Written by the Sri Lankan writer Uma Varatharajan
Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
****
The day the King was to arrive at that ruined
city was nearing. They said that he was coming to inaugurate the renovation
works of the temple, which was demolished in the war. The buffaloes were
roaming on the streets of the city carrying the posters pasted on their body
announcing the arrival of the king. The sound of the drums was heard in nooks
and corners.
The city was situated on the banks of the
‘river of blood’. It was a city of bamboo that could catch fire and set
everything ablaze at the slightest scratch of wind. The final battle occurred
three years ago. The trumpet of elephants, neighing of horses, the clanking of
swords and hapless howls of humans- were all still ringing in the ears. The
stench of dead bodies was still hovering in the sky, not leaving the city. The
birds that came there after leaving the nearby forests to feast on the corpse
were perching on the branches of big trees, yearningly waiting for yet another
chance. The houses with no roofs and the walls blackened with smoke were
announcing how the city had lost the nose of its beautiful face. The nights of
the city were passing with the incessant howls of the owls and the intermittent
wails of dogs. The moon that had taken shelter in the clouds wouldn’t come out.
The children didn’t cry for milk. The sound of horses’ hooves and the sporadic
chattering of soldiers would pierce through the nights. Oomaiyan (Dumb) was
lying on the mat as his chest pit dried up, ears growing sharper and eyes fixed
on the roof.
Only Oomaiyan and some other men were
remaining in the city. Those who were alive crossed the river to be alive and
moved to different places. The boats disappeared in the tears that welled up in
the eyes of women waving their hands, standing on the banks. Oomaiyan was not
willing to part from his mother.
Many in the city had forgotten the original
name of Oomaiyan. He acquired that name as he wouldn’t speak much. His mother
knew how his eloquence of words grew thinner gradually.
Thousands of vultures also entered the city,
almost clouding the sun with their wings, along with the soldiers the king had
sent to the city to control the rebels. The idols in the temples, the breasts
of women, and the heads of children – the spoils knew no limits. In those days,
the city looked like a sugarcane grove destroyed by elephants.
Oomaiyan was one of those arrested men. They
found him guilty of possessing a weapon, a razor for shaving the facial hairs,
tied both his hands behind and took him somewhere by making him walk on the hot
sand without footwear. They made him kneel in the middle of the street under
the midday sun and asked him to perform Surya Namaskar. They stuffed stones
into his mouth and punched his stomach hard. No sound other than “amma” came
out of the stones.
Oomaiyan and some other people were returning
along the empty street towards the city in the evening as their faces turned
pale and their legs were tired. Fearing that the messenger of death might call
them out back, they didn’t even look back and walked on wearily, as their
shadows were being dragged on. As soon as their heads appeared at the corner of
the street, women went running, briskly walking to them. They ran to every one
of them, searched their loved ones in their faces and shivered when they couldn’t
see the faces they were searching and wailed loudly and yelled haplessly, “What
happened? What happened?”. Not knowing that his father had died, a baby sitting
on a woman’s waist was smiling, sucking his finger tip. Another woman shook
Oomaiyan’s shoulders and cried, “What happened? What happened?” The casuarina
trees of the women’s hutments were still whistling the songs of melancholy in
the squall.
Oomaiyan, who was ashamed of his momentary,
childish happiness that he had a boon and luck to be alive, had now slowly
realized that he had been destined for a life with a knife hanging above his
head. His days passed in silence. All four walls of his house strangled him in
his confinement. The roof of his house descended many times into his heart. He
looked pale like a plant that couldn’t receive the sunlight. He was deeply
troubled, like an intimidated slender loris.
He was roaming in dreams day and night. The
men whose eyes were gorged out of their eye sockets, nails plucked out, were
tottering, mumbling, “Where is our justice?” The corpses, half burnt, rose,
twisting their torsos and murmured, ‘What’s our crime?” One hand from one of
the dead bodies lying in the well gently caught the bucket thrown into the well
to take water. A chicken that lost its neck convulsed, ran, flapping its wing,
searching for its life before falling onto the ground. The wheels of horse-driven
chariot would trample over the pregnant goat’s stomach. The mouths of
completely bald dogs were clasping either humans’ hands or legs.
The king had already appeared in Oomaiyan’s
dreams. He appeared as an unassuming man with a smile that spread up to the
corner of his mouth. People spoke among themselves that a moat full of
crocodiles, a mound where poisonous snakes would take shelter and a jungle
where poisonous trees would grow were hiding behind that smile that spread up
to his mouth. There were many such stories doing the rounds about the king.
