The Eighteenth Parallel

by MITRAN, ASHOKA

  Whenever our family procession entered these curves or the so-called short cuts through the bylanes, we lost sight of each other. Victims of a fond illusion that we'd reach home earlier by this route, we would zigzag through the crooked lanes. When we entered a new lane I would grumble to Father, 'This lane is too long, Appa.'

  'Let's ask for it to be cut then,' Father would reply.

  At the next lane I'd complain again. 'This one is also far too long.'

  'Let's cut this as well, then.'

  And so we went along, planning to cut lane after lane. When we were not engaged in this discussion of reducing the length of the lanes of Secunderabad, Father would ask me 'Don't these people have a grain of sense? Do they have any brains at all, I wonder.' The reference was to my sisters and Mother for not keeping pace. I never troubled myself for a reply because my ideas concerning the brain and the mind were rather vague. Moreover Father's tone left no doubt that the questions were merely rhetorical. We traversed the streets of Secunderabad in this curious fashion even when, years later, the city was in the grip of the Razakar terror. For that matter, as close as two days before I was attacked in the street, we had been walking through the streets at night. This time it was a Telugu film, Gollabama, not a Tamil one, and Anjali Devi had made her debut in the film.

  With her acting and her dancing, this actress zipped her way through the Telugu country and went on to conquer the Tamil country as well. Gollabama played more than six months at the Paramount, a permanent cinema theatre. We hardly ever bought tickets. More likely, you'd find our family waiting in a space near the cinema while Father spoke to the manager. We didn't always know this. After half an hour or so, when the manager had been softened up sufficiently, he would come out of his room and ask us to sit in one of the upper stalls. On several occasions, when there were no seats available, extra chairs were brought for us on the manager's orders. We never did see any film from the start, though. Father's habit of persevering for a free pass on every possible occasion was probably an offshoot of his job in the railways. We didn't ever buy tickets for any railway journey either. If it became unavoidable we would have recourse to a PTO which enabled us to pay a third of the usual fare. We undertook a journey of several thousand miles every year just to avail ourselves of this concession. Our pass would have the names of the starting point and the destination. A column one inch long was provided for entering the names of all the stations we wanted to touch. We were permitted to break journey at these stations. Since this column was too small to include all the places we wanted to visit, the names overflowed, swarming into the margins, left and right, up and down on my father's pass. By the time we returned after we had visited a score of places in two months, we'd be tired of the whole thing. Only once during such a trip was our house burgled, as far as I can remember. But it was our buffalo which presented a nearly unsolvable problem every time. The question of where to leave our buffalo would come up about a month before our journey. People in the milk trade were not likely caretakers as they might not feed the animal properly. A cow of ours had once been starved to death by a milkman. Then there were those who had cattle at home for their own use. But they were not prepared to put up with the additional responsibility of another animal and refused to entertain our requests. The only course we had was to leave the animal with someone in the villages beyond the city, paying him for his services. The problem was that the person might show up a week before we left on our trip—or he might never turn up at all until just before we left. Once we even missed our train because of the buffalo. After that we – Father and I – started to take the buffalo ourselves to Ghatkesar, a village several miles away. Father would take his walking stick along and I would carry an umbrella and a stick. Father wouldn't miss his customary enquiries. 'What babu?' 'What dorai?' and 'What master?' And the buffalo would lead us up and down and roundabout and half the day would be done before we finally reached a village of some ten palm-thatched huts. There we would search for our Mallayya or Sayana, and entrust our animal to him. We would return home by train. Free passes, of course.

