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 (laughing): “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.

The Zamindar's Last Son and the Lord's Last Rupee

 

The Reddys were a sprawling household in Dharmarajapuram, zamindars who held vast tracts of land in and around the village. Krishna Reddy had, once upon a time, journeyed from his native Tayyuru near Chittoor and taken root in this soil. He married into a Reddy family of Dharmarajapuram, established a property agency, and in due course prospered in his trade. His household prospered too, with three less than a dozen children, most of them brought up with dignity, who unfurled their wings across the length and breadth of the country to become engineers, architects, captains of business and holders of respectable offices in the government. The last of them, Ramu Reddy, turned out to be the quintessential prodigal son of a rather indulgent father.

The old-timers of the village, however, tell another tale of the land. Quite a few of those parcels, they murmur, passed into the zamindari family when mortgaged farmlands were seized, the hapless farmers having failed to discharge their debts.

The zamindar dealt even-handedly with all his sons, and so Ramu was enrolled at the venerable Goudie Memorial School in Tiruvallur, the district headquarters, just as his elder brothers had been before him. The school dated back to the days of the sepoy mutiny of 1857 (a tumult that scarcely touched the Madras Province), when an emissary of the Scottish missionaries felt a pressing need to educate the common people and lead them out of their backwardness.

                                      (Rev William Goudie Memorial School)

Unlike his brothers, who completed school and proceeded to reputed colleges, Ramu abandoned his studies before he could sit the matriculation examination. His mind was never in his books. He preferred to wander the rural countryside, lording it over the simple countryfolk with his social standing at his back.

Ramu gave his undivided devotion to money, the very resource for which his brothers toiled and struggled to rise in life. Ramu sought the easy road. In his early days he was perfectly content to cadge money off his brothers and visiting relatives, so that he might drift along in a happy-go-lucky haze. But such indulgence could carry Ramu Reddy only as far as his family’s patience would stretch, and not a step further.

While his elder brothers settled into plush positions, thriving lines of business and respectable government service, and were wedded into decent families in Chittoor, Madras, Nellore and Gudur, Ramu Reddy stared into a bleak future.

A worried Krishna Reddy then urged Ramu to take up his property agency. He wished to hand down the tricks of the trade, and the art of making money with little effort and a measure of guile. But the old man passed away before he could wholly bequeath his legacy to his youngest son.

With all of Krishna Reddy’s children, save Ramu, having departed the village for greener pastures, the duty of tending the local temple, and of managing its festivals and village functions, devolved upon Ramu. He seized the chance at once, for these occasions brought in a great deal of cash from devotees and village folk alike, money that had to be pooled to meet the common expenses of the festivities.

Around this time Ramu also took a bride, a girl from a respectable Reddy family of Mydukur near Cuddapah. She bore him two sons. They lived a rich and lavish life, to the envy and chagrin of the neighbourhood.

Soon Ramu Reddy grew adept in the art of mobilizing money for every occasion. There was Pongal, the harvest season revelries. There was Rama Navami, when the presiding deity was propitiated before the utsavar was borne through the village streets. There was Aadi, when folk cooked gruel beneath the open sky as an offering to Amman. There was Vinayaka Chaturthi, when the elephant God was celebrated with great pomp and splendour for three days at the very least, before a procession carried the sculpted divinity to be immersed in the Kosasthaliyar flowing past the village. There was Vaikunta Ekadasi, when the Lord granted his devotees darshan of his “Vishwaroopam”. And last of all came the Margazhi winter festivities, beginning every morning at four to rouse the Lord from slumber to the chant of “Kaushalya Supraja Rama Poorva Sandhya Pravartate”.

Thanks to the austere ways of the large household, nurtured on the modest earnings of the Reddy Patriarch, Ramu also learnt the art of containing expenses and setting aside a handsome sum from the monies mobilized for the festivities. In this manner he went on amassing cash, festival upon festival. He learnt, too, to fudge the accounts and records, inflating the expenditure so that each festivity closed with a meagre residual balance.

