(Continued from here)
The next morning, Thatha refused breakfast. I entered the kitchen to find Amma muttering to herself furiously—strangely, it reminded me of Pati in her final days. Half-deaf and increasingly disinterested in daily affairs, Pati spent the bulk of her waking hours in a peculiar state of quiet frenzy— she perpetually chanted Lord Vishnu’s name under her breath, ordering Him to show Himself. She would rant about His continuous absence and question His very existence, all in an understated yet angry manner. Amma today was just like that, except her mantra involved largely the following words—old man, senile, fool, waste—interspersed with other choice expletives.
By noon, lunch was served. And Thatha’s leaf was still friendless. Amma’s frown had grown set; she still didn’t say a word to Thatha, showing a spirit of passive resistance to open confrontation that matched Thatha’s own.
Thatha on the other hand, spent the bulk of the day writing and hanging a banner outside the house that said, in big, bold, black Kannada letters: “Indefinite Hunger Strike. We want Bus”. The first curious onlookers were children, all around my age, who stared and stared at banner that might as well have been in Greek. I took upon the task of campaign propagandist, explaining in grand detail Thatha’s motives.
By dusk, Appa was back, tired from his work in the fields and dinner was served. And refused. That finally broke Amma’s spirit: her upper-lip stiff, on the verge of tears, she told Appa of his father’s madness. Appa listened, initially with amusement, then with increasing alarm and did something I had never seen him do in my presence—put his arm around her. It was a brief, abrupt hug, but long enough for me to turn away embarrassed. And Amma, oblivious to all, let out a barely audible sob. Appa turned to me, smiled wearily and said: where’s Thatha? Mutely, I pointed towards the door and Appa went outside and I followed.
Thatha sat by the stairs outside, apparently nonplussed, staring into the distance.
“Appa” Appa addressed his Appa, “What are you doing?”
“Watching dusk give way to night; watching the sun make way for the moon”
Appa sighed, clicked his tongue, looked down, stretched his feet, and said:
“What are you doing, Appa?”
Thatha looked at Appa and smiled:
“This village needs a bus”
“So?”
“So, I am fasting to death to ensure this village gets one”
Appa sunk his head in his hands.
“And” he said, eventually looking up, “How do you think that is going to help?”
Thatha looked at Appa—his eyes excited, his voice acquiring a strength of its own, and said:
“I have written letters. One to the District Commissioner, a couple more to the Transport Office in Haladi, one to the Municipal Corporation in Bangalore, one more to the Transport Minister of the State and finally—“ he said and paused for dramatic effect, and I could sense something big was coming, “to the CM—Chief Minister!”
I tore my eyes off Thatha’s face—flush with delight—to Appa’s— unimpressed, weary eyes and a drooping jaw that let words out cautiously:
“Saying what?”
“Saying that I will go on a hunger strike—indefinitely—for a bus”
Appa’s face had at least five of Bharata’s nine emotions running through them—surprise, shock, amusement, disappointment and mirth. It was the last of those that stuck and he burst out laughing.
“You’re crazy” he said, between chuckles and continued, “Enough of this. Come, let’s eat”
Thatha laughed too, but said, in a firm yet kind way:
“No”
Appa sighed. Eventually, he said, more harsh than weary:
“Do you really think the Chief Minister of the state cares about an old man in an obscure village five-hundred kilometres from Bangalore?”
“If he has a conscience”
“Conscience?” Appa burst out, and he clutched his loin-cloth firmly to vent his rage and continued, “Who cares for us, Appa? We have no schools, no hospitals here! No electricity, no roads! One government falls, another takes its place, does anybody care? Every five years one official comes to take down our names and promises some grain. Where is that grain? Where is that rice? I walk through jungles to sell my produce, lugging them on my shoulder, my feet bare. Does anybody care? It has been twenty-five years since the British left—or so you tell me—and has it made any difference to our lives?”
And Appa stood up, furious, and made to leave, but not before he had one, final parting shot:
“Tomorrow, when you die, I will write a letter to the CM inviting him to your funeral. He will surely come!”
Thatha remained stone-faced, silent. And when the first owl-hooted, he turned to look at me staring at him—my eyes fearful—and winked and said: “Sleep-time”
That night Thatha sang Vachana Number Twelve and repeated, until sleep wrestled the last ounce of consciousness from of my eyes, the same line: “Then again, what can I do? I am but a poor man”
*****
By the third day, Thatha had become the talk of the village; Amma had become a nervous wreck; Appa was largely quiet, but obviously unhappy; I was afraid, but also proud. I had heard—from Thatha, of course—of Gandhi and his miracle fasts that moved nations. And here, in my very own house, I told myself proudly, we had his modern-day avatar!
