Tipu landed in Nabeezath’s nest.
He was indifferent to the thronging relatives and neighbours. An elderly woman came near him and tousled his hair, asking, “Hello, dear one, do you remember me?” Tipu merely glanced at her and continued to pull his toys out of the bag. Seeing his lack of interest in her, the old lady shuffled away.
Tipu observed that all the folks crowding around had the same facial expression. Most stood with eyes downcast, hands cupping their chins. He asked Nabeezath why all these people looked so desperate! Salim’s sister gathered him close and kissed him, murmuring, “Darling, you have everyone with you …your Umma hasn’t gone anywhere.” Tipu wondered whether they were not aware that his Ummudu had gone to Tilapia. He struggled hard to free himself from the woman’s flabby arms.
Nabeezath served tea to the visitors. After their repast, everybody went their way. Tipu jumped to the conclusion that all of them had their tea at Nabeezath’s home every evening.
Nabeezath gave Tipu a bath. He called her Rarumma. She had a unibrow; her thick brows met at the centre of her forehead, forming a cradle-like shape.
“Look at the eyebrow-cradle on your Nabeezathumma’s forehead! Areero, rareero raeeraro…” Thus, the Umma with the brow that resembled a cradle, who sang the “Raree Rareeram” lullaby, became Rarumma for Tipu. It was Fatima who made him call her that.
During his bath, Tipu asked, “Rarumma, will all the people return tomorrow morning to have their tea?” Nabeezath couldn’t make out what he meant at first. Later, she could not stifle her laughter at that memory.
Whenever Tipu came to Kerala for his vacations, he would stay in Nabeezath’s house at Njarakkadu, but not for too long. The house would usually be full of relatives and he would play with the children. Tipu hadn’t had many opportunities to explore the house properly in the past. Now, he was examining each object with great alacrity.
It was perhaps the first time that Tipu had seen the house so desolate; he checked each room solemnly. He carefully measured the number of his footsteps from one corner of the sitting room to another. Wow! This was as vast as the Dubai flat! One could easily fit in a bedroom, a kitchen and a toilet inside this! The distance between the two walls in the bedroom petrified him a bit. Taken away from the sense of security instilled by narrow walls and made to face open spaces, the child felt lonely. He wished that the four walls would come closer and huddle around him.
When it was time to sleep, he asked Rarumma, “Which is the smallest room in the house?”
“Come on, let us sleep in Ummudu’s room”, Nabeezath replied.
Tipu sprang up, ready to scramble up Rarumma’s back. She carried him to Fatima’s room. In the narrow room, there was a cot, an almirah, a chair and a table next to the wall. There was no sign of anyone having used it. A fancy clock was hanging on the wall. In Tipu’s Dubai flat, there were no clocks with swinging pendulums. If anyone stared at the ball oscillating on a thread for a long time, they would get hypnotised. Tipu could not remember which cartoon he had seen it in, but this was a favourite ploy used by conjurors to kidnap kids! He believed that he, too, would become groggy after staring at that clock for too long. He decided to test it out someday, without Rarumma’s knowledge. There were four windows, and the two that opened into another room were tightly shut.
Rarumma and Tipu lay down to sleep.
“The bed is freezing, Rarumma. Please switch off the AC.”
“There is no AC here, darling. Come, snuggle against me, your Rarumma shall give you warmth.”
Tipu kept complaining that the bed was cold until he fell asleep. When he insisted on unlocking the closed windows, Rarumma assured him that she would do so the next morning. She warned him that mosquitoes would race into the room if any of the windows were opened at night.
‘Then what about the morning?’ Tipu expressed his doubts.
“In the morning, the mosquitoes go off to sleep.”
“Ummudu told me that in the night, thieves will come prowling.”
“Hmm…there are no thieves here, dearest!”
“Maybe the mosquitoes are the thieves, hehe!”
Chortling with glee, Tipu hugged Nabeezath tightly. It was then that his eyes fell on the ceiling of the house.
“Rarumma, will the roof collapse and fall on me?”
“No way! The beams and rafters are pretty sturdy, my boy. The roof won’t collapse!”
Tipu closed his eyes. He was listening keenly to the outside sounds. There was a mango tree whose branches reached the window; the sounds of night birds perching on it and flapping away were audible. The squeaks of barn mice resounded intermittently. When the wind blew, a kree kree sound emanated from the branches of the mango tree – something which Tipu had never heard before. However, Ummudu had once given him a brief introduction to the night sounds in her home. In Dubai, when you closed your eyes, there were no sounds except the rumbling of vehicles. When an ambulance or police car drove by, there was an earsplitting turbulence.
Just above Tipu’s flat, there was a family with a naughty girl. She never slept at night; instead, she played with empty 20-litre bottles meant for fetching mineral water, rolling them across the floor. Tipu, lying beneath the noises, found it very vexing. He even made Vappu complain to the family upstairs. But he remembered Ummudu laughing at that escapade. Apparently, Ummudu recollected the child’s mischievous face whenever she heard the bottle’s grating sound, and hence could enjoy the ruckus like the music of a drum beat!
Most things that irritated Asif and Tipu, Fatima found funny. It was now that Tipu comprehended why Ummudu could dismiss all of that as silly. She herself was familiar with sleeping with multiple sounds surrounding her at night.
Pondering over many things, Tipu went off to sleep. As promised, Nabeezath opened the windows at dawn. Tipu opened his eyes when the sun kissed his face. Rarumma was not lying next to him. Tipu got up on his knees slowly and peeped out of the window.
“Ayyo! What a giant tree!”
Tipu was amazed at the size of the thick branches. Nabeezath came in and stood near him.
“Rarumma…if this tree grows more, will it not break our windows and poke inside?”
Nabeezath laughed, “As if we shall let them! Their place is outside the home.”
Tipu wasn’t inclined to totally trust what he heard and stared peevishly at the mango tree. Look at that giant waiting to nudge its way inside my room!
As his toes touched the ground, Tipu gasped, “Ouch! Coo …llldd…!” He quickly pulled his legs up. The shiver of cold after stepping on the cold cement floor!
Excerpted with permission from Herbarium, Sonia Rafeek, translated from the Malayalam by Ministhy S, Niyogi Books.
