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| Pavannan |
The Kitten (பூனைக்குட்டி) by Paavannan
Translated by Saravanan Karmegam
Vaitheki took off the uniform the hospital had provided her
and put on a frock—a yellow flower design drawn in the backdrop of pale
blue—brought from home by her mother. The frock, which used to be skin-tight
once, was now hanging loose on her body. Her mother avoided looking into her
eyes as Vaitheki lifted her head up and looked outside the window, staring at
neem trees with a feigned indifference, and wiped the tears that welled up in
her eyes with her fingers. Her father went near to her, fixed the hooks on her
back, combed her hair, and fastened it with a clip. Vaitheki remembered those
days when her parents used to be on their toes, hurrying her up for school,
each one of them standing on her both sides.
“What has my dear Vaitheki drawn today?” The senior doctor
entered the room with a smile, asking about her routine.
“Good morning, doctor.” Vaitheki smiled at him, displayed her
buck teeth, moved towards the edge of the cot, and sat. With a momentary grin
on their face, her mother, father, and grandfather paved the way for him and
moved aside. The scent of neem flowers came wafting through the windows that
were kept open. Vaitheki took out her drawing notebook kept near the pillow and
gave it to the doctor. The doctor flipped its pages prudently and keenly
glanced through the picture she had drawn a day ago. It was a painting—a cot
and three kittens sitting on it. She had named them Neela, Mala, and Kala and
written them under each kitten.
“Very nice… Very nice, the doctor told, examining the
painting at different angles again and again. “It looks very beautiful,
Vaitheki. Their whiskers and eyes… it seems as if they were real, sitting in
front of me. If there is a competition in painting, you are the one who must be
given the first prize.” He patted her on her shoulder. “Which one among these
three kittens does my dear Vaitheki like most?” the doctor asked her with a
grin on his face.
“I like all the three”—when she told this, her eyes were wide
open, effervescing gracefully.
He sat near her, asked her to show her tongue, pressed her
lower eyelids down, examined the eyeballs, and said, “My dear girl does not
have any problem at all. She can go home happily.” He then turned to her father
and told him, “A wonderful improvement, sir. I am really amazed to see her
strong willpower at this age of eight. I have seen children running away at the
very mention of medicine. But children like her who take medicines very
patiently without griping are very few. Vaitheki is a great child.” He patted
her on her shoulder. Her mother tried to ask him something hesitatingly.
“No serious problem anymore, ma… Now you can well be
confident… In case of any rare, extreme exigency, please do what I said.” He
calmed her down. He then turned to Vaitheki and asked her sweetly, “What would
you like to become after you complete your studies?” His fingers stroked her
soft cheeks gently.
“I would like to become a doctor…doctor,” Vaitheki replied
with a smile.
“Hats off, Vaitheki! I appreciate your spirit. You can join
as my assistant in my clinic. Can’t you?” He laughed. While laughing, his eyes
were filled with tears. He removed his spectacles and wiped them as he went
out.
As her father went out to pay off the hospital charges, her
mother collected the items kept in the room and stuffed them into a box.
Vaitheki showed her paintings to her grandfather sitting on her side and
explained each one of them to him enthusiastically. Each painting had a picture
of a cat in one corner—peeping cat, cat standing near the door, cat sleeping
beneath the cot, cat hanging from the branch of a tree, cat licking the pool of
water on the floor near a water bucket by the side of a well—Vaitheki thought
of asking her grandfather at once about her toy cats. She was confused with the
different durations she had actually stayed in different hospitals. When she
thought of asking about cats, thousands of questions arose—where they are
now? Is anyone sleeping beside them? Has its colour, which did start getting
faded, become alright?—hit her mind. At the very next moment, when she
realized that the replies she would receive from anyone in this regard would
never satisfy her, she brought the images of those sitting cats to her mind and
delved into surreal thoughts. In the world of her fantasy, those cats were
waiting, curling their bodies, looking up to her face, for her touch and
caress.
