Vannadasan
“We’ll be back soon,” as I called aloud, Easwari stepped over the threshold. “I so badly want to join you both and seek their blessings. But it so happens that I just cannot come with you. What can I do,” she said sadly.
“What if you aren’t able to join us. We’re carrying with us the ulunthu vadai and siruparuppu payasam you made,” said Thaandu Maama holding the stainless steel thookuchatti and the cloth bag with the sambadam in his hands. “They would surely understand why you couldn’t come. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not even a month since your sister passed away. What if you aren’t able to seek their blessings this year, there’s always a next time,” said Maama and stood at the doorway till I manoeuvred and parked the car outside the gate. Easwari stood waiting near the pillar. She can lock the gate and go inside only after we have left.
“It’s close to sixty-one years since Vengu Pillai got married. He must be as old as me, or even slightly older. He has married away all his five daughters and found daughters-in-law for his two sons. It’s indeed a blessing that the couple are living like Ammaiyappar, the Lord and his consort, till this ripe old age. Even though I don’t know them personally, that is one reason why I wished to go with Sundaram today,” Thaandu Maama explained to Easwari as he thrust his feet into the sandals. Easwari kept looking at the sixth toe attached to the pinkies on both his feet.
“We’ll leave now. You close the door and get inside,” he said and stepped out on the road. I had left the front left door of the car open for him.
“I’ll place this thookuchatti container between my feet. That will make sure it doesn’t spill,” said Thaandu Maama as he climbed in. In a way, he was related to me as a grandfather. “Call me however you want, I’m fine with either grandfather or uncle. I don’t have any objections. Whatever you call me, my name is still Thaandavaraayan. That’s not going to change in anyway,” he would declare with laughter.
He might be eighty years old. But if you asked him about that, he would get guarded. “Is someone going to give me a medal if I proclaim my age? Or is someone going to send me a money order as old age pension? I would know that I had been alive yesterday only after I wake up today. But where is the guarantee that I would be alive tomorrow? Would the crow that is going to caw tomorrow sit on my roof today and ask, ‘Thaandu, are you ready?’” he would elaborate in response.
I realized that Thaandu Maama wanted to wave goodbye to Easwari when he said, “Looks like she has work to do in the kitchen, she’s already gone.” He pulled the lever and pushed the seat backwards. “When you decided to buy this soap box, you should have gone in for a slightly bigger one? See, my legs wouldn’t fit in.” When he said this the first time he got into my car, I pushed the lever backwards to make room for his legs. The next time he got in, he seemed to have figured out how to do it himself.
“Oh, but I thought you would drive and that I could take the passenger’s seat,” I responded as I started the engine. I noticed that the two long-stemmed paneer flowers on the deity’s photo on the dashboard were vibrating. He seemed to be disturbed by that, just like me.
“Poor things, they’re trembling,” he said and held the flowers in his fingers. I assumed he hadn’t heard what I said. After a while, he removed his fingers from the flowers, turned towards me and said, “So, I’ve become a laughingstock for you all.”
Thaandu Maama’s voice sounded just the same as Kayathaathu Chittappaa’s. It sounded neither male nor female. It seemed to emanate from an unknown region that lay somewhere between his nose and throat. His voice resembled a series of waves generated by the shadow of a dry leaf that falls into a deep well filled with water on a hot summer day. When Maama slapped someone on the back either in good humour or when he narrated an off-colour joke, his voice sounded more pleasant.
When I was young, I’ve heard the way Maama used to address Radha Athai. That was before she passed away. He never addressed her by name and would always call her, “Yaettee!” And never had he called her in a gentle soft voice; his voice boomed whenever he called out to her. And, in that brief moment where his voice uttered her name with a slight wobble, it clearly demonstrated the love and affection he had for her. No one can not like his voice that sounded like a lost and found item.
“How could I mock you, Maama? You’ve always wanted to drive, isn’t it.” I said this with a deliberate intention. I expected him or rather wanted him to pick up a woman’s name and say in a lewd way, “What do you know how I drove her?”
In the ten days since he arrived, he had been pestering me to teach him to drive from when he came to know that I had bought a car. “Teach me how to do this, de. All I need to do is sit next to you and watch all that you do just a couple of times. And, I will be able to do it myself the third time. I can even take you for a drive,” he insisted. I hesitated only because I had to consider his age. Otherwise, I knew that he was quite capable of driving the car as he claimed.
