by Farahad Zama
‘I didn’t dare leave the place because I didn’t know when my husband would come back,’ said the old lady.
‘Didn’t anybody help you?’ asked Vani.
‘The whole village was in ruins. Everybody had troubles. Who had the time to help a woman on her own?’ said the old lady.
‘What happened then?’ asked Aruna.
‘About a month later, I went into labour and gave birth to a baby girl. But my breasts were dry and the baby died.’
‘How awful,’ said Vani.
‘Did your husband ever come back?’ asked Aruna.
‘He must have died, though his body was never found. No, he didn’t come back,’ she replied. After a pause, the old lady continued, ‘But, my husband’s brothers came. They said I was a widow and shaved my head and kicked me out of the house.’ She paused again, and must have been remembering the pain of those days because her eyes went blank. She looked at them with her good eye and said, ‘Things were difficult, but somehow I survived. Years later, I started working as a servant in a political leader’s house and he eventually got me this place on a government scheme to help poor widows. Things are not bad now - everything has become expensive but my needs are small.’
They all fell silent. Seenu came to their hut.
‘Lady,’ he said to Aruna, ‘there is a phone call for you.’
‘For me? Who would call me here?’ said Aruna.
‘The same person you called, madam. He said he had a missed call from you,’ Seenu said. ‘Come quickly, he will call again in two minutes.’
He turned back, moving quite fast with a shuffling gait, one shoulder hunched with strain as his hand supported his crippled leg every alternate step. Aruna followed behind him. The phone was ringing as Aruna reached Seenu’s stall. He picked up the phone, answered and handed it to Aruna, ‘Yours, madam.’
Aruna said cautiously into the phone, ‘Hello? This is Aruna.’
‘Aruna, what happened?’ said a male voice. It was Ramanujam. ‘I saw a missed call from this number when I came out of surgery.’
‘Thanks for calling!’ said Aruna with relief. ‘We are stuck here and I didn’t know who else to call.’ She explained what had happened and how she and her sister didn’t have any cash with them. ‘I was wondering if you could, maybe, send your driver,’ she finished, a bit awkwardly.
Ramanujam thought for a moment and said, ‘No problem. I can do that. Where exactly are you?’
Aruna couldn’t describe where she was, so she handed the phone to Seenu who gave their location to Ramanujam.
She thanked Seenu and went back to the old lady’s café.
‘Who was it?’ asked Vani, excited.
‘Oh! A client of ours - I happened to have his card in my handbag, so I called him but there was no reply. He saw a missed call on his cell phone and called back,’ Aruna replied.
‘So, what’s happening?’ said Vani.
Aruna replied, ‘He is sending his driver. Should be here in half an hour or so.’
Vani said, ‘Driver? Excellent! What does your client do?’
‘He is a doctor - a surgeon at King George Hospital.’
They came out of the hut when they saw a car pull up. Aruna was surprised when she saw Ramanujam get out of the car. She couldn’t stop smiling though.
‘I thought you were sending the driver,’ she said to Ramanujam.
‘The next patient caught a cold so we had to cancel his surgery. I am free until the evening clinic, so I decided to come myself,’ he said, grinning at the girls. ‘I feel like I am taking French leave from school.’
Aruna laughed and introduced Vani. Aruna could see that Vani was very curious about Ramanujam. She tried to look at him through her sister’s eyes. He was a good-looking man, tall and broad shouldered. He wore good clothes and came driving an expensive car; he talked very comfortably with both of them.
They now had transportation to the city. The old lady had come out of the hut to see them off and Aruna turned to her and said, ‘Baamma, thanks for helping us. We don’t have a problem going back to the city now, so let me pay you for the tea.’
The old woman protested, but accepted the five-rupee coin that Aruna gave her. As she was turning away, Ramanujam said, ‘Stop, Granny. Let me have a look at your eyes.’ He held the old woman’s chin and looked at one eye and then the other. He then closed the good eye and opened two fingers of his hand.
