The Death of A Writer - Part VI

(Part V has been skipped - will be published soon. 

Recap: A writer and a PhD student investigate an incident in a village where the landlord's house is burnt down. They hear that the Naxals are involved, hence they arrange a meeting with them. Subsequently, they meet with the local government officials - the Panchayat Secretary. In the unpublished Part V, an attack on the writer-student duo contributes to them returning to their university town.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 . 

) 

NELARATNA

I was sitting in my office when the librarian walked up to me and said I had a young lady visitor.

Back then, only selected PhD students were entitled to an office. I wasn’t one of them. My research was barely underway (under an advisor so distant that I could feel the entire asteroid belt whiz past between us) and I was a student of lowly humanities. I used to work out of the Public Library – the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. The name was a misnomer: the collection was modest, certainly not befitting a bibliophile such as Nehru. Also, I still don’t know where the “Museum” is.

The reading room was on the first-floor. This room was vast and rectangular – the sort with thrown-open windows allowing for shafts of light where motes of dust danced dervish-like – and filled with row upon row of benches and tables stacked with newspapers and magazines. Readers were few and preferred to keep their distance.

A month or so after my first appearance, the librarian– a quiet middle-aged woman whose kindness never made it to her eyes or words – took me by the hand and pointed me to an unused ante-room to a long-shut entrance. “For you to use.”, she said.  

The room had a table and a chair, with a window that overlooked our town’s main road. Shelves comprising books no one read lined the walls, giving the illusion of the room being smaller than its dimensions. On that first day, I remember looking from the window to the chair to the librarian’s stern, weary face. Without warning, I hugged her and said: “This is perfect, thank you.”

I couldn’t tell if she was mortified or happy.

The Death of A Writer - IV

(This is a fiction piece - the fourth in a series of ... many.)

(See: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

(Recap: A writer and a student - who is also the narrator - make a trip to a village to investigate a curious incident involving the burning down of a landlord's house. They realise that the Naxals may have something to do with this and arrange a meeting with them. Now, they meet the Panchayat Secretary to get his sense of what is going on. This series is set during the time Gavaskar retired - late '80s/early 90s.)

The Panchayat Secretary offered tea: the writer’s broad smile suggested enthusiasm.

We were in the Panchayat office – a recently constructed one-room structure, narrow and long, like the compartment of a train. At one end was the entry door and the peon’s table. Next to it, was a sturdy wooden chair bearing the letters “PCT 02” in white paint, on its arms and legs. Cupboards bearing brown files overflowing with yellowing paper lined the walls. Paperwork was to bureaucracy what debate was to democracy: superfluous, painstaking, vital. (Surely, I thought, somewhere in there, will be a file on a list of furniture items in the office with a row marked “Peon’s Chair” and “PCT 02” written adjacent to each other). A clock that was six hours behind (six hours ahead would be incongruous in a government office) and a calendar bearing the picture of Saraswati adorned walls whose paint still gleamed.

     

The Secretary seemed distracted, drumming his hands on the table, eyebrows knotted. The writer’s gaze went from the Secretary to the spread-open sports page of the Udayavani – the Kannada daily – that lay on the Secretary’s table.

“India doing badly?”, the writer asked.

“This Kapil Dev”, the Secretary responded, “He should retire.”

“I am not sure, to be honest.”

“Why?”

“Kapil is still two players for the price of one: he’s a frontline bowler, a respectable batsman and the best outfielder in the team. That is very hard to replace.”

“Have you heard of Prashant Devadiga?”, the Secretary asked, “He bowls in the Mangalore leagues – he’s faster than Kapil and can hit just as many sixers.”

This was usually the point where a serious cricket-fan would disengage: Mr Dev and Mr Devadiga in the same sentence was a laughable construct. 

The Death of a Writer - III

(Recap: The writer and the narrator are making their way to Sesha's village to investigate an incident where a landlord's house was burnt down.)

See: Part 1, Part 2.

Another song played on my faithful transistor as we were on the bus to Shesha’s village. A music teacher and her wards, on AIR Bangalore, were singing a paean to the new year. 

In October. 

The announcer, a humourless voice with perfect Kannada diction, didn’t seem bothered by this anachronism. I don’t remember the Kannada lyrics anymore, but I remember the main chorus (in English): the teacher and one section of her wards went “Happy, Happy, Happy New Ye-ear”; another section sang similarly, except, the “Ye-ear” landed on the harmony notes.

“A Kannada song to the Gregorian new year, in October, with an English chorus and a harmony – sign of new India?”, I asked the writer, who seemed to be preoccupied.

“Huh?” he said, shaken out of his reverie.

I pointed to the transistor.

“New India?”, he said, “More like the old woman has lost her marbles … and is now trying to locate them with an electron microscope.”

I laughed.

“Old woman? How can you tell – she could be twenty-five, for all you know?”

“This is AIR Bangalore: you have to look a certain type if you want a spot for you and your wards. And listen to her voice – it’s got that MS-type quiver.”

I stared out of the window. It was an unusually cloudy day: we were making our way through thin, winding paths that bisected forests; the trees seemed to dance around us, the wind brought the smell of firewood and wet earth; the hills, in the distance, stuck out like poorly glued-paper to the grey cardboard that was the sky.

We got off to change buses at Narayana, a prominent temple town back then, now rendered soulless by neo-pilgrims. The writer and I drank tea and made small talk with the tea-seller. When we told him we were going to Shadymane, Shesha’s village, a shadow crossed the tea-seller’s face. He said, quietly: “You may get there, but will you return?”

The writer laughed: “Why do you say that?”

“Things are not so good now. They don’t like your type.”

The hissing buses sounded oddly ominous.