The Wound

“It’s the heat that accounts for our anger,” says Gita, sitting down on the floor and patting the area on the thinnai  beside her invitingly.

“Is it?” Murari asks and sits by her side, stretching his legs and resting his back against the wall. He slides an oval tray laden with betel leaves and nuts and a blob of lime towards her. They agree that it will be a good way to round off the heaviness of the four-course lunch they had just feasted upon.

Murari takes something from the fold of his veshti tucked around his middle, and swipes it quickly with a finger on the betel leaf before tucking it in his mouth. Curious, Gita requests, “Some for me?” He chuckles and wraps the leaf like a little green cone and holds it up to let her nibble it off his fingers. It tastes different from the ones Amma allowed her to chew during weddings and festivities but she doesn’t object. It’s bitter and acidic. She chews the cud feeling somnolent.

“I can no longer recognize him”, Gita says, breaking the silence pointing to a recent copy of the weekly,Ananda Vikatan that lies on the floor between them. On the cover is the photo of a man standing stiff in the company of the chief minister.

Murari works his jaws a while before speaking: “Remember at home we didn’t call him Umapathi? He was called Chellam, as in ‘my pet’.” Gita nods.

Umapathi was the youngest of four children. His parents, struck by guilt and sorrow, called him Chellam. He was a beautiful boy, nobody doubted that. You wouldn’t be surprised especially if you saw his mother, whose moon face, pink lips, almond eyes and creamy complexion was so fetching that it was said that the fish swimming in the Tamarabarani river went still while she bathed in its waters.

He had been a bonny baby, a chubby fellow who lapped milk greedily from bottles. He had a roaring cry and loved horse play with the doting uncles and men folk of the house. In those days parents worried themselves sick that their infants were not fed enough milk. Vitamins or vaccinations were unheard of. Little Umapathi was frisky and active until a fever struck him when he was three years old. The fever had burned his body but the doctors who were summoned failed to recognize the deadly virus. He was a spirited soul and got better. However soon after it was noticed that he kept collapsing; his walk had become enfeebled; the muscles of his one leg turned flaccid with a probable spinal infection and a while later he would lay on the red-oxide floor all day long, his right leg limp and wobbly, struck down by polio.

The sammandhi grandparents were angry. “What was a household of adults doing slacking off, and not taking care of my only grandson?” Mayiladuthurai Umapathi Iyer had thundered. The diligent middle class tribe from Tirunelveli was irascible too, but it could never match the arrogance, pride and wrath of a man from the wealthy river bank of the Kaveri.

Umapathi did not notice the shadow that settled over his parents. His zestful temperament allowed him to battle his infirmity. In a few months he was back to his playful antics. He kicked and fell, yelled and cried, ran about the long corridors of the home dragging the good leg with him. He thrashed things in robust rage, plucked the tail of the cow in the backyard and would blissfully get lost during occasions by slipping away to chase the pigs that messed around the filth in the narrow backstreets of the row houses. In school no one knew whether he was insulted or heckled as ‘lame’, or the ‘stupid limp’. Was he a tormented soul, whose gut wrenched when he could not match the exertion of ball games on the playground? Did it cripple his spirit too? He never spoke of it. He was a brave boy with good humour and quick wit. He was not want of trying, and his jokes and ribald comments kept the sportsmen hovering around him on field. Friends? Oh, he had hundreds of them! Often his father would roam the streets and neighbours’ homes looking for him, only to find him at the cycle repair shop in the slum playing jester before the street’s residents.

At home, among dozens of cousins, he was the darling. Aunts begged to feed him, uncles fought over to take him out for treats and his three sisters joined their mother in spoiling him. He would run away from schools, and each time he came home, dragging the thin leg behind him, his eyes pooling in tears, his distraught parents would change cities, schools and homes to alleviate the blows to his ebullient spirit.

Gita was meek, obedient, easily frightened and a good six years younger than Chellam. As was family custom, she too adored him as a cousin. Chellam liked to play with plastic guns, loved action movies and the rough and tumble of physical games-nicks, cuts, fractures be damned. His unspoken venom and wretched rage would surface when he bullied Gita and ran roughshod over her. The simmering violence within, the incoherent hurt and infuriation would pour its acid upon her. He felt powerful and gleeful when her lips trembled and her eyes clouded when he barked at her. He would blackmail her when he found her avoiding the evening glass of milk and surreptitiously pouring the tepid thick milk in the drain. “Wasting milk, is it now? Shall I tell all huh, huh?” he would ask sharply wagging a finger and she would go cold with fear and her eyes would turn large with terror. He would snatch her share of sweets during gatherings and destroy her rag doll and laugh tickled while she sobbed expecting sympathy from a houseful of adults who indulged him. Murari would wince and look away when Chellam subjected Gita to his taunts. “Paavam da ava”, he would recommend and Chellam would glower at her.