Vaitheki grew up as a child who had been avoided methodically
by other children during her formative years. Even the children of her
relatives would move away from her, curling their lips in repugnance at seeing
her. There were days when it was very usual, even when the elders who, by
mistake, happened to stand beside her used to display a fake smile on their
face for a moment and avoid her with a cursory touch and grin. The thick, curly
hair streaking on her cheek, the corners of her ears, her hands and her legs
like a charcoal mark had made her stand aloof from other children. The changes
occurred on the child’s body, which was otherwise looking normal with a pale
brown complexion and healthy growing childlike features like any other child
till the age of three, were something beyond the comprehension of medical
knowledge. Within six months, it started spreading all over her body. There was
not a single doctor left out in Pondicherry who hadn’t been consulted. All
their suggestions and different medicines she took for months together yielded
no result. When her parents stood helpless, one doctor gave them a slip of
reference, suggesting consultation with the specialist doctors in Chennai.
After some months, they also declared that it was beyond
their ability and advised her parents to go to Bangalore. Her father spent all
his savings on medicines and a multitude of consultations without even
calculating how much it was. ‘My daughter, who once looked like a flower,
is now looking like a bush. I don’t know whose evil eyes have befallen my
daughter. O! Lord Muruga! Heal my daughter. In the month of
coming Aadi 1, I will come to your abode, carrying a flower Kavadi 2’.
Her mother took refuge in the feet of God. Her father was stunned when the
administration of a school at the corner of the street denied admission to her.
Other schools in the vicinity too were hesitant in giving admission to her the
moment they saw her.
At the end of his tireless efforts, her father could admit
her to a school with the recommendation of a pastor known to him. He had to
shell out some thousands of rupees for the infrastructural developments of the
school. Other girl children in the school didn’t talk to her. She was not
permitted to participate in the games too. Initially, she was shocked at the
manner in which she was subjected to such humiliating rejections. She was
broken, depressed. Only at that juncture did her mind soon discover the art of
converting her loneliness into a close confidante.
She started drawing pictures in the notebooks given by her
father—she would draw lines with various colours, circles, intersecting lines,
and thus drawing squares and elongating them randomly at her whims. In her
paintings, animals without horns would have horns, and those with horns would
have no horns. In her painting notebooks, the chickens were flying, piercing
through the sky; the birds were walking, hopping, and tottering; the cows and
goats were travelling in cars; and human beings with tails on their backs were
crawling with four legs. Her mother couldn’t tolerate these fantasies
represented in those pictures, looking askance at her with her teary eyes. Her
father, quite a sympathetic man, understood the efforts of his child in
diverting her mind, would move away without uttering anything, nodding his head
in affirmation with a feel of satisfaction.
In the school annual function in which her parents had
participated, she won six trophies for the first time—stood First in total
marks, full attendance, singing competition, painting competition, frog jump,
and running in a jute bag competition—when the auditorium quaked with the claps
of praise, her father with teary eyes held her hands tightly into his and
pressed them lovingly. While returning from the beach on Sunday evening that
week, her father stopped in the market and asked her, “Anything you want,
Vaitheki? We would like to present you a gift for the first prize you have
won.” She was unable to bear the shock of that sudden display of love. She
looked at both of them unbelievingly, staring at them one after the other
alternately. With her eyes wide open, she walked into the toy shop and moved
ahead, touching each toy with her fingers—Thalaiyatti pommai, 3 electric
trains, a soldier on a horse, and a baby elephant. If she stopped for a while,
looking at something intently, her father would get curious and ask, “Do you
need this one?” Vaitheki went near a toy kitten kept on a table in the corner
and pointed at it.
Thick, curly hairs hanging all over its body, small cute
rounded eyes, and whiskers looking like a bunch of grass felt smoother while
fondling it. Earlobes folded, stiffened, sitting with its back bent forward,
prompting one to take it on their lap and snuggle it. She stood beside it,
touched every part of it, wondered, and immersed herself in its beauty. “It
just looks like a real kitten…pa,” she smiled at her father. Her mother’s face
got gloomy without a tangible reason. Her father paid the required amount and
bought it for her. Vaitheki slept that night, keeping that kitten beside her on
the bed. She was awake for a long time, prepared a long list of names in her
mind to name that kitten, and then got them deleted. Without being able to
finalise a name for it, she was lying on her bed, staring at the darkness
outside through the window. Suddenly, the blue hue of the window curtain
prompted her to finalise the name, “Neela” (literally, it means blue colour).
