COLLISION
(Short story)
K. S. VENKATARAMANI
I
The
beautiful, little railway station of Akkur, new
model, stands in a shady grove on an arching curve of the track, like a bird on
the leafy branch of a mango tree. It is a beauty spot on the short branch line
from Mayavaram to Tranquebar,
the Queen of the
The
soil is fertile. All around the vegetation is rank and luxuriant though so near
the sea. The cocoanut trees peer the sky. Giant banyan
and stately mango cover the earth with a deep shade of solemn green. Life in Akkur seems a little idyll. The railway line gives it only
a fresh and added charm, a snake-like beauty and fascination.
The
little dots of fresh white buildings in the railway compound look like huts in
a hermitage. The station seems a place for
reverie, and no wonder even the trains move so dreamily, whistling a
love tune to the bracing winds from the sea.
II
The
sky was almost free and the crescent moon seemed to crawl and play with the
wayward floating shapes of thin cloud. A steady breeze from the sea was blowing
in, and Akkur, standing on a little eminence of its
own, received it to the full.
No.8
had just left for Tranquebar leisurely winding her way to the lull of the
evening sea.
The
clock struck eight, Ramanujam
had finished his work, and rose to
go to his residential quarters nearby, blithe as a bull to its feed after the
day’s hard work.
I
knew of this fate for me even
on my wedding day,” growled Lakshmi greeting her lord coming home after the day’s work.
The
growling voice was soft and rich but it was loaded with a heavy charge of
emotion. The station-master, young and alert, quick of sight and sound, felt
danger in the rumbling voice.
Will
the peace of the night be disturbed? How best to a collision?
But
with Lakshmi at home everything went wrong, from the broomstick to the well.
For, the broomstick was rough and long and looked more like an instrument of
chastising power. And the well stood in lonely splendour
a little way off, and the South Indian Railway rejoiced in using rubble
everywhere within its sacred precincts, which hurt Lakshmi’s
tender, unprotected sole. A bruised foot puts the feminine soul in revolt?
“What
is the trouble, dear, why on the very first day you are complaining?” Ramanujam ventured to ask in a kindly and conciliating tone
after a long pause, “Look around, the place is magnificent. The station stands
on a little eminence of its own.”
“What
is the trouble!” Lakshmi cut short the glowing
description, “In this forest none but bears can live. Not a soul or sound for
miles around but the screech of owls, the hiss of snakes and the music of the
frogs. I can’t live here a day longer. Either get a transfer by wire to-night;
you have been so good at telegraphing all your life for others’ weal and woe,
pray, do it now once for yourself. Signal at once your distress to your
officer, and get a transfer. Or send me home to
Lakshmi
finished decisively, and flung the silver cup to her lord, which had borne as
meekly as he the several dints of her temper. Ramanujam
caught it nicely from the googly bowler for he had
always a quick and trained eye for all moving things, from trains that fly at
forty miles an hour to domestic furniture that spins eccentric circles.
The
cup was meant for Ramanujam’s sandhya
prayers which would be some atonement, Lakshmi held, for his un-brahminical service on railways. Of course the train
timings did not permit their proper performance at their correct vaidic hour with the twilight. But better
late than never was Lakshmi’s creed so far as her
husband was concerned.
Ramanujam turned the cup uneasily in his hands, up and
down, half afraid to declare by word of mouth that it was empty. Lakshmi shot a
look of scorn from the left corner of her left eye, and pointed out the well
outside that shone in lonely splendour unconscious of
its great part in this little drama of life. Then she softened a little, and with
an air of contempt and
condescension showed the tub near her.
Ramanujam stole half limping to the tub of water near her.
Seeing that things were going too far even on the first day, he mustered a little
courage and desired to nip the mischief in the bud.
“You
call this a fit place for bears. It is the most envied spot, dear, on the whole
line. The trains are few. The traffic is nil. Tranquebar,
the Queen of the Coast, is but a station off and waits for you. Ours is a
little paradise if only we know how to enjoy it well together. Enough have I
slaved in junctions both night and day without rest or sleep! Here the work is
nothing; indeed my pay is pension.”
“Yes,
indeed, your pay is on the pension scale: twenty rupees a month and no extra
income. My brother will be ashamed even to own me. What you get for a month he
gets for a day. He rules over the flag in another way.” She made a very unkind
reference to the station-master’s emblem of power.
“Yes,
yes, he is a very lucky fellow. Whoever thought that Sarangan
would bloom into an I.C.S! Is he now an Assistant Collector at
Lakshmi
ignored the question proudly and asked her own. “Why have you spread out
to-night so broad a leaf like an eating purohit?”
