‘Chinnamma, here, have just this one idli’, Aruna said to her aunt pleadingly.
Kamalamma shook her head in a way that showed more inability than refusal.
Aruna put her arms around her aunt’s shoulders and said, ‘You haven’t eaten since this morning, you must eat.’
‘No, bidda’, she said, turning away, hiding the tears that were threatening to flow out of her eyes, and rested her head
against the seat.
‘Didn’t she eat?’ asked Venu, walking towards the parked jeep, his eyes on the uneaten Idlis in Aruna’s hands.
‘No’, said Aruna helplessly.
‘Well, at least you eat them’, saidVenu.
‘I can’t eat, either’, replied Aruna.
‘Akka, you’re also behaving like Peddamma’, scolded Venu. ‘You must eat, we need energy for the rest of the day. I’ve brought you another plate thinkingPeddamma would eat that, at least eat something.’
Not wanting to be told again, Arunareluctantly stuffed the idlis into her mouth.
‘Should I bring some chai, then?’,Venuasked.
Aruna nodded her head
‘Here, Peddamma, have some chaiat least,’ Venusaid handing her a glass of tea.
Kamalamma gulped two sips of chai mechanically.
‘He loves chai’ she thought to herself. With that thought, she couldn’t drink the tea anymore.
Neither could she throw away the chaithat her son loved so much. So, she just sat there, cradling the glass in her hands.
‘Drink a little more,’ Aruna pleaded again, taking the glass to Kamalamma’s lips, gesturing her to take a sip.
‘Mm-hmm’, Kamalamma said, declining.
Kamalamma’s mental state was in disarray since that morning. Her husband, Narsayya had been ill from the last two days. Krishnamurthi, the RMP doctor of their village suspected that it could be a case of Typhoid fever.
‘He has become completely weak this summer, Chinnamma’, said the doctor, ‘let him stay in my house for two days, I will put him on glucose’.
‘Alright son, whatever you think best…all I want is for him to get well’, she agreed.
Kamalamma, too, spent that night at the doctor’s house as Narsayya was treated with restorative fluids.
‘It will take a couple of hours for this to be done, you should get some sleep, Chinnamma’, the doctor insisted. ‘I will wake up to check on him’, he assured her.
Despite the doctor’s reassurance, Kamalamma did not sleep. What if the doctor doesn’t wake up? What if Narsayya moves in his sleep? What if he calls out for her? Anxious, she stayed by his bed all night, nodding off a few times only to jolt awake abruptly again.
She went home early the next morning. She finished all the chores swiftly, with the intention to take some food back to her husband.
‘This man is not eating anything I make. It has become a nuisance, what should I do’, she muttered to herself. Talking to herself, she began sorting things here and there in the kitchen when her brother-in-law’s son, Venu, came running with two of his friends behind him.
‘Oh? How come you thought of your Peddamma first thing in the morning today, eh?’ Kamalamma who didn’t observe the way Venu came running teased him.
‘Peddamma…’,Venu cried out in anguish.
‘What is the matter, son? What happened?’ Even as she uttered the question, her mind was filled with an unknown fear.
‘News in the paper…encounter…Anna’s name…’, gasped Venu, unable to say more.
Kamalamma grew cold, she couldn’t find her voice. Her legs became wobbly totally lacking strength. Unable to stand anymore, she collapsed on to the floor.
Aruna, daughter of Kamalamma’s other brother-in-law, who was visiting her parents, caught sight of Venu hastily running towards Kamalamma’s house. Curious, she came behind him and overheard what he said.
Holding up her aunt from collapsing, Arunasaid to Venu in a voice filled with grief,
‘what are you saying?’
‘It’s in the paper, Akka. They wrote that it could be Anna’, he replied wiping his tears.
Aruna wailed. But there was no reaction fromKamalamma. Her mind had become numb and the vacant look in her eyes indicated that she was hardly able to make sense of what she heard, where she was and what was happening.
Hearing the sounds of weeping,Kamalamma’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law and the neighbours, all gathered around her. The wailing grew louder.
Meanwhile Venu’s friend Yadagiri led him a few feet away from the group and said, ‘Look Venu, will you just stand here and weep too or see to what needs to be done now?’
Venu looked at Yadagiri, wiping his tears. His eyes seemed to say: ‘What is left to be done, now? What shouldn’t have happened has already happened.’
