Contradictory Co-Existence
The morning news paper coming with scams, scandals and celebrities in pink, keep people going until the day. A writer shouldn’t be worried about them at all, let alone the so called ‘news’. Scams, sometimes, the numbers in them frightens him; or at times the zeroes in them are so much that he thinks such numbers never existed.
The writer stepped swiftly into the lane, ending at a corner where the buses to the city stop. The bus stop is within the sight, I shouldn’t be hurrying now, he thought, unable to bring into mind any other thought. If I can’t think, I should at least be mocking some thought.
‘But Socialism....’
The memories of rhetoric came to fill in the void in his mind,
‘…alone, can bring self-determination of their peoples…’
Those days he devoured the hard backs that had even harder ideas inside, for the names that he found harder to pronounce. The days are gone. The word has become so much of a cliché, over used by those well paid academicians who discusses the plight of the human soul over the finest blend of Vodka, and of the sweat and blood of struggling masses in their air conditioned lounges. It has become an elite topic; I shouldn’t be taking it to the streets.
What else then?
‘Contradictory Coexistence’?
I heard someone speaking about it the other day, at the party meeting; such a fresh thought it seemed, and no one seemed to have any doubt about it.
A thud followed by some words woke the writer from his thoughts; the old chap down in the pavement was calling him names. Yes, I knocked him down. The writer chose to be polite, faking a smile on his lips to hide the grin, he was angry for no reason; or for interrupting his thoughts.” Is this ‘contradictory coexistence?” He thought for a while. No way. What Comrade Nair said must be something more serious.
‘I can’t expect these chaps in the pavements to be aware of a writer’s streams of consciousness’, well leave’em, he thought and moved on.
His alma mater was down the lane. A swam of bikes sped past him, reminding him of the muscular men riding the giant wheels; of the comic book memories. The women around them had little feminine about them, the writer gazed at their flirting games with a sigh. The dignity of my alma mater has left long ago; he walked on, fast towards the bus station. The street was in its brisk business of the day and the writer gazed around for something familiar, only to end in a bookshop where once he was regular to.
Browsing through the unlikely titles, his eyes caught on a rather familiar face. She was the so called hot, chilly, spicy (or whatever as they call) new face of the industry, posed so erotically wet to provoke fragile infatuations and momentary masturbating fantasies in its readers. The cover promises of even more spicy stories inside, of her unholy relationships probably with that superhero posing next to her. Such a revealing is always a stimulus to the intellect and to one’s creative spirit, the writer felt and paid for a copy, hoping to find something for a theme for his next story.
The writer busied into the first bus as he reached the station, and fell into the comfort of a ransacked seat and his occasional daydreaming. A siren from the adjoining boat-house penetrated his thought and has broken them for a while. Waking up from the comfort of a dream, in a virgin moment of existence, he felt bothered about his destination. A very rare moment in his life. The name boards never mattered to him, so did the ways but he chose to step down this time to browse through the journey charts at the wall of the bus station only to find unfamiliar destinations that he thought not worth going to.
Walking past the madding crowd, leaving the bus-station in a distant sight, the boat house he reached had the calmness that he always loved. The sky was cloudy and was getting darker; this lake side town is going to have its first rain of the season today, he felt.
The boat driver stood at the door impatient and the writer saw it eroding once he got in. ‘The angst of loneliness’, he smiled looking at the driver walking towards his cabin.
‘Will this start now?’ the writer opened up.
‘Right now’. The fellow was very pleased to have a talk.
‘But nobody in here?’ writer can’t hide his curiosity.
‘Are you expecting anyone?’ the driver replied as if he wasn’t.
‘I mean the other passengers’ the writer looked terribly insecure.
“Did you see that”,” sir”, the driver pointed towards the distant sky “if we won’t start right now, we’ll have to bear it half way”. He wasn’t arguing, it sounded, taking the last puff from a cigarette.
As he ignited the engine, an old woman came jumping in. The boat was shaken a bit, so did the driver.
“Hey you, old woman”, the driver was angry, “You were almost dead”
She smiled in reply, while finding a seat.
“If you die,” He pointed to a distance,
“They’ll come and burn me. No one will ask what you did.” He muttered.
“I thought you were leaving.” she tried to explain.
“And what if we left actually?” “You’d have jumped into the water?”
He wasn’t arrogant.
She laughed laud to that, moving to the bench next to the writer. He has dipped himself into the magazine as the boat moved. The canal looked like the graveyard of boats, where the remains of estranged ones floated, unwilling to submit to decay. The old women gazed at those remains of the abandoned, with her eyes deep in thought as the boat moved through them. The corpse of a dead dog floated past her thought, she raised her eyes towards a nearing boat and smiled at the white couple lying on its deck. They waved back in their touring spirit, while trying to capture the women in a camera. The writer felt a discomfort that he failed to express, as the women on the other boat focused her lens towards him.
“Have it”, the old woman told him, offering a mango.
