by Shreya Ramachandran
[box]Love, innocent, free of tangles and straightforward. Here’s a simple tale of love that blossoms between Vishnu and Keerti by the shore, near the temple, when they’re on their bicycles.[/box]The temple bell rang at three o’clock in the afternoon, and right on time, I put on a blue shirt on top of the white T-shirt I was wearing and got onto my cycle. I rode down the road, past the vegetable market, past the rivers and the sea and the large piles of fish that had just been collected by the fishermen. I reached the temple and rode around to the road behind it, where flowers and food were sold. There she stood, leaning against her parked cycle, trying to appear as if she had not been waiting for me.
I parked my cycle and put my hand on the handlebar, grinning. She looked the same as she did every day: she wore a men’s shirt on top of a large, colourful skirt. Her hair was left loose, but it was tangled and messy. She wore rubber chappals and an anklet only on one foot. She wore nail polish but only on three fingers. Her face, as usual, had no make- up at all.
“Let’s go”, she said.
We both mounted our cycles again. She shook her hair out of her face and said, “We have to reach fast, so don’t talk unnecessarily okay?”
I smiled. “Of course.”
******
I help Mohan in repairing two-wheelers to make extra money. One day I was in the shed. I was wiping the extra grease off a cycle using a rag cloth. The others were eating vadais and talking. They asked me about her.
“Has anything happened? Anything at all?” Balu asked.
“Anything with what?” I asked, wiping the wheel frame.
“With Keerti.”
“Oh, the girl he cycles to the sea with.”
“Does she know he loves her?”
I looked up and put down the cloth. “I do not love her.”
But they went on.
“How long has he loved her for?”
“For two years or something.”
“She doesn’t know anything?”
I continued wiping the frame.
“He should tell her somehow.”
A new entry to the shed said, “He should write her a song.”
Everyone started laughing.
“She’s not the type of girl songs are written about”, I said.
“Why not?”
“Have you seen her? She’s not a heroine.”
“Still”, New Entry said. “Girls like all that.”
I shook my head.
Everyone was still laughing.
*****
She cycled next to me for most of the way till we reached the piles of fish by the sea.
“Why did you come late today?” she asked. I was surprised.
She never speaks during cycling, and she always swerves and turns and tries to overtake me. I usually cycle some distance behind her.
I looked at her, but she was looking straight ahead. She rubbed her eye with her fist. This is something she does when she’s acting like a little child, simply acting, without thinking about how to act.
I could not believe she was saying this, but I decided not to ask anything to make her stop. “I was late?” I asked.
She shook her hair. The wind was blowing it into her face.
I thought I should stop wondering about what was on her mind and continue cycling. We had almost reached.
She always cycles so fast, we never have any delay reaching anywhere in Veranoor.
“You normally come while the temple bell is ringing. Today you came after it rang. Some of the people inside had left by the time you reached.”
“Inside?”
“Inside the temple.”
“They normally do not leave?”
“They leave after you come. They leave after the bell rings, but normally you are there by that time.”
I did not know what to say. Hearing Keerti speak these words made me want to get off my cycle, and I was happy enough that I believed that I could lift the cycle up and break it into two pieces.
“I came as soon as I heard the bell”, I said.
She was looking straight ahead and rubbing her eye with her fist.
“That is when I always leave from wherever I am”, I said.
She didn’t say anything, and she saw that I was looking at her.
“Don’t give me that look. Just look straight and cycle”, she said.
*****
Keerti never cries. She believes that crying is a way to get attention. “The time you waste in crying, you can use to do something better”, she always says.
I met her when she came to Mohan’s shed to fix the back wheel of her cycle. She asked what the problem was, because she had tried but she couldn’t fix it on her own. Mohan explained the problem to her and said he would get the missing part from a shop two hours from Veranoor and give the repaired cycle to her in two days’ time.
When the cycle got fixed, I walked it back to her house and returned it. Mohan said he would not ask her to pay for the repair, but she gave me a small cloth packet of money to give Mohan.
“I don’t know if he will accept the money”, I said.
She looked at me. That was the first time I spoke to her.
“Why do I not have to pay?” she asked.
“Because you are a girl.”
“So?”
“He wants to be nice to you.”
She looked at me as if I did not understand anything. “Take the money and give it to Mohan.”
I stood holding the handlebar of her cycle in one hand and the cloth packet in the other hand. I did not move.
She stamped her foot and walked back towards me. She was wearing a plain black flowing skirt and a large men’s denim shirt.[AK1] I was smiling. She smiled at my smile.
“Look, Vishnu”, she said.
How did she know my name?
“I heard Mohan calling your name. In the shed. He said “Vishnu”, and then you looked up. So that’s your name.”
She looked at me with that look again, as if I did not understand.
I understand how you know my name, I thought.
Her hand slowly came down towards mine, and I thought she was going to hold my hand, but she moved my hand aside and held the handlebar of her cycle.
“Why should I not have to pay because I’m a girl?”
“Girls are nicer than boys. So we should be nicer to them than we are to boys.”
She frowned for some time and then she laughed. “You do not make any sense. Give the money to Mohan.”
Saying this, she parked her cycle against the door of her house and then opened the door to go inside.
“What if he doesn’t take the money?” I said, feeling scared about how she would react to me talking after she had ended the conversation.
She turned around. “Ah?”
“What if he does not take the money?”
She put her hand on her waist.
“Should I come back to give you the money?”
