THE NOSTALGIA

(A short story)

S. KRISHNAMOORTHY

(Translated by the author from the original in Tamil)

It was the Christmas season, and the promenade of the city presented a festive appearance. It was the heart of the city and presented every evening an unending procession of fashionably dressed men and women parading their charms. The gaiety of the atmosphere was catching, and Murthi liked to wander about on the promenade, of evenings, watching the varied spectacle passing by him.

Today too he was there as usual but somehow his heart was not in the dazzling attractions of the city. The sights which used to exhilarate him day after day left him cold today. He had merely come there as a matter of habit and was sauntering along with a preoccupied air.

It was almost a year since he had arrived at that provincial German town as one of a batch of trainees from India to undergo training in a steel factory. When he first arrived at that town its exotic life and strange atmosphere had almost swept him off his feet. He had belonged to a small sleepy town in the Southern extremity of India, far, far away from the cities and had been brought up in a conservative, tradition-bound atmosphere. Of course he had gone to the city for higher studies, but those were days of complete absorption in studies. Those days his world had consisted only of his college and his hostel and he had no time or inclination for any distraction from his studies. Therefore he had never taken any part in the main stream of city life. His first real contact with life took place in that strange German town and no wonder that everything about him had thrilled and excited him. The merry shoe-shine boys playing their trade on the side-walk, the vivacious working girls in their chic dresses, demonstrative couples whose style was not cramped by any inhibition, shop-windows bright with all sorts of modern luxuries and gadgets–all these offered a perpetual feast to his eyes and he liked to wander about that place every evening. An evening walk on the promenade had become a routine with him which proved a source of amusement to his colleagues who made fun of him and even tried to frighten him, saying that, if he did not look out, some day he would find himself ensnared in the charms of some roadside Juliet. But all the ragging of his colleagues did not suffice to make any change in his daily routine…

The festive season had added more charm and gaiety to the place but today Murthi had no eye for all that splendour. He had come there as a matter of habit and was sauntering along absentmindedly. For the past few days he had been feeling somewhat out of sorts and restless. He had been conscious of a vague feeling of discontent within him but had been unable to locate its exact source. Now that vague feeling had crystallised itself into an yearning for home.

Murthi was rather ashamed to own up this yearning. He was a grown-up youth of twenty-four and not a child any more. But the yearning was none the less real.

He had never left his native place till he was eighteen when he had to go to the city for higher studies. But even while studying in the city, he always managed a trip to home-town at least once in two months, because he was the home-loving type. His home and all that Went with it–his parents, brothers, sisters, friends, house-pets and the familiar landmarks of his native town–the square tank in the centre, the grand temple tower overlooking the tank, the school building built of red brick and the narrow, but neat, paved streets–all these exercised a strong fascination over him so much so that while poring over books in the city hostel he would often lose himself, unbeknown to himself, in contemplating his life at home.

Now that he was far, far away, not only from his home but also from his country, the distance had added to the intensity of his yearning for home.

Of course he was not the only Indian there. The party of trainers to which he belonged contained at least one representative from each region of India. It was an interesting and cosmopolitan group–Niranjan Singh, nicknamed ‘the Giant,’ whose imposing physical size dwarfed everyone beside him; Ram Kumar Varma, the scion of an aristocratic family of Lucknow; Sunil Banerji, the Bengali with dreamy eyes; Vinayak Ram Joshi, the merry and vivacious Maratha; Mani Bagri, the heir to a rich and wily businessman of Rajasthan and Vasant Desai, nicknamed ‘the Snob,’ a product of English public-schools and the Oxford University and an embodiment of cultured sophistication. Though the others called Desai a snob behind his back, they suffered from an inferiority complex in his presence and were very much in awe of him and his public-school manners. Desai, the son of a high-placed civil servant, was himself a born leader. He never forgot his advantage as the only one in that group with a real public-school education and never allowed others to forget this fact. He laid down the law in everything, whether in the matter of pronunciation of a word or in the correct way of handling the knife and fork at table. Desai’s colleagues were envious of his authority but they had implicit faith in the values for which he stood. There was therefore an unacknowledged, but none the less keen competition among them to be guided by his opinions and to win his approbation. They were always haunted by a secret fear that they might commit some faux pas which would expose them in Desa’s eyes as wanting in manners or lacking in taste.

