REPUTATION

(Short story)

NEELA PADMANABHAN

(Translated from the original in Tamil by M. S. RAMASWAMI)

Kolappan stepped on the narrow lane that branched to the left from the busy road. And the dense darkness pervading there seized his mind which was already weary.

From an electric bulb, light slithered out of a window in Shenoy’s house at the left end of the lane and soiled the darkness.

Shenoy was his father’s best friend at Kayamkulam. At this time of the day his father could be seen either at Shenoy’s house or his, conversing with Shenoy. This was so, till his father died three months ago.

Hmm...Only he had been in his house for the past three months...Lonely life! His rented house looked a rat-hole. In the morning, regularly, he would lock his house, hand over the key at Shenoy’s, go to the factory near the boat jetty, open it, remain there for some time and then proceed to the college. Sometimes he used to take his lunch, sometimes not. In the evening, after the college is closed, he would remain at the factory till eight o’clock and then eat his meal in the hotel. By the time he reaches home usually it would be nine o’clock.

He got on the doorstep of Shenoy’s house to take the key. The outer door remained closed. As he opened it and tried to enter inside, his eyes gazed at his house with a heavy heart.

He was shocked.

Light comes now from inside that house!

During the past three months whenever he looked at the house at this time of the day he had found it wrapt in darkness like his mind.

Who would’ve come?

For a moment he was subjected to a curious perplexity–his standing there like this at nine o’clock one night three months ago–the intervening, cruel three months becoming a lie, a nothing.

He regained his poise immediately.

But, again the same puzzlement.

Who would’ve come to our house there?

Perhaps...perhaps... father’s...?

Chey!...What a foolish idea? Whoever he be, he could have opened the house only after getting the key from Shenoy’s. Then Shenoy could be enquired about that. With that idea he went inside the house. Still, his mind was tossing about thinking of various possibilities.

Shenoy was reclining on the easychair engrossed in the newspaper. He saw Kolappan, removed his spectacles! placed them on his lap, rubbed his bald-head resembling a lime fruit and said, “Is that Kolappan? You haven’t gone to your house yet? Your mother as come...”

He looked aghast.

What could be the matter?

“With whom?”

“With your grandfather.”

“When?”

“He brought your mother this and had gone back to Parakkai.”

Vatsalayakka, Mrs. Shenoy, came there from inside the house. The urgency of the work in the kitchen was visible in her face. The sound of blows among the children was also heard.

“Is that Kolappan? Your mother is waiting for you. Hurry up. Poor lady! During these three months she has become half what she was before. Hmm...What a vast sorrow within her? Yes...Yes...You go...I shall come there in a while. Since your grandfather was there I couldn’t ask her in detail about anything.”

He got down and walked along the lane.

If grandfather bad brought mother from Parakkai, left her here and returned to the village...? Means, from now on, mother will remain here itself.

What could be the reason?

He was puzzled.

On the sixteenth day of his fathers death, after the ‘kalleduppu adiyanthiram’ was over, his maternal grand-parents started for Parakkai. Before leaving, his grandfather told his mother, “Chellie, all the people in this place are Malayalis. Even for a chit-chat there is no one of our people here. You’re young. Kolappan is a small boy. If we leave both of you alone

here, who would be your company? So, both of you come with us to our village. The other day itself your elder brother Shanmugham had expressed this.”

Uncle Shanmugham Pillai is a dealer in fertilisers at Villukuri. Custom is that all those who are present when the pandal is put in a house where death occurs should also be present when it is removed. So, when the pandal was put with green coconut leaves in the courtyard here he shrewdly got down from the house and stood on the road. Next day, after the ‘Kadaathu’ was over, he went away to Villukuri in his car. He can’t absent himself from there even for a single day. He had such a roaring business. It seemed to Kolappan that his uncle’s visit to Kayamkulam itself on receipt of the telegram of the death of the father of Kolappan was a great concession.

“Then are you both coming with us now?” grandfather insisted.