It is indeed true that about ten years back, he had journeyed on the back of the Pottal Puthur elephant all the way from Alwarkurichi to Ambasamudram. He claimed that he had covered the distance between Manimuthaaru and the Maancholai Horse Point riding the horse of the Englishman who owned Harvey Mills in his younger days. I’m not sure if he really did that. If demanded, he would only say, ‘What is there to lie about this, de?’ Once, he had picked up my Rajdoot motorcycle from Velmurugan Workshop, where I had left it for getting serviced. He took it to a milkman and convinced him that it would be the best mode of transport to deliver milk every day and get it sold.
“Alright. You come over and sit in my place. You handover the keys to me and then see for yourself if I can drive the car or not,” he insisted. He was clearly a man of the olden days. So, he managed to articulate all this with a large smile and, most importantly, without letting the simmering anger flash on his face. I quickly extended a gesture of truce and said, “Since I am already at the wheel, I will continue to drive. You can take it on our way back. I’ll handover the keys the moment we reach Vengu Periappa’s house. Fine?” I removed my left hand from the steering wheel and placed it on his shoulder.
“What’s wrong with the steps I follow, de. I start the first gear, gently remove my foot from the clutch and start the accelerator, and the engine gets switched off. This is what happened the last two or three times and you were witness to it. Just that, right? You wait and watch what happens on our way back home. And, then you could let me know if the car is on wings or standing still,” he said. His shrill voice now sounded as if it had derived strength from some unknown place. When you draw water from the well using a bucket, and some of it spills over into the well, you would hear a guttural ‘thlup’, and his tone exactly sounded like that right now.
I tried to recall Kayathaathu Chittappaa’s face now. He used to sound just like Thaandu Maama. I wished the peaceful demeanour on his pockmarked face would appear on Thaandu Maama’s face now. “We’ll reach there in about ten to fifteen minutes. We might stay there for about half an hour and start back right away. Today is a holiday, so there won’t be much traffic on the road. The road will all be yours while coming back.” I tried to gently place him in the driver’s seat through my conversation.
“Why are you trying to change the topic. Do you assume I am a kid?” He didn’t remove his eyes from the road and looked on through the windshield. I turned the car right, reduced the speed, moved to the second gear, and as one half of the vehicle moved to the left, I steered to the right and sounded the horn. He observed me closely as I went through these motions without a second thought. He seemed to enjoy the electronic blips that went off as I switched on the indicator. He waited for it to subside and then started talking to me, all the while keeping his face straight and looking right in front of him.
“You don’t know, Sundaram. It’s been two or three days now since I started learning to drive a car without letting anyone know. All inside my mind. Do you know how many times I pushed the gear, how many times it went dud, and how many times I had restarted it. All in my sleep and waking time. It is like getting the solution to a math problem you’ve been trying to work on for a long time. You get the solution in a jiffy without realizing when it had come. When you step into the water would you know the exact moment when it accepted you. Can you pinpoint the exact instant it allowed you to start to swim? It is just an auspicious hour when everything comes together. That’s all one can say.”
“In the same way, your car has also accepted me. And has informed me to drive it on our way back home. In fact, I’ve already driven the car to your Athai’s home at Nadu Street in Paavoor. His voice trembled now. I could hear him call Athai, “Yaetee.” I’ve been to Thaandu Maama’s Radha Athai’s home. Their cow had borne calf on the day we were visiting. I had kept looking at the calf and its umbilical cord.
Sitting next to me, I can clearly see how much Thaandu Maama resembled that calf. He had its eyes and eyelids. His eyes appeared to have grown bulgier, and the eyelashes seemed to have grown lengthier than they were when we had left home.
“Another five minutes, and we will be in Vengu Periappa’s home.” As I announced, we crossed a large vaagai tree covering the ground with its huge shadows and splattered bird droppings. And flowers like silk tassels. One of them fell and got stuck to the glass in front of Thaandu Maama. We crossed two or three more vaagai trees, but none was as large as the first one. From one of them hung huge broad clusters of pods. A parrot screeched from the top. Thaandu Maama had now transformed into a totally different person altogether, and his voice had acquired a softness unlike before.