Contradictory stories about him – he was fond of rearing white pigeons, and at
the same time, he had a penchant for wearing skulls strung into a garland.
Stories were floating in the air that he had been wearing an ancestral crown he
had unearthed by undertaking a pilgrimage under the earth and carrying his
throne wherever he went.
The king appeared in Oomaiyan’s dreams with
the smiling face that artists of the royal court had scrupulously painted. The
temple bell rang intermittently. The birds were flying in the sky in flocks.
The saints were chanting the Veda. It was on the banks of a river. With his
white dress, the king was walking on the grass bed where the dew drops hadn’t
yet dried, stroking the white pigeon he was holding in his hands. Oomaiyan was
behind him. It was an early morning when the Sun seemed to hesitate to come out
watching the beauty around.
The king looked up to the sky.
“The clouds are clearing. A minute more…a
minute more. Light will appear.”
Oomaiyan grew a little comfortable seeing the
king’s enthusiasm.
“My lord, aren’t we going to die before the
light appears? Are we better now anyway? We are already dead, yet alive.”
The king turned and smiled at Oomaiyan.
“If it is war, it is war. If it is truce, it
is truce.”
Oomaiyan tried hard to swallow his words and
said, “Even if it is a war, there should be some ethics. Shouldn’t be? What
wrong did these innocent people do? Infants, diseased, saints, women – will
killing them ever be the ethics of war?”
The king smirked. “You are complaining about
the petty grasses that get crushed under the wheels of a chariot when it moves.
I know everything…I know everything.”
“You can do anything if you want. Is there
anything that you can’t?” Oomaiyan said.
The king’s walk stopped abruptly.
“Yes…Anything is possible if I wish to. Look here…”, the king said. The white
pigeon sitting in his hands disappeared suddenly and a blood stained, severed
head of a rabbit was sitting there instead.
As the time of king’s arrival was nearing, the
city grew restless. New royal security arrangements were beefed up. The work
went on day and night. They planted flowers in front of the morgues and watered
them. They brought uprooted trees from other cities and planted them at the
entrances of this city, where the autumn had become a permanent phenomenon.
They freshly painted the ramparts that stood smeared with indelible stains of
blood and continuous rains of a hundred years. The smiling king’s portraits decked
all over the walls. The bullock carts were standing in a long queue at the
check posts. The people were silently moving, carrying the bundles on their
heads, as their clothes getting drenched in the heavy rain. They were asked to
stick their tongues out to search for any inciting words against the king. The
stomach of a cow that strayed into the city at an inopportune time was slit
open and had its intestines examined. They inserted their hands into the rectum
of buffaloes to find out anything odd. The men who were under the intoxication
of toddy were beating the drums and dancing as the foamy toddy was still
sticking to their moustache.
“He gave us temple
Our king gave us a temple
He will give us more
He will give us whatever we want
Thillanlagadi thillaa….
Hold this begging bowl.”
Oomaiyan’s grandfather, sitting on the
veranda, stopped crushing the betel nuts and looked in the direction from which
the song came. For blind people, sound is the world. The toddy men’s songs must
have annoyed his grandfather. He kept crushing the betel leaves in the mortar
furiously with the pestle. “He gives us the temple. How long would he take to
demolish it?” the grandfather mumbled and stuffed the betel leaves into his
mouth as if he didn’t like to speak anything more.
One day to go for the king to arrive. The
grandfather, who was slumbering, got up suddenly, hearing the sound of horses’
hooves. The women came to the doorway, stuck their heads out to see, and then
pulled in swiftly and disappeared. Oomaiyan stared at his mother, who came
there anxiously. Her lips were dry, and her eyes carried terror. She looked up
to the sky, folded her hands and prayed.
Everything went on as usual. The soldiers
entered each house in that residential area, searched and then left. When they
took Oomaiyan along with them, his mother tried her best and cried. Only the
horses that seemed to have understood the human language bobbed their heads and
neighed. Oomaiyan’s dog cuddled his legs, followed him till the corner of the
street, while continuously barking at the soldiers. The soldiers kicked it
away. The women, beating their chests and stomachs with their hands, trailed the
men captured by the soldiers, howling helplessly. The horse riders brandished
their spears to drive them away. The women were helplessly watching their men
disappearing through the layer of dust stirred by the horse hooves at the
corner of the street. Leaning against the wall on his back, the grandfather
spoke to them to ease their worries. “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. The
king is coming tomorrow. Isn’t he? It is to inflate the crowd.”. A lizard
chirped at that time. It made the grandfather and others happy.
