A Promise to Write - Part 3

 

A time came when Dandi, past his prime, realised that he could no longer take part in the rat race for success on the technology or business front. His girth was on an ever-expanding course, restricting his movements, and he subsisted on a handful of tablets every day to keep his diabetes and high blood pressure in check. It was then that he resolved to confine his physical presence to his home at Marredpally, just as a croc confines itself to the waters and emerges on land only when necessity warrants.

For all these travails, it must be said to Dandi’s credit that he took exemplary care of his ageing and ailing parents when it mattered most. His father went through painfully unavoidable times for a year before he passed away in early 2024. Dandi endured every hardship, put his best foot forward, and gave his father the best of healthcare, which he could ill afford. His mother outlives him precisely for this reason. He sacrificed his own health in caring for the more deserving folks at home.

Over two decades, Nambi had evolved into a traditional astrologer, having evinced a keen interest in occult matters since the late nineties. Dandi was aware of Nambi’s prowess on this front. Sometime towards the close of 2025, Dandi asked Nambi when the inevitable could happen. He was anxious that his only son should finish college and stand on his own feet before the inevitable befell him.

Nambi scrutinised Dandi’s charts at length and said, “At least five more years.” Innocent and modest as he was, Dandi reposed all his trust in Nambi’s predictions. He had ample empirical evidence of Nambi’s knowledge and predictive abilities as far as his own life was concerned. Dandi even declared triumphantly to his better half, “Guru has said it. I have five more years. That’s plenty of time for me to accomplish the little I need to do.” Nambi knew he was not speaking the truth to Dandi.

The Rahu Mahadasa in Dandi’s chart lasted eighteen years, up to 2 October 2026, his 60th birthday. (Nambi’s jocular line to Dandi on his birthdays was, “Do jan aaye is duniya mein isi din. Ek ne des banaya aur doosre ne bigaada!” Laughing it off over a peg of whiskey, Dandi’s usual retort was, “Dekho bhai, mera do October ka janam vyarth nahin gaya, kuch toh kiya!”)

Nambi knew that with the onset of the Jupiter Mahadasa after 2 October 2026, anything could happen. Though Brahaspati, the ascendant lord of Sagittarius, stood exalted in the 8th house, it was placed in the constellation of Pushya, a star governed by the malefic and disastrous Saturn. Saturn is eminently known for heralding calamity for Sagittarius (Dhanur) ascendants, which Dandi had in his chart. Nambi made it a point to call Dandi during his happy hours, after 10 pm, every three days over the past year. After Dandi’s last birthday, the calls became daily.

On the night of 5 October, Nambi called up Dandi during his happy hours.

Dandi: “Good evening, Sir!” (Dandi had been addressing Nambi in this embarrassing manner for the last few years, ever since Nambi adopted a no-nonsense approach to Dandi and took absolute control of what could or could not be conversed between them.)

Nambi: “Kya haal chaal, Dandi gaaru?”

Dandi: “Choori ki beti ki shaadi ka kya socha hai?” (Choori, a classmate domiciled in Trivandrum.)

Nambi: “Jaana to hai.”

Dandi: “Kya main Chennai aa jaaoon? Hum wahaan se TVM jayenge?”

Nambi: “No, Dandi. I am not sure you will return to Hyd in one piece after this trip. You better stay put at home. Tere nahin aane se shaadi nahin rukegi.”

Dandi: “Acha… theek hai. Main aage kya boloon!”

Nambi: “I think I will shortly come down to Hyd. Hum dono Alankrit jaake, kuch samay wahaan bitayenge. Kam se kam ek chai toh peena hi hai. Pata nahin, humen phir kabhi fursat milegi ya nahin!”

(Alankrit, along the Nagpur Road past Bolarum Cantt, is a resort on the outskirts of Hyderabad, where Dandi’s wedding was solemnised and where the two had met many a time, for memorable meetings and good times.)