She laughed because she could not help it. “Don’t overact now, Vishnu. Go back to the shed.”
*****
We reached the sea, and she did not bother parking her cycle. She let it fall onto the sand. I lifted her cycle up and kept it against the rock wall, and I kept mine next to hers.
She sat on the sand and crossed her legs. When I reached her, she said, “They’ll give me the box of fish in twenty minutes.”
Keerti’s mother makes fish curry and sells it. That is why Keerti collects fish from the fish piles every other day.
I sat down next to her.
We did not say anything for some time.
I did not know what mood she was in or what she was thinking. She just kept looking straight in front of her and then she looked at me.
“Vishnu, do your parents have any plan for you?”
“Plan?”
“For you to get married.”
Before I could answer, she said, “How will it be if we got married?”
I looked at her and before I could say anything, she said, “Why should two people marry each other?”
I looked at the sand, waiting for her to talk.
“Forget love and all that which people talk about. You have to live with each other. Can you live with me?”
I felt a strange feeling inside, but I tried not to show it. I did not want to say anything when Keerti was being so open.
“Yes.”
She liked my answer. She turned to face me. “I will ask you questions, and you answer simply, like you answered this one. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Do you think we should get married?”
“Yes.”
“Can you live with me?”
“Yes.”
“Do I irritate you?”
“Yes.”
“Do I irritate you all the time?”
“No.”
She looked at me without saying anything. She felt uncomfortable. Keerti and I do not have conversations like this very often. I decided to say something.
“Should I ask questions now?” I asked.
She nodded.
*****
Mohan and the other boys in the shed had realised that love songs were not possible for Keerti. They spent every lunch hour thinking about how I should tell her. I did extra work during lunch, but I could listen to them.
One day, they told me that I was too quiet. “You are not telling us enough about what you feeeeeeeeeeeel about her”, Balu said and started laughing, but at the same time, he was serious.
They all sat next to me in the corner, and I put down the screwdriver. I wiped my hands on my banian.
“Do you love her?”
Mohan hit Balu’s head. “He loved her from that day. She came to repair her cycle.”
I scratched my head. I did not know how to talk openly about all this.
“Say something Vishnu. You are too quiet.”
“So if he loves her why doesn’t he marry her?”
“He has not told her.”
“Why?”
“She has not told him either.”
“But is there someone else the families have seen for Vishnu or her? Do the families know?”
“There is nobody else. But the parents do not know about Vishnu and Keerti.”
“Will they have a problem?”
“Vishnu is from a good family. Keerti is different from normal girls, but her family is good. The families won’t have any tension with each other. It is okay.”
“Then what is the problem?”
Balu slowly brought his hands together and made a silly face. “Communiiicaaatttttttiooon”, he sang. He was still serious in some way.
“Just tell her dei“, Mohan said, and hit my head.
“It’s difficult”. Balu said what I was thinking. He looked directly at me. “If you tell her, it will be over. If you do not tell her, nothing can start.”
“But you want to marry her?” New Entry asked. Balu pushed New Entry away. “Be quiet dei, we are trying to solve Vishnu’s problem”, he told New Entry.
“No no no”, Mohan said. “Let New Entry speak. He knows about all this. Love and girls and communication. I do not know anything.”
“I know some”, Balu said, but he pulled New Entry by the shirt, a signal to let him speak.
“Do you want to marry her?” New Entry asked me.
I nodded, looking at the screwdriver.
“Do you think that she also wants to?”
I thought. “See, we do not talk like that. But she likes me more than most people. I do not irritate her as much as other people do.”
“What do you think of her?”
“I think everything of her.”
“Do you love her?”
“I have not thought about love and all that. But she is…”
Balu, Mohan and New Entry kept quiet and looked at me. Someone from the tea kadai outside the shed called out to Mohan, but he did not answer. They were waiting to see what I would say.
I had to think about how to say it. Many things were in my head. But I did not know how to explain.
“I feel better when she is there than when she is not there.”
I could not think of anything else to say.
“Ah”, Mohan said, sounding impressed.
“Too much dei“, Balu said, and then pulled at New Entry’s shirt and pushed him away, because he could not think of what else to do.
*****
“You know, I always make you smile more than other people do”, I said. “And I irritate you less.”
“Don’t overact now, Vishnu.”
“That’s what I told Mohan and the others at the shed. They asked me if I love you.”
“You talk to them about me?”
“They talk to me about you. I do not say that much.”
“Talking about all this. You are the girl. Not me”, she said.
I held her hand, but she moved it away.
“It is true, what I said.”
She did not answer me.
“Let’s just get married and run away”, I said.
She looked at me with that look that I did not understand. “Stop getting all these love ideas inside your mind, Vishnu.”
“But you just said you love me.”
“I did not say anything.”
She stood up. I sat there while she walked to the fish piles and picked up a box of fish.
She turned around and shouted, “Come let’s go.”
I stood up and walked towards her. “Where are you going?”
“We are going to give my mother the fish.”
“Your mother is a good cook”, I said as we walked towards our cycles. “She can cook for our marriage.”
“You want her to cook for so many people?”
“Not so many. It will be a small marriage. We can get married right now if you want.”
“Stop smiling so much, Vishnu. Let us just give her the fish.”
“After that?”
“After that, we both know what will happen. Now stop smiling and get onto the cycle. We have to reach fast, so no unnecessary talking.”
“Of course.”
____
Pic : Wikimedia Commons
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