The star he liked most (அவனுக்கு மிகப்பிடித்தமான நட்சத்திரம்) by Ashoka Mithran

Ashokamithran

This is an English translation of “Avanukku Miga Pidiththamaana Natchathiram”, a Tamil short story written by Ashoka Mithran. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam. 

***

Sriram was twenty one years old. His B.A exams were recently over and the results were to be out in the month of June. It was April now.

Ramasamy Iyer was his neighbour. He was a clerk in a pharmaceutical company. He had five children. First three were girls, the fourth one was a four year old boy and the last one was a girl, a toddler of nine months.  

Sriram had subscribed to an English daily. The newspaper would be distributed at his house at about six every morning. Since his regular newspaper man had to attend a court case that day, he had deputed his son to distribute the newspapers. When Ramasamy Iyer got up in the morning, he saw a newspaper sticking out the window grill. He didn’t know whose newspaper it was. After washing his face and drinking coffee, he started reading that newspaper so attentively. 

A tamarind vendor was on his way selling freshly collected tamarind for an unbelievably cheap price. Ramasamy Iyer came out of the house, approached the vendor to buy a Mananku¹ of tamarind. The vendor weighed two veesai of tamarind each time. Some wrapper sort of stuff was needed to take all the tamarind balls into the house. Ramasamy Iyer was holding a newspaper in his hands without knowing to whom it belonged. When he was taking the third tamarind ball in with the newspaper, he saw Sriram speaking to someone, enquiring about the newspaper man. Ramasamy went into home swiftly, threw out the tamarind ball, wiped the newspaper with the best of his efforts, came out and asked Sriram whether the newspaper he was holding in his hands belonged to him. Sriram nearly snatched it from his hands and opened it. The front page of the newspaper carried a full scape advertisement of a movie. A blow-up of an actress, often praised as the most beautiful woman in the entire South India was printed in the advertisement. Her beautiful face was found grotty with the half-cleaned patches of six veesai tamarind smeared on it. Sriram had an insurmountable crush on that actress. He reproached Ramasamy Iyer for his depraved intention of picking up someone else's newspaper. Ramasamy Iyer told him that he didn’t know anything and he found the newspaper inserted in his window grill. Sriram mumbled something inaudibly and started reading the newspaper. The face of that actress looked awfully ugly. Sriram muttered audibly, “fool”. Ramasamy Iyer heard it and asked him “What did you say now?” 

“I said nothing about you. Fool”- Sriram repeated it again. In the next fifteen minutes that followed, Ramasamy Iyer came out with his opinions that Sriram was a fool, scoundrel, cheat and rogue. Sriram responded that he also had similar opinions about Ramasamy Iyer. That day, Ramasamy Iyer went late to his office by one hour. 

A couple of days later, Sriram saw Ramasamy Iyer carrying a bunch of neem leaves in his hands. Sriram’s mother told him that Ramasamy Iyer’s son had small pox. Sriram had planned to go to the Employment exchange, Book store and then cinema. Soon after he left his house, he wrote an anonymous letter to the Health department and dropped in the post box. 

The day was completely hectic for him. When he returned home, it wasn’t fully dark. He felt that something was not alright with him, but couldn’t understand exactly what it was. His heart cried for peace. 

When he was drinking the coffee kept in the flask in slower sips, his mother told him that someone had informed the Health Department about small pox, some persons came to Ramasamy Iyer’s house when he was not there and took his son along with them to the cholera quarantine hospital. Iyer’s wife cried inconsolably, begged everyone who came there to spare her son. But they paid little attention to her words, nor tears and left with her four year old boy. No one could do anything. ‘It is the law here’, they said. Ramasamy Iyer’s wife wept hysterically, running behind them in the street like a mad woman. 

It caused immense pain in Sriram as he didn’t expect all these turn of events.   

Soon after Ramasamy Iyer came home from his office, he ran out of his house without even removing his office dresses. Sriram saw him running towards electric train station. The quarantine hospital which was housing the patients with infectious diseases was ten miles away from the town. 