On 11 October 2026, Nambi called Dandi at 10:34 pm, as he did every night, but the call went unanswered. Five minutes later, at 10:39 pm, it was Dandi who called Nambi. It lasted about twenty minutes, and the conversation ran thus:

Dandi: “Good evening, Sir.”

Nambi: “Kya haal chaal, Dandi gaaru?”

Dandi: “Kuch khaas nahin. Bas chal raha hain zindagi.”

Nambi: “Usha kahaan hai?”

Dandi: “Usha uski maa ki ghar gayi hai. Sirf meri Maa hain idhar.”

Dandi: “Ghar mein kuch khaane ke liye nahin hai.”

Nambi: “Swiggy mein kuch order karoon kya?”

Dandi: “Hotel ka khana nahin jamta. Curd rice se kaam chala loonga…”

Towards the end of the call, Dandi’s speech was getting incoherent. Nambi attributed it to excessive alcohol, or to the diabetic’s urge to eat something to gather the strength to talk. Finally Nambi said, “Kuch kha peeke so jao, bhai. Mujhe bhi neend aa rahi hai.”

Nambi missed a call from Dandi’s mobile at exactly 1:30 am in the early hours of 12 October. He also missed another call, from CMDE, exactly five minutes later. Nambi was up early in the village that Monday morning, and noticed the calls he had missed.

He called Dandi’s number first. The stark response came from Usha, who, he now realised, had been the one calling from Dandi’s phone.

Usha: “Shivkumar has had a cardiac arrest last night.”

Nambi: “OMG! Where is he now?”

Usha: “Where else? In the glass box!”

Nambi: “I am coming to Hyd forthwith.”

By then, Nambi had also read the message from CMDE: “Dandi no more. Please call.”

Nambi booked his ticket to Hyderabad, and so did CMDE, from his camp at Mumbai.

They could not catch up with the rituals at Dandi’s home, since he had been taken away to the cremation ground at 2 pm. They reached the crematorium at Tarnaka just in time, as the body was being lowered near the funeral pyre.

I wouldn’t say much after this, except that it was the first time I had stood in a cremation ground and watched a body on firewood reduced to ashes from start to finish, a vigil that stretched for about three hours. Among those present were “Parget” RP, “Kaliya” Venu, and Syed Basha, Dandi’s legal counsel, besides the sine qua non, CMDE

Nambi could not make it to Alankrit before the inevitable happened.

◆

On a summer day in 1976, half a century ago, I watched a thin boy walk on his toes with his eyes on the road, as though he had lost something and meant to find it before he reached wherever he was going. I never learnt what it was. But I know what he did afterwards. He went about the world finding people: the hibernating frogs, the sulking porcupines, the shy giraffes, and one obstinate fellow who had once befriended him for show. If there was something he lost on that road, he seems to have spent his life making sure none of us lost each other the same way.

In 1980, I promised to write to him, and I did, for a few months. Then the letters stopped. It has taken forty-six years, and his going, to write again. This is that long-overdue letter, Dandi, and it carries a second promise, made to the Schemers you gathered. Both are now kept. Only the reply is missing.

A Promise to Write - Part 2

 

Ambi left the township in the summer of 1980. The family headed for Madras (as Chennai was then known).

School and home in Madras were a far cry from the comforts of a PSU township. Ambi suffered a culture shock, reminded at every turn of the township’s conveniences and of the small, familiar circle he had moved in. Homesickness soon set in, with his thoughts forever drifting to Sunabeda. He longed to rush back to the township and reclaim Dandi’s company for himself. There was no way Ambi could reach Dandi except through snail mail.

So began the series of letters from Ambi to Dandi, in the inland letter format, priced at 25 paise. The cheaper postcard afforded no privacy, and the yellow cover was comparatively dear at 35 paise. Dandi reciprocated with enthusiasm. After a few months, however, the communication fizzled out, more due to Ambi’s preoccupation with cinema and other modes of entertainment that the city had on offer. For the next nineteen years there was hardly any contact between Ambi and Dandi. Both, in all probability, were preoccupied with career progression and the demands of family life, each swept along in his own current.

