by Prashila Naik
Few things, to Hari, were as unpleasant as listening to Raman’s screechy, self-obsessed voice and simultaneously feel the stink emanating from his lungi, as he would sit himself down on his bed.
“Hari … Hari … wake up Hari anna. Breakfast is already served,” Raman repeated.
“Get off my bed, you monkey, and stop shouting in my ears.”
Raman chuckled good-naturedly and got off the bed. He had known Hari long enough to be bothered by any of his bitterness.
“I am going. They have made dosa and tomato chutney today.”
Hari did not answer but waited nonetheless for Raman’s footsteps to gradually fade away. He opened his eyes after a while and very slowly sat himself up on the cot, even as that all too familiar and sharp spasm of pain shot right through the length of his back. His stomach, as if on a cue, growled hungrily. No longer concerned with pleasantries such as cleaning his teeth or splashing water on his face, Hari adjusted his lungi and put his feet down on the floor.
“Hari, come. Your plate is here.”
Secretly grateful that Raman had saved him the chore of confronting the kitchen caretaker, a rude and generally unapproachable young man called Siva, Hari walked up to the table. As he sat down on the chair next to Raman’s, he noticed that Raman and he were the only people in the entire room.
“Where is everyone?”
“They have finished their breakfast already and we need to do the same. Don’t you remember the school students will be here to see us today? We need to be ready for them. I am going to wear my white shirt and…”
“School students?” Hari interrupted.
“Hari … Hari … If you become so forgetful at the age of 70, what will happen when you become 80?” Raman stopped here and allowed himself another generous and long lasting chuckle.
“Don’t you remember head madam telling us last Sunday that students from some Mysore school will come to see us today?”
“School students coming to see us…” Hari grumbled and put down the little piece of dosa he had just dipped into the strange looking chutney. “What are we? Some kind of animals put on display in a zoo that they are coming to see us?”
“Hari, the bitter old man. Have you ever seen a black bitter gourd or, black neem leaves, Hari? Have you? Have you? You just need to look in the mirror.” Pleasantly surprised by the spontaneity of his own joke, Raman burst into a fit of laughter that his lean and worn out body was clearly unable to contain, as soon all the frivolousness gave way to a series of painful coughs.
“Bitter… bitter … old…man,” Raman somehow managed to croak after all the coughing gradually subsided, a tiny fraction of his earlier laughter still leftover in the pained smile on his face.
“Why are you so excited about those children anyway? What are they going to change for you? Are they going to make this chutney any less horrible or are they going to make this horrible coffee any less watery?” Hari shot back.
“I am excited because I will be meeting and seeing children after such a long time and because I am tired of seeing all you rotten and bitter old men who are always sulking, always cribbing and complaining. I am not surprised at all that your children abandoned you and left you here.”
Stunned, Hari noticed how Raman was no longer smiling and how his voice, though softened by the aftereffects of all that prolonged coughing, sounded eerily impersonal and blatantly scornful. This was the closest he had come to seeing Raman getting offended and for some inexplicable reason, he had an urge to offend him all the more.
“At least I was man enough to produce children. Look at you. Wife ran away with all your money because you could do nothing for her, because you could do nothing to her. If you hate us bitter old men so much, then why are you staying with us? Ask one of those children to take you home. I am sure they will enjoy keeping a monkey like you outside their houses. Maybe they can tie a rope round your neck and make you dance on the streets and…”
Raman stood up abruptly and doing nothing to hide the hurt and humiliation on his face, walked away from there. Hari smiled to himself. He had not felt this kind of a smug satisfaction in years. His mind wandered to that one time when as a young boy, he had finally managed to kick Shambhu, his big bully neighbour, right on his shins, not just once but four consecutive times, bringing an end to a constant cycle of humiliations he suffered at the bigger boy’s hands.