Sriram was restless. He couldn’t even relish the food provided to him. He was watching the people walking on the street standing near his house compound wall. The time was past ten. The bustles of the town began to settle down. The railway station was at half a mile distance from his house. Sriram could vividly hear the sounds of trains passing through the station, the clangs of bell in the level crossing, and the sound of wheels rolling on rail tracks. This regular affair of the town going silent every night had never attracted his attention before this. The corner house boy studying in the medical college had also put off the lights. The parallel rows of houses were looking like dark shadows in the night. As his eyes got heavy, Sriram lied down on his bed. As he was unable to sleep, he got up, and came to the street again. He was wearing only dhoti. Everywhere it was dark and everyone was asleep. He was waiting alone in the street. At last, the one which had been keeping him under persistent fear, the one for which he was totally prepared to sacrifice everything in his world just to avoid facing it, did now appear in the corner of the street. It was Ramasamy Iyer. Arm supporting her, he was bringing his wife whose her throat seemed to have gone dry due to unrelenting sobs of pain. Sriram couldn’t have seen Ramasamy Iyer’s wife not more than some odd ten times during the past two years despite being their neighbour. She was such a woman who usually preferred to stay inside her house. Sometimes, Sriram used to think she must either be a dumb or handicapped woman. A woman of that unassuming nature was now coming in front of him, all the way crying throwing away all her inborn traits of being a passive woman. He learnt that she had begged everyone holding their legs and cried hysterically like a mad woman. 

Ramasamy Iyer and his wife entered the house. Their children who were sleeping till then without knowing anything that was happening around them, woke up suddenly and started crying in unison. Their mother wept along with them. That boy was her son, only son. He was just four years old. He would never leave her even for one hour. Now he had been thrown into some unknown area on the pretext of diseases he got infected. His mother wouldn’t be able to attend his needs when he needed her the most while lying sick. When he became thirty, she wouldn’t be able to provide him a mouthful of milk. They would throw him amidst thousands of lepers and cholera patients in an unfamiliar place. Not a single soul would be available to comfort that child. He would shake in fear. No one would be there to attend his natural calls. A heavy thug with big moustache would only be present to intimidate the boy. “O! My God! What sin have I done? Why do all these happen in my life? Why do you torture my boy without showing mercy?” 

Sriram couldn’t sleep that night. The boy died after two days. Since he was infected with small pox, they took his body directly to the burial ground without showing his face to his parents. 

After one month, Sriram summoned up his courage and entered Ramasamy Iyer’s house. Ramasamy Iyer was sitting on a recline chair. Sriram told him softly, “I want to tell you something about Raju”. Ramasamy Iyer’s son’s name was Raju. 

Ramasamy Iyer looked up to him, and asked, “What?” 

“Do you know who had informed the authorities about his small pox?”

“Hell with him. It doesn’t matter now. Does it?” 

“It was I who informed” 

Ramasamy Iyer looked at him sharply for a while and called out to his wife, “Kamu” 

His wife came out of kitchen. She was looking completely changed in the past one month. 

Ramasamy Iyer, pointing at her, told him, “Tell that to her” 

With heart filled agony and guilt, Sriram felt falling on her feet and washing it with his tears. Swallowing up everything that rose from his heart, he told her, “It was I who informed about Raju”.

He looked up to her, waiting for her obscene curses, and even prayed for it. But to his dismay she appeared as if she had regained all her old equanimity. 

She didn’t speak anything. 

****Ended*** 

 

1.    Old unit of weight, one Mananku is approximately equivalent to eight Veesai , i.e appx 12 kg (One Veesai - appx 1.6 kg)

The Mouse (Eli) by Ashokamitran

Ashokamitran

Translated from the Tamil by Saravanan. K 

This is an English translation of “Eli”, a short story written by Ashokamitran. This is 41^st  English translation in Tamil Classic short stories published in this blog. 