“It’s surprising, de. To see these pods and listen to the screeches of parrots in the middle of a large town gives me unfathomable feelings. Did you know that maruthu and vaagai trees are indicators of a lush and fertile region? When someone travels a long distance by foot, all they have to do is follow the row of maruthu trees and soon they will reach a flowing river. It’s just the same with a vaagai. A tree on which ten to twenty parrots reside cannot be an ordinary tree.” Thaandu Maama fell reticent, and in those two or three odd minutes, we had arrived at Vengu Periappa’s home.
“Shall we get off?” I asked him. Maama picked up the thookuchatti and the cloth bag with the sambadam and climbed off the car. “Have you locked the car?” he asked when he saw the indicators go on and off along with a click. “Hold this for a minute,” and he handed over the thookuchatti to me. He reached across the bonnet, picked up the vaagai flower, and put it in his shirt pocket.
I simply adored the door at the entrance to Vengu Periappa’s home. It was a huge double door made of large wooden planks. The dull green paint was a mere remnant of all the lush green that had been devoured by the glowing sun over the years. Its surface, once polished and smoothened by the skilful hands of the carpenter, was scuffed all over now. The joints had loosened up over the years. An open square-shaped metal hinge at the top held both doors together. When you lifted and released the hinge, it dropped on the door on the opposite side with a thud. Years of lifting and dropping had created a lead-coloured dent on the door.
Thaandu Maama seemed to admire the door even more than I had. After entering, he placed the metal hinge back in its position and said, “An aged tree. All shrunken and old, just like me.” On the floor at the threshold, two upturned triangles fused to form a star-patterned kolam. “A simple design,” he said. He moved to one side to see the glittering particles in the kolam powder.
Someone was playing the bulbulthara instrument from inside the house. “Who’s that, de?” Thaandu Maama gestured to me. “Vengu Periappa,” I whispered back. “I had totally forgotten that something like that exists in this world. Look at the name, bulbulthara,” he said. He tugged the branch of the pomegranate tree that bent in his direction to peer closely at the tender flower and fruit. When he let the branch go, it quickly sprang back to its position.
When Thaandu Maama said, “Aey, this is some yesteryear song, I am not able to recall it,” I mentioned the first line of the song, “Yenthen ullam thulli vilaiyaduvathum yeno, Maama.” He was taken over by surprise and said, “How did you know, it’s something from our times.”
“This is one of Periappa’s favourite songs. I’ve heard him play this before,” I replied.
“Lalitha would dance gracefully swaying this way and that like a snake,” he said. “How long did you say it is since he got married, sixty-three years?! Lalitha was not a random actress, you know,” he laughed heartily and continued. “When the song is over, Lalitha would go and sit next to Gemini Ganesan. Let’s go inside,” and he removed his chappals.
“Periappa,” I called aloud as I entered inside. Thaandu Maama walked beside me. I didn’t have to call twice. Vengu Periappa was already at the door. A glittering gold chain lay on his shirtless torso. The lungi that had been tied snugly around his paunch fell short of touching his ankle. He put his palms together and greeted us, “Vannakkkkaamm. Come in, Sundaram.” A golden bracelet and the red cord distributed in temples and worn by most people usually adorned his right wrist.
“This is Thaandu Maama,” I started introducing them to each other. As he looked at Maama and welcomed him, he uttered a blessing of bountifulness. “Vanakkkkam. Vaazhga valamudan.” He then picked up the turkey towel lying on the chair and wrapped it across his shoulders to cover his torso. He looked at Thaandu Maama and made a respectful gesture, indicating that he should take a seat. I noticed that the green paint on the two cane chairs was also faded.
Thaandu Maama opened the conversation theatrically without any hesitation. “It was easy for you to ask me to sit down. But before sitting, I had to inspect the corners of the room to make sure if some creature was still swaying to your mesmerizing tunes. Your song is over, but I’m not sure if the creature has shrunk its open hood,” he said.
“Aey yeppa!” Vengu Periappa was clearly awestruck by the response. He clapped his hands loudly in astonishment and laughed. He swiftly removed the towel and covered himself again. He picked up a pillow and placed it on his lap, and said, “Oh, looks like you had come in right at the beginning, it’s a pity that I didn’t notice you at all.”