‘How many fingers can you see?’ he asked.
The old woman frowned with concentration, and said, ‘One?’
He then closed the other eye and asked again. This time she answered correctly. He repeated the tests by moving his hand to different areas in front of her eyes. Ramanujam finally said, ‘You have cataracts in both eyes. Your left eye is completely covered and your right eye is partially clouded. It is very important to get this operated on otherwise you will soon go completely blind.’
The old lady was clearly scared. ‘What can I do, sir? How much will it cost?’
Ramanujam reassured her. ‘Don’t worry. It is a very simple operation. I am sure the government eye hospital runs free clinics.’
She didn’t look convinced. Ramanujam took out his mobile phone and called somebody. After the usual pleasantries, he said, ‘Ravi, when do you run eye clinics? I have a poor widow who’s presenting opacity of the lens in both eyes. Totally covered in the left eye and about seventy per cent in the other.’
He listened for a while and asked a few questions. ‘Thanks, I’ll give her a letter, so you will know I sent her.’ He asked the old woman, ‘What is your name?’
‘Gauramma,’ she said.
‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Fifty,’ she said.
His pen scratched out a letter and he handed it to the old lady. ‘Go to the eye clinic in KGH on Thursday. When you get there, give this letter to the attendant and tell him to give it to Dr Ravi. He will sort everything out.’
‘Thank you, sir. It must have been some good deed I performed in a previous birth that directed these lovely ladies to my door today and brought you here. Thank you,’ she said, tears running down her lined face.
They went to Seenu’s stall where Ramanujam gave him a small amount of money before taking their leave.
‘It was good of you to help the poor woman,’ said Aruna. ‘She has had a difficult life.’
Simhachalam is an old temple, built in the thirteenth century, dedicated to Lord Vishnu in the avatar of Narasimha - half man, half lion. According to legend, a demon king obtained a guarantee that he could not be killed by man nor beast, neither during the day nor at night, neither in his house nor outside and neither on the ground nor in the sky. Confident that he was invincible, his depredations knew no bounds. Finally, to stamp out the evil demon, Lord Vishnu burst out of a pillar in the form of a raging Narasimha and caught the demon king in his claws. The sun was setting as the half man, half beast brought his prey to the entrance of the evil demon’s palace. There, in the doorway to the palace, neither inside the house nor outside, at twilight when it was neither day nor night, Narasimha, neither man nor beast, sat down and lay the demon king on his lap, neither on the ground nor in the sky, and killed him. Even today, Hindus do not stand in the doorway of a building.
Aruna, Vani and Ramanujam entered a big courtyard criss-crossed with a maze of iron railings so people could form a queue for viewing the deity. It was not too crowded - just a few hundred people in front of them. They left their footwear with a temple employee and joined the queue. Quite a lot of the people - both men and women - had shaven heads as they had offered their hair to the Lord as a gift and their bright heads glistened in the sun like so many light bulbs.
Ramanujam turned to Vani and said, ‘Since we are here to thank the Lord because you passed first class, why don’t you shave your head and offer your hair?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said, making a face. ‘Actually, we are also visiting the temple because my sister got the job at Mr Ali�
�s. Why don’t you ask her to shave her head?’
Aruna saw Ramanujam looking at her long hair for several moments but he didn’t say anything. Aruna pretended she hadn’t heard Vani’s question.
The queue moved quickly and within forty-five minutes they were near the sanctum sanctorum. They handed their gifts of flowers and fruits to a priest and went inside, facing the idol. Ramanujam and Aruna folded their hands and bent their heads. Vani rang a bell that was hanging there and knelt in front of the idol, making a deep obeisance. They could not make out the true shape of the idol - it was fully covered in sandalwood paste. Narasimha is an angry avatar and the sandalwood paste is to cool him down and control his rage. The idol is revealed in its true glory for only twelve hours every year and the throng of devotees at the temple then is truly enormous. One of the priests standing there made sure they moved on in less than a minute and they were soon out in the sun again.