As if sensing the unasked question, Yadagiri said, ‘Let us go there. To our tragic misfortune, if it is indeed our anna…should we not bring him back?’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the word, ‘corpse’ or’ body’.
Murari, another friend of Venu’s, nodded in solemn agreement.
On hearing his friends, Venuwas reminded of his immediate duty at hand.
‘How shall we do this?’ he asked, looking to his friends helplessly for advice. The three of them then moved into the living room from the kitchen, discussing.
‘How else? We shall book a jeep! Didn’t they write that they might bring him to some hospital, let’s go there’, said Murariin a determined voice.
Some other men gathered around them. Each of them suggested their idea. They said we could do this or we could do that. Let’s do it this way. Maybe, let’s do it that way. But we must make haste, they all concurred.
In minutes, the news spread through the entire village. Venu’s parents and sisters joined the family, weeping.Their house is a short distance away from Kamalamma’s. Venu read the news in the morning paper when he was at the village’s consecrated stone and from there he ran straight to his uncle’s house. So, his parents heard the news a little later.
Krishnamurthy, the doctor, had read the news when he was at the tea joint. Shocked by what he had read, he quickly ran back inside his house and bolted the door shut behind him, fearing that someone might break the news to Narsayya. Narsayya was just recovering and the doctor was afraid this news may cause his health to deteriorate further, so he wanted to keep the tragedy from his patient as long as he could. He decided to keep administering the fluids until that evening and give him the news once he was better.
Meanwhile, at the house, Yadagiri arrived in a jeep. Who should go? Everyone was eager to go.
In the chaos, Yadagiri said, deciding, ‘What is the point of us all going, there’s nothing for us all to do there. Look Venu, you, me, Murari and Sambayya shall go, that is all. Not even your father or uncle. They are elderly and it is summer, it will be trouble for them. Since NarsayyaPedananna is unwell, we’ll take Kamalammapeddamma with us’.
After more deliberation, everyone consented to this plan.
‘Arunakka, will you come too, to accompany Peddamma?’,Venu asked.
Arunaagreed and handed over her children to her mother’s care.
The jeep began to move, leaving a trail of people behind, before catching speed and driving away. They all stopped and watched it disappear into the distance, a vision blurred by their sorrow.
In the jeep, Kamalamma gradually came to. She began to grasp reality. The thought that her only son may be dead, brought grief gushing out of her broken heart and she wailed. Aruna and Venu, who sat on either side of her in the jeep tried to calm her down, but to no avail.
‘Calm down, Peddamma. The newspaper didn’t say conclusively that it is Anna. They only suspected it to be him. Due to our good luck, it may not be Anna at all’, Venu said trying to convince his aunt of somethingthat he himself was unsure of.
‘No? Is it not my son, then? Oh God, please see that it is not my son’, she prayed.
She consoled herself thinking, ‘It may not be him, after all, they didn’t say anything with certainty in the newspaper,’ but more thoughts followed,‘but they did write that it could be him, why did his name come up at all if it was not him? This has never happened before. His name never came up in this way. If I believe it is not him and go there to find that it is, will I ever be able to bear it? Is it not better to turn my heart into a stone and be prepared then? Has it really come to this? Is there really no more hope?’ Kamalamma began to weep again uncontrollably.
After a while, as though exhausted by her own grief, she turned quiet and numb. Aruna gently laid Kamalamma’s head on her shoulder. The morning passed and it was afternoon when Yadagiri suggested to Venu, ‘None of us had any food since this morning. I’m sure we can’t bear to eat rice, let us have some tiffin and tea. We might not be able to eat for a while after…’
They pulled the jeep over at a roadside hotel and ate, almost cursorily, just for the sake of eating something. Kamalamma, however refused to eat. After all, what is hunger compared to a mother’s pangs of grief?
The jeep hit the road again, speeding.
Earlier, at the house, as Kamalamma was being helped into the jeep, an old woman had said, ‘why are you taking her along when she is looking like a mad person?’
‘It seems the mother has to identify the body, only then will they hand it over,’ someone answered in a matter-of-fact manner. These words came back to Kamalamma now.
