The setting of most of these flashbacks are set in the village of Velacheri or rather when it was still a village and not conquered by city folks who were edged out because they couldnʼt buy a property in the city since the prices of property were going through the roof! We were once such family. My father who was an Gazetted Officer of the Madras Government had to move to this village as his grand pension of Rs. 300 per month would have never got us a near decent life in the city.

Many of these anecdotes have a rather strong vein of truth in them. At times, they have some layers of exaggeration, to make it interesting. My mother would always tell me tales of her youth. Sometimes when she repeated an anecdote, it would have some extra fluff. When I caught her at this she would say “it doesnʼt hurt anybody! I wanted to make the event more exciting for you”

This would always leave me feeling guilty.

At times, she would tell me stories about real life incidents like the car breaking down on the highway but the brilliant mechanic who set it right always happened to be me. I was a superhero of sorts always rescuing the family from some horrific problems. No doubt this made a narcissist of sorts but what the heck. As a six year old, I enjoyed it, she enjoyed it and all were happy. Isnʼt this what fairy tales are made of?

So, these stories are all dedicated to my mother Kamala, who in my opinion was the best story teller of all time.

THE PADAPPAI BUS AND OTHER STORIES

MANI STORES

Velacheri was a calm, quiet place. It had all the hallmarks of a quaint village; lush paddy fields that were irrigated by the waters of a rather vast lake which looked endless during monsoons. St. Thomas Mount and the Pallavaram hills framing the north-western and western horizons, were clearly visible. The air was so clear that I could count the starts at night, they were like shimmering lights against the inky black sky which was not lit up by the city glow as there were no large colonies nearby and electricity hadnʼt reached all houses, including ours.

The bus stand was at the intersection of Brahmin Street and the Velacheri High Road. The bus stand was actually a arrangement of cement benches with red oxide slabs and it was a kind of a meeting point for most residents. There was a certain lazy, languid air about the place until the bus arrived after that it became a bee-hive of activity and everybody jostled with each other to get on to the bus first, to claim a vacant seat. Invariably, there would be a village do-gooder who would yell out to the milling, jostling mass.

“Make way for the ladies, especially the ones with children. Every one will be able to get in. Donʼt hurry” he would shout out, with the authority of one who has seen several hundred arrivals and departures. Then there was another group; the dashing young men dressed in their finest. They would remain a distance away from the bus with a studied nonchalance and once the bus would begin to move, they would run alongside the bus for a while and jump on the the alighting steps. These ʻfootboardʼ travelers as they were called, would hang in sometimes on just a toehold and this would get admiring looks from the girls in the bus. To them, this meant everything. To some, this was a way of getting a free ride!

When the bus departed, the mix of people changed so new topics were invariably started or old ones repeated to a new audience. So there was always varied points of view, every time.

Behind the bus stand was the village park that came to life in the evening. There was a community radio that blasted out programs from a station called Vividbharati. The park had one lone gardner, who rarely smiled but was always digging a hole or pruning a croton bush, and was the employee of the village panchayat. He wore khaki half-pants and a khaki shirt. Under his half-pants were bright colored boxers that were bigger than his khakis giving the impression that beneath that drab exterior was a bright side to his personality. He also wore a huge watch with a stainless steel bracelet that contrasted brilliantly against his sunburned, brown skin.

Just next to the bus stand were a few shops; to the right was a shop selling cigarettes, beedis and brightly colored candy. The different varieties of candy were all stored in identical jars. The shop also sold lemonade which was made fresh every time. For an

extra 10 paise, the shopkeeper would use soda instead of water. The soda bottle was fully recyclable. It had a marble inside the bottle and it rested in the upper quarter of the bottle. During the manufacturing process, the gas inside the bottle would force the marble up the opening and pushed it shut on to a rubber ring washer near the opening of the bottle. To open the bottle, a wooden peg was used to push down the marble, and depending on when the soda was prepared, it would either be a mini-explosion or a soft swoosh.

On the opposite side, some distance away, was the main grocery store called Mani Stores. The term grocery store was more for convenience as it actually was a mish-mash of various fancy merchandise. The proprietor whose name was Mani, was a pioneer of sorts. While most of the other shops were small cubby shacks selling peanuts, colored candy, and essentials like lentils and rice, Mani stocked luxurious items like fancy soaps, talcum powder, lotions, and perfumes.