It looked like Thaandu Maama was sizing up Vengu Periappa before he started responding to him. Usually, his voice sounded shrunken, but now it seemed to have expanded. “It’s good that you did not notice us. And, that we couldn’t see you. It was best that we were able to listen to you taking a Viswaroopam, like the gigantic figure that towers high and touches the sky. Actually, you may only reach up to my shoulder in height. But when you were playing the instrument you were somewhere there, at the top; like the flag on the chariot that flaps about in the breeze.”
It was clear that Thaandu Maama was getting animated. “If you had played a few more numbers, we would have stood there at the entrance spellbound, listened to you and simply gone back. We had to come inside since we are carrying the payasam and paruppu vadai made by Easwari for you. We cannot miss delivering what she had made to commemorate this special day.”
Vengu Periappa turned towards the kitchen and called, “Viradham, Viradham.” He then turned towards me and said, “Of late, your Periammai is turning into a total deaf.”
“But old age does bring some companions along,” added Thaandu Maama in a casual manner.
“But Anaviradham is six years younger to me. I’m much older. I am eighty three now. She would turn seventy eight in the month of Aippasi,” he said. “She’s undergone surgery in both her knees and uses a walker to move around. Otherwise, she has no other problem at all. All our seven offspring live in seven directions and are doing extremely well. And, we both live in the eighth direction all by ourselves.” Clearly, Vengu Periappa yearned for the company of someone like Thaandu Maama, who was of his age. He was opening up a bit, though he had not reached the realm of casual talk completely.
“Periammai,” I called out as I got up. Thaandu Maama handed me the bag and said, “Yae ayya Sundaram, take this along.” I held the bag close to Vengu Periappa’s face to let him inhale the aroma and said, “Payasam for you and vadai for Anaviradham Periammai.” His mind seemed to be somewhere else when he said, “We had not even come over as a couple to offer our condolence to that young woman. And, look at her. She has remembered the date and cooked for us all sorts of stuff without taking that to heart or getting cross at us.” As he spoke about Easwari without mentioning her name, his eyes welled up.
I simply couldn’t stand seeing Vengu Periappa’s face turn melancholy. Thaandu Maama had gotten up and started looking at the photographs lined on the wall at the entrance with his hands entwined behind.
Vengu Periappa went and stood behind him and started describing each of the photographs. “The one up there that you are seeing now was taken right after our wedding as a newly married couple. It was taken at Kalpana Studio. I’m not sure if you are able to make out. When I was working in Salem, one of my colleagues rightly asked me if ‘she was carrying’ at that time. Indeed, she was pregnant with Gomathi when this photograph was taken – two months carrying.”
Thaandu Maama looked at that photograph for a long time. “She seems to be wearing vangi, ottiyanam and all sorts of jewellery,” he said. He didn’t remove his eyes from the photograph for a long time.
“It’s her as well in that third photograph that was taken from a side angle. She has a sharp nose and from this angle the photograph turned out really well.” Vengu Periappa lifted his face to look at the photograph. Maama turned towards Periappa and said, “I can smell the scent of javvadhu.” Periappa cast his eyes down and replied bashfully, “I’m the one wearing it. A long time habit.”
“The nose stud looks good on her. That you placed the picture on an oval-shaped mount and got it framed adds on to its elegance,” Thaandu Maama said. “That’s right. All these years I’ve been wondering what it was that made this picture look so beautiful,” agreed Vengu Periappa.
“Periammai, they both are having a conversation over your photograph,” I called out to Periammai as I carried the vessels into the kitchen.
Periammai had made nei urundai, sweet balls that were made with melted ghee. She had cooked magizhampoo paniyaaram. She said she had also made ellu urundai with sesame seeds, but it was all finished now. If she had known that I was coming, she would have made a few more, she added.
In between all the bantering, she did not forget to enquire about Easwari’s sister’s passing away. “She wasn’t too old. What happened?” And then, she gently chided us, “So, you both sent the kids away to the hostel and are having a good time as a couple?” Next, she asked, “Someone told me you bought a car, is it?” I listened to all that she chattered about, but she didn’t seem to hear what I responded or said to her.
She pointed to where the lemons and the knives were stored. She asked me to cut them up and squeeze out the juice. She showed me the amount of castor sugar to be added. “Adding a sprinkle of salt would enhance the taste. Give it to me. You would not know how much. I’ll do it myself,” and pinched the salt with the tip of her fingers and added it to the juice. “Don’t strain the seeds, let them be. You may think they don’t have any taste. In fact, they enhance the taste if you leave them in,” she said. She pointed to the glasses lined on the top shelf and asked me to pick up four of them. “All of that was bought in his heydays,” and when she pointed her thumb to her lips, tilting it just a wee bit, she appeared so charming. “Periamma, I feel like cuddling you,” I squeezed her cheek gently and lightly with the tip of my fingers. I brought the fingers back to my lips and kissed them.
