The Disappearing Uncle. D. K. Rajagopalan
‘It’s okay, da. We can get another one by tomorrow. I’ll ask my father and you also ask, okay?’
Ravi responded in a slightly wobbly voice. ‘Okay, da.’
‘Come,’ Babu said, ‘let’s go home and play carrom.’
Kummi Paati could feel Ravi looking at her before she saw him. She turned towards him and met his glance with a smile. She had known Ravi since he was born, as she did so many of the young children in Shanthi Colony. She had been at the ceremony to bless his pregnant mother before his birth, she had been at the post-birth ceremony to bless him with a long life, and she had been at every birthday event he’d had after that. These children in the colony, while not related to her, were close and known.
‘You go, da,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ll come in a while.’
Kummi Paati gathered the hose the way she did every evening, and hung it on the rusty iron hook that had been used for that purpose for decades. She turned the tap on once again to wash her hands and her feet and when she turned around, Ravi was waiting.
He sat on top of the short wrought-iron fence that surrounded the playground. His shoulders were hunched over and he looked down, trying to hide his dirt-streaked face. Kummi Paati went and sat next to him. His little body heaved once, then he hiccoughed. He sniffled and turned away. Kummi Paati put her arm around him. After a few minutes, he brushed his arm over his face and turned back towards her.
‘Kummi Paati, the boys are all blaming me.’
‘What are they blaming you for?’
‘The cricket balls. They keep getting lost.’
Kummi Paati smiled.
‘Do they? And how does that happen?’
‘I keep them in a box in our scooter garage. And they keep going missing from there!’
‘How many have been lost so far?’
Ravi appeared to think for a moment.
‘At least three or four. And if I ask my Appa to get a ball again,’ his voice began to wobble as he contemplated confessing to his father, ‘he will scold me badly.’
‘Hmm. I see. Well how about this. Go tomorrow and buy a ball from Mythili Mart. And keep it with you, in your room.’
She reached into her blouse, extracted a twenty rupee note and handed it to the boy.
Ravi’s face lit up.
‘Thank you, Kummi Paati!’
He jumped up, ready to run to his friend’s house. But after a few steps, he turned around and looked at Kummi Paati again.
‘But Kummi Paati, what about all the other balls?’
‘I am glad you have not forgotten about them. After all, your father paid money for them, didn’t he? So we will have to see about them too. But you don’t worry, kanna,’ she said, the Tamil endearment slipping out naturally. ‘Leave it with me.’
* * *
The next day, Kummi Paati woke at 6 am, as she did every morning. She started the day by cleaning the corridor outside the entrance of her flat and drawing a kolam on the floor, a pattern made with rice flour that could be simple or highly complex, depending on Kummi Paati’s mood. Then she went into the kitchen and boiled the milk. A container was left near the front door every morning by Anbu, the man in the back lane who kept cows. It was rare, these days, to get fresh cow’s milk and when Anbu had moved into the neighbourhood with his five cows, Paati was happy. Even though his milk was more expensive than the packet milk delivered by the newspaper boy, she enjoyed it a lot more.
After she had boiled the milk, she made her morning coffee. She and her husband still ate the traditional way, and so did the grandchildren when they visited. None of these cereal breakfasts for her. They had coffee in the morning, and a full meal at 10 am. And so, once she had finished her early morning coffee, she began to cook. She started with the rasam, a thin lentil and tomato soup that was eaten with rice. Then she made beans kootu, a thicker stew made of green beans and lentils. Next up was the sambhar, a different type of lentil broth. And she was just finishing the potato curry when she noticed the time. It was just after 8am. Time for her second coffee, and for her husband’s first one. She measured two tumblers of milk into a stainless-steel vessel and placed it on the stove.
Her husband, Somasekar, was known in the colony as Somu Thatha. Somu was a nickname for Somasekar, while Thatha was the Tamil word for grandfather. He was from the same small town as Kummi Paati. Both of them had grown up with very little. Soon after they were married, Somu Thatha’s father started a new business, manufacturing and selling water pumps to builders. In due course, Somu had joined the business, which had prospered. When things had started to improve, they had purchased the three-bedroom flat in Shanthi Colony. At the time, it had seemed luxurious to Kummi Paati.
The business had expanded even further. Her husband often spoke to her about it, talking her through decisions he had to make and wanting to know what she thought. Despite the increasing profitability of Sekar Pumps, they had continued to live their life the same as before. She did not want for more. In fact, now that her children had moved out, the flat felt too big to her – except when they visited, at which time she was grateful for the space. What would she do with a bigger house? Just more rooms to keep clean, with no upside. Or a fancy car? They had a good car, a Maruti 800 that her husband felt comfortable driving through the hectic Chennai traffic. It took them from point A to point B. Wasn’t that the purpose of a car?
She wore little jewellery apart from her thali (her wedding chain), the diamond earrings that had been given to her by her father on the occasion of her marriage and two gold bangles on each wrist, a sign that she was a married woman. She had some more eye-catching wedding jewellery, for special occasions. And she had saris enough.
The money Sekar Pumps made had been useful when first her son and then her daughter had wanted to study overseas. The fees at the universities abroad had shocked her. And yet, an overseas education was what her children had wanted. So, as she wished for them to have the choices and opportunities that she had never had, she convinced her husband to pay the exorbitant fees for her son and daughter to go to a university in Australia. That had been twenty or so years ago. After their education, both children had settled down in Sydney. First her son, and then her daughter.
She still missed them, every single day. Visits like the one now seemed few and far between – but it kept the heartache from becoming entirely unbearable. Just.
She was brought out of her reverie by the milk starting to foam. As soon as it boiled, she added the thick coffee decoction to it. She had made the decoction the day before by allowing hot water to slowly drip through a large amount of coffee over a number of hours. She was mixing in the sugar and frothing the coffee when her husband walked into the room. He went straight to the prayer room, just off to the side of the kitchen, to perform his morning devotions.
Somu Thatha was almost six feet tall. Kummi Paati looked tiny next to him. But then, she looked tiny next to most people. Where she was pleasantly rounded, he was bony and gangly. But like Kummi Paati, he had a kind face. Kummi Paati had not known him well – or at all, in fact – when her marriage to him had been arranged. She had been sixteen years old, which was old to be getting married compared to many other girls of her generation. She hadn’t minded not being married – she had enjoyed school, enjoyed learning. But she had known it couldn’t last.
It could have been worse. Somu Thatha, the boy who had been chosen for her, was only four years older than her, which was not too bad. And she had not heard anything negative about him. In the small town in which they lived, gossip spread quickly. Had he been one of those rowdy boys, always whistling at girls or chasing them on his bicycle, she would have known. And after she had been told what was to happen, she had managed to take a look at him over the compound wall that separated their two houses. Not that she could have done anything about it if she hadn’t liked what she saw. But she wanted to try and get a sense of what was in store