THE DAY IT DRIZZLED

Sreekumar K

Madhu got out of the bus first. I waited for him to open his umbrella. It was drizzling a little. He took a while to open his three fold but the conductor seemed to be in an unnecessary hurry. I was almost pushed out of the bus. I staggered, my foot slipped out of my chappal and Madhu had to drop the umbrella to catch hold of me. The conductor reared his head back into the bus like a tortoise and the bus disappeared around the bend in no time.

We got drenched a little and we hadn’t expected that. I looked at my shirt and shook off a few drops of water before they could seep into my shirt before I got under Madu’s umbrella.

“Is this the place?”asked Madhu looking around doubtfully.

“I hope so.”

It was raining rather heavily that day and the road was kind of flooded. I recalled the torrential rain, muddy water falling off the cliff over which there was a rubber plantation with trees hanging over the cliff and swaying wildly in the storm, my bike parked on the roadside, Sumi and me completely soaked in water and the steaming tea from the roadside shop warming us up.

“No cows were tied here that day?” Madhu chuckled.

“Yes, this is the place and that shack is the shop. But see, it is closed. Where the hell did he go?”

“You sound like you had asked him to be here. These villagers are quite unlike us the urban folk. They don’t have a sense of time. But they do have a strong sense of direction and season. If you ask anyone for direction even at night they will refer to north and south. If you ask for a date they always go by the Malalalam calendar.”

“My Malayalam calendar has only eight months because that is all I can recall.”

“Whatever it is. You go north and turn west and towards the south you can see a cowshed in the east. In pitch darkness, on a winter night. There you are. Hahahaha.”

We crossed the road and stood patiently near the shop waiting for someone to come by. The drizzle was getting encouraged by the wind to mature and be a rain. The tree tops on the cliff were swaying menacingly and the small streams across the road were racing to get closer and be be a large single stream. Dry leaves got washed down to the side of the road.

A group of Bengalis, all in a line, walked by with each person’s mobile playing a different song, and each holding a dented nickel lunch box. Probably they are not listening to the songs, but creating an ambience just like their Kakrajohl or some such village to mitigate their homesickness.  Songs can do that. Shift one geographical spot to another. Or even move a certain period of time back and forth.

A coconut plucker, with his gear, a ring of rope and a jack knife, passed by and stared at the shop and at us. Before we said anything he started. “Asan innu varaththilla. Avide poyekkuva.”

*Asan will not come today. He has gone there.*

We didn’t know the person or place he was referring to but both of us in unison looked in the direction he pointed at as if we understood every word.

We moved in that direction. 

We took a small path which deviated off the main road and soon we found that we got plenty of company. The whole village seemed to be going up or down the road and strangely no one anymore stared at us.

It had been the same season a year ago but the day was fresh in my memory. With my wife, I was passing by that place and got stranded in the rain. It was a storm. That shop was open and we got under the thatched roof whch flopped up and down like a dragon opening and closing its mouth.

The shop keeper communicated with his eyes and handed over two cups of teas as if we did not speak his language.

While sipping the tea, a miracle happened. We overheard a conversation between a customer and the shopkeeper, probably about a silent character with a well maintained beard, sitting on a stool, his eyes fixed in the distance. He too was sipping tea and smoking what looked like a fat beedi.

From the overheard conversation, we could figure out that the man was an astrologer, and very good at reading palms. He was a lazy fellow and not interested in keeping a place for himself. The shopkeeper sent people to him having had pity for his starving wife and daughter.

The customer's story was that the man had predicted years back that he might go abroad but make no money at all. That was unbelievable for him. He was sure that if he ever went abroad he would stay there all his life to see to it that his family had a roof to sleep under.

He did go abroad, but only for a visit as part of some church activity. We all had had a good laugh over it.

Hearing this my wife nudged me and I resisted it for some time. I was agnostic and never took a final stand on these things. It may or may not be true. Who cares!

But then I had to take a clear stand. By sticking my palm in front of him I would kind of change my view. And finally that is what I did.

When I abruptly pushed my hand in from of him, he smiled at no one in particular, finished his cup of tea, spat the last bit onto the road, gave back the cup and sat down.

Then he took my right hand in his left hand and laughed as if he had cracked a joke that no one understood. He held my hand for some time and without looking much at it, just having had a few furtive glance at my face and my hand and at my wife, said, "Sarinte achan oru moonnu masaththinakam marikkum. Sarinte joliyum pokum."

*My father was going to die and I was going to lose my job*

He closed my fist and pushed it back at me as if I held a national disaster in my closed fist. I was a bit taken aback to hear all that. My father was sick, but I expected him to go on for another year. My job? There was no way I was going to quit, my school would never ask me to leave and I was too young to retire. But why did he call me sir? How did he know I was a teacher? I was already becoming a believer, I caught myself. He would have  addressed any stranger who gave him money as sir, right?

My father died in two months and four months later I got a very good job int the north and left my school.

Later at a get together, I related this incident and from then on Madhu was pestering me to go with him and find this man. He wasn’t dying to know his future or anything, he just wanted to meet this man who could predict future so accurately.

And there we were, a couple of furlongs away from the astrologer’s house. We walked up the muddy path, the squishy mud getting between out chappals and feet and making it too hard to walk uphill. A man who rushed past us brushing his shoulder rather ruled onto mine woke me up from my memory.

He turned around. I said ‘it’s OK’ thinking that he was about to say sorry. He had no intention of apologising, Instead he asked us whether it was time to take the body to the pyre. We said we had no idea.

At the end of the path, we entered a hut in bad repair and there he was. The smell of death lingered around as if looking for the next in line.

On the floor, covered in cheap red silk shroud lay the body of a man who could see into the future. We paid our last homage to him, came out and stood around for another half an hour.

The deceased man’s daughter was screaming out loud and his wife was also inconsolable.

To the left of us us was a house half built. Obviously the construction work had been stopped for a day. Seeing us staring at that house, a man said that it was the departed man’s big dream.

We walked down the path in silence. Both of us wondered whether we should stay back to be present at the last rituals. But who was the man to us? Practically a stranger. Death only parts us. It does not bring people together.

We caught the first bus that came by and grabbed two adjacent seats. Life keeps us together.

When the crowd in the bus thinned out, Madhu leaned over from the other seat and asked me whether I had his umbrella with me.

I said no. We had lost it somewhere.