That look of terror in Shambhu’s eyes, his silent pleas to spare him of a fifth kick – Hari had never really grown out of that moment. He always liked to think of himself as that 11-year-old boy who had conquered his 14-year-old burly enemy with just his presence of mind and determination for company. Nothing in the 59 years that had followed that haloed and rainy Friday evening, had ever matched up to the exhilaration of those few moments. The moments gave him a sickening realisation of the hopeless and ordinary life he had lived this far and yet they provided him with his only moment of glory, something that forced a conclusion that the ordinariness and hopelessness were not a consequence of his own shortcomings, but rather his badly written and shaped destiny, a repetitive stroke of bad luck. He had after all managed to single-handedly bring down that monster and watch his pride become one with the sludge he had fallen on.
***
Dressed in a white shirt and brown pants, his thick white hair neatly parted and with a solemn, expectant expression on his face, Raman was almost unrecognizable. As if acknowledging this newness, he stayed silent for most part of the morning, mostly confining himself to his cot, softly humming songs from various old movies and darting his eyes in the direction of the door from time to time.
“Why are you so silent today, Raman?” Bhaskar, the latest entrant in the shelter home, asked him when the humming too stopped.
“I am saving my energy for the children,” Raman replied haughtily, as if any attempt at making a conversation with anyone other than the children was an absolute waste of energy.
“No chivden ave comming tovay,” said Manohar, a self-proclaimed freedom fighter, who now put a daily fight with the troubles that his toothless mouth caused him.
“What are you saying? No children are coming today?” Raman shot back. He was the only man in the room who could make sense of Manohar’s slurred words.
“He is right,” Augustine added in a matter-of-fact manner. Raman uneasily looked around the room as if this was some kind of a strange joke all of them had decided to play on him.
“You old goats are just trying to make a fool out of me,” he laughed nervously and looked at all of them for a second time, carefully keeping Hari out of that group glance yet again.
“Raman anna, why would we do that? Did you not hear Siva tell us in the morning that he had a phone call from madam saying the students visit was canceled for today?” Augustine responded, slightly hurt at that accusatory tone and also because at 60, he was not very comfortable at being addressed as an “old goat.”
“No, of course not. I did not hear Siva say any such thing,” spoke Raman, this time passing a slight glance in Hari’s direction, as if seeking that much needed alibi from him.
“How would he know? He was not there when Siva had told all of us. The children are not coming today,” the usually silent Sivaji suddenly spoke up. Raman opened his mouth to protest, but Sivaji was not someone to lie. He spoke only when he had something important to disclose. No one could doubt him or his integrity. He was too principled a man to participate in such foolish jokes.
Suddenly tired and defeated, Raman lay down on his bed. He wasn’t even certain what was bothering him more. The fact that the students were not coming or the fact that no one else in the room was as bothered and upset as he was and none of them had noticed how much he had looked forward to this visit. He turned to his side and closed his eyes, clearly unaccustomed to lying down with his shirt and pants on. For a second, he wondered if he should change into his regular clothes; but soon that question died. How did it even matter when he slept through every single day in the same bed among the same men?
“Why are you sleeping in that shirt and pant?” Hari asked a few minutes later.
“Raman, go and change into your lungi. The children are not coming,” he added a few seconds later even as Raman’s silence and awkwardly sleeping form filled him up with a strange uneasiness.
“Leave me alone, you monkey,” Raman hissed loud enough for him to hear.
A smile of relief spread across Hari’s face at the acknowledgment of that retaliation.
“I was thinking we could play a game of cards. Bhaskar, Guna. Do you want to join too, Raman?”
Raman did not answer and yet Hari knew the offer had piqued his interest.
“Augustine, I will teach you how to play cards,” Hari theatrically called out to a clueless Augustine even as he looked on uncomprehendingly.
“Augustine and playing cards. Hmph… Even a tree can play better than him. Wait, I will come,” Raman grumbled against his pillow and then slowly sat himself up.
“Let’s join the two cots,” Hari said, trying to hide his relief. Raman’s forgiveness was still a long way off, but at least he had managed to get him off that bed, and that dreadful silence.
“Wait, wait. Let me change out of this suffocating pant and shirt. Another two minutes and I am going to stop breathing.”
Hari said nothing as he watched Raman open his shirt, narrowing his eyes to focus on each of its buttons, his fingers treating each one of them with utmost care and patience, somehow holding onto the last traces of a grace that he was possibly never going to display again.