The very next moment, the kitten got its name, Neela. She mumbled in its ears,
“From this moment onwards, you are my best friend, Neela.” She gently kissed it
on its forehead and earlobes. She felt a tickling sensation when its hairs
brushed her nose. Caressing its leg, she smiled, “You are a four-legged cat; I
am a two-legged cat. Aren’t I?”
From the next day, Vaitheki recited all the verses she had
memorized to Neela. Tapping its toes, she would repeat the tables. ‘Look at
this naughty look! The toy kitten accepted all the loving bouts of Vaitheki
with its smile. She would find happiness in wearing garlands made of fallen
cherry flowers found in the garden around its neck. Coming from the school, she
narrated different stories to Neela while her fingers still fondled Neela’s neck.
Neela too would tell her stories into her ears—stories of wandering, hiding
from one place to another, stories of stealthily overturning the utensils to
drink milk, and stories of chasing rodents. Vaitheki slept that night
peacefully under the warmth of those stories. Watching her activities, her
mother became more and more morose. “Let her live in her own world”—with” his
single note, her father would keep her mother’s mouth shut. Her mother failed
in her attempts to penetrate the layer of loneliness that Vaitheki had built
for herself, to scoop her up and hug onto her, but in vain, and stood depressed
every day.
She won six trophies in the next year too. Her father took
her to the shop to purchase yet another gift for her. This time too, she
selected a toy kitten for herself again. She named it Mala. She stood first in
the subsequent years too. Seven trophies were announced for her. As she won six
trophies consecutively for three years, the seventh trophy was given to her as
a special trophy. That time too, she asked for one more toy kitten. Before
buying that, she had already finalised a name for it. The name was Kala. She
had allotted half of the space in her cot only for those toy kittens. Her aunt,
who had come from Cuddalore, saw her sleeping amidst the ‘kittens’ and
passed a witty remark, with a smile, “If this goes like this, it would be
difficult to differentiate the kitten from Vaitheki.”
Before she could understand the causticity of those words she
spoke, they had already driven knives into Vaitheki’s heart. She cried her
heart out, inconsolably, as if her heart was about to burst out. Her father,
who had never been harsh with anyone, took her aunt in isolation and rebuked
her severely for her impetuosity. Vaitheki wondered, thinking about all these
instances as if they had just happened a day ago. Her memories were rolling
down just like pearls scattering around from a bundle thrown open.
“Shall we leave now?” Her father held Vaitheki’s shoulder.
Seeing the gown she was wearing, he said, “Isn’t that the same gown we got from
Hyderabad for her birthday?” He looked at her mother for a moment. “Two years
gone… it has passed just like that. Hasn’t it?” He heaved a sigh. Both of them
picked up their bags in their hands, looked around the room once, and came out.
Vaitheki ran to an old man and a boy who were lying in the adjacent room, said
goodbye to them, and came back. As her grandfather sat in the front seat near
her father in the car, both Vaitheki and her mother occupied the rear seat. Her
father drove the car in reverse, took it out from the parking bay, and came
straight for moving forward. When the car rolled forward with a mild jerk, an
uneasy feeling filled the stomach. Only after the car started striding on the
main road, leaving the entrance of the hospital, did both their mind and body
come to normalcy. Vaitheki started looking outside through the window
after the car moved ahead for a short distance.
The buildings were looking like different types of wooden
sticks inserted on wet earth and were standing frozen. The trees on the sides
of the road had their branches spread towards the sky. Under their shadow, seen
many pushcart vendors. Looking at the movie posters pasted on the walls one
after the other, she kept reading their names in her mind. Those different
names of movies occupying her as a cluster came out first mixed and then hit
her memory. Suddenly she called out to her father and asked, “You told me that
we would go to watch a Sivaji 4 movie once it hit the theatre. What about it
now?” Hearing it, her father felt his throat had got choked up for a second.
Eyes were filled with tears. Without turning his face, he told, “It’s been out…
ma. Next week we can watch it on the CD. Vaitheki saw her face reflected in the
rearview mirror. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks looked hollow, and facial
bones were visible. She felt that her cheeks, hands, and neck had become
softer, devoid of any tingling sensation, which she used to feel earlier in her
body whenever her curly hair brushed against her skin while fluttering in the
wind. Even though she could feel that her body had turned normal like others,
she was embarrassed to see that her complexion had turned into the hue of burnt
wood.