  The railway pass which was recognised by the cinemas went absolutely unheeded by the customs employees. Our tonga filled with half a dozen people and an equal number of boxes would stop in front of the customs checkpost, an old building situated just outside the Secunderabad railway station. After months of touring far and wide, we had to wait there in a final ten minutes of utter panic. The customs inspector there was a woman, even in those days when the Nizam's territories were supposed to have been in the Middle Ages. It was she who ransacked our boxes and baskets year after year at the end of our trips outside the State. She would go on fishing things out one after the other, while we would go on insisting that everything was brought within the Nizam's territories. The woman, who bore a slight resemblance to Janab Jinnah's sister Fatima, would eye us all very suspiciously and mutter something before she finally took a bunch of hill bananas or a few mangoes for herself and said to us, 'You may go.' I didn't ever see anyone paying customs duty there. She stayed in her job, a permanent fixture like the sun and the moon and the mornings and evenings, ransacking travellers' possessions and dampening the zeal of vegetarians and fruit-eaters even after India's Independence was declared. She was there right through the year-long confrontation of the Government and then for a few months even after the annexation of Hyderabad State by the Indian troops.

  My father's usual ebullience got considerably subdued in places like this customs counter and such other precincts which were under the sole jurisdiction of the Nizam's government. No language except Urdu could be used for any transaction in these offices. It would be presumptuous to expect any official to be at his seat at the appointed time. The Nizam's bureaucracy described itself as the Mughalai Durbar. The Mughal Emperor's courtiers posed several possible connotations, the chief one being that nothing happened according to schedule. Eighty per cent of the State Government employees were Muslims; the rest were mulkis, that is, those recognised as natives of Hyderabad State. In those days the Nizam's State Railways offered unmatched opportunities for employment for Tamil persons and others from outside the state. Railway employees always looked down on the minions of the State Government, but living in the State, it was not possible for them to avoid the State offices entirely. On such unavoidable occasions, you found railway employees going in search of Urdu scribes to fill up their forms, and then buying and pasting on the Nizam's court stamps (on which even the numbers were printed in Urdu). You'd find them at the local office at exactly eleven o'clock for the eleven o'clock appointment, waiting there until two, and returning defeated at the end of it all, because neither they nor the local staff had the faintest idea what the other party was talking about. The railway staff were generally treated like an alien horde of plunderers. Father must inevitably have had his share of unpleasant encounters in the corridors of the Nizam's State offices. But then remember my Father's predilection for accosting everyone with the introduction: 'I am a railway servant.' Even if he were to meet a full-throated lion somewhere, this formula I'm afraid, would remain the same. Was it any wonder then that the Mughal courtiers of Hyderabad were not exactly friendly with him?

  6

  There was a large crowd at the Dreamland Cinema. What had been an orderly queue at first turned in a crowd converging on the ticket counter the moment it was opened. If only Morris had been here! He would elbow his way through the crowd till he reached the counter and would then hoist himself upon a few shoulders and get a ticket. Chandru entered the hall without a ticket and curiously, no one stopped him. He was the lone spectator in the hall. A special show of Bathing Beauty began for him. The five-foot-nine Esther Williams swam about in the water for a long time before she left the screen. Then she came and stood 'fully clothed now' before Chandru. Two of her upper teeth were a little too big but this only conferred a distinction upon her. She was asking him something sweetly, gently.

  'I didn't understand...' Chandru replied
.

  'Do you like me?' she asked, very clearly this time. Unable to think up a quick answer in English, Chandru was silent. She took him by the hand, led him up to the screen and stepped into the swimming pool with him. Chandru began to tremble.

  He was still trembling when he sat up in bed, quite awake. He felt not only ashamed but also afraid. These absurd dreams were a recent development. Was there no way to be rid of them? But there was no one he could turn to for advice.

  He got up. The inside of the house was in shadowy gloom. The presence of a roof overhead could only be deduced by the absence of stars.

  Chandru came up to the front door. Tall doorways in keeping with the enormous height of the house. The bolt at the top must have been two feet long. Unfastening it was not easy. Special efforts were required. But he had to get out into the open. Had to.

  The dim moonlight that filtered through scattered clouds showed things on the ground in silhouette, emphasizing the contours. A light mist hung in the air. Lancer Barracks and its environs slept deeply. The strains of a distant song could be heard—a Muslim song with an unmistakably Muslim cadence. A gramophone in some Muslim restaurant would be belting out Zohra Begum or Amirbai Karnataki.