In 1999, some years after Raman’s passing in 1995, Ambi set out for the township to get his IAF pension application endorsed by HAL, the re-employer. Having dropped sheet anchor at the Guest House, he resolved to trace Dandi’s whereabouts, and soon landed at the sub-post office in NAC, SBD-1, where he met Dandi’s father. There he learnt that Dandi was in the software development business and had been busy travelling abroad for work. Ambi left his contact details and address with the revered postmaster, to be passed on to Dandi upon his return from a marathon overseas tour.

Back in Chennai, Ambi slipped into his routines, until a week later, when Dandi called up from his office in Hyderabad. It was thence that the relationship was revived. The conversation between them ran thus:

Ambi: “Who is calling?”

Dandi (in a baritone voice): “Abe, Guru, Dandi bol raha hoon.”

Ambi: “Orrey Dandi, Yela unnavoo!”

Dandi: “Sab, maje mein. Tum sunao. Tumko kahaan kahaan dhoondha! Aakhir, tumko ek din apna gaanv aana hi pada… I will come to Chennai next week and meet up with you.”

Ambi sent Dandi all the directions needed for the meeting. About a week later, one evening, Dandi turned up at Ambi’s office on Edward Elliots Road, Mylapore.

The receptionist stepped in and announced, “Sir, a person by the name of Ganga Prasad wants to meet you urgently.”

Ambi: “Who? From where?”

Receptionist (with a comic smile): “He says he’s from Jhumri Talayya.”

Ambi (with a confused smile): “What?”

Dandi forced the cabin door open and stood drooping with folded hands at the threshold.

Dandi: “Namaskaram Ayya!”

Ambi: “Orrey Dandi, kameenay sala!”

Dandi: “Tu bada haraami hai re.”

Ambi: “Hua kya?”

Dandi: “Janam kundali ke bina kisi ko tere se milna mana hai kya? Isiliye bola ki main Jhumri Talayya se aaya hoon!”

And what a meeting that turned out to be, after almost two decades.

Dandi was of medium build, with a confident baritone, thoroughly presentable and carrying himself with an air of authority. It was a stark contrast to the sulking, diffident and hesitant creature Ambi had known ages ago. His gait was distinctive, but with that same stress on the toes. His eyes were prominent enough, it seemed, to spot every business opportunity that came his way. Dandi had, in short, undergone a metamorphosis the likes of which Ambi had never witnessed.

The two left the office together and whiled away the evening at the Malgudi restobar in the Savera Hotel, trying to bridge the bygone past with an incredible present. Ambi apprised Dandi of Raman’s demise in 1995. Dandi acknowledged Raman’s brutal honesty and his no-nonsense approach to people. Dandi was in Chennai for a roadshow to promote his company’s IPO. He had tied up with partners in the USA to promote his business, and mentioned that he had met Rajiv and Anand in the US and was roping them into it.

Dandi returned to Hyderabad in a couple of days. His company hit the markets with a bang, and celebrations galore followed. But his senior partner, who oversaw finance, eclipsed him on all major decisions, much to the ire and resentment of his partners in the US, Rajiv and Anand, who were his classmates. The split became inevitable when Dandi could not muster the strength to counter the finance man, in the face of the discontent thrown up by those partners.

Ever since the split, his business fell on evil days, and it became a roller coaster, plunging every now and then into the depths of despair. Loneliness and a helpless state of mind threw him out of gear in an irreversible manner.

Dandi turned to the bottle for solace, to drown his worries and woes, but the bottle only deepened the abyss, and he slid slowly into depression.

Ambi sympathised with Dandi and beseeched him to part ways with his senior partner in Hyderabad and start afresh, with all the necessary help that Ambi could provide. This stemmed from Ambi’s inference that corporate governance had been given the go-by in Dandi’s organisation. But Dandi had pinned all his hopes on his senior partner, much to Ambi’s vexation.

After many years, matters came to a head, and Dandi forced himself out of the organisation and the business. He then took to freelancing as a PR functionary for quite a few businessmen he knew and had worked with. This did not take him far.