There was a big dent in her shoulder pits. Hands were looking
like thin sticks. She was sad, and her sadness penetrated her heart. The very
next moment, she remembered the words the doctor spoke to her during the
consultation. She made those words heard aloud in her heart—‘Vaitheki, you
must not think about the past ever. There is nothing called yesterday. Only
tomorrow henceforth’. As she repeated those words a couple of times as if
she uttered them for others, her mind turned to the state of happiness.
It was just a mere serendipitous incident that a specialist
doctor participated as a chief guest in a painting competition, and he had
requested Vaitheki’s parents to come to the school to discuss certain matters.
His words, ‘This can be cured with laser treatment; that too within seven
or eight months she can be fully cured,’ gave them an enormous hope. “Even
if her education takes a hit, let it be. We can send her to the school next
year. But how long can we keep this child in this condition? No matter how much
we need to spend on her. We have to treat her anyway,” her mother begged her
father. With permission from the school, they managed to obtain leave. Once her
father arranged a big amount as a loan from the office in the very next week,
her treatment started.
With the treatment given for six months uninterruptedly, her
appearance changed completely, amazingly though. Not a single strand of hair
was found on her body. But her dark complexion had got further, unbelievably
darker. Dark shoulders, dark hands, dark neck, and dark cheeks. That night when
she returned from the hospital, she stayed awake in the night, cuddled those
kittens, and cried silently. The room was filled in with the thickness of
darkness. At that moment when the darkness, which had engulfed the entire world
outside the window, rose like an ocean and filled in the room, the kittens
assuaged her, telling her, “Aren’t we all dark in complexion?” Their tiny hands
stretched forward tenderly and patted her back lovingly. Just to make her
sleep, the eyes of the kittens started narrating stories. As their bent back
slowly got straightened up, and the way they got metamorphosed into small girl
children with tiny braids, made her immeasurably happy. Those girl children
crawled towards her and sat beside her.
They woke her up and led her to the garden. Leaning against
the haystack, they chit-chatted, counted the stars in the dark sky, held their
hands together, played, spun like a spintop, ran as their braids flapped
behind. They picked the flowers and made a garland out of it, put it around her
neck, made her sit in a palanquin, and carried her. The old songs they sang
while carrying her in the palanquin resonated like a lullaby. At one moment,
they got her down, made her sit on a swing, and moved it to and fro. They got
her immersed in the experience of the ecstasy of a bird flying around, swimming
across the sky. Then they got down from the swing and made her sit on a flying
carpet and flew towards the clouds. The soft, icy clouds, which she had never
experienced. She couldn’t forget that wonderful experience of driving through
them and coming out on the other side like an arrow. All her sorrows and pains
that had been choking up her heart densely vanished at once in the presence of
their fun-loving company. Getting tired of being ecstatic, Vaitheki fell into a
deep sleep without even knowing when she had fallen asleep.
Unlike before, her love for those kittens grew manifold from
that day. During the daytime, she was deeply absorbed in the dreams about the
previous night. The next day too, once the darkness descended and everyone fell
asleep, those girl children came near to her, rolling over from the corner of
the cot. As they came close to her, they picked up her hands into theirs,
caressed her cheeks, and pinched it gently. They narrated stories and sang
songs one after the other. Laughed. Jumped. Kissed. Low-pitched murmurs were
ringing around her all the time. One day, when her irritated mother asked her,
bending down to pick up those kittens lying beside her, ‘What is this heck of a
nuisance of talking to yourself?’, she jumped on it, hugged it tightly, and
refused to part with it. When her mother tried to snatch it away from her
forcibly, she cried violently. “Hell with you! You are just incorrigible! He
only brought them. Didn’t he? Let him take care of this nuisance.” - Visibly
annoyed, her mother moved away. Once her sobbing stopped, she started playing
with those kittens, twisting their earlobes, curling their whiskers, stroking
their bodies, and twisting their tails.