The villagers always had tremendous respect for Thatha’s knowledge, but they also thought he lacked basic common sense. He had invoked in them not the kind of passionate introspection and subsequent action that Gandhi did, nor a thirst for blood like the communists; indeed, they were untouched by neither the fear that gripped Amma or the saintly reverence that I felt. For them, it was a curious, amusing, a little sad sometimes, but exceedingly interesting act from someone’s life—looking back, I think they sort of thought they were watching a play. Gripping—the stuff of legend, even—but somebody else’s problem.
As for buses, the villagers couldn’t care less. Thatha’s speeches on bus-stands and petrol and lives changing inspired at best, fantastic flights of imagination; at worst, they were dismissed like his views on untouchability.
*****
Every meal, Amma placed an empty leaf and filled it with rice and saaru. Every meal, I ate twice.
One day, Appa procured, from God-knows-where, at God-knows-how-much, some payasa. Its aroma filled a house unaccustomed to its presence. Amma smiled for the first time in days; Appa seemed to relax a little too. I was delirious with joy. Thatha, however, slept through lunch-time.
*****
Appa was born in the ‘40s and grew up, largely, on his own. Thatha, a freedom-fighter and a staunch Gandhian, lived away and would send money at irregular intervals; at even more irregular intervals, he would make an appearance in the village—gaunt, unshaven, rag-clad, his eyes sleep-deprived, he looked like he was seventy-five. Appa and Pati would nurse him back to health and within days, he would go away. He only came back for his son, Pati would tell me much later, and would always bring books—story books, comics, children’s novels and suchlike. That was Appa’s only education.
Appa did like his books, but he loved his village more. The blue skies, the tiled roofs, the dew-drenched grass, the eucalyptus trees, the tadpoles in the puddles, the great, golden fields, the green-blue, algae-ridden tank by the temple and the crocodiles within, the vast hills in the distance, their tips swallowed by the clouds—he so intensely cared for these that despite Thatha begging him to do so later on, he refused to shift to Haladi. Instead, he asked Thatha to move back with him.
Thatha did and never quite settled down, but never complained either.
*****
On the seventh day, Appa had all but given up when Amma announced, much to his shock, that she was going on an indefinite counter-fast. To her credit, we had exhausted all other possible options—they had pleaded and begged, appealed to his human side, asked him to live for me—his only grandson whose free education in the city ran on his goodwill; they yelled at him, called him names, even chose to completely ignore him for a couple of days, hoping silence would help him come around. Many years later, Amma admitted to me that they had even tried force-feeding him—the very thought brought tears to her eyes.
Appa was livid. In his own quiet manner, he threw a few of his prized possessions, my books and some clothes, into a bag, caught me by the hand, and staged a walk-out. “I don’t want to live in this mad-house” he thundered. Amma wailed; Thatha, who could barely walk now, sprang out of his bed and put his hand on Appa’s shoulder and said: “Stop”. Appa looked at him—frail, wiry thin, unshaven, sunken sleepy eyes, only his giant ears stood out, its size accentuated by the shrunken dimensions of all else. Appa dropped his bag, let go off my hand and looked down at the floor, rooted, unmoving. Amma, taking that as a sign that the coast was clear, proceeded to, in her own efficient nature, unpack Appa’s bag and replace my books; Thatha went back to lying down on his charpoy in the veranda, his eyes fixed on the spectacular sky, unblinking.
Much like Thatha’s eyes, Appa stood, motionless—the sky changed colours, the sounds of the day gave way to those of dusk, but like the sun standing still watching the world go around, he remained, immobile.
*****
A Satyagraha, the Mahatma once remarked, usually passes through five stages: indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression and respect. Going by that yardstick, Thatha’s campaign barely got underway—the village didn’t even care enough to ridicule it. Inside the house, however, the success was resounding: if the campaign survived repression, the Mahatma said, then ‘it invariably commanded respect, another name for success’. And, whether grudgingly (as was in the case of Appa and Amma) or openly (as was with me), he had earned tremendous respect within the house. The leaner he grew, the stronger became his resolve, the greater was his aura—even in moments of grave doubt, when it dawned on him that his was a cause beyond his fellow-men’s simple minds, he never went back on his word.
For Thatha himself, his Satyagraha’s success was, at best, questionable—indeed, towards the fag end, his very definition of success changed. His initial enthusiasm briskly wilted, giving way to, by the third day, deep introspection and consequently, deeper disappointment. In fact, when the house chose to win him over with its silence, Thatha himself receded into a quiet phase. When he emerged, Thatha was a different man—no less stubborn in his denial of food, but unsure of what he actually wanted to achieve.