Periammai moved her walker forward one step at a time like a baby pushing its stroller. She wasn’t overweight and was of a height that was in perfect alignment with the walker. So, she was saved the trouble of having to bend at an awkward angle to move forward. This made her look like a bird walking in its own gait. The pleats of the ripe mango coloured silk sari that adorned her fanned gently between her feet and the floor without hindering her gait. Even the bangles in her hands tilted ever so slightly and stopped midway as she moved the walker forward. What she offered in the way of an explanation was even pleasanter. She didn’t seem to be annoyed that she couldn’t walk using her own legs and that she needed support. “The crow, sparrow and mynah – all those birds have been given two wings in addition to their legs, right?” she smiled and moved where Periappa and Thaandu Maama were seated. She had a hearing problem, and so I had merely indicated that I had brought someone along without mentioning the name or other details.
“Take care,” said Vengu Periappa with concern and went into a nearby room and brought out a chair for her. “This is hers; she would always sit on that. If needed, you could even stretch your back,” he explained to Thaandu Maama.
Thaandu Maama had been looking at the way I had ushered Anaviradham Periammai into the room. Though there was a lot of space, he stood up when she entered as if he was making space for her. He placed his hand on his chest and stood anxiously looking at her.
“You please take your seat,” despite Periappa’s pleads, Thaandu Maama remained standing until Periammai sat down in her chair. “Gently, take care,” he made a hissing noise as if he was making the effort of sitting down himself. Sensitivity and concern seemed to gush out of Thaandu Maama’s face.
Still seated in his chair, Vengu Periappa stretched his hand and placed it on Periammai’s shoulder. “This is Thaandavaraayan, related to Easwari on her mother’s side, her Periappa,” he raised his voice and explained. Periammai put her hands together to greet Thaandu Maama. Periappa was nagged by the fact that she had not heard anything that he had said, and he bent his head down both with concern and in dejection. He twiddled his big toe and dragged it on the floor to draw squares.
I went back to the kitchen and brought out the foodstuff arranged on four plates. I served the lemonade. “You are the host, and you are also the guest here,” said Anaviradham Periammai, smiling at me. “Why don’t you serve them those ulundhu vadai one each, there’s a whole lot. How much can just the two of us eat,” she said. “Give him one more seeni urundai, let him eat,” she pointed in Thaandu Maama’s direction. “She made it herself,” added Vengu Periappa.
Thaandu Maama didn’t refuse and took the urundai. As he bit into it and the particles fell down, he deftly caught them in his outstretched palm and said, “It’s soft as petal.” He glanced at Vengu Periappa and then turned towards Anaviradham Periammai and looked at her. He seemed to be reassuring himself that there was nothing inappropriate in what he was about to mention. He was now observing Periammai as he said, “That picture is so nice,” and pointed to the third photograph on the wall. “He says that you look beautiful in that one ever since he arrived,” Periappa explained to Periammai in a loud voice brimming with pride and happiness.
I’m not sure if Periammai heard all that he had said. She raised her open palm and gently waved it in midair, and smiled, “Is that so.” It wasn’t a smile that delved into the admiration of her own beauty. She seemed to be acknowledging a beauty that was more absolute and all-encompassing and was smiling at that.
On every visit, I fell at the feet of Periammai and Periappa and took their blessings. Especially in such blissful moments when Periammai smiled like this. When she was engulfed by a feeling of completeness and wholesomeness and was immersed in total peace, I wanted to bend down and touch her feet right now.
“I want you both to apply thiruneeru on our foreheads,” I requested. I had said ‘our’ thinking of Easwari and me. But Thaandu Maama got up from his chair as I said this.
“He wants us to apply thiruneeru,” Vengu Periappa said loudly and moved closer to Anaviradham Periammai. He gestured by tracing invisible lines across his forehead with the three long fingers on his right hand and placing his open palm against his mouth. Periammai nodded in understanding and smiled at me. She also noticed Thaandu Maama standing up.