All Ambi could do during these years was to keep abreast of Dandi’s activities, speak to him at periodic intervals, and help him in his efforts to drum up business. Such efforts entailed travelling across the country: to the North East, Chandigarh (with Timmy), Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, among many other places. Timmy, sadly, passed away in early January 2026, while on a morning walk.

A time came when Ambi, the young lad, grew mature enough to become Nambi, who could finally tell the wheat from the chaff. Nambi stopped entertaining business ideas from Dandi and confined their discussions to anything but work and business.

Yet it would be wrong to see those years only as a decline. Sometime at the beginning of the millennium, Dandi took upon himself the onerous task of ascertaining the whereabouts of all the “Schemers” and bringing them together in the virtual world.

“Schemers” was the name assigned to the class of 1982: the deemed Xth Std pass-outs from VSV or any other school, whether or not they were together in 1982. The name owes its origin to a string of mischievous adventures resorted to by the group, mostly within the school, undertaken with great enthusiasm and little remorse, much to the annoyance and consternation of the alma mater and the authorities. Among these was an incident, long after Ambi had left the township, in which the masterminds of the group, Dandi being a prime member, detonated a country-made bomb at the school assembly, the device blowing up with fine precision exactly when the National Anthem concluded. Of course, enquiries, investigations, suspensions and penalties followed.

Dandi went about ferreting out the hibernating frogs, pulling back the sulking porcupines, persuading the shy giraffes, beseeching the pachyderms, hunting down all cats, big and small, and then consolidating the denizens of the global jungle into a virtual email group. Messenger services hardly existed then. Most of them were on Sabeer Bhatia’s network, some on Rediffmail, some on the now-defunct Satyam, a couple of sarkari babus on VSNL, and quite a few on Shammi Kapoor’s exuberant network. (BTW, did you know that the shout of ecstasy did not emanate from the vocal cords of Mohammed Rafi or Shammi?)

Nor did Dandi’s contribution to the Schemers end with the email group. He made it a point to participate wholeheartedly in all their get-togethers: Goa (2016), Vizag–Sunabeda (2018), Amritsar–Jalandhar (2019) and Hyderabad (2025). He made it to every one of them with his nuclear family, in spite of his ailments and the strain on his means. He was a permanent fixture at all the gatherings, besides the many mini-reunions that took place in Hyderabad and elsewhere.

The Hyderabad reunion of December 2025 was the last time Nambi saw Dandi. He managed to move around with some effort, but could not climb the few steps at Anand’s farm. Poor Dandi exerted himself to get around the various venues of that reunion without a murmur of protest or hesitation.

Their conversations in those later years were about solutions to Dandi’s erstwhile financial problems, with Nambi providing minor relief here and there, once in a while. Otherwise they dwelt on nostalgic memories of the township, on Dandi’s eulogistic exclamations on the Hillranger’s blogs, or on anything else under the sun.

◆

Half a century after that dark road to L Zone, the boy who once walked it alone had become the man who knew where every one of us was. He found us, he gathered us, and he turned up at every reunion, with his family, whatever his health allowed. The last part is about the years in which he came out less and less, and about one night in October.

A Promise to Write - Part 1

 

It was during the summer of 1976 that Ambi first noticed the boy: a thin, lanky figure, smiling benignly at all and sundry, walking solely on his phalanges and metatarsals, eyes glued to the road as if he were in desperate search of something lost along the way to his intended destination. There was nothing more about him that Ambi registered, nor did the boy stir the slightest fancy in him.

Folks in class took note of his peculiar mannerisms, and he soon became the butt of jokes for most students. Shivakumar, aka Shivdu, alias Dandi, was written off as a half-wit, his conduct bordering on the deranged. Ambi, for his part, was an obstinate lad who rarely saw eye to eye with his parents and teachers alike, and who deemed himself a cut above the rest, though he had achieved nothing in school to write home about.