“In the olden days” Thatha told me, “the old King would give up all and go away to the forest. Eventually, if he wasn’t eaten by animals or consumed by a forest fire, he would give up his body too, by fasting to death”. “My fast may be a public failure”, he told Amma, sipping pensively his glass of salt-water, “but privately, it has shattered the very foundation on which my life had been built—it has harboured a great phase of unlearning in my life. The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing”
******
One morning, I awoke to find Thatha and Amma bellowing at the top of their voices: another fight, I presumed and hid myself under my blanket, willing myself to go back to sleep. It proved futile: a fresh day laden with infinite possibilities, a bright new sun, clear rays streaming through every open space, light playing with spots of shadow, light dominating shadow—these proved too heady a concoction for even sleep to overcome. I sat up to stretch and Thatha hobbled in, as lean and bent as a creeper, but he was smiling.
“Fighting again?” I asked.
“No” he said and added with a wink, “practising. I think I’ll be seeing your deaf Pati again soon”
*****
“When Gandhiji fasted, a nation prayed, millions mended their ways, countries shook” Thatha said and added drily, “The only thing my fast inspired was another one”.
That night, the tenth since Thatha began his campaign, Thatha sat with us for dinner. Bursting with energy, whose source could only come from the oxygen he breathed, he laughed and joked and even sang a couple of lines from a Vachana he had recently discovered in one of his older notebooks. Appa and Amma, in uncharacteristic fashion, bowed down before him after dinner and told me to follow suit. I followed Thatha’s advice instead and stood next to him as my parents lay sprawled out in front and blessed them as he did. Thatha ruffled my hair and let me go.
As we went to bed, Thatha, like many nights during the past week, felt he was too weak to sing for me. Instead he lay down in his characteristic fashion—straight as a rod, his right hand on his stomach, his left wrapped around his head like an inverted ‘L’, his legs a little apart.
Thatha never woke up—he died a peaceful man, one whose final act was a failure, but only left him infinitely wiser.
The next morning, Thatha refused breakfast. I entered the kitchen to find Amma muttering to herself furiously—strangely, it reminded me of Pati in her final days. Half-deaf and increasingly disinterested in daily affairs, Pati spent the bulk of her waking hours in a peculiar state of quiet frenzy— she perpetually chanted Lord Vishnu’s name under her breath, ordering Him to show Himself. She would rant about His continuous absence and question His very existence, all in an understated yet angry manner. Amma today was just like that, except her mantra involved largely the following words—old man, senile, fool, waste—interspersed with other choice expletives.
By noon, lunch was served. And Thatha’s leaf was still friendless. Amma’s frown had grown set; she still didn’t say a word to Thatha, showing a spirit of passive resistance to open confrontation that matched Thatha’s own.
Thatha on the other hand, spent the bulk of the day writing and hanging a banner outside the house that said, in big, bold, black Kannada letters: “Indefinite Hunger Strike. We want Bus”. The first curious onlookers were children, all around my age, who stared and stared at banner that might as well have been in Greek. I took upon the task of campaign propagandist, explaining in grand detail Thatha’s motives.
By dusk, Appa was back, tired from his work in the fields and dinner was served. And refused. That finally broke Amma’s spirit: her upper-lip stiff, on the verge of tears, she told Appa of his father’s madness. Appa listened, initially with amusement, then with increasing alarm and did something I had never seen him do in my presence—put his arm around her. It was a brief, abrupt hug, but long enough for me to turn away embarrassed. And Amma, oblivious to all, let out a barely audible sob. Appa turned to me, smiled wearily and said: where’s Thatha? Mutely, I pointed towards the door and Appa went outside and I followed.
Thatha sat by the stairs outside, apparently nonplussed, staring into the distance.
“Appa” Appa addressed his Appa, “What are you doing?”
“Watching dusk give way to night; watching the sun make way for the moon”
Appa sighed, clicked his tongue, looked down, stretched his feet, and said:
“What are you doing, Appa?”
Thatha looked at Appa and smiled:
“This village needs a bus”
“So?”
“So, I am fasting to death to ensure this village gets one”
Appa sunk his head in his hands.
“And” he said, eventually looking up, “How do you think that is going to help?”
Thatha looked at Appa—his eyes excited, his voice acquiring a strength of its own, and said:
“I have written letters. One to the District Commissioner, a couple more to the Transport Office in Haladi, one to the Municipal Corporation in Bangalore, one more to the Transport Minister of the State and finally—“ he said and paused for dramatic effect, and I could sense something big was coming, “to the CM—Chief Minister!”