He was shook up from his thoughts
“Eh?” He stared at her, and at the piece of offering.
She seemed irritated, signaling him to eat it and no words spoken. “Give this one to that chap up there, he may be tired of driving”, she told the writer, breaking silence and showing another one.
“I’m too tired to climb to his cabin”.
The writer rose from his seat and moved towards the driver’s cabin. The driver sat in an air of smoke, holding a cheap brand of cigarette in one hand and the wheel on the other and his eyes enjoying the distant sights of voyage.
He offered the mango to the driver who looked curiously into it. “Oh...so that old woman has this business too.”
He had a bite.
“Nice... I was looking for something to chew”.
The writer tried to smile, walking back to his seat. He sat looking at the rain beginning to pour in at distance and nearing him, unmindful of the old woman moving from her window seat behind him while the magazine’s cover girl getting wetter in his lap. He put the magazine to the seat next to him.
“Rain came too early this season”, the old woman sighed, looking at the paddy fields that lay at a distance, still to be reaped.
“Umm...” the writer tried to be concerned.
“What Umm?? Do you know anything about it? Nothing. You know nothing.”
That’s very true. I don’t even have the slightest idea about it. But how the hell she made it out? He felt shocked.
“I knew a lot of people like you” she continued, “intellectuals...revolutionaries...”
“They came to save us, promised heaven, and said it’s a movement: they fed on us and fell on our women in secret.”
The words did upset the writer. Pied pipers, he thought as sat gazing down the floor. The boat began to quiver; the music of the rain drops falling over the boat’s roof came in the backdrop of his flashback memories.
“We won’t ask you for your God, your religion or caste; if you strive in the soil until the last drop of your sweat and blood, and still can’t get enough to feed your children; if you are being cheated and can’t own the land you live and die, we are here for you...”
“Sons of bitches.” And curses followed.
She looked terribly fuming in the pain of being betrayed. “When they get power, they don’t want anyone; don’t want to see anyone. We sit at their doorsteps for days and they don’t have time to listen us; not in a day, two or even weeks.”
The writer nodded in approval.
“You don’t know anything” she continued.
“We hid their leaders from the police, fed them even when our children were starving and they had the gratitude, till their death. It’s just because of them that we still vote your Party to power.”
She took a deep breath.
“I know what to do next time; they’ll come begging vote. I’ll thrash them with my sickle.”
“This woman seems to be a diehard Congress”, the driver commented from above.
“Congress???” She was furious again.
“Call your dad by that name”
The driver laughed out loud, the writer too joined him.
“I didn’t mean anything” She tried to explain, as she calmed down.
“Was just worried a bit”.
That wasn’t true. The writer was reading stories of pain, poverty and betrayal from her eyes.
The boat moved on.
He felt the cold winds penetrating through the worn out clothes. The chilling wind creped through his chest and crawled up his bones. He hugged the only mortal procession that he had, his cloth bag, tight to his chest. The deep lagoon was preparing something for them down the calmness of its waves. The boat was shaken for a while, and some mangoes fell down from her basket.
“Don’t worry my son; I’ll pick them once the boat stops.”
She said, watching the writer trying unsuccessfully to catch them and put back the one she picked from the floor with a smile.
He watched the mild tides growing into waves and its crest shaking the boat. There was water streaming inside the boat, and his cover girl swam lavishly in it. The wind was getting harder and the boat was trying to content it with its even harder noise.
“It’s quite unusual now, the rainy season is days away.”
The old woman tried to sense some reason.
“Umm...” The writer agreed.
“Again your Umm...” She laughed.
He too tried to join her in the laughter, but he couldn’t. The shores were fast disappearing from sight. He felt like in the middle of a sea. The boat was shaking and shivering; the old woman was holding tightly on the bars and tried to smile to the writer’s face.
“It’s just the wind; it’ll go as it came.” She struggled to be calm.
“Umm...” the writer assured himself. Both of them laughed.
The boat jumped in the tides, breaking them apart. The writer fell on the floor and the old woman tried to offer him hand, holding on the bars.
The writer rose, holding her hand and tried to sit.
”I don’t understand what the hell he’s doing up there”, she murmured, looking towards the driver’s cabin.
The writer walked towards the steps and climbed to the driver’s cabin, ignoring the pool of water down the steps. The driver was there, his hands off the wheel and completely wet in rain. The darkness hid his face from the writer. The boat shook itself against the tide again, the driver slipped from his seat with it.
The writer stepped down, calmly.
“What he’s doing there?” she enquired angrily.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be shore soon”.
“Alright.”
He sat next to her, watching the tides shaking their vessel and the fog surrounding it getting thicker. It was darkness, everywhere. Amidst the howling winds, he realized the journey, now has a destination. He has a story now, but to be left untold.
Day after, the writer float over the calmness of the tide with the old woman; hand in hand.
Or
They contradictorily coexisted.
Note ; Translated from Malayalam by Sreejith K Chandrasekhar.