Ambi took pity on Dandi, with an avowed objective of scoring some points and making an impression upon the folks in school. He set about befriending the hitherto isolated Dandi, to display a show of solidarity that others could not fail to notice. All Ambi wanted was to grab attention through feigned acts of kindness and bonhomie towards a strange character newly admitted to the class.

Soon Ambi learnt that the boy came from L Zone, a pocket tucked away from the main township towards its southern fringes, so secluded that few ventured into it during those early days when the staff quarters were newly built there. The road leading to it was scantily lit and lay steeped in pitch darkness on most nights. Ambi also learnt that the boy’s father served as a postmaster in a sub-post office in far-away NAC, en route Koraput.

Dandi was not particularly proficient in studies, nor was Ambi, though Ambi fared better. Dandi came from a rural background. He owed his origins to a village by name, Mullakalanka, on the banks of the Godavari, not far from Rajamahendravaram (erstwhile Rajahmundry), and spent his early years in a place called Donkarayi, where his Nana ji was employed in the Hydro-electric Project. (Donkarayi, in AP, lies in the lower reaches of the Sileru river, which flows down from Machkund in Odisha.)

Ambi accompanied him home from school on many occasions and gradually became acquainted with his family. He discerned many similarities between his home and Dandi’s: love and affection were never on display, and conversations carried a distinctly business-like air. Ambi could relate completely to Dandi’s life, so closely did it mirror his own. With little else to occupy him after school (Ambi was a mediocre student), he took it upon himself to tutor Dandi and take him under his wing. Dandi meekly submitted to Ambi’s whims. That marked the beginning of a long and seemingly perpetual relationship.

Dandi had a natural flair for hilarity, in action at first and in words later on. Probably after he had mustered the support of Ambi and a few others in class, he grew emboldened. From a docile and hesitant creature, he began to indulge in small acts of mischief while classes were in session. Dandi was often to be seen on his knees beneath another’s desk, up to some antic, while a class was in earnest progress. A giggle from the back benches would give him a fillip to indulge in more. The boys did not mind and were rather amused by his comical capers, though some teachers did not tolerate Dandi. Dandi knew exactly which teachers were unenthused by his antics.

Ambi’s fondness for cinema soon catapulted Dandi into the township’s celluloid world at Bhanja Mandap. When movies like “Dream Girl” came to Bhanja Mandap, it was a literal mara-mari for tickets, and Hemamalini was a heartthrob for many. Ambi found in Dandi a receptacle for his innate longings and fancies, without the fear of being judged. When “Noorie” was released, Ambi literally fell in love with Poonam Dhillon and expressed this freely to Dandi. Dandi was aghast. “Will this really work out?” he asked. All Ambi said was, “Imaginations can run wild. It gives me happiness.” The innocent Dandi was thus ushered into the world of silver-screen fantasies, as Ambi seemed to grant a licence to Dandi’s mind to run riot too.

In course of time, Ambi and Dandi became the proverbial Siamese cats. Ambi latched on to Dandi, and Dandi to Ambi. Ambi often took Dandi home, much to the amusement of Raman, his father, who even rebuked Ambi for such needless bonhomie with anyone. On one occasion, when Dandi came looking for Ambi at his place, Raman accosted him, and the conversation ran thus:

Dandi: “Uncle, is Ambi there?”

Raman: “No, that fellow has gone to the library near the cinema.”

Dandi: “Shall I wait until he returns?”

Raman: “That would be futile. I never know when he will return. He roams around the township like a temple bull allowed to graze every field he sees.”

Raman: “Why are you always seeking the company of this useless fellow? He is as unreliable and unstable as a wild beast let loose in a civilised world.”

Dandi (fidgeting, uncomfortable, and shitting bricks): “Ok… uncle, I will go home.”