***

Ganesan was terribly annoyed with the repetition of the same act. That day too, the womenfolk in his house cleaned up everything completely, leaving no leftover food in the kitchen after dinner. It was not that they were not aware of anything that was going on there. Elder sister was fifty years old. Wife was to complete her forty years of age. Daughter was going to complete thirteen years. Not a piece of dosai,or pappador tiny meat of coconut was available. ‘What else then could be kept in the mouse trap? Hell with everyone!’  Ganesan went to bed. 

He could have slept no more than half an hour. He heard the sound of the bamboo pole moving. ‘The mouse is somewhere near the bamboo pole’. Just past two minutes, now the bamboo pole rocked more. ‘The mouse is now climbing on the pole’. Now the sound of large brass plate hitting the wall was heard. “The mouse has got onto the loft’. A swooshing sound. ‘The mouse was on its way upon the heap of old newspapers’.A sudden sound of a knock. ‘The mouse has jumped off from the loft to the cupboard’.  The empty tin boxes kept at the top of cupboard rustled with each other.‘The mouse has gone to the almirah fixed on a nail on the wall’. A brief silence. A big banging sound of something being pushed down as if to compensate the silence that preceded. Ganesan and his wife got up, switched on the light and examined the area. The mouse had pushed away the lid of an oil jar. 

Ganesan looked at his wife, gnashing his teeth as she was closing the jar with its lid, covered it with a basket, upside down upon it. “Nothing I say goes into your ears to leave some leftovers and to my dismay I don’t know why do you keep everything here spotlessly clean?” he asked, disparagingly. 

“What else do you expect me to keep as left over? Can we keep Rasam for the mouse? Or will you keep the Uppma in hook of mouse trap?” she retorted. 

“Stop your teasing” Ganesan told her. 

“I didn’t tease you. If it is Dosaior Adai, we can keep in the trap. But you know…we are making dosaiand adai every day at home right. Aren’t we?

“Then let the mouse tumble everything and ruin it.” 

His wife didn’t speak anything. She took out a dried onion from the vegetable bag, gave it to him and told, “You may try it”. 

“Tell me when did the mouse come here to eat this onion?”

Though the onion he had thrown at her might have hurt her, she said nothing and went to bed. 

Ganesan couldn’t sleep. In those two small rooms in which even ten persons wouldn’t be able to either sleep by their side nor eat together, four or five rats were playing around with full-fledged freedom, biting, tearing the cloths, opening the lids of boxes, scooping out the pulp from tomatoes, drinking oils, and unfailingly stealing away the wicks from the lamps kept in front the God. 

Ganesan put on his shirt with quarter of an Ana in his shirt pocket, closed the door and hit the street.  

All the hotels were closed. Only the shops selling beedaand betal leaves were kept opened. ‘Just a vada…even a half of it will be enough…’ 

Unluckily, no leftovers of vada anywhere. Breads, buns, biscuits and bananas were only available. Experimentation with all these stuff in different times in the past was already completed. But the mice were grown insouciant in attitude towards it. ‘Any food stuff roasted in oil- like vada, Bakkoda, or pappad-were found useful earlier. We can’t make all those items at home daily as the cost of dal and oils is unbearably high. Can we? Rice Uppma, Rava Uppma, then Pongal. Then the cycle will be reverse- First Pongal, rava Uppma and then Rice uppma- this is how one could get food at home’. Even the words Pongal and Uppma had made him sulk. Possibly, the mouse would also feel the same. Wouldn’t it?

The mouse must have been lucky that day as Ganesan had decided to return home. A public meeting was going on at a distance in the ground. The crowd wouldn’t consist of more than thirty or forty persons. Despite that thin attendance, the speaker was enthusiastically giving his speech, waving his hands fervently. ‘I could listen to him for a while. Couldn’t I?’ Ganesan walked towards the crowd. The speaker was throwing warnings to Nixon. Then to China. Then to Britain. Then to Russia. Then to Pakistan. At last he warned Indira Gandhi and leaders in Tamil Nadu. ‘Even if one hundredth of these warnings had reached the pedigree of those rodents, they would have taken refuge into the Bay of Bengal. Why don’t these rats understand Tamil language?’ 

