rope in the middle of the nail. As she forcefully tightened it, the rope cut her palm, hurt it. Unable to bear its pain, she slavered it and gently blew air on it. Standing on the cot, she again tried to hook the nail into the ring with the help of stick. As the nail was not fixed properly at the tip of stick it fell onto the ground repeatedly. She rested for a minute, and set right the shiver in her hands. Again resumed her attempt to hook the nail into the iron ring. While half of the nail could enter the ring, the knot in the rope obstructed the remaining half from entering fully. The weight of the rope also prevented the nail from entering the iron ring. Seeing the rope lengthy, Deivanai felt that the rope shouldn’t be that long. ‘Where she could get a knife to cut off the rope to the required length, she reflected.  There was no knife at home. Blade? That was also not available’. Deivanai remembered an Arival manai ² lying in the kitchen. She jumped down, ran downstairs and brought the Arival Manai. She stood at the edge of the cot, planned to shorten the rope deftly, by measuring out the distance between her neck and the iron ring, and fixing an approximate point on the rope where the noose to be made. Luckily the Arival Manai was relatively sharp, she didn’t have much problem in cutting the rope. Deivanai had yet another idea. She parted the tip of the stick a bit with Arival Manai. Now, she was able to raise the stick above, with the rope not falling down as it was tightly wedged at the tip of the stick. After successfully tucking the nail into the iron ring, she made the rope hanging perpendicularly as the nail was pressing across the iron ring. Standing on the edge of the cot, she tried to make a noose big enough for her head to enter with a knot at the tip of rope. She couldn’t make both noose and knot. She wasn’t experienced in these kinds of affairs. After a couple of failures, she was successful in making a noose with a knot. That time, she heard someone knocking on the door downstairs. Deivanai halted all her attempts for a second. The sound from below grew louder. “There is no such urgency for all these now”, she reflected, ran downstairs, wiped her face with the hem of her saree, adjusted her dress and opened the outer door.

The brothel agent and a new person were standing outside.

“Why this much time to open the door?” asked the brothel agent.

“I was upstairs” Deivanai replied.

“I told you to switch the lights off and lock the door. Didn’t I? Who asked you to go upstairs? As the brothel agent entered the house, the other person too entered along with him.

“Umm…switch the light on” the brothel agent told her, as he entered the house. Deivanai switched the light on in the outer veranda. The person who had come along with the brothel agent looked very tall. His hair was styled, incompletely, like Bhagavathar’s ³, and he was wearing a Terylene shirt and eight cubit long dhoti. Unlike other usual visitors who used to stare at her, he was glancing through the outer veranda and the room adjacent to it. “Does  everything look O.K  sir?” the brothel agent asked him.

He entered the room adjacent to the outer veranda, examined the walls closely in the tube light, and told,” Not bad. You have kept everything neat and clean”

“Here everything is very clean” the brothel agent told, threw out a sly smile. “Let me take leave, then”

“The amount?” asked the new comer.

“I will collect it from the doctor” The brothel agent replied and left.

The visitor closed the outer door and switched the light off in the outer veranda, came to her. Deivanai greeted him and entered the room lit by tube light, adjacent to the outer veranda. She directly went to the bed and sat there. He came near to her, stood hesitantly.

“You may sit down here” she remarked.

“No…There is a chair in the outer veranda. Isn’t it? Please bring it here” he told her. She smiled.

“I am habituated with sitting on easy chair comfortably” he explained.

Many visitors had flirted with her sitting on that reclining cane chair. She went down, brought that cane chair and put it in front of him. He sat on it. She sat on the cot again. Both of them were looking at each other.

“You look beautiful” he told her.  She smiled at him.

“Please pull your saree down a little” he told her. She laughed again. “I am not kidding. Pull your saree down a little so it does not cover your breasts fully”.

She obliged.

“Sit straight”

She sneered.

“Please sit straight” he told as if he was pleading her.

“Are you going to photograph me? She laughed.

“Yes…you may think so” he retorted.

She adjusted her saree and hair as if she was sitting in front of an artiste. He gazed at her intently for a while, relished her beauty, found her pose inappropriate, and told her, “You don’t offer good view in sitting. Please lie down”

“But you are sitting there…doing nothing. Aren’t you?” she told without smiling.

“I have come here just to sit and watch you. Haven’t I?” he replied. She lay, smiled. She folded her one hand, buttressed her head with it, and lay there looking at him, yet smiling. He kept looking at her.

“Don’t you have an urge to do?” she asked him.

“Yes I do have…a lot”

“Then why this distance?”

“That is why I keep staring at you”

“Is just a stare enough for you?” she smiled.

“I can touch to feel you as well”

“But you haven’t touched me yet. Have you?”

“If I touch you, you won’t keep quiet. Will you?”