Vaitheki spread her wings and flew in the world of ecstasy,
which got her relieved of bitterness and fatigue. The girl children, holding
her fingers, flew away in the emptiness of space in the direction prefixed by
them, coaxing her also to come along with them. She loved that journey. The
trees were covered with darkness. Dark bushes. Cliffs. Dark clouds. Since she
could join the school only in the next academic year, Vaitheki had to stay
home. As her mother thought that she had to be fed with nutritious food and her
words must be filled with mirth, she showered more love and affection upon her.
She made Athirasam, Porivilangai balls, and Murukku 5—all that
she used to love much. She would sit beside her and comb her hair, making
different patterns of coiffure. In order to drive away her shyness, she took
her to the temples and markets along with her. Her father brought some old
school books and asked her to read them. He brought drawing notebooks and paint
boxes for her. Seeing her drawings, he cheered her up with his encouraging
words every day.
All her times when she couldn’t spend time closely with
others were actually spent with the cats. Vaitheki always loved to keep them on
her lap, hugging them onto her chest, and cuddling all the time. Without giving
a damn about time, those girl children came out of those kittens whenever she
thought about them. Putting their jaw on her shoulders, they murmured something
into her ears. The stories and songs they narrated made her laugh heartily,
clapping her hands, to an extent of filling her eyes with tears, choking up
with laughter, followed by resultant coughing. Mother came running to her on
hearing her coughing sound and stood there bemused, watching her hearty laugh.
Mother’s arrival severed everything, and emptiness engulfed
again. Her mother shook her, shouting, “What is this all? What is this?”
Without knowing what to reply, Vaitheki threw an empty stare at her. However,
the subsequent events that occurred every day after that didn’t allow her
mother to take the things for granted. Her mother became extremely worried; she
shed tears seeing her condition. Without knowing how to go about this
situation, her father also got hugely confused. Mother insisted that doctors
should be consulted immediately. Her father was literally broken at the very
thought of admitting her into a hospital for further treatment. He stood for a
long time near Vaitheki while she was sleeping in the dark, caressing her head
tenderly. Her lips, parting slightly for every breath, reminded baby fish. Her
childhood innocence was reflected on her softer cheeks. He was prompted with
the feeling that by any means, his child had to be cured. The intensity of this
feeling increased manyfold when her subdued voice was heard incessantly in that
empty room.
On one particular night, Vaitheki accepted the call of those
girls who lured her to come out to watch the moonlight. She slipped out of the
bed without making noise and silently took off her shawl. She tiptoed, hit the
cloth almirah accidentally, turned towards the other side, and again hit the
cloth lines used for drying. Steadied herself somehow, moved in the dark with
blind assessment of direction, opened the door, and when she entered the
garden, the chilly wind of the night embraced her. The chirping of insects was
resonating in all directions with an unusual sound that she hadn’t heard of
before. She stood stunned at the beauty of stars scattered in the sky, looking
like dots in the kolam that had been left incomplete and
forgotten. The children showed her the moon floating like a round plate in the
sky. Vaitheki stood immersed in the beauty of its light. Moisture of dews. The
light lay spread across like milk. The fragrance of jasmine is blossoming in
the bushes. The icy wind braced her chest. The girls were dancing, singing new
lyrics. Vaitheki joined them and danced. She also started singing in an
unbridled ecstatic elation. While dancing in a circular motion, her legs hit a
stone, and she fell down. As her head hit on a washing stone kept near the
well, she fell unconscious.
When her mother came to the well to take water in the
morning, she saw her lying unconscious, came running to her, and scooped her
up. She shook her violently, “Vaitheki…Vaitheki.” She lay speechless, immobile
like a statue. Her father came there hearing the sound near the well, lifted
her, laid her on the sofa, and sprinkled water on her face. Vaitheki opened her
eyes, still only half conscious, and couldn’t identify anyone around her. She
mumbled the same moon song. Her hands rose up involuntarily as if someone was
holding her hands. A streak of smile shone on her lips. Her father and mother
stood completely transfixed, staring at the allurement of ecstasy and the
gravity of loneliness in her eyes shining concomitantly.
Their trips to the hospital continued again as usual. As the
first one was not satisfactory, they went to another doctor. As he was also not
efficient, they went to the third doctor. The third one approached the issue
with a motherly tenderness. He treated her as if she were his own child.
