Finding Lost Time (Part 2)

“Eda kochaney, one coconut falls on your head, and they wont have to look for coconuts for the chammandi anymore.” Vivekanandan seemed to be amused by the idea of Boshi’s brain chutney being served with dosa. After conducting countless tests of accidentally dropping the massive green, brown and sometimes orange fruits on people’s heads, Vivekanandan’s theory of brain chammandi still remained unproven by and large. He considered himself to be in an elevated social being. For a land that was flat, Vivekanandan really was at it’s summit – on top of the coconut palm. When he was not climbing trees, he was high on Mathai’s patta. Either way, he was way higher than the rest of the village.

What brought Boshimon to the first level of consiousness, however was Kuriakose's generous helping of dog saliva on his face. And as had become customary in the past week, he shouted some class-one obscenities at the dog and started his day thus. Now a dog on the run can't complain about bad language. Although born to a nameless mongrel mother, Kuriakose had inherited most of his features from his father - Dingan, the German Shepherd. It had taken his nameless mother a whole month and a half to seduce Dingan, and when Dingan fell for her ways, it was the talk of the town. The litter had three other puppies, but they were such sorry things, that when the legendary Balakrishna Kurup saw them by the road, they didnt get petted or picked, and hence they didnt get names.

That is how the smaller than usual but German Shepherd like pup went home with Valya Kurup to his new home. He remained there in peaceful co-existance with its other inhabitants, until one day the grandmother of the house suddenly stopped running her race, and the whole household got busy with the obsequeis . Kuriakose was forgotten, and he remained hungry, and tied to the little washing stone in the backyard.

Little Velayudhan was as naughty then as he is now (his ways have changed since). Kuriakose wasn’t quite enjoying the boy’s exotic dance – especially not when he was hungry – and so in a moment of weakness he bit the boy on his little fountain - Hard enough to scare the effluents out of the boy, but not hard enough to do any real damage to his boy-hood. Kuriakose fled, as fast as his four legs (German Shepherd like, but shorter) could carry him, with his tail (unusually bent for a German Shepherd) tucked safely between his hind legs.

(to be continued..)

It's my Budday!

Go, go, go, go, go, goGo, shortyIt's your birthday

We gon' party like it's your birthday

We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday

And you know we don't give a bleep

cause it's not your birthday!

But it eees my budday!

It eees my 13 n a halfth budday.

YAY!

Finding lost time (Part 1)

It was a March very much like this one. The sun was beginning to rise (with a little trouble) over the big thatched roof of the toddy shop. A little further from where he lay, the growing light revealed the bottom of a coconut tree, and the sleeping Kuriakose. The dog did not seem to care about day or night. He liked to sleep. And Kuriakose looked happy.
No matter how hard Boshimon tried, he couldn’t recollect the last few hours of the previous night. He was drunk. Magnificently drunk. More drunk – drunker than he had ever been before.

Boshimon was born black and it wasn’t his fault. He was on paper, the first day of his life on this world. His mother was sixty three, and grandmother of four. The world was amused. They laughed, and didn’t bother to turn the other way when they did. They laughed on his face – wet laughs – the ones that spray spittle from corners of paan stained crimson mouths. Boshimon, would wipe blobs of frothy liquid from his face and smile back. He had to live.
His grown-up siblings visited him once on the day he was born – or so he was told – with their children and all. He doesn’t remember seeing them, and he hoped they would come when the mother died. They did not.

He was twenty seven, and yet yesterday qualified as the first of his adult life, the first day when he could call the said life his own – when he could look the village in the face, without fear of them calling him his name. He had walked the fields and the well-trodden paths at a steady gait, greeting the old and the un-known. There was not a great deal he could think of to wish for. In the night, on his way out of the toddy shop, he would have danced down the deserted path if it was not for the fear of falling on his face. And yet he fell.

His blood had always attracted the fattest mosquitoes from far out in the kayal, and he had spent the night chasing them away until the breeze put him to sleep again. He was fanning himself frantically when he saw the big face above his own. “They bite like rabid dogs. So, you had the moolavetti, ey?” Sabu was squatting by his side, and had a toothbrush stuck into a corner of his mouth. The effects elicited by the two packs of illicit liquor were spewn all around him, but his otherwise strong sense of smell didn’t seem to take note.

Sabu too hated his father for his name. The girls in the fifth standard classroom had laughed when he had to introduce himself. And the rest of his academic life, everyone called him by his full name of Shehanshah Shahjahan. Why couldn’t they call him Sabu like everyone in the village? Sabu aimed, and spat in a projectile. The toothpaste foam splattered off the coconut tree base, scaring the chicken into another futile attempt at flight.

(to be continued..)