They collected their shoes and sandals and Ramanujam said, ‘Let’s go and collect the prasaadam.’
Aruna said, ‘We don’t have the money to buy it, remember.’
Ramanujam said, ‘Come to Simhachalam temple and miss out on the blessed sweet? There is almost no point in coming to the temple.’
Vani laughed and Aruna said, ‘Don’t talk irreverently about God’s offering.’
Ramanujam held his ears in his hands and said, ‘Sorry, Mummy. I won’t be naughty again.’
Aruna laughed along with Vani.
He handed Aruna a hundred-rupee note. When he saw her hesitating, he said, ‘I am just lending it; return it later.’
Aruna thanked him and took the money. She did feel more comfortable with a bit of cash on her. There was an even longer queue for the prasaadam than there was for the deity. They finally got to the front of the queue and Ramanujam bought two half-kilo packets of the tasty sweet, made in the name of the deity.
‘Now for the picnic,’ said Vani.
‘That’s a good idea. I know just the place. Let’s go,’ he said.
They got into the car and Ramanujam drove them down the hill. At the bottom, instead of turning towards the city, he turned the other way. The road had been recently laid and they had a smooth ride. Inside the air-conditioned car it was cool, and India looked its most beautiful through the tinted windows as they drove past green trees and looked at the rural life outside - farmers preparing their land for the coming rains, boys and wiry old men herding goats and buffalo, women carrying pots of water or firewood on their heads. They passed a pond and Ramanujam pointed. ‘Look, a crane.’
Soon, too soon for Aruna, the car turned off the main road and took a narrow twisting lane. Within minutes they passed a small village and entered a large, gated orchard of mango and cashew-nut trees. Crossing the cattle grid, Ramanujam drove the car into a sweeping gravel driveway and parked under the shade of a tree. They got out of the car and the girls looked around with interest - the driveway was flanked on both sides by painted bricks, half dug at an angle into the ground. There were bougainvillea, jasmine, marigold and golden kanakaambaram plants flowering all around. There was a large porch in front of the house and a group of villagers were sitting, some on the ground, some on benches in front of a powerful-looking man in his forties.
The man stood up to greet them - he was tall and well built with a broad chest and strong arms. His long black hair was swept back and he sported a thin handlebar moustache. His teeth were stained red with paan.
‘Good morning, Doctor. What brings you here?’ he said in a deep voice.
‘Morning, Mr Raju. The ladies wanted to go for a picnic after visiting the Simhachalam temple and I brought them here,’ replied Ramanujam.
‘You should have called me. I would have had lunch prepared for you,’ said Mr Raju.
‘No, we already have food. I wasn’t expecting you here - I heard you were busy building the shopping mall in town.’
‘That’s right. But, today I had some property matters to settle, so I had to come round and talk to these people,’ he said, waving his hand at the villagers, waiting patiently for the gentlemen to finish their conversation.
A young man brought three plastic chairs from the house and set them down near Mr Raju’s chair.
Mr Raju asked them to sit down and took a seat himself. It was easy to believe that this man belonged to the Kshatriya caste, whose forefathers were soldiers and kings.
‘Your sister and brother-in-law were here last weekend,’ he said.
‘I know. They told me. They got us some mangoes,’ said Ramanujam.
‘They took away a lot of mangoes,’ laughed Mr Raju.
Ramanujam introduced the girls. ‘The ladies are sisters - Aruna and Vani. Their uncle is a priest at the Annavaram temple.’
Mr Raju and the villagers looked impressed.
Aruna and Vani joined their hands and said, ‘Namaste.’
Aruna took out a sweet and gave it to Mr Raju. ‘Prasaadam from the temple,’ she said.
Mr Raju leant forward and took it in his right hand, touched it to his forehead reverently and ate it in one gulp.