  Chandru felt several parts of his body ache—his thigh, hit by the cricket ball at those four square inches unprotected by the pad; his shoulders which had borne the brunt of the Razakars' attack. Were they really Razakars? Actually, it could have been far worse since they had struck from such close quarters. Then there was the diffuse pain in his legs, the result of cycling fifteen miles against the wind in less than four hours and wheeling the cycle along the last three miles because he didn't have a lamp for his vehicle. Those twelve-rupee cricket boots, the handiwork of the cobbler under the tree, weren't good for anything but cricket. The half-mile walk dragging the dead weight of those boots was enough to make your feet ache. Today's walk had been considerably longer. But what was this pain in his side? The buffalo seemed to have butted him.

  There was some comfort in the distraction that physical pain offered from the tangles and confusions of the mind. Chandru rubbed his thigh. But though his whole body ached, the pain was not intense enough to drive everything else from his mind.The embarrassment of the dream returned... Nasir Ali Khan. The old man at the bicycle stand. The wind on his face on the Tank Bund. Narasimha Rao. Refugees cooking on the pavement of the road. The fat woman at the police officer's house, the bluish green tracery of veins on her neck and hands ... He stood for a while in the open. The shadowy shapes round him took on a more distinct identity as his eyes got used to the dim light. There was a peepal tree in front, with the compound wall of the Barracks behind it, and the street beyond the wall. On the other side stood his house, attached to many others in a row. A stretch of open ground, then the banyan tree with its multiple hanging roots. Again the compound wall on that side separating the barracks from the surrounding streets. The street. The street lights. A few bungalows here and there. Strains of music at a distance. A distinctly Muslim tune. The song, a song he had heard so many times over Kasim's radio next door. Pyari Begum was probably asleep now.

  Pyari Begum posed a problem. His perception of her had changed recently. She had been no more than a fat girl before. But now she was not just fat but pretty and deserved a second look. She now looked straight at him as at an acquaintance and did not avert her face.

  For some time now, two other families had come to stay with Pyari Begum's family next door. They hadn't come there on holiday. Chandru knew they had come from Sholapur. If Kasim hadn't offered them refuge, they would have been housed in the bamboo shacks on Station Road. They were all Muslims. So was Nasir. But how vastly different they were!

  Chandru felt a twinge of regret now. He had not taken proper leave of Nasir Ali Khan. Nasir couldn't be expected to invite Chandru to cricket practice every time. But after the fiasco of that evening, Chandru doubted if he would ever feel like going to the nets again on his own.

  Chandru wanted to cry but he couldn't. It had been like this for quite some time now. Laughing heartily, crying openly, expressing one's thoughts freely, all these had become impossible. Months had gone by since he last spoke to Morris and Terence, his neighbours and long-time friends. As for his new friends, he was at a loss to continue any conversation beyond the first two minutes.

  Chandru bolted the front door of his house from the outside. He shut the gate and walked towards the peepal tree. Dry twigs from the tree snapped under his feet. He had often collected these twigs and bundled them for the family priest to use to light the ritual fires. The priest had brought a new astrologer home one day. Unlike the general run of astrologers, this one had predicted no glorious future for him. For that matter, this astrologer had never read any of their horoscopes at home without a preliminary pout and a tch-tch. Mother had nicknamed him Saturn, Sani is thought to be dark-complexioned. This astrologer certainly was. He was so dark that it would have been difficult to see him at night. Chandru was thought to be under the sinister influence of Sani right now. His wild speculations next turned to the name 'seven-and-a-half years' Sani'. Folk etymology made it sound like 'seven-and-a half-countries Sani'. Did the sinister planet dog your steps through seven and a half countries as well, he wondered. Was he perhaps accompanying him at this moment? Where was he?