Mother’s eyes got moist. Somehow she managed to say: “This is the first year in B.A. for Kolappan. He has two years more to complete his studies. After all these days only now we are getting some income from the business. How would it look if I come there now leaving all the things here helter-skelter?”

Grandmother felt indignant.

“Yes, yes. The man himself, who was firm as a rock, has kicked the bucket. Your husband invested the entire amount in the cashew-nut business. And we have seen with our own eyes what he had gained all those days. Now, what is there for you, mother and son, to amass in the business? Don’t you have any other work?”

Grandmother took a pinch of snuff from the small snuff bottle in her hand, pressed it at the end of the row of her teeth and continued maliciously, “We knew even then that it would happen like this. Only because of that we withheld the payment of your stridhana amount of one thousand rupees. But a year ago you came to Parakkai, cried, insisted on getting that amount too and gave it to your precious husband, Now, it’s all gone. Out of my ten daughters, it is my lot now to see only you, my youngest, in this dress.”

Grandfather is seventy-five years old and is slightly short of hearing. So, the general opinion is that all that grandmother says is not heard by him. Grandmother raised for grandfather twelve children–two boys and ten girls. It is Kolappan’s view that his grandfather forms part and parcel of the obstinacy and haughtiness of his grandmother’s words.

At last, grandfather called the accountant of the cashew-nut factory and discussed this with him. He said, “Goods have been supplied on credit. More than fifty thousand rupees is outstanding. Now, if all of a sudden we stop the business it would be very difficult to recover the amount. I speak out of my experience. For some more days, just to show that we haven’t stopped the business, we have to supply at least small quantities of goods to our customers and thus recover the cost of the goods already supplied. That would be prudence. If we do like that, we could realize at least half the amount.”

Shenoy then gave this suggestion: “Let Kolappan remain here till the studies are over. The factory needn’t be closed down. Enough he goes there and attends to the business during the time he can spare after his college hours. Then, aren’t we all here?”

Only three months since my mother went accordingly to Parakkai with her parents. If she has come back here now?

When he saw his mother his eyes welled up with tears. At Vatsalayakka said, she was nothing but skin and bones. When she saw him, she too couldn’t control the flow of her tears.

For a while silence alone spoke. She was dressed in white sari and was without any ornament round her neck; she was shedding tears. When he saw her his heart was crushed down by the weight of an inexplicable grief.

“You came with grandfather.” His voice was hoarse. She nodded her head.

“Hmm?”

Chellie was bewildered when she saw in his piercing look the question demanding the cause for her sudden return from her parental home where she was offered permanent shelter. “How many days have passed since I saw you last? That’s it.”

He didn’t say anything; he was sitting on a chair facing a table and flipping the pages of a book.

“Then that’s all. Nothing special. Isn’t it so?”

Malice and harshness in his query. They must have distressed her. She tried to control herself by saying something. But he said, “Isn’t it the affair of your parental home? If you can tell me what took place there, do so. But never tell me a lie.” She was swept by a surge of emotion.

“Kolappa, why should I tell you a lie...? Shall tell you everything.”

Sobs for a while. Then she resumed: “People say that parents are infatuated and children are stone-hearted. But, I know full well that it is quite the reverse in our home. That was why I felt reluctant to go there that day.”

He glanced at the book and allowed her to continue.

“After I went there, in the presence of people who came to the house for some days to bewail the death of your father, my mother abused scathingly in her ‘oppari’ your dead father and us two not dead. I bit my teeth and bore all that as our fate. But, I shouldn’t tell plainly how my mother behaved to her own daughter. If I do so, it would disgrace us only. None would believe it. If we say a mother-in-law treated her daughter-in-law in this manner the entire world would believe us...”

Kolappan quivered with anger. Yet he controlled himself and sat stiff.