“Bring me the maravai with the thiruneeru from the pooja room. Light up a couple of incense sticks. You will find the matchbox right there,” I had entered the pooja room by the time she finished doling out the instructions. I remembered them only too well from our earlier visits. If Easwari had been here, she would have added a few drops of oil, pinched the wick and lighted the lamp.
When I came back with the maravai, Vengu Periappa was helping Anaviradham Periammai to raise herself up. “Will you be able to stand up. You can sit down if you are not able to. Ok?” he shouted into her left ear. He then looked at Thaandu Maama and explained with a smile, “Sometimes, she can hear a little on this side.” He didn’t need to smile, but how else could one communicate their unease to a stranger.
“You both stand together as a couple, Periappa,” I said. Vengu Periappa was wearing only a lungi. He bent down to adjust Periammai’s sari pleats to make sure her feet were covered. “Hope it’s perfect,” he murmured softly as he straightened up. Then he moved towards me quickly and took the maravai from my hand. “You go ahead, ayya.”
I bowed down and touched their feet, and as I raised myself up, I covered my lips with my right palm and stood with my eyes closed. Periappa murmured his blessings and sprinkled a bit of thiruneeru on my head. He then applied it on my forehead with his thumb sticking out from the rest of the fingers.
Periammai gesticulated to me to get closer. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and hugged me tightly. “Stay blessed with Easwari and your kids and offspring.” She blessed me and applied the thiruneeru on the entire forehead. She then covered my eyes with her palms and gently blew to remove any loose particles lest they fall into my eyes.
Even before I could move aside, Thaandu Maama bowed forward and lay prone, his face touching the floor, and his hands lifted above his head and held together in salutation. Not just me, even Periappa and Periammai were caught unawares. “Aey, aey, please ask him to get up,” said Periappa in a startled tone and bent forward.
Thaandu Maama was still lying prone and moved his face from left to right and back again. He then pulled himself up, touched both their feet, and placed his fingers on his eyes with reverence. He dug his fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a sagging vaagai flower which he placed at Anaviradham Periammai’s feet. He then put his right palm over his lips and said, “Bless me, please.”
“What have you done? How can I bless you,” Periappa’s fingers trembled in anxiety? Thaandu Maama remained bent without uttering a word. Vengu Periappa applied thiruneeru for Thaandu Maama, but it was very different from how he had done it for me. He placed his thumb on Maama’s forehead and pulled it across from one end to the other. The trembling of his hand showed in the imprint of thiruneeru on the forehead.
After touching Periappa’s feet, Thaandu Maama shifted positions and touched Periammai’s feet without raising himself up. Periammai rubbed the thiruneeru between her fingers and applied it on his forehead the same way she had done to me and with the Anaviradham smile dancing on her lips. She then paused for a while as if she was giving him time to touch her feet again. When he returned to his upright position, she blessed him again.
Thaandu Maama stood rooted without moving. It looked like he was swaying a bit. He moved backwards without turning around and sat on the chair. By reflex, he realized it was not the same chair he was sitting on earlier and shifted to the one next to it.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked him with care.
“Ask him if he wants a sip of water, de,” said Vengu Periappa. Anaviradham Periamma handed over the glass of lemonade that she had left untouched, “Maybe he can have this.”
“I’m fine, it’s nothing,” said Thaandu Maama with a smile. It was the same smile that blossoms on one’s face when you have accomplished the task of climbing a steep flight of stairs.
“Shall I ask Vengu Periappa to play the bulbulthara? He can play all your favourite numbers like ‘Oli mayamaana ethirkaalam’ and ‘Malarnthum malaratha’. Do you like ‘Raakkamma kaiya thattu’.” Vengu Periappa regarded as I spoke to Thaandu Maama.
“Shall we go home?” Thaandu Maama said briefly. I comprehended that he wanted to treasure this precious moment and carry it in his heart without letting it get dissipated. Hence the short reply.
“We will start now, Periappa. I will come again with Easwari. Give me a ring in case you need anything,” I said and checked if I had picked up the car keys.
When Thaandu Maama said, “Well, until we meet next,” the expression on his face indicated that he was ready to bid farewell. Once again, he looked at the wedding photograph and Anaviradham Periammai’s solo photograph. He glanced in the couple’s direction with his hands folded in salutation and walked outside.