Wondering how to multiply the wealth thus gathered, Ramu hit upon the novel notion of lending to village folk, traders and merchants of the neighbouring villages at exorbitant rates of interest, compounded daily. Ramu never believed in formal banking, so he kept all his monies in cash, at home or in the hands of his borrowers.

Ramu put on weight, prospered, and piled up a vast fortune in the process. The village folk began to entrust him with their own savings as deposits, earning interest at twenty-four per cent per annum and above, and Ramu mobilized lakhs of rupees in this fashion. He now began depositing monies in a scheduled bank in the neighbouring village of Tamaraipakkam, and before long became a well-known and successful financier of the rural neighbourhood, whom people sought out for their financial needs and unforeseen obligations.

This drew Ramu Reddy into close fellowship with the bank managers of the day. He became the extended lending arm of the bank, facilitating farm loans, jewel loans and petty loans for the villages around, and exacted a hefty commission for all the trouble he took in securing them. He soon rose to be President of the farmers’ cooperative society of Tamaraipakkam. His weight grew. His girth grew. He bought himself a Royal Enfield, though he could only be ferried about by his confidante, for he never learnt to ride it. The thump-thump and dug-dug of that machine, anywhere in the neighbourhood, heralded the arrival of Ramu Reddy.

In due course, Ramu Reddy’s gaze fell upon lands lying unoccupied, unused and bereft of cultivation. He drew out copies of land records (patta, chitta, adangal, village sketches and the like) from his father’s collection of documents, and enlisted the local surveyor to identify those parcels. He quickly mastered the tricks of the property trade, though his father had taught him scarcely a thing, and discovered an avenue for regularizing land parcels, wetlands, drylands, poromboke and whatever the prevailing classification happened to be. Colluding with the powers that be in the offices of the sub-registrars, the Village Administrative Officers and the Tahsildar, he usurped parcel after parcel in his own name or to his order.

Before long he set up a sprawling office near the bank premises at Tamaraipakkam, with separate chambers for land dealings, deposits, banking services and a host of other tertiary services incidental to the main objectives of his business.

Of his two sons, the elder went on to become a college professor, while the younger, more or less, walked in his father’s footsteps.

And then came Covid, unannounced.

With the onset of the pandemic, the village folk who had forsaken farming and the traditional modes of life began to lose their livelihoods, or were paid too meagrely to keep their households afloat. Trade and commerce ground to a halt.

People began to throng around Ramu Reddy, clamouring for their deposits to be returned. There was a ruinous run on the informal banking he offered, and he was caught utterly unawares. He struggled to refund his depositors. Ramu had never been particular about keeping proper books of accounts, save for jotting down the names of his major borrowers on scraps and slips of paper.

His efforts to recover the monies he had lent came to nothing as the pandemic refused to relent. Either the borrowers swore that they had paid him back fair and square, or they simply pleaded their inability to repay just then.

A morose and gloomy mood settled over the Reddy household. Ramu’s attempts to sell some of his clandestinely acquired land parcels fell flat, for there were no takers when everyone was starved of cash. The village folk were content merely to buy rice and lentils for subsistence, with the small vegetables of their backyards to accompany the humble soup.

The second wave of Covid, sometime in mid 2021, proved more devastating than the first. While 2020 had scarcely claimed a couple of lives in the village, 2021 brought a grim procession of casualties. Velan, a cattle farmer who owned two bullocks, was the first to go.

Sometime in early July 2021, when the birds and bees had hardly stirred, I heard the long wail of a woman behind my village home. It was Lakshmi, beating her breast, lamenting the sudden passing of her husband, Ramu Reddy. At the inquest, I was told that he had been brought dead on arrival at the general hospital at the district headquarters in Tiruvallur.

I went early to pay my last respects to the departed soul. Having laid a wreath upon the glass box that held his mortal remains, with a circular one rupee coin stuck on his forehead, I turned back, retracing my steps homeward, when Anwar Basha, the local butcher and my errand guy, whispered into my ear:

“Sir, Korona illai onnum illai saar. Avar tharkolai senjuttaru.” (No damned corona, sir. He simply took his own life.)

=============================================

The Hillranger writes from Dharmarajapuram, where the Margazhi mornings still begin at four, and the Lord wakes, mercifully, without being billed for it.