She laughed. “I won’t be naughty. You may touch me, if you like”

The sound of knocking on the door was heard from below. She had trouble getting up as if she couldn’t do it on her own. The visitor rose, calmly, went to the door and opened it. It was the brothel agent again who had knocked on the door.

Before the brothel agent asked him something, the visitor took out something from his pocket and gave it to him.

“No…No…Keep it with you. I will collect everything from the doctor. Doctor has arrived at the shop. He asked me whether you had come” the brothel agent told him.

“Do tell him that I will be there in a some while”

The brothel agent leaves. The visitor locks the door.

“Atrocious!” exasperated, he sat on the cane chair. 

“What is that?” she asked him, getting off from the cot, came near, stood beside him.

“These kinds of time calculations” as he was telling her, she hugged him, placed kisses on his cheeks and kissed his lips in haste.

“It is alright. You better sleep now” he told her.

“What are you doing then?” she enquired. Lay on the bed.

“I am just sitting here” he replied.

“I don’t mean that. I am asking about your profession.”

“Taking birth, growing up and then dying. This is my profession”

Getting off from the cot, she tries to hug him. But he remains reclined on the chair. Having failed in her attempts, she goes back to the cot and tosses her on it.

“I feel thirsty” Deivanai tells him.

He switches the light on in the outer veranda, brings water from a pot in the corner, and gives it to her. When she drinks it, part of it doesn’t go inside her mouth, spills over and wets her breasts instead.  

As he is standing, tells her, “Good bye”

“When will you come next?" as she is enquiring him, he takes out five rupees coin from his pocket, gives it to her. She receives it, touches it with her eyes and keeps safely under the pillow. He then opens the door and leaves.

At three ‘O clock, the brothel agent came to the house. She was very much eager to ask him about the visitor. But the brothel agent didn’t like her show any interest on any particular visitor. So, on the very outset, she informed him, “That man gave me five rupees.” 

“Which man? asked the brothel agent.

“That man…the one you brought first. That one”

“Who did I bring first? I came here only once today”

“You brought him here at half past seven or so. Haven’t you? You don’t remember that? Do you?”

“What? At half past seven! When I left Subbu’s house, it was already nine.”

“Did you go to Subbu’s house today?”

“Yes…merry making till I spent twenty rupees. The Head Constable warned me not to venture out till nine on the street today. So I stayed back at Subbu’s house till nine”

“If then, you didn’t bring that Terylene shirt man. Did you? I understood that a doctor also came with him. And you took that ‘doccutor’ to some other house. Didn’t you?”

“Doctor! Who is that Doccutor? Are you out of your senses? Or have you been dreaming by keeping the door opened?”

“No…I don’t. I was sitting upstairs keeping the door closed. I came down only when you had knocked it.”

The brothel agent blinked clueless. She continued.

“He had a long hair. He was wearing a blue colour Terylene shirt and eight cubit long dhoti. But he never touched me.” Deivanai laughed when she told this.

“You…whore…stop your blather. When I came to the street, it was already nine ‘o clock. I brought only one guy. It was that Sayabu. Who did I bring before that?”

“Let us see who is actually blabbering, whether it is you or I? Quipping, she turned the pillow over to show him the five rupees coin that she received from the visitor. But nothing was found under the pillow. Deivanai shuddered. She got nervous, and turned the whole pillow over. Nothing was found. She searched for it under the mattress and inside the pillow covers. She toppled the pillow covers upside down holding its two ends. The pillow fell on the ground. She groped inside the pillow cover. Searched the floor completely. That five rupees coin was not found. The brothel agent was standing clueless.

“It shouldn’t have gone anywhere. It must be somewhere around here”. Deivanai was still hopeful.

“Which one?” the brothel agent asked her.

“That five rupees given by the Terylene shirt man."

“You had dreamt. Hadn’t you? The brothel agent laughed.

“It is you who will forget everything under intoxication” Deivanai retorted, still searching the missing five rupees coin.

“Probably it may be in the room upstairs” Deivanai climbed up the steps, ran upstairs. The rope that she had left hanging from the iron ring with all her efforts and the noose that added beauty to it at its tip, left her astounded in the light of mercury lamp which she didn’t switch off.

***End***

Notes:

1. Chettinadu: The region in southern Tamil Nadu known for its exquisite cuisine and architecture.

2.   Arival Manai: A curved cleaver with its sharp edge facing the user, fitted on a wooden frame held down by legs, used for cutting vegetables in olden days. Even now, it is used in many Indian villages.

3.     Bhagavathar: It refers to famous film Actor Thygaraja Bhagavathar.  His iconic hair style was a sort of craze among youths those days.

Translated by Saravanan Karmegam

Source: G. Nagarajan’s Short story “Terylene shirtum Ettu Muzha Vettiyum Anintha Manithar”