My fathers son

By Satendra Nandan

the airport metallic, tarred, rising from the deep blue sea; a white watchtower erect, watching darkly. jumbos idle like oiled white bodies on the beach; while sea-fishes feed to be fed. a few hotels on the landscape bruises on the peasant face; the village—dark and dumb so sullen in the sun; a muddy lost track hobbles to a hut on the hill. a red hill with four coconut trees, under the mango tree a dozen goats; a red flag withered and holy, children — naked, ribs dancing in the light, teeth beaming with stolen sugarcane, growing with the mynah birds. below the hill, a well full of frogs, two boys, a girl shrieking with killing stones. four frogs are floating, eyes to the sun, their white bellies up. quiet and ageless as the hill the old man comes leaning on a ‘lathi’: a sudden slap, a scream, and I run. he curses my mother, pulls them out one by one and buries them under the red earth. the cow grazes and gazes and moos for a second birth that was years ago, i was young and unkind— to the frogs, i mean.

II now in this conditioned office on a swivel chair and farted air i batten on—a civil servant — defined, secure in a sinecure, i see the island in the sea where my father was quarantined.

“for two weeks only,” he said, but the journey? i asked.

his eyes withdrew into himself: “the dark waters and the blind winds the landless sea forever raging it was ‘narak’, many died, I survived, what retribution for leaving a loving home and the cows grazing beside the ‘mandir’ and my friends playing ‘gullidanda’. sleeping and eating we arrived!” that’s how he remember’d the passage of one life into another. 111 early morning — rain, rain, rain, like the nagging of a wife, the phone rang ‘wrong number ’ yawned the woman in my bed. my brother simply said: ‘pitaji’ is dead, oh, well, i’ll forego the dinner, death comes without invitation, worse, such dinners are so rare with the permanent secretary’s wife with so promiscuous an air.

IV the old village was there in the old man’s old bure. a tattered mat on a three-legged bed, the black blanket that made my childhood so warm, the mosquito net with knots and patches. near the grog basin sat the frog, eyes bulging, ineluctable as ever. the basin was empty but the smell of grog was in the corner where i used to serve the ‘tauki’. the village was there, toothless, faceless, nameless, except old pookladdu, the peasant politician, and buddhu, the ‘purjari’, who burnt his arse fire-walking (how father had laughed!) and wanted to lift the hill like hanuman. others’ heads grown grey, hearts grown old a hundred years scribbled in a hundred wrinkles. i looked too well-fed,

mumbled ‘ram ram’, and sank into the only chair. they said there was no need to weep he died in his sleep he was so old—no one knew his age. besides, he had to go his land, on which his wife was buried, was ‘reserved ’ two weeks ago. in the children —the parents live again.

V they washed the dead old man, i poured a ‘lota’ of water and saw his ribs rippling. his grotesque loincloth like Christ’s i wonder’d if he, too, had paid the price? for his children’s children? but around me there was only death and decay and there were flies round the corners of his eyes. next to the airport there’s a crematorium built by a shopkeeper for his drowned son (or was it for an election he ne’er won?) the logs covered him the pundit gave a speech and blessed us all with the dead, read a few ‘mantras’ from a red book which neither the living nor the dead understood; they poured ‘pure australian ghee ’ my brother lit the pyre, while i stood lookii g at the sea. in an hour—ashes to ashes. thank god it didn’t rain. om shantih, shantih, shantih . . .

VI the sea beat against the shore with the monotony of the heart, the sun sank like a shark under the ocean, the sky was red as a mutilated hibiscus, while i sat on the beach till the spittle of the sea touched my feet, and i flew back to my retreat, it’s different here, i see the island touched by a rainbow, a yacht . and a black mynah bird.