She must see and identify her son. The thought itself rattled her. Many images of ‘encountered’ corpses on the TV and in the newspapers danced before her eyes. Bullet-ridden bodies, shot in the head, in the eyes, the heart or the stomach, with skin bruised black and blue, as a reminder of police brutality, flies swarming around them…terrrifying, chilling, heart-wrenching sights. How many times did she turn away from them, unable to make herself see? How many times did she shiver in panicked anxiety? Her son … in the same way, bloodied, bullet-ridden, flies -swarming all around him…No, no, no. She shut her eyes tightly closed, willing the images to go away. For a bit, the horrific thoughts seemed to ebb.
‘Kamalamma, look at your baby. It’s a boy, and that too in your first delivery, you are fortunate, bidda’, her mother said laying her newborn next to her. As that first spring of motherly love blossomed in her heart, she forgot the pain and struggle of labour, and looked at her son for the first time, adoring, her eyes sparkling with joy.
After bathing the baby and marking his forehead with a black dot to ward off the evil eye, her paternal grandmother laid him on Kamalamma’s lap. ‘He looks just like your husband’, she teased, playfully pinching her cheek. Shyly, the new mother looked contentedly at her beloved son.
In the hospital, at his birth, when the doctor said, ‘Your son is well and healthy, plump as a marigold,there’s no need for any medicines’ she beamed at her child happily.
One day, when her husband said, ‘Our son is first in his class at school. If he keeps this up, his headmaster thinks he could become a collector when he grows up!’,Kamalamma looked at her son, proudly pleased.
Once when he received a prize at a school tournament, her neighbour commented a bit jealously, ‘Your son is so bright, first in class, first in sports, first in music, first in everything, you have nothing to worry.’ That day she looked so gleefully at her wonderful boy.
When he wouldn’t heed her caution against playing in the hot sun, she beat him on his back, admonishing him, looking at him angrily.
‘Are you your mother’s boy, or your father’s boy?’, she would ask him. He would answer, ‘I’m a mother’s boy’ and hide his head in her belly, cuddling up to her. She would look at him lovingly, stroking his hair.
When her son said, ‘I will study well, become a collector and I will drive you and father in a car’, she looked at him adoringly.
When he said, ‘Amma, I will also fetch water in a small pail along with you,’ she looked at him with love.
‘Your son is hurt, a wild thorn has pierced him, he’s at the school, crying’, when his schoolmates informed her, she ran hastily to him, shuddering as she saw to his wound.
When he was studying in the high school in the neighboring village, a local boy told her that her son had won the first prize in a singing competition. She waited for him to return, eager to share his joy. When he did return, with his prize hidden under his shirt, he told her with a disappointed expression on his face that he didn’t win . She tapped his head with her fist lovingly, and looked at him, delighted.
‘Amma, I saw some marigolds in the garden on my way from school, and I brought some for you. Here, put them in your hair! Quick!’, he said one day, impatient to see his mother wear the flowers he had brought. That day, she cherished her precious boy.
When the whole village had marched into the movement, she looked on as her son marched ahead, leading the people with a red flag in his hands, her heart bursting with pride.
When her son began to sing ‘Relare…’ at the sacred stone of the village, and the women around her talked among themselves about ‘how wonderfully he sings’, she revelled in his glory.
As he narrated the Oggukatha, playfully inserting his own humour here and there, ‘Look at your boy, how he makes up stories’, teased an old woman. Kamalamma looked at her son, laughing uncontrollably.
Once, as hedelicatelynarrated the story about the four children, she tearfully looked on.
As her son stood at the village stoneand delivered an intense speech, Kamalamma saw him ardently.
At night, when they lay down beside each other to sleep, her son would tell her of his dreams of the dawn.She looked into his eyes and saw the embers of revolution, flickering even in the dark of night.
As time passed and repression increased, the whole village stepped back in fear . Her son, however, would only march forward, as she looked on anxiously.
In time, her only child, would tell her that the movement is life itself. That he would leave her behind and cross many faraway lands to ignite with his very breath the sparks of revolution. She saw him off, her eyes full of tears and her heart heavy with the despair of parting.
‘Be proud of your son, Kamalamma. I taught many children, some of them are doing very well for themselves, big jobs and all and some are doing small jobs, some have amassed wealth and property, only your son is doing this. This is my only satisfaction. He is the only one of my students I’m truly proud of’, as Yadayya Sir said this, her son’s image played before her eyes andshe looked at it with wonder.
