LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

ection> DEDICATION

      I. RAVI

      ‘Dai, Ravi! Get the bat and ball and come down! I’m setting up the stumps!’

      A young boy, around twelve years old, was running into an open playground, calling out to another boy on a first-floor balcony above. It was just after 4.30 pm and the piercing heat – and worse, the humidity – of the Chennai summer afternoon was just starting to abate.

      These evening hours were precious. Although the boys would have loved to play as soon as school was out, their mothers insisted that they have something cool to drink and wait an hour. Most of them had learned by now that it was useless to argue.

      Ravi, leaning over the balcony railing, raised his hand in acknowledgement of Babu, the boy who had called out. Ravi was a tall, somewhat plump boy. His light brown eyes sat under heavy eyebrows and he had a button nose. His wide lips were generally stretched across his face in a smile, but just at present, he was gulping down a glass of milk, two white rivulets streaming down from the corners of his lips. Finally, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and ran indoors to make his way down to the playground.

      Babu’s stumps were a piece of cardboard wedged in between a broken brick on one side and a large rock on the other. He was a lanky boy, having just grown three or four inches in the last few months. His eyes were jet black and his long lashes brushed against his glasses, which were usually cloudy with perspiration. He was squatting in front of the stumps, making sure the flimsy cardboard was secure, his dark brown skin shining in the afternoon sun. Once this was done, he stood up and carefully measured fifteen paces, counting them under his breath, to mark out the other end of the crease.

      He took his job seriously. Babu was the captain of the Shanthi Colony cricket team.

      Shanthi Colony was a group of ten blocks of flats, each of which housed six units. The blocks themselves were fairly simple concrete buildings, constructed in the seventies. They had originally been painted light yellow on the outside, a colour that the harsh sun had turned off-white over the years. The flats were surrounded by a large boundary wall with two gates, each manned by a security guard. These guards were not exactly of the ex-policeman variety – in fact, both of them used to work in shops – but they provided enough peace of mind to the mothers in the colony that their children wouldn’t run outside without their knowing about it.

      The playground was just inside the colony gates. One end of it contained a set of swings, a jungle gym and a long-broken seesaw. The rest was open space. Boys would play cricket in the evenings and girls would play badminton or catch-catch. The playground was surrounded by a short wrought-iron fence and a flowerbed, which was being watered by a short, slightly plump old lady. She wore a burnt orange cotton sari, and her greying hair was in a bun at the nape of her neck. Everything about her was neat – from her carefully parted hair, to her perfectly round pottu (a round red dot drawn in the middle of the forehead as an adornment). Her smile was friendly and welcoming.

      As the water hit the ground, the sweet smell of the wet earth began to fill the air. The old lady sighed happily. She loved this part of her day.

      ‘Good evening, Kummi Paati,’ Babu said.

      Kummi – or Komalam, to use her full name – had lived in the colony for nearly forty years. She had come there as a young married woman with two children. Two children who, like Babu, used to play in this very playground every evening while she was in the apartment, cooking and cleaning and doing all the things that needed doing in running a household. Somehow the years had passed by, and now she was nearly sixty-five. Her daughter Shakuntala and her son Vivek were grown and lived overseas, and she had become the honorary Paati (or grandmother) to all of the young children who lived in the colony now. Like Babu.

      She smiled back at the boy and replied to his question.

      ‘Good evening, Babu! Getting ready for the big match, yes?’

      Babu nodded. ‘We have a lot of catching up to do. The boys from New Look Manere have been practising for months!’

      New Look Manere was a high-rise apartment block, two streets away. It had only been built a few years previously and had much better facilities than Shanthi Colony – including, to the envy of the colony children, a swimming pool. But the New Look boys and girls were not inclined to share.

      ‘We are already behind. But what to do?’

      Babu looked around and, as he did, his glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, propelled by sweat and habit. He wrinkled his nose, using the action to push his glasses back into place.

      ‘See? My team still haven’t come for practice. Not even my vice-captain is here!’

      As he spoke, though, a few boys started to trickle in. Kummi Paati gestured over his shoulder, her lips turning up at the corners.

      ‘Look behind you,’ she said.

      Without another word, Babu turned and ran towards his friends. Kummi Paati continued to water the garden, smelling the earth and the delicate scent from the many varieties of jasmine plants. As she lifted her gaze from the flowerbed, enjoying the riot of colours from the hibiscus, the bougainvillea and the crossandra, she took in the scene of the children playing together. Every evening, she watched these children play while she watered the garden. It was almost always the best part of her day.

      As she stood there, hose in hand, three more people walked into the playground. As soon as she saw them, Kummi Paati smiled. Shakuntala, her daughter, was taking her twin ten-year-old nieces, Nina and Alisha, to meet a group of girls playing badminton at the far end of the playground. They had arrived a few nights ago from Sydney, Australia. The girls were tall for their age, and had warm russet-brown skin, like their father. They both had straight black hair. Nina’s was plaited in two and Alisha’s was in a high ponytail – both girls attempting to keep the hair off their necks in the heat. They were dressed to play with other girls, in shorts and t-shirts that had seen better days. Vivek, their father, had been planning to make the trip with his daughters, but a last-minute work crisis had nearly made him cancel the trip altogether. But then his sister Shakuntala had decided she ‘needed a break from Sydney’– whatever that meant – and so the trio had made the journey together.

      Having left the girls with their new friends, Shakuntala – or Shaku, as she was usually called – walked over to Kummi Paati. She was tall, like her father, and had long, black, curly hair, currently pulled up in a high bun. Her face, like her mother’s, was pleasant and open. Both of them had the same rounded nose, the same thick lips. But where Kummi Paati had small eyes, covered by large, caterpillar-like eyebrows, Shakuntala – who had edited her eyebrows down from what nature had bestowed upon her – had large eyes that, just at present, were ringed with circles.

      ‘I might go upstairs, Amma,’ she said, using the Tamil word for mother. ‘I’m still tired.’

      ‘Jetlag?’ Kummi Paati asked.

      Shakuntala nodded.

      ‘Shall I come up and make you some coffee?’ Kummi Paati asked.

      ‘No, no. I think I’m going to lie down for a bit.’

      ‘Okay. You go, ma, I’ll watch the girls,’ Kummi Paati said.

      She glanced back at the girls, and then over to the boys. Ravi, the delayed vice-captain, had arrived and was shouting out as he ran towards the group. She continued her watering but noticed soon enough that the boys were not playing cricket. They seemed to be discussing something instead. A lot of the boys were pointing at Ravi, and Babu appeared to have taken up a placatory stance between him and most of the other boys.

      The feeling of water on her legs startled her. She looked down to find that her sari was wet, drenched by her slackening hand as she watched the boys become agitated. Voices were raised, but she could not make out what was happening. She hitched her sari up a bit, tucking it in at her waist, and turned back to the plants.

      She would find out soon enough, she thought.

      Twenty minutes later, Kummi Paati rounded the corner and turned off the tap. The girls were still playing badminton,

Скачать книгу