This is an English translation of “Moondru
Bernaargal” a short story written by Prem Ramesh (Ramesh Predhan). Translated
into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
***
It was fifteen minutes past two in the
afternoon on December 6th, 1988, at the coastal tavern in Puducherry, “The Sea
Gull” upstairs, when Jean Bernard was found dead as he remained seated on the
basket-shaped cane chair, and the last gulp of liquor he hadn’t taken was still
on the table in front of him.
Following the sound of the first handful of
damp earth that fell on the wooden surface of the coffin placed at the bottom
of the grave were the sounds of different handfuls of sand dropped on it. The
scooping sound of the shovel through the heap of sand. The fluttering chaos
that suggested the return of the pigeons that had left the towers a while ago
after being intimidated by the honk of the bell was heard as the sounds of
human footsteps moving from one place to another, and the noise stirred by the vehicles
outside the cemetery were slowly settling. Everything was over. Yes, as far as
he was concerned, everything was over. He lived his life for sixty years, six
months and seventeen days. When the last swig of undiluted liquor was slowly
evaporating, Jean Bernard also joined it and became nothing in the end. Nearly
eight years ago, while walking in the rain, we faced each other, and thus I met
Bernard for the first time, who was known for his words that even sex wouldn’t
offer the pleasure of taking a stroll in the pouring rain along the empty
coastal road of Puducherry.
He was tall. No one could be very sure of his
identity, whether he was a Tamil or a European. A resonant voice. The coarse
articulation of the Tamil language, usually identified with the tongue that was
very familiar with speaking French. A composed demeanour that elicited no sign
of urgency in any of his moves. I never thought that I would lose Bernard this
fast.
His house on the Rue Capitaine Marius Xavier
Street, though it looked dilapidated with its outer wall’s mortar frayed, was
not actually looking bad in its interiors. On the wall in the reception, there
hung a portrait of his Tamil Christian mother with a vermillion on her
forehead, studs in her ears, and rings on her nose, along with his ‘white’
father. While this portrait in black and white, framed in teak wood was hanging
prominently there, a small, bare, tree-like structure, as if it was planted
right there after its branches were chopped off, was standing in the right
corner of the opposite side, to hang the caps on it.
There were hats of different sizes that
belonged to Bernard’s family members. Some of the hats, on seeing me, seemed to
have brought back their melancholy of losing the heads they once sat on, and
waved their heads. Immediately after entering the inner hall, there was a very
big colourful portrait of Vadalur Ramalinga Swamy. There were four or five
hibiscus flowers the servant maid had placed at the bottom of the portrait that
stood in white leaning against the wall right from the floor. After that, there
were two small rooms on both the right and left sides of the small
thoroughfare. On the left was a bedroom. On the right was a puja room, he said.
I wondered how a room which had never been in use and full of cobwebs between
the door and its beam could be termed a puja room. One day, during my stay
there, I called the maid and asked her to clean the room on the right side. Her
reply “My master will scold me if I do it” sounded strange and left me
perplexed.
My wife was seriously interested in knowing
about Bernard’s peculiar habits and some incidents that happened in his life.
One day, we were shocked to see Bernard, on one of his visits to our home for a
feast, mixing the cigar ashes with the wine before drinking it. He would then
say that nothing would parallel the taste and the buzz effect of wine that was
soaked with tobacco. My wife, who had kept reminding me that my once frequent
visits had now graduated into meeting him almost every evening, grew worried
about my addiction to liquor. This made her slightly angry with him and develop
a mild dose of hatred towards him.
Bernard often spoke about his ‘white’ wife and
his son, who were living in France. He said that they had been living
separately without a divorce ever since their youth. His son, who used to pay a
visit to him once a year, had stopped visiting him of late; he rued.
I had never been interested in knowing others’
personal matters. Though I had nothing to gain from the details of Bernard’s
personal life, I just listened to his stories for the sake of my wife.
Once he said: “There was a deep, devotional
bond between his father, France Bernard and Vadalur Vallalar. I was always
proud of Vallalar, a magnificent yogi who incidentally belonged to my caste.
When I understood that Bernard’s mother was a Christian woman from my caste, I
couldn’t avoid the sense of being close due to caste, growing thicker between
us.