By then, Dandi’s father had been assigned a sub-post office in a G Zone quarter, and the family had moved from L Zone to GZ. Dandi literally fled from PZ to GZ, as though his life depended on how soon he could reach home. Shit-scared, he did not speak to Ambi for a couple of days thereafter. Hurt and bewildered, Ambi accosted him and asked what the matter was. Dandi recounted, word for word, what had transpired between Raman and him. Ambi realised that Raman had pulled a fast one on Dandi and bade him relax. Dandi heaved a sigh of relief, though he remained scared out of his wits at the thought of Raman. What Raman did not know, or chose not to know, was that the “library near the cinema” was more often than not the cinema itself. Raman’s bark, as Ambi knew only too well, was far bigger than his bite.

Back from school, Ambi waited for Raman to return from the factory. Raman parked his bicycle near the steps and came into the house, noticing Ambi morose and annoyed about something. The conversation ran thus:

Raman: “What’s wrong with you, Ambi?”

Ambi (looking up at the ceiling): [No response]

Raman: “Have you filled your mouth with a kozhukattai (Modak)?”

Ambi: “What’s wrong with YOU? Who gave you the right to chase away my friends from here when I am not around?”

Raman: “I haven’t done anything like that.”

Ambi: “Then why did you chase Dandi away about a week back, when I wasn’t here?”

Raman: “I never did that. I only cautioned that Postmaster’s son. I know you better than anyone else. You are adept at fixing people and making the most of their proximity.”

Ambi: “Next time you do this, I will run away from home. Beware!”

Raman (smiling): “I am waiting for that day of relief.”

It was sometime in 1980, when Ambi and Dandi had just finished their 8th Std, that Raman decided to leave the township for good. Ambi bade Dandi an emotional farewell and promised to write to him periodically.

In 1980, a schoolboy promised to write to the friend he was leaving behind. Forty-six years on, that friend is gone, and the promise has returned to me in another form, made this time to the classmates who loved him, and to Dandi himself.

The Ambi of these pages was no saint. He befriended a lonely boy for show, and he was seen through at once by a father who knew him better than anyone. What neither of them could have guessed, in those dark evenings between L Zone and the cinema, was that the pretence would outlast every motive behind it.

The rest of the story, from the letters that followed Ambi’s departure to a telephone call at 10:39 pm on 11 October 2026, will follow next weekend.

The Old Man Who Directed the Puppets

 

It was a December in the early seventies, the month of the winter holidays, and the restless Ambi had at long last reached his Nana’s village of Kollenvilai in Kanyakumari district, on the southernmost tip of the peninsula, after a long and arduous journey by train and bus all the way from the township. Hardly had the aches of that journey worn off when the boys grew fidgety, and then positively naughty, as boys will in a village home where the days are long and the grown-ups are preoccupied.

The last of Ambi’s maternal uncles, Mr Subramoni, was the typical prodigal son of an indulgent father. He had made a habit of failing his college examinations, with a regularity that bordered on devotion, and Nana was growing anxious about his life and his future. But Subramoni had a passion, and it burned for the celluloid world. He kept himself abreast of every development in Kollywood and Mollywood in the manner of an ardent student preparing for the most punishing quiz ever set, on actors and actresses, producers and directors, on-screen matters and off-screen lives, and the doings of all the heroes and heroines of celluloid. His room lay strewn with Bommai, Filmfare, Cineyug, Stardust and Pesum Padam.

Whenever Ambi and Kalyan went racing up the stairs to the only room on the first floor, the one that housed the family’s granary, there he was, either attending to his coiffure before the mirror with the gravity of a man due on a film set, or sunk deep in the gupshup that the film magazines narrated so vividly. He never tired of promising Ambi that he would travel with them on their return journey to Sunabeda, as far as Madras, where he would get down to visit the studios at Vadapalani, gather a first-hand account of the proceedings on a film set, and catch a glimpse of his favourite stars, MGR above all, and Manjula. He also considered himself smart and handsome enough to be given a chance to act in Kollywood. But when the hour came to bid adieu at Kollenvilai, the man was invariably missing, no doubt holed up in a cinema house in Nagercoil, or watching a film shoot in progress in some picturesque spot like Muttom, or at the Palace near Thuckalay.