I tore my eyes off Thatha’s face—flush with delight—to Appa’s— unimpressed, weary eyes and a drooping jaw that let words out cautiously:
“Saying what?”
“Saying that I will go on a hunger strike—indefinitely—for a bus”
Appa’s face had at least five of Bharata’s nine emotions running through them—surprise, shock, amusement, disappointment and mirth. It was the last of those that stuck and he burst out laughing.
“You’re crazy” he said, between chuckles and continued, “Enough of this. Come, let’s eat”
Thatha laughed too, but said, in a firm yet kind way:
“No”
Appa sighed. Eventually, he said, more harsh than weary:
“Do you really think the Chief Minister of the state cares about an old man in an obscure village five-hundred kilometres from Bangalore?”
“If he has a conscience”
“Conscience?” Appa burst out, and he clutched his loin-cloth firmly to vent his rage and continued, “Who cares for us, Appa? We have no schools, no hospitals here! No electricity, no roads! One government falls, another takes its place, does anybody care? Every five years one official comes to take down our names and promises some grain. Where is that grain? Where is that rice? I walk through jungles to sell my produce, lugging them on my shoulder, my feet bare. Does anybody care? It has been twenty-five years since the British left—or so you tell me—and has it made any difference to our lives?”
And Appa stood up, furious, and made to leave, but not before he had one, final parting shot:
“Tomorrow, when you die, I will write a letter to the CM inviting him to your funeral. He will surely come!”
Thatha remained stone-faced, silent. And when the first owl-hooted, he turned to look at me staring at him—my eyes fearful—and winked and said: “Sleep-time”
That night Thatha sang Vachana Number Twelve and repeated, until sleep wrestled the last ounce of consciousness from of my eyes, the same line: “Then again, what can I do? I am but a poor man”
*****
By the third day, Thatha had become the talk of the village; Amma had become a nervous wreck; Appa was largely quiet, but obviously unhappy; I was afraid, but also proud. I had heard—from Thatha, of course—of Gandhi and his miracle fasts that moved nations. And here, in my very own house, I told myself proudly, we had his modern-day avatar!
The villagers always had tremendous respect for Thatha’s knowledge, but they also thought he lacked basic common sense. He had invoked in them not the kind of passionate introspection and subsequent action that Gandhi did, nor a thirst for blood like the communists; indeed, they were untouched by neither the fear that gripped Amma or the saintly reverence that I felt. For them, it was a curious, amusing, a little sad sometimes, but exceedingly interesting act from someone’s life—looking back, I think they sort of thought they were watching a play. Gripping—the stuff of legend, even—but somebody else’s problem.
As for buses, the villagers couldn’t care less. Thatha’s speeches on bus-stands and petrol and lives changing inspired at best, fantastic flights of imagination; at worst, they were dismissed like his views on untouchability.
*****
Every meal, Amma placed an empty leaf and filled it with rice and saaru. Every meal, I ate twice.
One day, Appa procured, from God-knows-where, at God-knows-how-much, some payasa. Its aroma filled a house unaccustomed to its presence. Amma smiled for the first time in days; Appa seemed to relax a little too. I was delirious with joy. Thatha, however, slept through lunch-time.
*****
Appa was born in the ‘40s and grew up, largely, on his own. Thatha, a freedom-fighter and a staunch Gandhian, lived away and would send money at irregular intervals; at even more irregular intervals, he would make an appearance in the village—gaunt, unshaven, rag-clad, his eyes sleep-deprived, he looked like he was seventy-five. Appa and Pati would nurse him back to health and within days, he would go away. He only came back for his son, Pati would tell me much later, and would always bring books—story books, comics, children’s novels and suchlike. That was Appa’s only education.
Appa did like his books, but he loved his village more. The blue skies, the tiled roofs, the dew-drenched grass, the eucalyptus trees, the tadpoles in the puddles, the great, golden fields, the green-blue, algae-ridden tank by the temple and the crocodiles within, the vast hills in the distance, their tips swallowed by the clouds—he so intensely cared for these that despite Thatha begging him to do so later on, he refused to shift to Haladi. Instead, he asked Thatha to move back with him.
Thatha did and never quite settled down, but never complained either.
*****
On the seventh day, Appa had all but given up when Amma announced, much to his shock, that she was going on an indefinite counter-fast. To her credit, we had exhausted all other possible options—they had pleaded and begged, appealed to his human side, asked him to live for me—his only grandson whose free education in the city ran on his goodwill; they yelled at him, called him names, even chose to completely ignore him for a couple of days, hoping silence would help him come around. Many years later, Amma admitted to me that they had even tried force-feeding him—the very thought brought tears to her eyes.