Mani resembled a popular Tamil film actor, or at least that was the opinion of many residents of Velacheri. He knew it and he played it to the hilt by mimicing certain signature mannerisms of the star. Teenage girls in their half-sarees would giggle when they passed by his shop. Somehow, I could see only a vague resemblance ; I not being much of a movie goer those days. My parents believed that movies caused moral turpitude and was the cause of all evils in society. So, my comparison was limited to posters and paintings of the film star that were plastered all over the walls of the transformer factory, nearby.

Every evening, Mani would get his assistant to sweep the entrance to his shop and sprinkle water to cool down the bit of earth heated by the post afternoon heat of the sun. This gave rise to a warm, earthy smell, not unlike what you would encounter after a summer rain. Mani would then switch on his prized transistor radio. It was a Bush Baron, a Cadillac among transistor sets, and it would belt out music at such loud volume s that you could hear it until you reached the park. From there the radio in the park, took over. So, it was a kind of a relay race. Thankfully, they were all tuned to the same station so it did not sound like so many popular remixes of today.

Mani had one failing. He hated to admit his ignorance. So, when somebody asked for something that he hadnʼt a clue, he would pretend to look for it. He search was bound to bring no results since he did not know what he was looking for. So, after a point, he would say he had run out of stock. Later, he trained a sidekick, a small boy with a leaky nose.

At times, he hadnʼt a clue what I wanted.

“Give me a pack of Marie biscuits” I would ask.

“Boy, give sir Hari biscuits” Mani would yell to the boy inside. His trained sidekick would yell out that they were out of stock. Clearly, he nor his sidekick, had a clue what Marie

biscuits were. I would begin to do an about turn and start walking out of the shop when Mani would call out to me in an apologetic tone.

“Stock just over sir. I will get it surely next week” I knew he was bluffing. Mani would never exhibit his ignorance. After all, his was ʻtheʼ grocery store in the village!

This used to go on. I then decided to teach him a lesson and would ask if he had stock of various brands of ice cream and things of that nature knowing fully well he did not have a deep freezer. Nobody had one, because uninterrupted supply of electricity was something unheard of in the state of Madras.

Later, it became a game, and I got more and more adventurous. Those days, it was lonely in Velacheri and this was one way of keeping my mind busy! Once I remember I asked him for a Ford Mustang, another time it was for a Soyuz spacecraft. Some months later, he saw through my game. Some bystander must have told him, behind my back, that I was pulling his leg.

Later, whenever he was unfamiliar with an item, he would ask me with a half-smile. “ Sir, I hope you are not trying to fool me” asked Mani.

He was a sport and he enjoyed the exchanges with me.

Mani survived for about five years as being the only ʻsupermarketʼ in town. When the village became an overgrown municipality, many traders set up business on both sides of the now Velacheri High Road and Maniʼs shop lost all the luster and exclusivity it once had. His transistor set, that could be heard until the beginning of the park fence, was lost in the din, due to a combination of overall increase in ambient noise levels and due to the arrival of cassette recorders in every one of the new shops. Also, his Bush Baron was no longer at its prime and started fading out together with Maniʼs importance of being the only supermarket in town.

It was about this time that I finished my schooling and I moved to Bombay for my future education, with stars in my eye. This plan did not work for several reasons, so after about a year, I was back at Velacheri, richer in experience of living, traveling and working in a huge metropolis, and with valuable lessons on how relatives behave when you start living with them.

For old times sake, I visited Mani. He had a pair of thick bifocals and his curly hair which once was shiny black and draped his forehead like a mini unicorn horn, was all thin and lay limp. All the charisma had gone. I wondered how all this happened in just one year. His store, that normally used to burst in its seams with stock, had almost nothing.

“ Mr. Mani, I want a bottle of Horlicks” I asked for old times sake. His face broke out into a glow of recognition and gave me a wide smile. Two of his front teeth were missing.

Instead of yelling out, he ambled into the dark recess of his small store! He no more had an assistant.

“ No stock sir. Not like before, sir. I have very few customers and so I donʼt get enough sale to buy new merchandise. Good times are behind us sir” said Mani, with a strange smile. Mr. Mani might have changed in appearance, but he was still the same in his attitude.

That was the last time I saw him. His store was demolished to give way for a multilayered textile showroom.