Now, as the days dragged on and the boys grew ever more restless, Nana hit upon an idea: he would take them along to watch the evening sunset at Kanyakumari. The folks at home were not exactly enthused about this onerous task that Nana had shouldered, and they suggested, rather pointedly, that the unemployed, starry-eyed undergraduate might as well stand in for Nana and take the boys out.

Subramoni, for one, was not up to the idea at first. But it soon dawned on him that he could profit from the trip after all, since he could cadge some good money from Nana on the pretext of covering expenses and keeping the boys in good humour. So Nana agreed and pressed a Gandhi note of those days into Subramoni’s palm. Then the plan took an unexpected turn. The two elder boys, Swami and Ganesan, bowed out of their own accord, having resolved to complete the elusive eleven of a local cricket team that was raring to take on a side from neighbouring Tiruvithamcode. These two were the self-styled opening pair, Fredericks and Greenidge of Kollenvilai, and no excursion to the sea could hope to compete with that.

So it was Subramoni, the mischievous Kalyan and an unruly Ambi who resolved to make a day of it to Land’s End. But the note stayed snug in Subramoni’s pocket, and looking at Ambi, he rubbed his palms with glee as the two opening batsmen withdrew.

They set out for the local bus stand, since express buses would not deign to stop at Kollenvilai, and asked Moses to drop them there in the Ambassador. Moses had been Nana’s driver in the late sixties, and when the car was sold to an acquaintance, Nana had sent him off along with it. He was still at the wheel of the same Ambassador for its new owner, and gave the three of them the lift as a favour.

Soon an express bus to Nagercoil came rolling in from Marthandam. Subramoni ushered the boys aboard, and finding them haggling over the window seat, instructed them to sit tight and quiet in an empty seat line. Before long they saw him haggling in turn with the conductor for two half tickets, swearing solemnly that the two boys were tiny enough to merit the special concession. He was, of course, counting every paise he could save for a “filmy” day. The conductor, naturally, had to yield, if only to buy peace.

The bus wound its way through green paddy fields, with rocky hillsides rising to the west and small hamlets strung along the road, past Puliyoorkurichi, Kumarakoil, the Villukuri viaduct, Chunkankadai and Parvathipuram, and finally, after about thirty minutes, swung into the city bus stand at Vadasery. The boys leapt down, ran, and installed themselves on the cement benches of the terminus. Their hero descended last, with the unhurried dignity of a star stepping out of a studio limousine, scanning the terminus for the admirers who must surely be waiting for him to set foot on terra firma.

But the seventy-odd people waiting for buses in different directions were all engrossed in a tamasha at one corner of the stand, which the boys could view clearly from their benches. A mini screen had been put up under a low roof, and the organisers were working half a dozen puppets from behind the back screen. It was a bommalattam, a puppet show put on by the local social welfare unit, with a large red triangle displayed as publicity, urging people to take to family planning. The song that accompanied the puppet dance was a Tamil song 

நான் எங்க போனாலும் நீயும் கூடவே வர்றியே,
யாருக்கும் தெரியாம மெல்ல என் நெஞ்சுக்குள்ள குடியே புகுந்துட்டியே.
சொல்லு பாரு, நீ எனக்கு யாருடா?
பேர் வைக்கவும் தெரியல, விட்டுப் போகவும் மனசு வரல.

This song was inspired by the Hindi number from the iconic Raj Kapoor’s movie, Chori Chori.

जहाँ मैं जाती हूँ, वहीं चले आते हो, चोरी-चोरी मेरे दिल में समाते हो, ये तो बताओ कि तुम मेरे कौन हो...

Subramoni, who knew no Hindi, had not the faintest idea where the tune had been lifted from. Ambi knew very well. He had heard that song again and again on the valve radio at home, during the noon break after twelve, in the Vividh Bharati programme Aap Hi Ke Geet.