‘Where do you want to go for the picnic? The second guest house is free; nobody is using it today,’ said Mr Raju.
‘No, we’ll just go to our plot. It will be nice in the shade of the trees,’ said Ramanujam.
‘Basavaaa . . .’ said Mr Raju loudly, turning towards the house.
A young man came out. ‘Basava, cook these people lunch,’ said Mr Raju.
‘There is no need for the trouble. We have a packed lunch and there are a lot of fruits out there,’ said Ramanujam.
‘No trouble,’ laughed Mr Raju. ‘We don’t need to kill a chicken or a goat for you Brahmins, do we?’ Mr Raju turned to Basava and said, ‘Use the vegetarian kitchen.’
Ramanujam said to Basava, ‘Something simple - just rice and one curry.’
Basava nodded and went back inside.
Ramanujam, Aruna and Vani walked down a straight road through the orchard. Aruna was carrying their bag of food and Ramanujam was carrying a mat that he had taken out from his car. On both sides of the path there were mature mango trees. The trees were hanging heavy with yellow fruit. Parrots and mynah birds chirped and flew among the trees.
‘Mr Raju bought this orchard several years ago from farmers, laid these roads and built the guest houses. He then divided the area into plots and sold them on. We bought a couple of plots at that time. We gave one of the plots to my sister when she got married,’ Ramanujam explained.
‘It’s lovely - so peaceful, you cannot hear anything except the birds,’ said Aruna.
Vani was skipping in front of them like a little girl.
‘Yes, I know. We come here three or four times a year for picnics. ’ Ramanujam stopped after they had walked for a few minutes and said, ‘Here we are.’
It looked no different from the rest of the area around them.
‘How do you know this is yours?’ asked Vani.
‘Do you see this stone?’ asked Ramanujam, pointing to a stone post dug into the ground by the side of the road. Vani and Aruna nodded. It had the number twenty-one written on it in black paint. ‘Plot twenty-one is ours. All the way from this post to that one there,’ he said, pointing to another post a couple of hundred feet away. He then pointed through the trees. ‘There are another two posts marking the other side of the plot.’
They got off the road and walked into the trees. The trees were regularly spaced every ten or fifteen feet away from each other. It was cool under their canopy of glossy, dark green leaves. Ramanujam spread the mat under one of the mango trees. Aruna took out a bed sheet from her bag and covered the mat. They all kicked off their shoes and sat down on the sheet.
Ramanujam said, ‘We’ll be getting some hot food soon. Shall we wait for that?’
‘I’m starving,’ replied Vani.
‘I’m hungry too,’ said Ramanujam. ‘Let’s start with some mangoes. Come on.’
Vani immediately jumped up. Ra
manujam held his hand out to Aruna. Aruna hesitated for a second and then stretched out her hand. Ramanujam pulled her up. A thrill went through Aruna as he held her hand. It was the first time that they had touched. Aruna blushed and stood, looking a bit confused. Vani had already gone ahead and Ramanujam turned away as well to put on his shoes.
Aruna composed herself and thought to herself angrily, It’s no big deal. Doesn’t mean anything. Relax.
She couldn’t relax, however, and was still standing there when Vani turned back and shouted at her, ‘Come on, akka.’
Aruna joined them. ‘They look like Banginpalli mangoes,’ she said to Ramanujam.
‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘the best mangoes in the world. My father always says that if mangoes are the king of fruit, the Banginpalli variety is the king of mangoes. When Mr Raju told my dad that the land held mature Banginpalli trees, he didn’t stop to think about whether it made economic sense. He just put his name down for two plots without asking any more questions.’
They each plucked a ripe fruit and Ramanujam said, ‘There is a standpipe on the other side, come on.’
‘How will we cut them?’ asked Vani. ‘These mangoes are meant to be cut and eaten, not sucked like a Rasaalu mango.’