The doctor had converted his clinic into a play court. The
children and old people alike were playing freely there. The tenderness and
care of the doctor were soothing for all of them. With his earnest efforts of
six months, he pulled Vaitheki back from the severe mental stress she was
suffering from. Vaitheki asked her father every day, “Father, will I be able to
attend the school again? Will I get all those trophies again?”
“You will win them, dear. If you don’t win them, who else
will?” Her father, teary-eyed, hugged her onto his bosom. On reaching home, her
grandfather got down from the car and opened the door of the rear seat. “Get
down slowly, Vaitheki,” he called her out, guiding her, holding her hands.
Seeing a new bicycle kept near the entrance door window, she smiled, with her
eyes wide open, “Aii…bicycle!” she exclaimed. “Yes, dear girl… it is for you.
It’s me, your grandpa, who got it for you. Henceforth, you can practice driving
with this bicycle.” Her grandfather stroked her head lovingly.
Once they entered the house, her father showed her a video
game box he had bought for her. He taught her how to play the game on the
television by connecting those twenty or thirty video game discs he got for
her. She was very much excited to watch the game of a motorcycle rider escaping
the bullets from the guns aimed at him. In ten minutes, her hands gained the
expertise of operating the game box on their own. Everyone was trying to engage
her in some conversation. In spite of it, it appeared that some enigmatic
silence had occupied the ambience, as if sitting there permanently on a chair
amidst that situation.
Hours later, Vaitheki went into her room. The items and
dresses that were kept clean were found neatly placed in their respective
places. Vaitheki stared at them one by one—table, chairs, television, toys,
trophies, medals, clothes, almirah, book racks, and cot. Once her eyes fell on
the cot, she started searching for the kittens reflexively. She threw her eyes
all around the room and did a random quick search, visibly anxious that they
might have been misplaced. Searched for them in the loft. With a suspicion that
they might have been put into a sack, bundled, and kept under the cot, she bent
down and searched there too. Nothing was found. Her chest rose up, heaving a
sob.
Her body started sweating profusely, instinctively. As her
tears welled up in her eyes, she bit her lips violently. As she was about to
leave the room, sobbing, she saw the kittens stuffed beneath the almira where
clothes were kept. She bent down inquiringly and pulled them out. She held them
in her hands zealously. The kittens didn’t turn their faces towards her.
Avoiding her eyes, they were looking in a different direction. They couldn’t
feel the touch of Vaitheki’s fingers. There wasn’t even a sign of girls who
used to come out of them. The thought of not being able to meet them anymore
hit her consciousness deeply. She dropped those toy kittens, blinking blankly
with their big eyes, and sobbed inconsolably. Her father and mother came
running to her, tense, on hearing the sound of her sob.
“What happened? What happened?” Her mother’s question did not
enter her mind. Due to incessant crying, her chest beat became faster. Her body
was shivering. Tears were rolling down like a flood from her eyes. Unable to
understand the reason for her anxiety and shiver, her mother ran inside, opened
a medicine box quickly, and took out a green colour tablet that the doctor had
prescribed for emergency situations. She laid Vaitheki on her lap and assuaged
her, “Don’t cry, my dear girl. Aren’t you my dearest one? Please open your
mouth,” Mother beseeched her and made her swallow one tablet. After placing a
tight kiss on her forehead, her mother started narrating some entertaining
stories. In seven or eight minutes, Vaitheki fell into an empty space of sleep
where her mother's voice hadn’t been reachable. With their worried faces, her
father and mother were staring at her face, rather helplessly.
***Ended***
Notes:
1. Aadi-
a Tamil month
2. Kavadi-
A decorated wooden stick bent in a semi-circular form carried by devotees of
Lord Murugan as a part of their worship.
3. A
toy made of plastic with the upper body of a human being or an animal with the
moderately heavy object (clay) under its seat to maintain a centre of gravity.
If the head of the toy is tilted on one side, it will come straight again due
to gravity. This type of toys is known by the town from where they became famous,
Thanjavur.
4. Sivaji Ganesan- a
popular actor in Tamil cinema
5. Snacks prepared during
special occasions in Tamil families.
6. Kolam- Patterns drawn
in the front yard of the houses with rice/lime powder.