Something he came across there was found to be more useful than the speech for Ganesan. Just a distance away from the meeting venue, so many persons were standing around a push cart. Hot snacks items were being fried with the help of a stove grouted in the cart. Within seconds they were kept on the place after scooping them out of boiling groundnut oil with the slotted ladle, they were sold out. 

Ganesan was also standing near that shop. About twenty chillies coated in flour were frying like submarines in the oil. One of them standing there was demanding, “Make vada…make vada”

But the chilly Bajji was again fried. Ganesan too joined them yelling, “Make Vada…” But there was a pressing demand for bajjis. One person came in his car and instructed, “pack eight bajjis” and went to pee in dark. Ganesan once again insisted, “Put Vada this time” 

Once the chilly bajjis were taken out, they were shared immediately in minutes of time. They were bundled up in two, four and sometimes in ten. 

“You have asked for vada. Haven’t you? How manyvadas do you need?” 

Ganesan was hesitant to tell him that he needed only one. “Two enough” he told. 

“Let me make it after this” 

However, only chilly got the preference again and went into oil. The one who was demanding vada for long became restless and neared the point of getting into a big scuffle with the vendor. “It is getting ready soon. See…he is also waiting for it” 

It was rather a painful waiting for Ganesan. Now there was a big crowd around the push cart. Everyone was waiting for their turn to savour the snacks. They might have thought that he was eagerly waiting to relish vada. What would they think if they did come to know that the vada he was demanding was for a rat? The very thought of it pained him.

Once the vadaswere taken out, Ganesan was served with first lot with two vadas in a piece of old Malai Murasu newspaper. The oil was hot; it spread on the paper till his palm got oily. Two vadaswith good aroma. The pulses used in the vada were protruding from its crispy surface in white. 

Ganesan was walking towards his home. Unable to hold the vadasas they were very hot, he kept changing it from one hand to another. Both his hands and papers were fully soaked in oil. Poor push cart vendor…he didn’t know that the vada was for rat. Ganesan wouldn’t have been that embarrassed had they been made at his home. The whole episode was painful for him anyway. 

Without making shirt dirty, it was nearly impossible for him to take out the key from his pocket. He kept he vadasdown, rubbed his hands soaked in oil on his rear anklet and calf and wiped it. Went into the house, hooked a vada to the clasp in the mouse trap. He ate the remaining one by himself. A fifty-year-old man would have some definite repercussions if he ate vada at ten in the night. He reconciled that it was a recourse to something due for him. He lay down and slept. 

It was in the morning, Ganesan developed a discomfort in his stomach. The mouse had got caught in the trap, kept on screeching all the way through the night. He wasn’t aware of it. His wife only informed him about it. 

Now he had to dispose of the rat somewhere. He left the house carrying the mouse trap. The rat tried slipping its nose out through the small hole in the trap. It wasn’t clear from the size of the nose if it was big one or a small one. But would the size, no matter it was small or big, be a matter of concern when it had strength to push the flour box down, roll the oil jars, nip the dirty cloths and tear off vegetables? 

Ganesan didn’t prefer the street gutter this time for its disposal, and went to the ground instead. ‘The rat would take at least one week to find out the way back to the house. In case this rat is gone, another one might come…’   

Ganesan wanted the boys who were playing over there to move aside. But they were waiting for him to open the mouse trap. He kept the trap on the floor and gently pressed down the lever of its lid. The rat jumped out and ran away. 

It was neither big nor small in size. As it wasn’t familiar with open ground, it started running haphazard. One of those boys threw a stone at it. Ganesan requested him not to do that. It was at that time a crow came flying from somewhere, pecked the rat once and flew away. The rat tumbled, lay on its back, hopped. It hastened its speed and hopped faster. The crow took a circle above and descended fast. There was no place for the rodent to hide. The crow picked it up and flew away. Ganesan was sad at seeing it. 

On seeing one more thing, his sadness had got indeed increased. While returning home carrying the mouse trap, he looked into the trap. The vadahe fixed on to the hook in the previous night hadn’t been eaten up yet. 

