The Walk - Part 1

Having lived up to my promise in my first post about being a slow writer, I am back..

This is something I had written in November 2004. Found it in some remote corner of my hard disk and decided what the hell :)

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The eighty- by eighty room with uncared for a bit of a not-so-old rosewood furniture set strewn around was in stark contrast to the street outside the apartment. The rug on the floor flaunted tea stains and patchwork. Dirty towels and underwear hung proudly on a nylon wire connecting two adjacent walls asymmetrically. As far as the animate occupants of the room were considered; spiders, moths, cockroaches and lizards had a field day in establishing base. There seemed to be no territorial dispute. Food and water were available in plenty, thanks to a leaky washbasin. The animal kingdom was in flourish.

Less than thirty steps away, the entire street had been cleanly swept for the first time in many years by Ramu, the community appointed sweeper (that, being debatable because he had started to accompany his dad, one of the Corporation sweepers since he was a kid). The years of hands-on experience wielding the broomstick was not in any way an indication of his talents, as, for most part of the Sunday afternoon, he just stood gazing at a single speck of dust, the rhythmic to and fro motion of his broomstick being the only indication of his conscious state.

Mr. Vasan often joked that Ramu had worked too long with dirt and dust to develop an unconscious liking and feeling of pity to unseat it from its place of rest. The kinship developed was mutual as the dust refused to leave its chosen place of rest in spite of repeated entreaties by Ramu’s broom.

“O Podu” blared the speakers as the adrenaline-charged teenagers at the front danced to the asinine tune with indefatigable vigor and ferocity; each kid hopelessly trying to imitate the neighbor and only succeeding in confusing the one next to him by paralytic twists. Mothers meanwhile tried to encourage their wards vociferously; only succeeding in irking other mothers who felt it was their parental responsibility to encourage raw dancing talent. “O Podu” soon faded into the cacophony of hysterical mothers and confused fourteen year olds who were left to dance to the tunes of the women.

A big shamiana had been erected the day before in the park on Ramaswamy Road. Balloons and colored paper was littered about and the whole place bore a festive look. Kids were having a field day running around the support-poles of the shamiana. Not far away, half a dozen adolescent girls stood watching in eagerness, undecided about whether they were too old for the kids’ antics, as they were supposed to act as young graceful women. A few of the elders, Sudhakar, the Secretary, Jayanth, the Treasurer and a few other men from the Colony leaning on the wall appeared to be in serious discussion.

“Nothing like carefree childhood life”, I thought watching the fun and frolic in front of the bus bringing me quaint memories of my own childhood. Born in a 3-bed Corporation Hospital in Kannur, a village 50 kms from Coimbatore city to Kanaga who passed away within few minutes after releasing me into this world, life was far from being a bed of roses. Hurdles and subsequent desperation drove me to become an acknowledged cynic, a non-believer. There were never taunts. People were much too busy to bother about the un-threatening urchin. The “Who are you? Where are your relatives?” looks I got in plenty. How my mother landed in the Hospital while in labor, no one could explain. To the Gurkha, the pregnant lady in labor who was nowhere around one minute earlier, was lying outside the gate the next. The poor illiterate soul suspected the hand of the supernatural. Unfortunately he could never confidently pinpoint to whom - God or the Devil had conspired to torture his soul. I was thus never picked up and cuddled by the Gurkha, a small man with a big and luxuriant mustache. He always seemed to maintain a safe distance with me, sequestering me as an indelible stamp asserting the supernatural's late night foray into Kannur village.