Run

            It had been raining heavily for the past few days. I came to convince Jangamaiah to go with me, to live with me, loners the two of us, with no one to shower our love on, even if we had the feeling left in us in spite of the calamities we managed to weave dexterously into our meaningless lives.  Our village was on the bank of Krishna river and my home was right on the riverbank.

Our home is almost in ruins and I just could not relax thinking about Jangamaiah in these ruins.  Its yellow paint peeling and the water seeping into the walls, the house was a ghost of its former beauty.  Standing on the terrace, I traced my childhood in the mists raised by the vast river.

My father died even before I was born.  My first memory of my childhood is my mother, wearing a wet pattu saree, singing keerthans in the twilight.  We had a small temple in our backyard graced by the presence of a stone statue of a female deity.  Later on I came to know that the statue was washed to the bank one stormy night.  My mother who was completely mesmerized by that sculpture, called it Bhavani.  She found the expression on the statue, peaceful and calming whereas I found the expression as indifferent, to the degree of insolence.  It was really wonderful in an eerie sort of way to watch my mother go into raptures over that stone face.  In the evenings, she used to light diyas in front of this statue and sing the keerthan, “challani thalliki chaangubhala, aa chekkara moviki chaangubhala” (hats off to the mother of all beings, hats off to the face which is as sweet as sugar) in such a melodious voice that the neighbors used to crane their ears to listen to her.

Jangamaiah used to join us after coming back from working in our meager agricultural land.  A man of few words, looking after our wants seemed his sole purpose in life.  He used to bathe in the river and come dripping wet.  A dalit by birth, he constructed a small mudroom for himself in our backyard after my father passed away.    In the entire village there were no compound walls.  Our backyards used to extend to the Krishna.

Mornings were characterized by the cocks crowing, cows mooing, and the cries of various birds.  By the time I got up, my mother would be up in her wet saree, cooking.  Her morning ritual comprised of adorning our courtyard with beautiful rangolis, bathing near the well, praying to the Tulasi plant and then cooking.  She was forced to bathe at the well after my father passed away because nobody in the village were ready to see the inauspicious face of a young widow early in the morning.  The well in our backyard was dug by Jangamaiah, singlehandedly.  Nevertheless, on auspicious days, she used to go to the riverbank at three in the morning to have her bath, with Jangamaiah following her at a distance of a good twenty feet.  Apart from the coconut trees and various flowering plants, our backyard contained a singular cactus plant, which I used to water regularly to my mother’s consternation.  She told me once that the plant does not require watering, after that we used to simply ignore each other whenever I watered the cactus along with the other plants.

Conceived very late in her mid thirties, my mother was carrying me at the time my father drowned in the Krishna.  His death raised a few doubts because he was known to be a great swimmer.  But even Krishna had its reputation of being unpredictable!  I had a twelve-year-old elder brother who passed away when I was three, I do not remember how.  After, I grew up, whenever the topic of my brother’s death came up it was doused by my mother’s crying and her senseless chant of “Krishna, Krishna.”  It was Jangamaiah who brought my father’s dead body home and it was also Jangamaiah who laid down my brother’ body on the mat outside the home.  But the effect of discovering the two dead bodies, if at all, was never found in Jangamaiah’s face.

Since morning he has been fretting over his three pairs of clothes, putting them in a bag and taking them out again.  He also confessed that he wanted to take the stone deity with us.  Even Imelda Marcos would not have fussed over her shoe collection the way this octogenarian is working himself over his clothes.

The sun was setting and the river looked innocent.  At a distance, three huge waves were rising.  I looked at them in wonder.  Waves always captivate me.  Starting as two huge and one small wave, slowly the first wave engulfed the small wave.  Empowered by the volume it rose as if to reach the sky and collapsed in exhaustion.  The second wave followed suit.  Undaunted, they rose again collectively, but to no avail.  As they reached the bank they combined to form a magnificent wave, cocksure this time they would achieve their goal.  I was greatly disappointed when the huge wave failed to reach up and lashed out at the bank angrily.  It reminded me of the time when my mother slapped me, the first and the last time in my life.