One of his references about Vallalar during
his casual talk got me stunned. Vallalar declared that he would live for a
hundred and twenty-five years and in fact lived that long life, he said. I was
listening to him dismissively as I thought they were mere rants of an old man
under inebriation. When he told my wife that the flicker died when he was ten
years old, in other words, in nineteen forty-eight, she became furious and
retorted as her face turned red, “Don’t speak about the saints when you are drunk”.
One day I asked Bernard, “I have been familiar
with all the places in your home. But you have never shown me your puja room.”
He remained silent for a long time, and then replied calmly in French, “Life
requires some eccentricity and some bizarre ways of living. A man needs as much
fixed fictional appeal as he does unfixed fictional appeal.” He then stammered
as he was unable to find suitable words to convey it in Tamil.
He wouldn’t use tube lights at home. He had
fixed bulbs all over the house. The old-fashioned style of the house and the
light from the bulbs would fill the heart like a magical riddle when one was
completely inebriated. That day, it proved it right. Vallalar’s colourful
portrait seemed to stand alive with flesh and blood under the yellow rays of
the bulbs. I told Bernard, “Vallalar didn’t die. He just disappeared. Siddhars
are immortals. They always roam around us”
Bernard let out a heartfelt laughter, and
said, “Your French is not that bad when you are drunk” his teasing seemed to
aim at changing my topic.
I grew furious. “You speak as if Vallalar is
your family property. Shouldn’t there be a limit to your lies?” I yelled out to
him. The old man was shaken for a second. Shaken from inside, he rose quickly,
brought a big key, opened the puja room, switched on the light and dragged me
inside, holding my hands. Whatever happened after did, in fact, look improbable
to me. When I described everything to my wife, she tried to test my mental
equilibrium anxiously. She shouted at me, “You have also become mad like that
old man”. She then held my shirt’s collar, and yelled at me, shaking me
violently, “You never meet that old man anymore”.
After this, I could go to the old man’s house
only after two months, that too, when I came to know about his death. His body
was kept embalmed in JIPMER’s morgue for one week. They completed the funeral
ceremonies after his son arrived from France. Bernard’s wife didn’t come to his
funeral. Jeak Bernard looked young age Bernard. He was two years younger than
me. He often touched me while speaking. He said that he wanted to build a big
multi-storey building after demolishing that house and sought my help in realizing
that. I became nervous at hearing his words.
“You have been a close friend of my father
during his last days. You must be aware of the secret about the Puja room.
Mustn’t you?” he asked - his voice sounded strangely teasing.
I remained silent.
“He has been troubling himself with the dead
body of an ascetic for these many years. It was because of this, that my mother
got me separated from him, and took me to France. That dead body has been lying
there since the days of my grandfather. It is still there in the coffin. I need
to give it to the government. I need your help in this matter”
I remained silent as my eyes remained closed.
I asked my wife as my eyes welled up with tears, “Can we keep that embalmed
dead body with us, along with the coffin?”
Though my wife glanced at me with pity, I
couldn’t bear to look at her eyes on me.
“Tell me if I should live with you or leave
you?” she asked me quietly, rose quickly, ran to the bedroom and shut the door.
The next day, I met Jeak Bernard. On seeing
me, he asked impatiently, “What have you decided?”
“It is not possible to give it to the
government. Both the government and the media will grill us with questions. If
we disclose the secrets of the dead body, my life will be in danger, as it
might turn into a religious conflict. That dead body is not only an ascetic; it
is the zenith of India’s spirituality. Being a Frenchman, neither are you aware
of its worth, nor its wonders, nor the dangers arising out of it” I spoke
quietly.
My calm resolve got him nervous. We were
drinking the wine silently for a long time. A while later, I explained my plan
to him. He hugged me happily.
The next day was the Pogi festival. We kept
drinking till dawn. My wife was restlessly speaking on the telephone. We went
into the puja room at three o’ clock in the morning. The coffin was covered
with a saffron cloth. I removed the cloth, tried to open the coffin that hadn’t
been nailed. Jeak stopped me. I looked up to him and then opened its lid. There
was a bundle of something covered in saffron cloth. We carried it to the
doorway, poured petrol on it, and set it on fire. The flames flared up, crackling.
People started burning all sorts of stuff here
and there near their doors. In half an hour, the ashes were emitting smoke near
our entrance. I scooped out a handful of ash and tied it in my handkerchief.
Went inside the house, collected Vallalar’s portrait, kept in the rear seat of
my car and shook hands with Jeak before bidding him a good bye. An enormous
amount of fire was seen in almost all the households, all along my way.
***Ended***
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