Ramanujam hoping that supper would have an excellent effect
on her temper and save a domestic collision whose after-effects it would take a
long time of skill and patience to repair, ran through the sandhya
with great speed letting down quickly much water slip between his fingers.
Then he himself took out a broad plantain leaf and began to spread it out for
his meals. He sprinkled a little water thereon, cleaned it nicely over and over
again, and in subdued grunts and appropriate gestures was declaring himself
ready.
Lakshmi
caught him in the act and put the above incisive query.
Ramanujam dared a straight reply this time. “Because,
plantain leaves grow splendidly in our compound. It is a fertile spot the like
of which you don’t have for many miles around.”
“Then
eat the leaves; for rice bags don’t grow wild here, and twenty rupees can’t
feed two souls.”
“Dear,
rice bags too will grow wild for us very soon. If you would but learn a little
patience and win the favour of God...”
“Learn
it yourself and earn first the favour of Railway
gods.”
“It
will come with God’s favour. The goods section will
soon be opened, and, dear, you will have then everything for the mere asking:
the finest table-rice, gram and pulse. God has fixed a generous scale of fees
to the under-paid and over-worked dogs of this earth.”
III
Ramanujam spoke sitting and polishing his leaf patiently
with sprinkled water which rolled like drops of pearl from end to end. Lakshmi
stood like a goddess in a prophetic fit of anger. Peace or war trembled in the
balance like the water-drop on his own fresh leaf.
Peace it proved to be.
Lakshmi,
overwhelmed with a gracious mood, wheeled into the kitchen with a stately
motion all her own, and slipped a plateful of cooked rice all over the leaf in
such fine disorder as only an angry wife knows how to slip.
The
sight of polished rice in unbroken grains of beauty swept away all taste in Ramanujam even for a manly protest. He began in between
handfuls his story of pacification with increased zest, dramatically opening
another chapter of his conquest for his Cleopatra’s sake.
“The
local magnate is already my friend. You don’t know how mighty rich he is: three
hundred velis, two thousand acres of
first-class nanja. Even from the
station yard I can spy his hayricks and grain-heaps as high as hillocks. It is
a sight for the gods.”
Ramanujam had read in novels of women’s delight in the tale
of rich and powerful men. Why not try the effect of a neighbour’s
story on the peevish mind and mood of Lakshmi?
“Yes,
Mr. Mudaliar is already my friend. We owe indeed this
railway line to him, and this beautiful little station of Akkur
is wholly a creation of his. It is of no use to others. It is his own. He asked for it and got it. Mr. Mudaliar
is a member of the Taluq Board and the District
Board. His proud boast is that he signs his name in such a way in Tamil that it
is easily mistaken for English. He even thinks of standing for the Legislative
Council. A rich man can do many magic things in this world.”
Lakshmi
seemed to listen to the story. Ramanujam chuckled:
yes, reading maketh a full man, and novel-reading
makes one a good pilot in stormy seas.
“The
great Mudaliar swept into the station in all the
glory of the new Auburn Sedan this afternoon to catch No.6. He was gaily
dressed like a peacock and his white teeth shone like lightning in cloud-spread
sky. He is young and corpulent. His body gleans like polished iron rubbed a
little with oil. That is the way of all old fat and blue flesh.”
Lakshmi
nodded leave to go on but hinted that the philosophic bits might be left out.
“Fortunately,
No.6 was late by half an hour, as the driver was kept a trifle longer by his
lady love at Tranquebar. I had all the time with Mr. Mudaliar. We gave him our best chair. Though it had a
broken leg it was well fixed with a country nail–our porter, Karian, is a fine fellow, and he used his inherited skill,
his father was a blacksmith, to bring together a broken leg and a chair, and
charge a carpenter’s fee for the same! Mr. Mudaliar
was very kind to me and he promised me his support. On his return he will send
us two bags of first-class irriku semba rice. I understand that the station-master is
reckoned as part of his household and royal luggage.”
Ramanujam boldly spun the tale. Half of it was fact and the
other half the legitimate inferences of an aspiring hen-pecked mind. And l.akshmi’s smile was worth any bold venture or gypsy tale.
Yes, there were visible signs of returning good temper. Lakshmi’s
face was lit with a very sly smile.
Ramanujam rejoiced beyond measure. He would have even
clapped his hands for joy. But the right hand was busy gathering into a regular
mound the fine grains of rice scattered all over his leaf. Thank God, it was broad
enough.
“As
for the goods section it is as good as sanctioned, all a question of days. You
will have everything you dream of, dear, from petty greens to lordly cabbage;
from choice fuel to table-rice, gram and pulse; of course, all free. Mudaliar himself exports to
“Twenty
thousand bags of rice! Incredible, mighty rich he must be for that! What does
he do with all that flood of wealth?” There was a subtle change in Lakshmi’s voice and now one understood the native charm of
her talk in peaceful moods.