They were a lively company no doubt, but all their liveliness and boisterous good spirits did not suffice to dispel Murthi’s vague yearning. If there had been some companion from Tamilnad, his own part of the country, he might not have felt so lonely. He was sick to death of having to speak an alien language to be understood. He had never been strong in English, still less was he in German which he was obliged to learn in a short-term course before coming to Germany for training. Every time he had to talk, he was painfully conscious of his brain frantically struggling to translate his thoughts into passable English or German. In spite of his earnest attempts he could not express himself completely and to his own satisfaction, and he had the feeling that a part of the thoughts he had wanted to express had remained unexpressed, choking his brain. He was aware of the absurdity of this feeling, which seemed so illogical, but there was no denying that the feeling was there, and it made him pretty uncomfortable.

Ever since he had left India, there had been no occasion for him to talk in his mother-tongue. He even began to nurse the absurd notion that he might forget it and cut a sorry figure when he returned among his own people. Memories of home began to obtrude on him quite frequently. When he was dining with his friends at a port restaurant in that town, with its sophisticated atmosphere, subdued lighting and liveried waiters, his mind unaccountably travelled back to the memory of his mother pouring diluted butter-milk over his cold rice, and he relived again in imagination the pleasure of contact of his fingers with cold rice. Eating at home had always been such a jolly affair. He had a number of brothers and sisters who enjoyed every morsel of even the cold rice they used to have of mornings. Dinner was an elaborate ritual. There was a lot of ragging, fun and noise...As he now watched the soft-footed waifers flitting about in conspiratorial silence in their cool efficient way, he longed once more to be back again among his noisy brothers at dinner.

It was the same when he went for his bath. All the pleasant comfort of the shower was no match for the cool, limpid water of the Tamraparni river where he used to swim for hours together during the long summer days. Once in the river he used to forget all sense of time and spend hours in aquatic acrobatics despite his father’s warning against such activities. It would be long past midday when his ablutions were over, and he would slink home entering it by the back-door to escape spanking by his father for coming late.

But apart from all these memories, what made him specially homesick was his yearning to speak and hear his mother-tongue. He was surprised at this, for he had never imagined that he had to much feeling for his language. He had always prided himself on what he called his broadmindedness in the matter of language. He was no doubt proud of Tamil. He admired its primitive ruggedness and robust strength. But he had no patience with the fanatics who claimed all sorts of superior merit for their own language and decried other languages as of no merit. He was quick to appreciate the good points in other languages too, so much so that his fanatic friends called him a renegade ...

He had walked on, lost in reverie. Oblivious of his surroundings he had gone on farther away than usual. Suddenly he found himself in a small, busy side-street with petty shops and cheap eating places on either side.

Suddenly he stopped short, unable to believe his ears….How could he hear a Tamil folk-song in that far-off German town?

Yet the familiar strains reached him clear:

“Unequalled in valour, courage incarnate,

Brothers of immortal fame,

Great in life and grander in death,

Kattabomman, the Brave, and Umaithurai, the wise….”

He could recognise the song with its ear-catching tune. It was the famous folk-song on the exploits of Kattabomman, the ruler of Panchalankurichi and his brother Umaithurai who had put up a gallant fight against the British in South India and went down in valiant struggle. These two heroes were an institution in his part of the country. Their story was a favourite theme with the street-singers who used to regale spell-bound audiences under the street-lamps with the famed exploits of the heroic couple, narrated in an easy mixture of prose and rhyme, Murthi, as a boy, had listened often to these recitals with avid interest and had ridden in imagination along with Kattabomman pursuing the fleeing army of Englishmen.

