Scattered Fates - a novel on the second partition of India

by Ram Garikipati

Chapter 3: OLD MAN AT THE SEA

  Maya woke up with a jolt, as the pounding on her door got progressively louder. It took a few seconds to get back her bearings, and she recollected last night’s odyssey, hurriedly slipping on her nightgown that was laid across the chair.

  Despite the central air-conditioning, she found the room temperature a tad unbearable and had decided to sleep naked, of course after making sure that the door was securely latched from inside.

  ‘Coming! Give me a moment,’ she said stumbling towards the door. She unlatched it to face a brown face peering inside. Yes, it was Naga all right, but he looked different in the natural morning light.

  God, it is so difficult to recognize faces. All of them look alike.

  ‘Good morning, rise and shine, it’s 8:30.’

  ‘Thanks Naga, give me a few minutes, and I will be right with you,’ she said tightly holding on to her gown.

  ‘Take your time. I am in no hurry. I took a week off to be at your service. By the way, I am preparing breakfast; hope you are okay with toast and eggs. You can taste Dravidian food later.’

  ‘Thank you, be right there.’

  Twenty minutes later, sitting at the kitchen table, she was staring at a burnt toast and a blobby omelet, hesitating to dig her fork in.

  What is this stuff?

  ‘Sorry, about the bread, the toaster is old, never used it much.’

  ‘My maid in Corea always burns my breakfast, I am used to it,’ she replied, almost choking on the salty piece of battered egg.

  ‘You have a maidservant? But I thought your parents are university professors,’ he said surprised.

  ‘Yes, they are. Everyone in Corea has at least 3 helps, one for cooking, another for cleaning the home, and the third for gardening, don’t you have any?’ she said hurriedly gulping down a glass of water.

  ‘Of course not, the only people who have servants here are the wealthy. As for gardening, most of us live in apartments, and only the superrich own their own villas.’

  Maya was confused.

  Dravida is a rich country, but the average citizens cannot afford servants and live in high-rise buildings, while Corea is a poor country, but almost everyone I know hires maids and lives in independent houses.

  ‘How much do you pay them?’ Naga inquired.

  ‘Well, in Dravidian rupees… let us see. 1,000 Corean won would be equal to around 10 US dollars, which is equal to around 100 Deccan rupees,’ she said, fingers punching the imaginary calculator. She suddenly stopped, as her eyes caught a gecko slowly inching towards the ceiling fan above.

  ‘That’s all? You know how much it costs to hire a maid here? 10,000 rupees. Isn’t that atrocious?’

  Maya was half-listening. Tense, her eyes were following the four-inch long brown gecko that was chasing a small black spider.

  What a disgusting creature.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry, balli’s are harmless, they just eat insects,’ he said, noticing her goose bumps and looking up.

  ‘What if it falls down?’

  ‘Not to worry, that rarely happens. Even if it does, make sure it does not fall on your head.’

  Even before he could complete the sentence, Maya let out a loud shriek, and jumped out of her chair.

  The gecko, in one last desperate attempt to catch it’s prey, lunged forward, missed the target, slipped and plopped on her right arm, before leaping onto the plate, and struggled to escape.

  ‘Help me. Get it out. Get it out,’ she screamed, rushing to a corner of the room.

  He coolly folded a newspaper and chased the harmless little reptile till it disappeared behind the curtains.

  ‘You will get used to it. You know Dravida is a tropical country. Every home has ballis, without them we would be infested with insects, they do not bite and are not poisonous, so calm down.’

  ‘How can you live with those creepy creatures?’

  ‘There are a lot of superstitions about ballis, and we call it the Balli Dosha Shastram. Depending on which part of the body it falls on, it can either bring good luck or bad.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if it falls on your head, something very inauspicious is going to happen, if it falls on the foot it means travel, and in front of you means bad luck. Every body part it touches has a significance, different for men and women.’ ‘What about the right arm? It fell on my right arm.’

  ‘No idea, I never cared for all this humbug.’

  Naga knew, but did not want to frighten her on the first day. He could not risk telling her that for women, it meant romance was in the air, while for men, it foretold trouble.

  ‘So, what is the plan? I thought of taking a few days to see the city before I start my research.’

  ‘Great. We are having lunch with some of my closest friends, and then we will go on a drive around the city.You can read some newspapers or watch TV, we still have an hour to go.’

  ‘Wow, how many newspapers do you read daily?’ she said, eyeing the stack on the coffee table.