  Chandru looked around. The block of houses lay stretched like the sleeping giant Kumbhakarna of the Ramayana. The second block of the Barracks was hidden from view. The spire of the church rose straight into the sky. He had been to the church only that evening, looking for the buffalo. Rough, open country to his right with a few buildings in the distance, and then the Christian cemetery. English ghosts, a hundred years old, would be enjoying themselves here at this hour of night. The place was scary even in the day. But wait, how was it that he could see the cemetery which was half a mile away? Was it perhaps because Saturn was with him?

  Then there was the banyan tree. One needed the intervening distance to get a full view of the tree. It looked so incredibly large, as large as a hill. The tiny red fruit on the tree were not visible now. Did they burst after they turned red? Or did they redden and burst after the crows had scattered them to the ground? It didn't matter. The tree was now a dark mass, a charcoal drawing on an immense grey canvas. Not a leaf stirred. But in its own way, it was breathing. In deep silence. Probably oxygenating.

  What was that noise? A rustle? A snake. He watched fascinated as it slithered quickly past him. Its path wasn't wavy at all. He stood watching until it merged into the dark and at last was lost to sight. A snake. He had been seeing snakes recently, in fact ever since he had had these dreams. He had seen three during the last few months though he hadn't seen any before that in the nearly eight years he had been in this place. Snakes – the cobra – Nagaratnam. Her name meant the jewel on the cobra.

  Nagaratnam. Another girl who one could not pass without turning to look again, a look that never failed to churn up his system. He shouldn't have these thoughts about people who were older, should he? But then did age count in these matters? Besides, of all the girls who interested him, it was Nagaratnam who seemed to reciprocate his interest somewhat – though you never knew for sure – with that twinkle in her eyes. Was it perhaps a Get-away-you-gawky-adolescent sort of look that she gave him?

  Chandru had heard things about her from here and there. But only Ranga had given him anything like a cogent account of her. It wasn't inspired by his dislike of her. Nagaratnam had never encouraged Ranga. Maybe there were no specific reasons for her behaviour; maybe there were.

  Maybe Ranga's tactics to draw her attention were to blame. But then, boys had been much worse. Ranga was infatuated with her just as half of Secunderabad was. Nagaratnam had become an obsessive topic of discussion with him, but he never got to know her personally. Only those really close to you could ever think it was all right. Others would only talk. Ranga must have ruminated on all the gossip he had heard about Nagaratnam and then come to his own co
nclusions. But where was Ranga now? He'd left without an address. Couldn't he have written at least a line from wherever he was?

  Weighed down by a sense of loss, Chandru wondered if Ranga had befriended him only because of Nagaratnam. No. There had been much more to their friendship than that. Oh for the days they had spent together, walking endlessly and sharing their thoughts.

  It was Ranga who had properly initiated Chandru into cricket. But, curiously, as long as Ranga was there, Chandru had learnt nothing. As a batsman, he didn't last beyond the first four balls, and as a bowler, he always found the ball displaying a will of its own. The worst bit was that he wasn't even a good fielder. But a strange thing happened once Ranga left the place. All the techniques that Ranga had taught him so lovingly and painstakingly, all that which eluded him as long as his mentor was present, were now within grasp, just so simple. The ball as it came sailing towards him was no longer a blur. It was now possible for him to talk to the ball, rebuke it and dismiss it from his presence. Even Krishnaswamy's brother Goku of Second Line Barracks, who used to smirk every time he went to bat, now nursed a feeling of inferiority. When Chandru was chosen captain there had been no murmur of dissent. Even if a few had demurred, and you had asked them to suggest a better name, the answer would have been long coming. In the last three months, Chandru had led his team in seven matches, winning five and drawing two. He had notched up a grand total of 318. Only once had he scored below thirty. It was always a 40, 50, even a 77 once. If only Ranga had been there to see him now!

  Ranga would then be the captain, of course, but to score like this under him would have been glorious. Ranga's family was among the first to leave Secunderabad because of the Razakar menace. Or was it just that his father had been transferred? Whatever it was, Ranga had left.