***

Translated from the Tamil by Saravanan. K 

Source: “Eli”, a short story written by Ashokamitran.

The artiste in Tiger Disguise (Puli Kalaignan) by Ashoka Mithran

 

This is an English Translation of “Puli Kalaignan”, a short story written by Ashoka Mithran. Translated from Tamil by K. Saravanan. This is 37^th English translation in the Classic Tamil short stories series.

Ashoka Mithran 

We used to have interval from one ‘O clock to two in the noon. Earlier, it was up to half past two, people say. During those days, the work also started at eleven in the morning.  Reaching the office at half past eleven while the scheduled office time was eleven, after having breakfast at about half past ten or fifteen to eleven at home, it was sort of an impossible task to sit for lunch at one ‘O clock. Due to this reason, one could see the actual crowd at the canteen only at two “O clock. The time was reduced to half past ten from eleven. Now they had passed an order to reduce it further to ten and it had been in force for the last one month. For lunch, it was from one to two. The office which used to be once closed at five in the evening, was now functioning till six.   

Work remained routine there anyway. Factory divisions made in the name of carpenters, electricians and lottery men had eight hours duty daily. Similarly there was an account section. Then Account department. No matter whether there was work or not, the persons in this department would have to keep writing accounts throughout the year. Then came telephone operator attending telephones having no respite or leave for itself. Hence, only those who were not included in these departments had at times some leisure time in the office, sometimes in days or in weeks or in months. 

As far as I remember, our studio once remained jobless without producing even a motion picture for about one and a half years. During those one and half years, we could receive our wages without doing any work, sleep during office hours with our legs on tables, let our hair getting grey, let our belly bulged with fat, invite diabetes, teach our eyes to look around as there was no fixed target for our thoughts, and bring lots of incoherent stammer to our talk.  After one and half years, when we received the real tasks we could experience a new leash of enthusiasm as our compulsory leisure had come to an end, and sometimes found doing the works a bit difficult due to lack of continuity over these years. On one such day when we were expecting such enthusiasm and difficulties on daily basis, he came to us in one afternoon while we were all munching petal leaves and tobacco after our lunch.

“What do you want?” Sharma asked him.

Trousers were part of Sharma’s attire in those days. He was working as a police sub inspector. Later, he wrote plays, stories and published them, gained fame and had become an important person in the story section of our studio. During those old golden days, he used to carry our owner in the motor cycle pillion and selected good locations for outdoor shooting. Now he got used to with Dhoti and tobacco. His descending square shaped shoulders while standing below his neck proved that his physique was sculpted with exercises once upon a time.

It was a small room. Old tables in different sizes were there, big and small. We ought to consider Sharma who was sitting behind the big table as the main spokesperson of that room. Other than the chairs where we were sitting, there was one more chair lying. All our chairs were old ones having different shapes. One leg of the chair lying extra was found short. Anyone who sat on it would tilt on one side and develop a sudden gush of uneasiness in stomach. The person who came there was standing holding the back side of this chair.

“What do you want?” Sharma asked him.

“I came to your house on Saturday sir” he said.

“I was not in the town on Saturday” Sharma told him.

“I came in the morning. You were repairing an umbrella”

“O! It’s you! Aren’t you Velayutham?”

“No sir…I am Kader. Tagar faayit Kader”

“Were you the one who came?”

“Yes…Vellai told me…to meet Aiya at his home.”

“Who is Vellai?”

“It is Vellai. Agent Vellai”

Now Sharma could understand something out.  Vellai was the agent who used to bring hundreds of men and women whenever we had to shoot big crowds in our studio. Other than showing their faces in the crowds, no acting skills were required of them. Vellai would collect two rupees per head along with meals.

“At present, we haven’t planned any crowd scene. You know that? ” Sharma told him.

“Yes..I know. But he told me that you would give some role if I meet you”

“Who’d told you?”