On long summer holidays the young cousins would gather at a large room on the first floor, away from the adults to play act and sing. Pots, pans and tables would double as percussion instruments and the din was good fun. Chellam would feel a thrill when he shut the heavy door on Gita’s face to the room. He would be the livewire of the party amusing the gathering, imitating Tamil film heroes and keeping everyone in splits over his risqué jokes. “Can I join in please?” Gita would beg. “Not you, po di”, he’d say with a hard glint and he’d be satisfied to note her eyes smarting from unshed tears.

The years went by. Gita was 14, learning with almost a shock that boys took the trouble of glancing at her. Chellam noticed it too and his spite grew. On Deepavali days he would burst the noisiest firecrackers under her bedroom window and would laugh as she would cower in her room. He’d pinch her, tweak her waist embarrassingly and let his hands rough her up during weddings and on busy family occasions when no one noticed. He gripped her neck to warn her about protesting and in a menacing low voice in her ears said: “Don’t dare squeal. I’ll belt the skin off your back”.

Gita found it wise to keep mum for no one would believe her. Thankfully as the years rolled on the families drifted and they saw less of each other except during occasions. During her college years she found a flowering in Chellam. His rage mellowed and his handsomeness shone. He had a golden complexion and a healthy head of hair and a great pair of shoulders. Chellam wore his corduroy trousers and crinkled Madras shirts with a certain rugged machismo and his slight drag seemed unnoticed. Besides he suddenly realised the virtues of a good education. He passed his college and university in Madras with high grades. His eldest sister invited him over to America to study further. He easily won scholarships and enrolled himself in a prestigious American university.

It was the time when India’s prominence was at its height in American academic and literary circles. Chellam exemplified it in more ways than one. Chellam was hailed as a leader among the accomplished desi men- underdog yet resilient, disadvantaged but not embittered, tough and charming and they eulogized him. It wasn’t surprising that he found a girlfriend. She was modest, reserved, and demure, a wide-eyed Tamil student in the same university where he chaired the department of Indian Languages.

The family approved of the match readily and everyone was happy for Chellam, though he married in private, almost in secrecy in America. The company of the large extended family seemed irrelevant now. He had moved on and his spirit had been avenged. The past seemed unpalatable and the searing pain of a maimed boyhood, a fumbling youth where the family seemed to have better and brighter members who shone in academics, in brilliance, respectability and physical health blurred. Now it was his turn to enjoy the glory that had denied him. His stature as an academician grew. Visiting relatives murmured rumours of the odd pretty student who caught his fancy, but it was decided not to dwell on such matters. He deserved only happiness and prosperity.
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“He’s famous. He is a visiting professor at Harvard and hailed at Oxford and it is said that his work-in- progress on “Culture, Politics and Gender-a Study in Tamil Cinema” will be turned into a book”, informs Murari flipping to the page in the magazine bearing Chellam’s beaming photo at a literary award ceremony in Chennai.

” ‘He is spotted in the company of American politicians and Delhi Rajya sabha circles mention the possibility of the Indian government bequeathing a Padma Shri’ “, reads out Murari.

“Hm, especially if more photographs of Chellam and Clinton appear in newspapers and magazines!” says Gita.

Gita stares at the Ananda Vikatan that lies open before her. Chellam is unrecognizable in the photo. He looks sun burnt like a roasted bean, his tousled hair and disheveled scholar’s casual clothes leaving no hint of his bygone handsomeness or the disarming smile that once danced on his full lips. His chiseled features are now gaunt and the limp pronounced due to his widening waistline.

But then Chellam’s on a well-deserved roll, moving in swish cars, living in posh beachside apartments, and warming his students with his easy humour and abundant talent. The strength of his spirit, his grit and boundless enthusiasm is an inspiration for the disadvantaged and a source of pride for his aged parents.

“Optimism is the pacifist’s weapon against life’s battles; the disabled’s war to overcome the anguish of the soul”, says Murari, leaning forward to clasp Gita’s hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.

Gita stares at her toes and doesn’t respond. Instead she asks, “What was that you added to the betel leaf?”

“Something to soothe old wounds”, he says with a smile.