Past Fast – I

One gay November day, Thatha decided to go on a hunger strike: Anna Satyagraha, in his words. The cause was, in hindsight, an important one. However, in our village of a hundred and seventy-two, Thatha had only one other supporter—me. I was sharp, smart and perhaps the best-educated in the village. Unfortunately for Thatha, I was eleven.
Thatha was everything the village was not—he thought ahead, sometimes years ahead; he liked to travel, to see the world; he rationalized—he argued for reason to be placed above all, even Lord Vishnu. The latter was a stand that brought him so much flak that he ended up preaching it only to me, well after the last lamps in the house were extinguished, in whispers so soft that the words wrapped around me like a cosy, comforting blanket, making my eyelashes heavy; At a time when most of the village could speak one language and read none, Thatha was trilingual— proficient in Kannada, English and Sanskrit, the latter being self-taught. Needless to say, the village thought Thatha was nuts, a view that was shared by all in the house except Amma and I; it was also a view that he didn't care much about; indeed, it was a view that he was completely oblivious to, that didn't affect him directly up until that November afternoon.
It all began a few months previously, when he received a letter from his friend—another old man with little to do—that rambled on about Basava's Vachana number twenty-three. I remember, very clearly, the scene: it was late-afternoon by the time the post-man got home, a little tired and extremely thirsty. Thatha had a look of controlled excitement on his face—he masked it well enough for a casual observer to not see any trace of contentment, but I knew better: his hands trembled, ever so slightly, as he held the letter; his eyes flickered with pride, his wrinkles a web of eager, dancing patterns. He took the letter and smelt it, an old habit that rubbed on to me so hard that I find it hard to explain to perplexed onlookers when they catch me with my nose plastered to my laptop screen when I get an email from old friends. He read out the letter—not because he wanted me to listen, but because he always read out aloud (which perhaps contributed in no small way to Pati's acute loss of hearing in the twilight of her life).
The letter was unremarkable but for the post-script tucked away in a corner, hastily scribbled but underlined thrice: "We've got our first bus that plies every second day, from our village to Haladi!" Haladi was to us what Bangalore was to the Haladi: a hallowed land of endless opportunity, of bus-stands the size of playgrounds; of schools that housed more children than a forest had trees; of railway stations where trains actually stopped and not merely flew past.
Thatha read the post-script out and paused. His eyebrows shot up. Unconsciously, he drummed his bald plate and muttered to himself, softly—'bus', 'Haladi'. He thrust the letter in my hand hurriedly almost as though it was a plate-full of meat that he had mistakenly presumed to be his lunch and began pacing around the veranda, his hands tied behind his back, pausing now and again to look at the clear, azure sky.
Thatha skipped lunch that day. He chose to eat guavas for dinner—guavas tinged with salt and khara. I asked for the same, but Amma gave me such an ugly look that I chose not to pursue it, though I shot longing glances at his plate throughout dinner. Appa noticed me and smiled wistfully when he caught my eyes, and pointed to Thatha and ran circles around his own head: screw loose. That night, Thatha sang Vachana Number Twenty-Three to put me to bed. I slept a few lines into his explanation of the depth of the song.
The next morning I awoke to a wailing cock and a spectacular sun—the rays bounced off our newly painted walls, their brilliance reflected, multiplied; the world, as I awoke, was bathed in white—not the faint, calming white of a full moon, but the coruscating one of a new dawn.
Thatha was gone, Amma told me, as she placed my milk on the floor. Gone where? I asked, still drowsy. Somewhere, she said from her kitchen, and the clattering of vessels and the gushing of water told me her mind was elsewhere.
Subsequently, Thatha went 'somewhere' quite often. It was not like he didn't disappear previously; it was just that he never did with such alarming frequency. His disappearances would last a couple of days sometimes, sometimes longer. I once asked Amma, I think after his fourth disappearance in three weeks, where Thatha went. She said she didn't know, and added, more to herself than to me: at least, it keeps him going. I didn't dare ask Thatha—don't get me wrong, I wasn't afraid, but it was disrespectful to ask and I didn't want to pry.
*****
My eyes flew open. But for a streak of pale yellow that crept through the half-open door of my bedroom, there was darkness everywhere. An owl hooted from somewhere nearby; I heard the hyenas cackle, secure in the confines of the jungle that bordered our village; insects clicked and screeched. And voices argued, in audible whispers. I snuck up to my door and peered at the figures lit by the lamp-light: in the hallway, under the shadow of my Thatha who stood in front, was Amma, her back to me, hands on hips, legs apart. Thatha was visibly tired, but was hunched in a manner that was at once defiant and apologetic. It was obvious that he had just returned.
"What if the hyenas eat you?" Amma asked, rubbing her forehead with her wrists.
"I have lived in this godforsaken village for an almost uninterrupted seventy-five years now. The hyenas and I have a very fine, working relationship"
"Why couldn't you wait till tomorrow to leave wherever you left from? What is the hurry?"
"I sleep best in my bed, ma. Ageing brings with it, amongst other ails, a fanatical rigidity in tastes"
I wondered if there was ever a time when Thatha had flexible preferences, but that train of thought was quickly put aside, for the conversation wound up and Thatha was making his way to his customary sleeping place beside me. I rushed to bed, shut my eyes as hard as I could, and pretended to sleep. For a brief few tense moments, there was darkness behind my eyes, and then it was gone, for Thatha had walked in, lamp in hand. I heard him unroll his mattress, pat the bedspread a couple of times and heard it puff as he laid it out.
In less than a minute, all the hyenas and the insects, the owls and the frogs were drowned by Thatha's snores.
*****
The next day Thatha called me over to his 'study'. The study, in essence, comprised a cane chair and a table, placed strategically in a corner of our bedroom. He partitioned it from the rest of the room with an old, off-white, plain curtain. The table was situated next to a window—one surprisingly large for our kind of houses—that when thrown open, accommodated a modest landscape: neatly partitioned fields, palm trees, languid cows and a lazy green everywhere.
"Do you see this?" he asked, pointing to a table.
On the table was a hand-drawn map, its shape unrecognizable, its names alien. I plodded through the Kannada words scattered all over the strange shell-shaped figure, looking for something familiar. Eventually I spotted one name, right at the centre, written in bold, black ink. I put my finger on the name and read out:
"Ha-la-di"
"Excellent" he said, beaming.
"This is our map. This is—", he said, tracing his finger north-ward from Haladi and stopping at a point, "where we live"
"What are these lines?" I asked. There were lines that ran from Haladi to various other points, lines drawn in blue ink.
"Excellent question, excellent question!" he said, and continued, excited, "They are bus-routes"
And Thatha explained what had possessed him all this while. Over the past few months, ever since he got that letter from his friend, he had made trips to a whole host of villages, taking buses, bullock-carts, even trekking on foot; he had been talking to Collectors and transport officials, weavers and farmers, school-teachers and village-doctors, labourers and activists.
He ran his fingers around what roughly constituted a circle around our village—the five closest villages on the map—and showed me how all of them were connected by blue-lines. Indeed, all but three villages of a total of over sixty had buses that plied through them. Ignominious company, he hissed. He went on to explain to me how buses changed lives, altered outlooks and livelihoods, about how people he had met from all walks of life told him glowing stories about shrinking distances, growing opportunities, greater happiness.
*****
The next morning, Thatha refused breakfast.
(To continue, in three days)