“That one…that Vellai”

Sharma looked at us. We both glanced at the newcomer. He was short. He must have possessed well sculpted body earlier. Now he was looking frail with his collar bone protruding outside. The joints of his jaw, well jutted, showed his dark cheeks shallow more than actually it was. Almost all the persons brought by Vellai would carry the similar look like that. Even if we took a motion picture on the Kingdom of Lord Rama, the citizens appearing in the movie would look like the ones who were born in the year of “Dhaatu” (A Tamil year)

“I will let you know about it through Vellai” Sharma told. We leaned against the chairs. The interview was over.

He further told, “Ok sir...” his voice became softer. “If you can arrange something immediately, if possible, it will be of great help” he told.

“We haven’t started shooting yet. We would take crowd scenes only at last”

“I don’t mean that sir. You could give me any role”

“What sort of a role I could give you? The casting assistant is sitting over there. Give your details to him.”

I was the casting Assistant. I had details such as names, age, height, and address of thousands of people who came to meet me like him. In case of any need, if we wrote letters to four persons with the help of details available with me, three letters would come back with an acknowledgement that the person had changed his address. Then it was Vellai who would come to rescue.

But he didn’t turn towards me. He was so certain that Sharma was the most important person among three of us.

“Only with your recommendation, something can happen” he said.

“Do you know swimming?” Sharma asked him.

 “Swimming! He repeated it, asked us. Then told, “I know swimming…a bit”

“No use of knowing it incomplete. We need to take a shot in which one person should jump from a height and then swim through. You are not fit for that”

“I know takar faayit Sir…Even my name is Takar faayit Kader sir”

“What’s that Takar faayit?”

“Takar faayit sir…Takar…you know Takar”

Now all of us were attentive. No one could understand what he said.

Then he told, “Tiger sir…tiger…tiger faayit”

“O! Is it Tiger fight? Tiger fight! You will fight with tiger. Wont you?”

“No sir…I act like a tiger in disguise. People call it takar faayit. Don’t they?”

“So you are an actor wearing tiger costume. Aren’t you? But cinema does not require tiger disguise. Anyway, let Vellai come. If I find any suitable role for you, I will let you know for sure.”

“I perform takar faayit effectively sir. It will look like a real tiger”

“If it looks like a real tiger, we can bring the real one. Can’t we?”

“Nothing like that sir…my performance will exactly look like a real tiger. Do you want to see that?”

“Ahaan….No ….Not required”

“Just have a glance sir. You couldn’t have seen tiger disguise anywhere else sir?

 “Why not? For every Moharram or Ramjan, there would be a lot of tiger disguises on the street.”

“My performance is something different. It will look like real tiger”

He took out a tiger head from somewhere. Only after that we understood that he had brought a cloth bag as well along with him. Tiger head means only the outer part of it was covered with tiger skin. In a second he wore it on his head, and pulled that mask down at his jaw. With his own eyes, now he changed himself with a leopard’s head. He threw his eyes around the room for a second.

“Excellent!” Sharma said. We kept looking at him.

He limbered up his hands and body once. He, then bent down, stood on four legs, and turned his face here and there.

“Superb!” Sharma said again.

He arched just his back like a cat, curved his body and shook it up. Then opened his mouth. We were stunned at looking at him. We never heard such roar of a ferocious tiger in such a close proximity.

He roared once again like a tiger and shook only his rear. He jumped over a chair lying empty in that room with his four legs and curled himself. The chair rocked, losing its balance. I shouted, “Aiyo”.  

He, then, pounced over my table with his four legs. Within a flick of an eye, he jumped over to Sharma’s table. Papers, books and petal leaves casket were found scattered on Sharma’s table. His leg didn’t even touch any of them. He crouched upon Sharma’s table, stared at Sharma, and gave out a life-taking roar once again. He then jumped into the air from there. We all shouted in dread.

It was very old building. Along its wall, at about ten feet height, an edge of two inches was carved out. On one side of the wall, a window with single rods just above the edge was acting like a ventilator. It was dusty, dirty and full of cob webs.