Ramanujam felt the triumph of his strategy. He continued in
an absorbed tone “Yes, yes, marvellously rich these
fellows are, and equally idle and vicious. The miser’s hoard of three generations
of sweated labour of the poor is now seeing the light
of day. The young Mudaliar has a nice band of
advisers, and I understand that the station-master of Akkur
has an ex-officio place therein. He has already finished the liquid cash of
ages. I am told that his gay march this evening was to a money-lender at Mayavaram. I have tramped from Rameshver
to
Lakshmi
was getting more and more absorbed in the story and was just beginning to
discover a slender vein of poetry in her lord. Has sylvan solitude and
sea-breeze such mystic effects on over worked and underfed men? She wondered.
Ramanujam thought that this mellow mood was a ripe occasion
to ask for a favour, He had not yet progressed with
his meals. He was all along waiting for soup. After serving him with rice so
well, Lakshmi sat down opposite to him intent on the tale with all the grace
and majesty of her static pose.
Ramanujam gently began, “The rice is rather getting cold.
The place is as chill as Ooty. Some sambhar if you please, dear.”
Lakshmi
fell from Heaven.
“Sambhar! Is
there any feast today? Why do you love this sambhar
so wretchedly well? Now I see that it is the tamarind in the sambhar that has soured you, indeed, as you
say.”
Lakshmi
repeated herself. “Sambhar! Is there any
feast today? I have not had the time even to set my things in order or wash my
face. Is it not enough to get cooked rice on the first day in a new house?
Strange indeed are the ways of men! They think no better of us than as beasts
of burden and toys of pleasure.”
There
was a strange glint in her eyes and a hollow look in her face. The malady
seemed far deeper than the immediate cause of Sambhar.
Every touch of home life seemed to hurt her deeply.
Ramanujam simply collapsed. There was hushed silence for
several minutes.
IV
Middle-statured, a little soft and plumpy, shining with the colour
of burnished gold, Lakshmi looked a round-faced, perfect Burman
beauty. But the high brow, the rising forehead, and the eagle nose and
eyes, and the unfading lustre of a high-class Brahmin
girl gave her a marked1ook of distinction and aristocratic birth to which she
had really no claim. Hers was a humble birth and her classic beauty was a
strange gift of the gods in the infinite mutations of life.
Her
father was an agent in the household of one of the leading aristocratic Mahrana Brahmin families of Tanjore.
Though his pay was only ten kalams of
paddy and five rupees a month, he was the real master of the household. In such
an environment of aristocratic culture and refinement Lakshmi grew till her
tenth birthday.
The
great house had a sudden fall. It went into insolvency. For, the traditions of
hospitality were royal without royal means, and three
important law-suits went against it in all the courts. Lakshmi’s
father died with his chief a broken-hearted man, when she was just ten. Her
mother lived only to see her married at fourteen.
Ramanujam was a remote, poor kinsman of hers. He was a bright
boy at the college at the time of his wedding. But a strange ill-luck seized
him almost immediately after. A wander-lust filled his mind once proficient in
geography in the High School. He roamed all over India without a pie in pocket
as a young Sadhu: thanks to the beneficent railway system which winks at
a free ride by all who care to smear their bodies with the sacred ash, and tell
beads piously when the flying squad of ticket examiners click their fingers before
them as so much of their own time and money wasted.
Somehow
this roaming life for Ramanujam came to an end when a
kindly and young Assistant Traffic Superintendent, recently and directly
recruited to the Service, discovered this bogus young sadhu
at Madura. He sympathised
with the story of Ramanujam’s wedded but truant and
unfulfilled life, appointed him as a ticket-collector at Mayavaram
on promise that he would take in his partner and set up home.
Ramanujam’s as a ticket-collector and signaller
was a splendid record of good and earnest work. He kept his promise and set up
home. But even on the first day he saw that Lakshmi was too great for him in
every way; indeed, too great for the touch of man. He appeared to himself as a
slender stream of water springing from obscure depths by the side of a mighty
river which moved with all the majesty of a mountain-birth and inborn motion.
He dared not break the lofty bunds of reserve and mix with the moving stream
his humble offering of love. He was content to crawl along by her side obeying
instinctively her sweeping curves of gesture and high turns of mind.
But
Mayavaram did Ramanujam one
definite good. It gave him bark his old school-boy love of books. And one
common trait cheered him, that Lakshmi too loved reading. He became a voracious
reader of books; thanks to the Higginbothams’
bookstall and to the friendly relations he kept up with its clerk, who shared
with him the decent view that books are in the first place for being read, then
for sale to those who can buy but do not read.