Now hearing the well-known, well-remembered song he felt once again a boy sneaking out of home at night to join the all-night session of the folk-singer at street-corner. It was as if the long interval between his boyhood and the present had evaporated. It did not matter that he was a stranger in a foreign country, and the street where he stood did not appear quite respectable.

The song was coming out of a phonogram from a cheap eating place. Murthi was irresistibly drawn there and stood in front of the shop listening….

“Sind Sie Indien?”

Murthi looked up. A middle-aged German, probably the proprietor of the shop, was smiling at him encouragingly.

Murthi nodded.

“Kommen Sie ein!” the German invited him inside the shop. Then, perhaps remembering that the stranger from India might not know German, added in broken English, “Like you the song? …wonderful, isn’t it?….It reminds me of our own rustic songs....”

“Have you got any more records?” asked Murthi.

“Yes, yes, I have got the whole set! Would you like to hear it? All right, I shall play it. Make yourself comfortable.”

“How on earth could you come by these records?” queried Murthi in astonishment.

‘You see, my father was a great traveller in his days. He had been to India and had brought with him these records, because he liked these songs, though he could not understand them.”

The tune of the folk-song pervaded the dingy little room and transformed it for Murthi into the street-corner so familiar to him….He could see the singer warm up to his theme after the usual invocatory Song, accompanied by his assistant with the drum….The description of the fortress at Panchalankurichi….The demand of the English for tax from Kattabomman….His spirited reply–

“The sky gives rain, fields give grain,

Why pay tax to the Englishman?”

Then the final struggle in which the brave hero was caught, and finally his death at the scaffold, a sad finale to a great life…

The story had ended. Murtbi awoke from the spell of the song. It was a great comfort to have listened to it in that foreign Country. The session with the Tamil folk-song had a cathartic effect on him and he felt relieved of the vague restlessness and dissatisfaction that had afflicted him all these days. He felt profoundly grateful to the German proprietor of that mean-looking restaurant for giving him that glorious experience...

“I have got more records at home. Shall I bring them tomorrow?...Will you come again?” asked the German.

“I shall only be too glad to come!” exclaimed Murthi with enthusiasm. “Now, good night!”

“Auf wiedersehen!” the German shook Murthi’s hands and saw him to the door.

Murthi started walking to his hotel. The night was far advanced. The usual street-sounds were no longer heard, but a different type of sounds reached his ears…Noises of brawls coming out of the drinking dens, shuffling foot-steps of drunks on the pavement, the incoherent mumblings of drunken people sprawling by the road-side, calls from the soliciting street-walkers…..He now understood what Desai had meant when he said that this was a disreputable locality. He was ashamed and a little afraid. He started running, anxious to get away from that place….

“Where had you been last evening, Murthi? You returned pretty late?” asked Desai the next morning.

Murthi hesitated before replying. Should he tell them the truth? What would Desai and others think of him if he told them that he spent half a night in a mean-looking eating place in that disreputable quarter of the town! What a fall it would cause him in their estimation!

Desai and others noticed Murthi’s hesitation. “Is it something that we should not know?” Desai asked provokingly. “In that case you need not tell us. After all, we have a right to our secrets. We don’t want to embarrass you. But it is a revelation to us that you–the puritan–too have some secrets to hide from us.” He winked at others who laughed uproariously.

Till a day ago it had seemed tremendously important to Murthi to retain the good opinion of Desai. He would have died rather than confess to anything which might lower him in Desai’s estimation. But today Desai’s opinion no longer seemed important. What was important was that there was a bit of his native land in an obscure part of that German town where he could spend some happy hours reliving the good old days of his boyhood...

“I had been to Liebenstrasse,” he said calmly.

“Liebenstrasse!” chorussed his friends in a shocked voice. They could not believe it of Murthi.

“Yes, Liebenstrasse!” asserted Murthi. “And what is more, I intend to go there every evening!”

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