With the help of his four legs, he jumped above our head and fixed himself in that two inches edge for a moment. Holding the ventilator rods with his hands, he roared like a tiger once again.

“Be safe …Be safe” Sharma cried. In that height, the ceiling fan was running fiendishly right in front of his face. The distance between his face and ceiling fan blades was not even in inches.

He jumped off from that height onto a chair and then to the ground.

All of us remained frozen with unmitigated fright. His eyes in that leopard face now sparkled like that of a tiger. Now the leopard opened its mouth once again and roared ferociously. Next moment, his body got relaxed, he got up.

Even Sharma couldn’t utter any word of praise. He took off his leopard mask.

We were all tongue tied. It was he who came out of this trance first and became normal.

“I will certainly do something for you” Sharma assured him. His voice was changed now. He folded his hands, prayed to him.

“Where are you putting up?” Sharma asked him. He mentioned his place at Mir Sahib Pettai, told him some number and lane. He further told him hesitantly, “But….I don’t know sir…how long I will be staying there.”  

“Why?” Sharma asked.

“Nothing sir….”while dragging his words, he prostrated in front of Sharma suddenly.

“Please get up…get up Kader..” Sharma was uneasy at his action. We stood up. He also got up, wiped his eyes. “My wife had told me not to come to my house.” It was he who was roaring like a tiger just a while ago.

“It has been long time since I earned. What else she could do then? We have four kids. All are very young.” He was crying now.

Something occurred to Sharma. He asked him, “Have you had your food today?”

“No sir” he replied. After seeing his condition on that day, it was unnecessary to ask him about the days he hadn’t taken his food.

Sharma put his hand into his pocket. We also groped into our pockets. We collected some amount. It was two rupees. Sharma gave it to him, and told, “Go to the canteen and eat well”

“No sir…”he refused.

“Why do you refuse it?  Please have your food first” Sharma insisted.

“Please offer me a role sir” He told him amidst his sob.

I had never seen Sharma getting angry like that. “How could you say no to the money that comes to you? If you deny money, from where will the money come? Even if it is a penny, it is Laxmi. (Goddess of wealth). From where will your Laxmi come? Get this money, go to the canteen and eat first” he yelled at him.

He stopped weeping, received the money. Sharma became soft in his tone, and told him, “Such things like offering roles are not in my hands. I will do my best for you. Now you go. Have something for your stomach”. He turned towards me, told, “Take him to the canteen and make him eat something. I got up.

“No sir…I’ll go myself and eat. I’ll go myself to eat.” he told. He folded his hands once, paid regards, and left.

We remained silent for some time. Sharma spoke involuntarily in a slightly raised voice.

“How can we make use of this fellow? Isn’t the movie we are shooting now about some king and queen?”

But he didn’t remain quiet after that. When the story section assembled for discussion, he somehow managed obtaining permission to shoot a scene in which the hero would enter the enemy fort disguising himself as a tiger. While showing it as a tiger disguise, he thought of engaging Kader as “dupe” in place of the hero. At least he could fetch hundred rupees for him.

I wrote a letter to Kader. As usual the latter came back in four days. The reason: the addressee was not there.

Sharma called upon Vellai and searched for Kader. We also tried our hands everywhere to search for him. The day of shooting the scene in which the hero would enter the enemy fort under tiger disguise was also nearing. But we couldn’t find Kader.

Even if he was found, it was of not much use. In one movie released in that month, there was a scene in which our hero was shown dancing with a Kavadi ¹ in the back drop of folk music. That movie became a black buster, fetching unmanageable crowds everywhere in Tamil Nadu.

It was decided that our hero would also dance with Karagam ² in the movie.

***The End***

Note:

1.     Kavadi:    Bamboo sticks bent in semi-circular form with some ornamentations, carried by devotees on their shoulders as part of their religious commitment towards deity

2.     Karagam: A metal pot kept on the heads of performers while performing Karagattam, a Tamil folk dance.

Translated from Tamil by K. Saravanan

Source: Ashoka Mithran’s “Puli Kalaignan” short story.