Appa was livid. In his own quiet manner, he threw a few of his prized possessions, my books and some clothes, into a bag, caught me by the hand, and staged a walk-out. “I don’t want to live in this mad-house” he thundered. Amma wailed; Thatha, who could barely walk now, sprang out of his bed and put his hand on Appa’s shoulder and said: “Stop”. Appa looked at him—frail, wiry thin, unshaven, sunken sleepy eyes, only his giant ears stood out, its size accentuated by the shrunken dimensions of all else. Appa dropped his bag, let go off my hand and looked down at the floor, rooted, unmoving. Amma, taking that as a sign that the coast was clear, proceeded to, in her own efficient nature, unpack Appa’s bag and replace my books; Thatha went back to lying down on his charpoy in the veranda, his eyes fixed on the spectacular sky, unblinking.
Much like Thatha’s eyes, Appa stood, motionless—the sky changed colours, the sounds of the day gave way to those of dusk, but like the sun standing still watching the world go around, he remained, immobile.
*****
A Satyagraha, the Mahatma once remarked, usually passes through five stages: indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression and respect. Going by that yardstick, Thatha’s campaign barely got underway—the village didn’t even care enough to ridicule it. Inside the house, however, the success was resounding: if the campaign survived repression, the Mahatma said, then ‘it invariably commanded respect, another name for success’. And, whether grudgingly (as was in the case of Appa and Amma) or openly (as was with me), he had earned tremendous respect within the house. The leaner he grew, the stronger became his resolve, the greater was his aura—even in moments of grave doubt, when it dawned on him that his was a cause beyond his fellow-men’s simple minds, he never went back on his word.
For Thatha himself, his Satyagraha’s success was, at best, questionable—indeed, towards the fag end, his very definition of success changed. His initial enthusiasm briskly wilted, giving way to, by the third day, deep introspection and consequently, deeper disappointment. In fact, when the house chose to win him over with its silence, Thatha himself receded into a quiet phase. When he emerged, Thatha was a different man—no less stubborn in his denial of food, but unsure of what he actually wanted to achieve.
“In the olden days” Thatha told me, “the old King would give up all and go away to the forest. Eventually, if he wasn’t eaten by animals or consumed by a forest fire, he would give up his body too, by fasting to death”. “My fast may be a public failure”, he told Amma, sipping pensively his glass of salt-water, “but privately, it has shattered the very foundation on which my life had been built—it has harboured a great phase of unlearning in my life. The only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing”
******
One morning, I awoke to find Thatha and Amma bellowing at the top of their voices: another fight, I presumed and hid myself under my blanket, willing myself to go back to sleep. It proved futile: a fresh day laden with infinite possibilities, a bright new sun, clear rays streaming through every open space, light playing with spots of shadow, light dominating shadow—these proved too heady a concoction for even sleep to overcome. I sat up to stretch and Thatha hobbled in, as lean and bent as a creeper, but he was smiling.
“Fighting again?” I asked.
“No” he said and added with a wink, “practising. I think I’ll be seeing your deaf Pati again soon”
*****
“When Gandhiji fasted, a nation prayed, millions mended their ways, countries shook” Thatha said and added drily, “The only thing my fast inspired was another one”.
That night, the tenth since Thatha began his campaign, Thatha sat with us for dinner. Bursting with energy, whose source could only come from the oxygen he breathed, he laughed and joked and even sang a couple of lines from a Vachana he had recently discovered in one of his older notebooks. Appa and Amma, in uncharacteristic fashion, bowed down before him after dinner and told me to follow suit. I followed Thatha’s advice instead and stood next to him as my parents lay sprawled out in front and blessed them as he did. Thatha ruffled my hair and let me go.
As we went to bed, Thatha, like many nights during the past week, felt he was too weak to sing for me. Instead he lay down in his characteristic fashion—straight as a rod, his right hand on his stomach, his left wrapped around his head like an inverted ‘L’, his legs a little apart.
Thatha never woke up—he died a peaceful man, one whose final act was a failure, but only left him infinitely wiser.
5 comments:
Well written.. But it has a lot of scope for expansion. The ending felt a little hurried to me.
Yeah.
I got the exact same criticism from someone else. I could have written a lot more-- indeed, I had an alternate ending-- but I suddenly felt space-conscious. I did not want another part. Maybe, one day, I will sit with this and rewrite the ending. And rework some other bits.
But, thanks for visiting, anyway.
:)
It's funny, it's heart-breaking, it's insightful. What's more, it's a brilliant mix of the three.
I loved it. :-)
Thanks ve, Sita :)
I wish I had grown up reading stuff like this
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