“If mother goes out anywhere she would lock the kitchen and take away the key carefully with her. She would also have arranged somebody to snoop about. I shouldn’t go to the room where the groceries and other things are kept. Many a thing like this within these three months. If I were to tell you all that I had suffered my heart would burst. So horrible it is. But, let me tell you only what happened two weeks ago on the seventy-sixth birthday of my father.”

Kolappan was impatient. He closed the book, threw it on the table and prepared himself to listen to his mother’s words.

“All my sisters, brothers-in-law, two elder brothers, their wives, children–all of them–had come that day. They were eating food. It was all salty. What harmful deceit was it due to? No one ate. All of them rose. Father shouted in all rage and the whole house trembled. Mother said, “Everything was prepared last night itself. I tasted each one of the dishes. It was good. Hmm. Hmm. I know well whose work is this. It’s three months since I slept soundly. Chellie’s husband is hovering round this place from the day she came here. This is his work. Should send for Karuveppilai Aasaan and do a ‘Kalippu’. She said many things like this.”

Chellie couldn’t control the tears overflowing her eyes. She wept and wailed.

They didn’t have a good word about his father even when he was alive. If only they could leave him alone now....

Kolappan couldn’t sit quiet. The disgrace that fell to his parents was his as well. Anger and shame harassed him and he paced the room up and down very much agitated.

He couldn’t get words to speak even. “Why the hell did you go with them there? We could have remained here and died together.”

Those who slighted her are not here now. Though he knew that it wasn’t proper for him to vent all his anger on her, he couldn’t control his feelings.

A little while later he asked: “Did you say that you must come back here? Or, did grandfather himself forcibly bring you here as he did take you?”

“After the incident on father’s birthday, I myself approached him and said, ‘Father...take me to Kayamkulam. Let things happen according to my fate ... I can’t stay here any longer’.”

“What did grandfather say?”

“What’s there to be said? He looked at me for some time without uttering a single word. Then he said, ‘Kuttie...I knew all these even long ago....None is capable of getting along with your mother’s temperament. As for me, I have no other go. Like this and that I’ve spent these forty-six years with her. Hmm...I never wanted to take you that day from Kayamkulam. But...it was your elder brother Shanmugham who compelled me to do this.... Therefore...if he comes here from Villukuri either tomorrow or the day after, let me consult him too. Then I shall take you to your house at Kayamkulam as I brought you from there. Let things happen according to your fate.”...

Kolappan felt angry at his grandfather’s impotency. Impotency or lack of interest? Perhaps...perhaps...Kolappan thought whether grandfather too was on grandmother’s side.

“What did Shanmugham Pillai say?”

“My elder brother has plenty of money. Whatever mother may say to others about him in his absence she would be greatly excited once she sees him or his wife or his children. She would exhibit so much attachment. I don’t know what my parents told him. Yesterday when he was at Parakkai he told me, ‘Chellie...that is a rotten place. I thought that if you remained there and fell into disrepute it would be a slur on our family. So I told father to bring you here somehow. If you think it is absolutely necessary for you to go to Kayamkulam, you can go. But...it is not proper on your part to pick quarrels with father and mother like this and harass them in their old age. Yes’ ...”

Kolappan’s entire frame was ablaze with anger.

“Didn’t you say anything in reply?”

“What could I say? Our lot has come to this. What, then, is the use of quarrelling with them? I’ve come here with the idea that we could be far away from them. That father graciously came here with me is itself a great thing....”

Kolappan’s heart turned into a volcano. He sat gritting his teeth. He had a lot of lessons to learn. With much effort he was trying to concentrate on his lesson.

Then Vatsalayakka came there. In the course of conversation she asked Chellie why she had come back to Kayamkulam.

“All my elder sisters have been married. My elder brothers too have set up separate families. Now, father and mother alone are at Parakkai, in our house. My father, mother and elder brothers–all of them–compelled me to stay there. But...my husband is no more. How will my mind agree to be there in peace when my son is here, all alone, eating in a hotel?”

Kolappan also heard this–his mother establishing thus the reputation of her parental home.

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