All captured men were kept in the city’s
lodges. All the lodges in the city were overflowing with men who were brought
from surrounding places like them. They didn’t speak to each other, bemoaning
their fate that had befallen on their heads with all its pernicious outcome.
The laughing sound of the soldiers pierced their ears like arrows of insult.
Oomaiyan leaned against the cool wall and closed his eyes. A big sacrificial
sword was shining on the altar in the darkness. A rope with a noose was
dangling in the wind that howled like a fox. The pillar-like legs of elephants
were marching ferociously towards him, buried neck deep in the ground. The
whips had drawn newer blood streaks on his naked body. In the vast nebulous
space of dreams and reality, he saw his house coming. Withered flowers and dead
leaves were found in the yard, which hadn’t been cleaned. The dog that lost its
zeal was lying across the doorway. A lazy cat was lying in the stove, from
where the ashes had still not been removed. The utensils that turned cold in
the kitchen. The grandfather would grope in the dark, hitting the walls, unable
to sleep like a dark beetle. His mother would be lying, curling her body
without food, sleep and eyes not yet dried. Oomaiyan was roaming in the
magnificent forest of darkness, carrying every minute on his head that burdened
him like boulders. He was lying, not shutting his eyes, waiting for the lodge’s
door to open to enjoy the wind and light.
It dawned. The leader of the soldiers entered
the room through the door before the light entered.
“Get up…get up” he yelled out.
The bullock carts marched fast along the
city’s streets carrying them. The merchants of the commercial street stood
stunned at hearing the constant jingling sound of the carts. Oomaiyan was
greatly ashamed to see him walking like the most despicable animals in the
world with oily faces, sleepy eyes, unkempt hair and hungry stomachs. All were
disembarked on the banks of a pond near the temple that had been hit by
thunder. They were made to sit in a queue. The sky was cloudy. The soldiers
were speaking among themselves that the king had brought the rain along with
him.
“Rajathiraja….Rajamarthanda….Rajagambeera…” a
thick announcement rose. The musical instruments began playing suddenly. The
exponents of ‘Makudi’ made the girls of the city twist their bodies and
dance like snakes. The toddy men were somersaulting without touching the
ground. The king was coming from the rear. The saints rose and paid their
homage with a smile that failed their beards. The king reached the pedestal
built at the topmost place and waved his hands. The poets with enormous buns on
their heads were fanning him with palm leaflets even in that chilly weather.
Ice cubes kept pouring in from the royal poet’s tongue. The domestics who had
shaved off half their moustache were sitting at the rear of the king and
scratching his back while itching.
Oomaiyan looked up. The sky was waiting to get
rid of its dark attire to get naked. A drop of water fell on Oomaiyan’s face
like a piece of excrement of a bird flying across the sky. Then followed the
drops falling at a speed, commotion and the wind that indicated the direction,
the war that the rain waged had begun. The king rose from his seat amid the
heavy rain. He must have been astonished to see the people not moving an inch,
even in that heavy rain.
“My dear countrymen whom I hold above my
life…” his voice tried to overwhelm the sound of rain.
The king’s voice, unaffected by the rain,
resonated under the canopy decked with the fully grown rack of bananas, tender
leaves, and crimson flowers. Oomaiyan was shivering in the cold. The rain that
repeatedly slammed the mouths, stomachs, backs, and faces like a woman
possessed by a demon.
“I have come here to renovate the temple hit
by the thunder. What else do you all need more? Tell me”
The wind and the rain replied to his queries.
Terrorized by the tips of spears the soldiers were wielding, and their rolling
eyeballs, people were silent without moving.
“I am overwhelmed to see you all waiting to
meet me even in this heavy downpour. Let me know what you all need”
Oomaiyan looked upward again. Varuna Bhagavan
(The god of rain) was clenching his teeth. The whips of lightning that
descended through the ladder of rain, the water flowed zigzag, finding its way,
snakes of fire were wriggling all across the sky and played truant.
“I will build magnificent buildings for you. I
will order to get all the streets repaired today. I will get the ponds renewed.
What else do you all need? Do you need galleries? Do you need nine types of
grains? Silk clothes? What do you need? Let me know what you need. I am ready
to give you all these. But you should never….”
Hardly had the king finished his statement,
was there a lightning, then followed a loud noise. A long streak of lightning
appeared as if connecting the sky with the earth.
Oomaiyan was shocked for a moment as his eyes
grew dull. He rubbed his eyes once and looked upward again.
The king who was addressing the crowd a while
ago had vanished.
***Ended***