Kalyan grew so rapt in the bommalattam that he abandoned his cement bench, tiptoed up to the screen, and fell in with the bandwagon of little boys capering around the show, in spirited competition with the puppets. A little later he slipped around the screen and discovered that the whole spectacle was being run by two men pulling the strings from behind. He came rushing back to the benches to announce how the entire system was operated by a couple of puppeteers. Subramoni paid no heed. Ambi asked Kalyan to take him to see the string-pullers, and he did see them, but scurried back to the benches, lest he lose his uncle to the buses.

Subramoni’s attention had not stayed on the puppets for long. It had drifted to an old, haggard man in his seventies, who stood watching the puppetry from a safe distance, a little away from the screen. The frail old man gesticulated and gestured the whole time, as though he were issuing instructions to the dramatis personae, directing them to act as he wanted, from moment to moment. The crowd had very nearly concluded that he was insane.

When Ambi got back, Subramoni was still where he had been left, though he had edged slightly to his left, and was muttering to another man beside him, pointing a finger at the frail old man. Ambi had no idea then what Subramoni was up to.

Soon a line of buses filed into the terminus, one after another. Subramoni’s attention was fixed wholly on the old man and on where he was heading. The old man boarded a bus to Kanyakumari, one that took a detour before reaching the sunset point. Subramoni shepherded the boys into that same bus, seated them securely in the middle, and went up to where the old man sat and settled down beside him. He was seen trying to break into a conversation, though the old man was rather reluctant to speak, but Subramoni showed no inclination to give up. He pushed and plodded on until, at last, the old man could be seen nodding gently and answering in single syllables. He looked sick, morose and melancholic. For a full twenty minutes Subramoni kept him engaged, until the bus turned off the highway into a village, Agastheeswaram. Five minutes later the bus screeched to a halt, the old man alighted gently, and Subramoni shouted the boys out of the bus as he got down himself.

He followed the old man to his house, talking to him all the way, while all the man did was nod to his fellow walker. Ambi and Kalyan simply trailed the two of them, until they came to a large, old, tiled mansion, where the old man bade adieu to Subramoni and walked into a tenement on the ground floor.

Then miserly Subramoni marched the boys all the way from Agastheeswaram to the sunset point, a good two and a half kilometres. As they trudged along, Ambi began his round of interrogations. He was told that the old man had been a great film maker, one of the earliest of the early twentieth century, from the days when celluloid entertainment had not yet touched Kerala, though Tamil Nadu had already made some strides in silent movies.

They arrived at the sunset point tired and famished, just in time to watch the Sun sink, blushing and unhurried, into the confluence of the three seas. Then the boys served Subramoni with an ultimatum: take them to a hotel and feed them masala dosa, nothing less, or they would not budge. Left with no alternative, he led them to a cafe and ordered the exotic long dosa, muttering all the while, “I made a mistake in taking these devilish ghouls out of Kollenvilai,” his kutti pisasus, his little ghouls.

*  *  *

Years passed, nearly half a century of them. It was only in 2020, during the covid holidays, when Nambi sat down to watch Kamal’s Celluloid, that the whole scene at the Vadasery bus stand came flooding back to him: the puppets, the red triangle, the crowd, the frail old man at the edge of it all. The “insane” old man was probably none other than J.C. Daniel, Joseph Chelliah Daniel, the father of Malayalam cinema.

Nambi realised, all those years later, that Ambi had seen a forgotten celebrity.

And the strings, he thought. All the characters of Vigathakumaran vanished without a trace, P.K. Rosy among them, and the man who had made them was himself left standing at the edge of a crowd. The truth, perhaps, was that he never did direct the puppet show at all. But he was so passionate about film making that he stood there directing the puppets anyway, lost in it, losing sight of his way home. He had probably come to Nagercoil to see a doctor about his ailments, Nambi supposed, a diagnosis offered, alas, nearly half a century too late. Sitting there on the cement bench all those years ago, Ambi had only wondered where the old man was going, and had never thought to ask him anything.

The Hillranger writes from Dharmarajapuram, where the strings are pulled by hands no one sees, and the finest directors are often the ones who stand a little apart.