THE TAMARIND TREE

As you got off the bus stand and started the trek to Jagannathapuram, where I lived, you had to follow the banks of the lake for some distance. At one point, just after the sluice of the lake, was a tamarind tree to the left. Below the tree was a blacksmith who had set up shop probably ten of fifteen years before we moved to Velacheri. He had a small thatched shelter below was that raging fire that sprouted out of a bed of coals. This fire was fed with a huge pair of bellows that was activated by pulling down on a thick casurina pole.

The blacksmith was a thin, small man with sunken cheeks and thin, grey hair. He had a straggly beard and if you think that all this would make him a meek man, it was hardly so. He had fire in his eyes. They were huge for his face and piercing. His bushy eyebrows accented his fiery eyes. He had a thin torso and wore just a loin cloth most times he worked. Since fire was his constant companion together with the summer searing heat of Madras, even a loin cloth was too much but then he had to cover his shame. Most of his customers were those who wanted a crowbar made, or to hoof their cattle that used to pull the carts laden with produce.

It was not uncommon to see a huge bullock lying on its side all trussed up; with its fore and hind legs tied together, completely allowing mute access to its hoofs. To prevent the hoof from wearing out while pulling a laden cart on the tar topped roads, the hoofs had to be lined with iron shoes. Shoes were thick, flat pieces of iron that were contoured to the shape of the hoof and were nailed to the hoof. I used to feel sorry for the animal as it seemed like a scene from a torture chamber but my father explained to

me that it was actually doing good to the animal and the hoof being largely cartilage, something like a toe nail that does not hurt when you cut it, the procedure did not cause any pain to the animal. My eternal doubt was if the animal knew that this did it any good as at most time, fear and terror could be seen in the wide eyed stare of the trussed animal.

One day, I heard the ominous drum beat; a pattern that is played when someone dies. The village being what it was, thinly populated, with few automobiles plying, this beat could be heard for miles around. The question was not what it was, it was more who it was who died. This time it was the blacksmithʼs turn to hand in the dinner pail.

It was all fine and forgotten until some one swore that he saw the ghostly apparition of the blacksmith furiously working on his bellow in the dead of night. So, ever since the rumor took hold amongst the populace, nobody dared cross the tamarind tree alone. So much so, if you were alone when you had to cross the tree, you waited until another came along and you would jointly cross the tree, sometimes humming a tune or talking loudly. A case of whistling in the dark.

This arrangement worked fine until it was reported that late one night, a lone crosser waited for another to accompany him. They had a light banter going until they reached the tree when the another sprouted long fingernails and with a high pitched cackle walked into the hollow of the tree and disappeared. The other guys is rumored to have run so fast that his strides were etched on the path for ever and he wore out his sandals that night.

“ All just stories” said Kumar. “ No such things as ghosts. It is people who are alive who we have to fear for they are the ones who can harm you”

“No, no ghosts are for real” said Vijay. “ When people die with unfinished business, they remain earthbound and try to finish whatever they set out to do” said he.

Kumar, who was also a singer, started to sing an old Tamil song whose lyrics went something like ʻ donʼt be afraid of people who say that there is ghost on top of the tamarind tree...this is all the imagination of jobless peopleʼ and so on.

“ Okay, in that case, I defy you to cross the tamarind tree tonight at 12 am” wagered Vijay.

“Doneʼ said Kumar.

The question then arose as to who would watch him cross as neither Vijay or I was willing to do this. So, we arranged it with two friends who lived on either side of the tamarind tree. The arrangement was that Kumar would report at around 11.55 pm at the first house, making a sound like an owl, cross the tree and report at the second house and hoot like an owl to mark his presence. Since that was the only route between the two houses, he had to pass the tree to get to the second house.

On that fateful day, the guy in the first house heard Kumar but not the guy in the second house. When we knew about this, Vijay and I were certain that Kumar developed cold feet and was too scared to cross the tree. The next day, when Kumar did not turn up at our usual meeting point, we were a little concerned and so, Vijay and I went to check what the matter was. As usual we yelled out his name at the gate of house. His mother came out and told us he was not well and asked us to come inside.

Kumar was lying in bed with high fever. We went to his bedside and asked him what happened. He looked ashen and pale but insisted that there was nothing wrong with him. He kept repeating that the fever was just coincidence although we did not ask him anything. Vijay and I looked at each other and told him to get well soon. Kumar said he would be fine soon. He clearly looked like he was frightened terribly.

On the way out, we found his sandals. One of them was flipped over. On the underside was a cattle shoe neatly nailed into it.