  ‘I get 12 newspapers, 6 in English and 2 each in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Sinhala. All paid for by my office. You see reporters cannot afford to miss any news.’

  ‘How can you read all these newspapers before breakfast? I can hardly manage one. Do you really know all those languages?’

  ‘It takes practice to read so many. You learn how to spot the important articles and leave the rest. Also almost every Dravidian knows the five languages. English is our national language, but the others are also official languages. We have to learn at least two languages besides our mother-tongue and English in school.’

  ‘Isn’t it difficult?’ she said, recalling her efforts to learn English in school.

  It was a nightmare, and here students have to learn three different languages apart from English?

  ‘Well, not really, because all the five languages are more or less similar in grammar construct and vocabulary. Only their scripts are different. Similar to Corean, Chinese and Japanese.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Japanese and Corean are similar grammatically but their vocabularies are very different. Mandarin and Cantonese are also different from the other two. Moreover, we are not forced to learn the languages in school.’

  ‘I am glad we are forced to learn our official languages. It makes us complete. Look at Hindustan, Hindi is both their national and official language although it is the mother tongue of only 40 percent of the population. So if your mother tongue is Hindi, there is no desire to learn any other language. The remaining 60 percent know only their mother tongue and are forced to learn Hindi. Very few know English, except in the NorthEast states. There are so many other beautiful languages, but no one cares. That is why they are underdeveloped.’

  ‘I think that’s a bit farfetched. Soviet Union faces a similar language situation, so does the European Union, and they are both developed. One does not have to make English a national language to become developed. That is the American conspiracy,’ Maya said.

  ‘I am sorry. Who said that Soviet Union is developed? All their economic data is manipulated. They only have military strength, which I also seriously doubt.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to argue now. We can have this discussion later with concrete data.’

  ‘Suits me, I don’t want to quarrel with you on your first day here.’

  ‘It’s my second day, and you already did on the way from the airport,’ she reminded.

  ‘Hey, still upset? I told you I am touchy about my father.’

  ‘No, not that. It is just that I am really confused and in a new country. English is not my mother tongue, and you always misunderstand what I say. I am very stressed translating everything from Corean in my head before speaking. I hope you control your temper.’

  ‘I will try,’ Naga promised, walking towards his vibrating mobile phone that was being charged near the music system.

  He looked at it and almost froze.

  Shit. Big boss.

 
‘Who is it?’ Maya asked.

  Putting a finger to his lips, he stammered: ‘Good morning sir… yes sir, I read the Deccan Herald and Island articles. I had the same document with me, but it is not genuine. A planted story sir, just to shake the markets… OK sir… I will try. I am on leave for a week, but will work on that angle from home… I have a guest from Corea… family friend… OK sir.’

  ‘Your boss?’ Maya guessed, as he put the phone in the holder.

  ‘Yes, my editor, he always calls up if I miss a story that appears in the rival newspapers. It was about some front-page articles that appeared in Deccan Herald and The Island. Corporate rivalry. I did not want to fall into their trap, and he understood.’

  ‘You report directly to your editor?’

  ‘No, actually I have to report to my bureau chief, but the editor has a personal interest in my stories. You see, his family group owns my newspaper, and is bidding for 3G mobile licenses later this year. Our rival newspapers carried a story on the issue.’

  ‘3G, you mean third generation? Wow! In Corea we all use landlines. Handphones are very expensive, and very few people can afford them.’

  ‘The cellphone market in Dravida is one of the most advanced in the world and boasts nearly 100 per cent coverage of its 270 million population. We have more cellphones than landlines now,’ he boasted.

  ‘Yes I read. I also know that your Internet speeds are the fastest in the world. I want to confess one thing. We still use dial-up Internet in Corea, that is why I could not use Skype.’

  ‘Is it? I thought you wanted to hide your face, anyway, good to know the real reason. Here, we can surf the Internet even on the road. We have free WIFI all over the city, it a new government initiative.’

  ‘Naga, can I get a temporary mobile phone. It is part of my research grant, but I want it soon. Can you help me?’

  ‘Sure why not, we will get it on the way to lunch with my friend Mathew and his wife. Everyone can get a connection in 20 minutes. Just don’t forget to get your passport along.’

  ‘Only 20 minutes? It takes two years to get a landline connection in Corea’. ‘I know. Just like Hindustan. I think we better start getting dressed, I don’t want to be late.’

  ‘Just give me an hour,’ she said, springing from the sofa.