Poornima exploded out of the door, her quivering flesh yearning to grab Raghavendra by his collar. If only he was not her husband! Before she could utter the words, she saw Rajesh standing near the door. His body posture, still as in a picture, ready for combat, a small-sized version of the giant film posters. Ajay Devgn, Suniel Shetty, Sunny Deol had all metamorphosed into ready-to-fight muscles in his body.
Rajesh’s presence stopped Poornima. He smiled at her, pleased, looking like a grinning miniature waterfall. Raghavendra took the opportunity to tell her urgently, “Get two towels for us.” Poornima went inside and got two thin cotton towels. Her daughters had come to stand behind the door. Suhasini’s nose peeped out, a freedom granted to her growing years.
Raghavendra towelled his hair and gave the wet towel to Suhasini, whose hand came creeping out of the darkness. He then went in to change his clothes. Poornima, in a burst of thanksgiving, told Rajesh, “Stay and eat something.” Poornima spoke to Rajesh in Kannada. He, after three years of staying in Bangalore, had learnt about a dozen words of Kannada that included idli, vada and dosa. On the rare occasions when he had to speak or merely communicate with Poornima, he would splutter in chaste Hindi and broken English. His English sounded as if he wrote the words in the Devanagari script.
He had eaten his dinner earlier, at Guptaji’s mess. The dinner of roti and rice had not been bad, but he was getting tired of eating potatoes in every size, shape and form. Public food all over the country had become synonymous with potatoes. Vegetables, colourful and succulent, had been banished into high-priced menu cards. When Poornima asked Rajesh to eat, he promptly said yes, imagining a plateful of his favourite greens, dal that smelt of the motherly fragrance of the pods, and cabbage or lady’s fingers cooked in a generous amount of oil. He threw the damp towel on the chair and ran up to change. By the time he came back, she had lit a kerosene lamp.
The passageway had become an ancient corridor where shadows fought enemies on the wall, and her comfortable kitchen, a temple. Poornima, the mother goddess at the platform-altar, pointed Rajesh to a plate on the ground.
“Today is special.” Raghavendra translated the remaining words as if Rajesh had understood the first few. “For your bravery.” He tried to say it with a flourish, but it was sucked into his newly formed cavities.
Poornima served rice, ghee and then hot saaru. Suhasini served the special of the day: potato roast. Boiled, peeled, diced and roasted well. Rajesh smiled wryly at his plate and the potato pieces seemed to smile back.
“Uncle, you let me handle this fellow. My friends can take care of him.”
“What friends? You are all students. You can’t speak to a rowdy like him.”
Suhasini and her sister – whose name should now come out from behind the door – Sanjeevani, as if sisters are rhyming words in a couplet, as if through their names one extends one body into the other, were both busy competing to serve Rajesh. More rice? More saaru? More pot-ate-o? The daily assembly in their Catholic school where they said prayers to an anonymous Lord in a singsong tune made them speak like that all the time. Pot-ate-o? Thanku, no.
“How can you say that, Uncle? My close friend is Commander Bindra. He brings guns from Bihar and sells them to autorickshaw drivers and others here. Another friend, actually from my neighbouring village, has not passed his degree in ten years. Ten years, Uncle.” Ten years back that friend had come to Bangalore to study engineering, and repeatedly failed exams so that he could stay on as a student. For him, nothing was as good as being a student, as it allowed him the freedom to be the local leader and protector of all North Indian (but only Hindi-speaking) students in Mathikere. He spoke a mixed dialect of north Bihar, and every word he uttered was coated with the bright red colour of paan. His speech most often floated on the fumes of 420 zarda, the potent tobacco mix that he and his friends adored.
Ten gleeful years! Rajesh’s smile overflowed into the saaru, although he could never understand why these Southies (as he had come to call them) diluted dal to this extent. Even the kerosene lamplight paled in comparison to his smile. In between bites of food, he added, “Commander Bindra’s father is a well-known dacoit, also near my village. I can bring these friends tomorrow. And Nagaraj will never bother you again.”
This was Rajesh’s way of offering his thanks for the hot rice and saaru. When Suhasini gave him a glass of buttermilk, he drank it in one gulp. Eating rice with buttermilk was a habit he happily left to the Southies.
Excerpted with permission from Water Days: A Novel, Sundar Sarukkai,
