ACROSS THE RIVER

Sreekumar K.

I never understood what is so great about being on a boat. The first time I was on one, I was a poor swimmer and there was the thrill of gambling with death. I was only 11 and no one with me could swim. But, now that I could swim and swim well, boat rides had become a bore.

But one sees a really mixed lot of interesting people on a boat. For example, the one I was on last week had a good number of school children returning from the school in the city. The boat took them from their village to the city in twenty minutes. So, they had access to some good schools in the city. The river had prevented the villagers from accessing the comforts of the city for generations.

Mine was a pleasure trip. I was going to the village to see an old temple there. It was not a pilgrimage and it was not a famous temple either. During the last festival season, there was some news in the local newspaper about a strange idol in a smaller temple outside the main one and it had caught my wife's attention and she had brought it home and translated it for me.

The school children were interesting. They always are. The girls had double plaits tied with green ribbons. They wore white shirts and blue skirts. The boys wore blue trousers and white shirts. They made a lot of noise, telling each other all the things that had happened that day at school. I was weaving through the crowd to reach the side of the boat when a small boy caught me by my sleeve. I turned around and smiled at him. He was following me in the same direction. There was an empty seat I wanted to sit on and he asked me whether he could sit on my lap.

I was intrigued. It was hard for me to understand his language. He might be in a preschool, probably accompanied by an elder brother or sister.

I let him sit on my lap and it took me some time to understand that he had mistaken me for someone else, probably a teacher who was very affectionate to him. He wanted to show me his drawing book and I expressed my curiosity.

He opened his bag and showed me a dog-eared drawing book. He turned the pages and found the latest entry. The date was given on the top in neat handwriting. Truly artistic and mature. Probably it was written by the teacher. He showed me a painting. I could make out a tortoise and a hill. He would have had to copy it from a picture in his textbook.

He buried himself further into my lap and fished out another book. It was English and the alphabet was repeated several times. I helped him put them back in his bag.

I wanted to talk to him about an islet in the middle of the river and the animals that might be there. I also wanted to ask him if they got holidays when the river flooded. But he was rather quiet and there was a good wind blowing that took the moist off my lips and I preferred not to say anything.

Something would have told him that he had made a mistake. He continued to be quiet and slowly became uneasy and he started tapping on the floor with his heels. It was not very rhythmic. Then he wriggled out and went away without another word.

I thought I should have talked to him a little more. I could have told him that they were planning to build a bridge across the river soon. And that a new residential school was coming up in his village.

When we reached the other bank, the school children were the first ones to rush out. I could spot the boy pointing out me to an elder girl, probably his sister. Holding her hand he walked away down the wet path that disappeared around a corner.

When he was turning around the corner, he didn't wave at me or turn back to look at me. But his sister turned around to look at me and waved at me and smiled.

 

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