“I’ll walk to the gate to see them off. You stay here,” Periappa said to Periammai. But Thaandu Maama didn’t seem to pay attention to either of them. He slipped his feet into his sandals and walked to the gate. He stood there for a few moments and ran his fingers across the coarsened plank of the door.
“You drive the car. And stop for some time near the vaagai trees that we passed on our way here,” he said even before I opened my mouth. As I walked around the car to get in, he opened the car door slightly and greeted Periappa and closed the door again. He had mastered the knack of closing the door without just the right amount of force.
We reached the spot with the vaagai trees within a few minutes. He asked me to stop and got off the car. “Can we stay here for a while?” he asked. I got down without saying anything. The road appeared to be whiter now than when I had seen it from the car. Layer after layer of bird droppings that had fallen from the top of the trees seemed to have painted the figure of several birds with elongated legs on the bare ground. I imagined seeing a cluster of birds rising up from the middle of each splatter of dropping and taking flight. Some of the vaagai flowers were smashed to the road into red-coloured discs; the rest lined the side of the road like tiny red fans. The flowers had long stems.
Thaandu Maama walked towards the adjacent tree and craned his neck to look at its top. The straw-coloured yellow pods with the seeds protruding through their brittle coverings teemed the tree, and the green leaves were not visible at all.
“There’s not a single parrot to be seen now,” he was not talking to anyone in particular. I went and stood next to him. Thaandu Maama’s voice sounded like picking a handful of something from a large pile and handing it over to me.
“Something snapped within only when he called her Viradham. And then, you started addressing her Anaviradham Periammai, using her full name. It is at that moment that I started recalling everything from the past.” He walked towards the large trunked tree and bent down to pick up a dry pod. He held it next to my ear and shook it like a rattle, and said, “Doesn’t it sound nice?” It did sound pleasant.
“The name of the first bride they chose for me was called Anaviradham. But I turned her down quoting a vague reason saying that I didn’t like her. I’m saying this because the name Anaviradham seems to be more than a coincidence. I’m not sure if she is the same girl or not. Honestly, I don’t know anything about all that. It could even be a different person altogether. But I got a feeling that she might have been the one.” Thaandu Maama was now counting the seeds in the pod starting from the top. Next, he started counting them, starting from the bottom to the top. Seriously, did he expect the number to change each time?
“When I met them, and saw the photographs of them as a couple, and then the solo photograph, I felt a strange emotion gushing within. You could name it happiness. And you could also call it sadness, maappillai.” Thaandu Maama has called me “Sundaram” before but never has he addressed me such.
“That’s why I felt the urge to pay my salutations when you were taking their blessings. I bowed down before them for a whole lot of reasons put together,” he smiled at me as he said this. I couldn’t get myself to smile back and stood looking at him without uttering a word. I wished a parrot would screech somewhere right now.
He extended his hand, “Give me the keys.”
“They’re still in the ignition.”
“Let’s leave,” he opened the front right door and climbed in. He placed the vaagai pod in front of the deity on the dashboard. He waited for me to get in and pushed the lever to adjust the seat to a comfortable position. He adjusted the mirror outside the right window to be able to view the vehicles coming from behind. He then remained silent for a while.
“Shall we?”
The car started moving even before I could say anything. Thaandu Maama was looking straight at the road as he changed gears swiftly.
He hadn’t even asked me the direction in which we had to go now.
…………………
This story is originally written in Tamil and is translated to English by Karkuzhali
Karkuzhali works as an Instructional Designer in a global organization. In her free time, she loves writing poems, articles and short stories in Tamil and English; she also
translates into both languages. Karkuzhali started her writing career with Chandamama and was a sub-editor with the print syndication division. Around that time, she wrote a weekly column in the youth supplementary of the New Indian Express on Tamilnadu history for close to two and a half years. She also translated syndication materials into Tamil for Veerakesari, a Tamil daily published in Sri Lanka. She then translated and edited books for Tulika Publishers, Pratham Books, Whetstone Publications, Melting Pot, etc. She has worked with several social welfare organizations and educational publishers Karkuzhali now continues to write and translate literary works published in leading literary magazines and forums such as Kanali, Book day, Tamizhini, Yaavarum, Padaippu Thagavu, Iruvatchi and so on.
This Translation is an outcome of a joint project by Kanali கனலி- கலை இலக்கிய இணையதளம் and FemAsia Magazine.