Ramanujam was tired of the strenuous work and night vigils
at the Mayavaram Junction for over five years. When
the branch line was opened from Mayavaram to Tranquebar he had his eyes on Akkur,
the coveted station on the whole line. He knew that his urban-minded partner
would scarcely like the calm, the solitude and the grandeur of Akkur But he was not prepared for the thunderstorm even on
the opening day.
Ramanujam had merits of his own which yielded decisive
success in many measures of life. His was the insinuating way. He had not the frank
and striking force or beauty of direct power. He made a point through endless manoeuvres. Usually he doubled this skill before the august
presence of Lakshmi. That was the fatal error. Women hate this kind of skill,
and Ramanujam had read of it even in the cheaper
novels of the bookstall. But in real daily life it was impossible for him to
change by magic or tuition the winding, sneaking tissues of his body or the
secret glands that poured continuously this malicious stream of subtle strategy
into his halting blood.
The
net result was that Ramanujam was still waiting on
this fateful day for his soup while Lakshmi was squatting with the full splendour of her queenly face turned on him like a
searchlight.
Time
passed painfully and the delicate deadlock continued.
V
No.
8 on her return journey from Tranquebar was screaming
at the outer as No. 13. Whistle shrieked with a vengeful noise and a petulant
ire. Ramanujam was still waiting for sambhar, still mounding the scattered pearls
on his broad leaf. He broke his fine work at the first scream of the whistle,
and scattered the heap oh rice all around in anger as the one act of protest,
and rushed out to receive the roaring train, crying at the top of his voice, “In
the branch line they have no sense of time. They come and go early and late as
they choose. But that shall never be hereafter. Where is the scoundrel, Karian?”
Karian is the prop of the whole station. He is the man whose
goodwill is essential for the motion of trains. But he too had for the day his
share of domestic troubles. He got home dead drunk for he made for himself
eight annas more than the usual daily luck from a
rustic who came with a gunny bag of excess load. What could he do in the
intoxicated mood, but stagger home, break the pots and his wife’s head? He too
had difficulty in getting his food; for his earnings for the week never reached
home as the gin-shop stood on the way. On hearing the screaming train he too came
swearing and cursing as if he would blow up everything.
Ramanujam was in a rage. “You rogue, where had you been sleeping?”
“Sleeping! No, Master, I was quite awake. I had some trouble
at home and my meals were not ready and I beat my wife. Ere I could finish with
her and get meals, the train is roaring before time. Let her roar. I fear the
driver is drunk.
“Beating your wife! Karia, to get your food!” Ramanujam
wondered how such a thing was possible and so easy to a porter. But the train was
screaming, and there was no time for a more elaborate investigation of the
methods of Karian to get at his recipe for good and
quick meals.
“Go
and lower the seme-phore and see that the points are
in proper position.” For, on the second line there were a few empty rakes of a ballast
train.
Karian went tottering to the handle to lower the seme-phore and the station-master cried out, “Karia, Karia, you seem to be dead
drunk; take care, don’t fall on the line and get crushed; see to the points.”
“Who
is dead drunk? Karian? No. The engine driver is,” Karian
roared to himself at the top of his voice and tried to lower the signal cursing
and muttering, “Come come, you strumpet, I’ll break
your jaw even as I broke her head just now. Not a moment of peace in this
wretched work on railways.”
Hardly
the signal seemed to lower, No. 13 started thundering
along the lines.
The
key barely turned in the doors of his office room. Ramanujam
had not yet reached even his coat and flag. There was a terrible crash as of
engines fighting for way. The little vagabondish
train ran against the ballast engine and empty rakes on the second line. No. 13
leapt out of the track.
Ramanujam stood thunderstruck. The crescent moon was struggling a heavy cloud.
Fortunately
there was no injury to life except for a hearty shake at a chill hour. No. 13
came almost empty except for Mr. Mudaliar and his gay
retinue. But Mudaliar himself did not travel as an
ordinary passenger but drove the engine with his mighty hand on the throttle
and the driver by his side, presumably for emergencies. He was naturally proud
to guide a train himself on a track which was so much his own.
Lakshmi
flung aside the conventions of her life at this critical hour. She who was never
afraid of collisions at home was rather taken aback at the terrific sight of
riding steel and smashed timber before her very eyes. Almost immediately she was
seen on the station platform by the side of her lord with a troubled face
wherein anxiety shone like the cloud in the moon.
Yes,
collision was in the air since eight o’clock in the evening.
Thank
God that the whirlwind which sprang at home spent itself abroad.
Thank
God that what came to wreck life wrecked only steel and timber.
Yes,
collision was in the air since eight o’clock in the evening. Thank God that it
wrecked only vagabondish trains and empty rakes, and
not young and beautiful lives in their first making.