Jangamaiah used to carry me on his reliable shoulders to school till I was nine years old.  When I was nine I became aware that my friends were not comfortable with Jangamaiah’s presence.  One evening, I told my mother of the snide remarks my friends were making.  My mother’s answer was to ignore them.  Around this time, one evening, I was told to serve fruit for Jangamaiah who came home after toiling in the field.  My mother used to stay in the mudroom for three days in a month.  These three days Jangamaiah used to shift to the verandah of our home.  I came to know later that a woman who is menstruating is not supposed to enter the home as she is unclean.  Maybe this custom started with a good intention to help the women take rest on those days.  Who knows!  Coming to that particular day, my mother told me to give a plate of fruit to Jangamaiah.  I was busy playing at that time and I resented chores.  I always detested being ordered about, this was also one of the reasons I separated from my husband.

I took the plate from the kitchen and put it down savagely. The plate made an ugly sound as it came in contact with the floor.  Jangamaiah was taken aback and so was my mother who was watching through the window.  I still can recollect the hurt in Jangamaiah’s eyes that day.  My mother who never moved from the mudroom on those three days, who never uttered a cross word in all my life, crossed the courtyard in three huge strides and struck me on my face.  After a painful silence, Jangamaiah went back to the verandah, and my mother and myself to the well to douse ourselves with cold water because her slap tainted us both.

The bus will start at nine p.m.  We have to finish our dinner and get into the bus.  By morning, hopefully, we will be at my home.  I came down the stairs and went to the temple in the courtyard.  Bhavani was shielded from the prying eyes of the public by one of my mother’s old pattu sarees.  The multicolored checks and gold border reminded me of my mother.  There was a vermilion mark on the saree.  She had a fetish for pattu sarees with magenta and gold border.  All her pattu sarees though of different hues, had the borders in magenta and gold.  The sari she used to hang herself with also had a magenta border.

A widow wearing pattu sarees was a topic in our village.  What use has a woman with pattu sarees when her lord and master is no more?  But my mother was totally oblivious to the idle talk.  I do remember the incoherent way in which Jangamaiah blabbered over the phone about her death.  She was diagnosed with kidney failure.  That was when she must have decided to end her life, very much like herself, always doing whatever she believed in, without compelling others and without asking for support.  The last time I came to see her she was lying in the bed.  When I sat next to her, she cried along with me.  She complained of pain in her legs, and when I tried to massage them, she got up slowly and began massaging my hands saying that she did not have the strength to press my hands if I were in pain like she did when I was young, or when we were young and alive.  Chakkani thalliki chaangubhala, nee chekkara moviki chaangubhala!  Isn’t it amazing that I can still cry?

I went inside taking the sari with me.  Jangamaiah was sitting forlorn in a corner of the hall.  He never graduated to sitting on chairs.  I went into my mother’s room, which had an attached bathroom, constructed after her illness, and tried to wash away the vermilion mark.

Outside in the bedroom, I could hear my daughter’s loud wailing.  She fell off the cycle and scraped her knee. My mother was consoling her.  I washed it with a disinfectant regardless her protestations and warned her not to go out again.  But go she would, into her own wide world, to pursue her dreams.  One fine day I had to listen to her decision to live her life on her own.  Like mother, like daughter!

I took the sari and draped it on a chair to allow it to dry.  It was nearing eight by the time we finished our dinner.  I took Jangamaiah’s bag in my hand, collected all the things that I could not leave and locked the door.  Jangamaiah broke his silence.

“At least the cactus needs no water to grow,” he remarked in his drawling way.

His remark affected me so much that immediately I was on the run, out of the house, with my mother, my memories, leaving my daughter behind as Jangamaiah followed behind.

*

About the Author:

Kadavakollu Tejaswani is at present working as an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English, GITAM deemed to be University, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.  She has a Ph. D. from University of Hyderabad.  She published several research articles in National and International Journals and presented papers at various National and International Conferences.

She is a multilingual poet and published five anthologies of poetry, two in English Language, autumn leaves and A Forgotten Rose; two in Telugu language, Tallukkumannadhi Taarakasam and Pratibimbalu, and one in Hindi, Purvai.  She also contributed Hindi poetry to Aparajitha, an anthology of Hindi poems by Multiple authors, published by Kavya Kaumudi Chetana Hindi Manch in association with Telangana Sahitya Academy.  Her poems also appear in the anthologies, Words of the World, Mosaic of Poetic Musings: Contemporary Women Poets from India, Vibrant Voices: An Anthology of 21^st Century Indian Women Poets and in Hum Aiseich Bolte.  She presented a poem in Hyderabad Literary Festival, 2023. She is a member of multilingual poets’ association Sahitya Sangam, and online multilingual poets’ associations, Mahila Kavya Manch and Kavya Kaumudhi Multilingual Poets’ Group associated with Telangana Sahitya Academy.