‘We grew weary and put down our guns years ago, Kamala. We couldn’t see how our leaders were deceiving us. By the time we realized it, we were too old to pick up our guns again. Anyway, your son is on the right path.It is good that he is now holding the gun that his grandfathers had put down’, her uncle said with contentment. She looked at the image of her son as sketched by her uncle ,with admiration.
When the son, who lived the revolution as his breath for the past ten years, came to visitandstood smiling before her, calling her, ‘Amma’, with her heart singing in elation, she saw him to her heart’s content with the eyes that had longed for his image, celebrating him.
Now, many days and years later, they tell her cruelly, ‘we killed your son, come and see him…’
‘Oh dear God!Why did you not snuff out my eyes? Did you bless me with these sinful eyes only so I could see my son like this?’she lamented, all to herself.
‘I can’t see him … no, I cannot. My son is the little red-faced baby my mother laid next to me for the first time, he is the lively, fun-loving little boy, he is the very spirit of the marching crowds, my boy is the resounding voice that reached all corners, he made everyone laugh in the meetings with his humour, he is an inspiring river of songs ….that’s how I shall keep him alive in my memories ….
Oh, god…I can’t see him as a rigid dead body with blood clotted all over and flies swarming all around him. For as long as there is life in my eyes, I cannot see him like that, it is just not possible. Go back,we must go back. I must ask them to turn the jeep around.’
The jeep came to a stop.
‘Chinnamma, get down’, said Aruna in a trembling voice, holdingKamalamma’s shoulders with her trembling hands.
Kamalamma opened her eyes to the vision of a hospital.
‘No, I will not get down, I will not see my son like that. Let’s go. Let’s go back. Now!’, she cried out waving her palms in front of her face, her tears now a relentless waterfall.
‘Peddamma, please don’t say that. We can only take him back if you identify him’, said Venu, his voice thinning with sorrow.
‘No! Let them not give him to me. I can’t bear it, son…’
‘Amma’, Yadagiri spoke firmly, ‘our annais not an orphan, we are all there for him. People in the village await our return, to see him one last time. You must turn your heart into stoneand do this unbearable thing, if only for them.’
As Aruna and Venu helped her out of her seat, Kamalammagot down from the jeep. They held her on either side as she slowly started walking forward, one foot after another. With each step she took, she felt as if she slipped a thousand feet into a bottomless pit.
‘I wish my heart would stop now, I wish my head would burst, I wish my nerves would snap and tear off, then I wouldn’t have to see my son like this’, she thought.
‘You wait here. Venu, let’s go talk to someone inside’, said Yadagiri as he started to walk towards the hospital entrance.
Meanwhile, the rest of them sat down on a bench under a tree, hearts racing and nerves threatening to snap out of anxiety. Kamalamma rested her head on Aruna’s shoulder and shut her eyes, waiting.
A half hour had passed, slow, heavy, burdensome.
When they spotted Venu and Yadagiri returning everyone held their breath, bracing themselves. But Kamalamma’s eyes were still closed shut.
As they walked closer, Aruna, Murari and Sambayya sensed the relief in their manner and slowly released their breath. They felt their hearts grow lighter. They looked at them, questioningly.
‘All okay’ their eyes seemed to say.
Venu held his aunt’s shoulders and began shaking her back to reality. ‘Peddamma, it is not him. It is not our anna. Our annais well. You don’t have to grieve anymore’ he said, elation and relief in his voice.
Aruna brought her palms together and prayed her gratitude, ‘Oh god, we will return your kindness’, she said. She felt as though someone had reached into her heart and taken away all the pain and weight of loss.
‘Who is it then?’ asked Murari, still rattled, ‘Why did they print Anna’s name, then?’
‘You know why? This is all a police act,it is their games and their plots. No men were killed. A woman has been killed’, Yadagiri said, his voice blending fury and sorrow.
It took a few more moments for Kamalamma to absorb this information. All her grief now broke the floodgates and came rushing out of her core. She began to wail loudly.
Everyone looked at her, a little confused. Hearing her wail, some bystanders began to hurry towards them.
‘It is true, Peddamma! It is not our anna. We made sure. We also checked with the journalists’, stressed Venu.
Kamalamma wouldn’t stop crying. She wailed and wailed. The ocean of grief that she had held still between her chest and her eyes all morning, gave way, heaving out of her all at once.
‘Peddamma, it is true! Don’t you believe it?’
Her wailing eased gradually. Finally, she spoke.
‘Which mother’s child she was, I wonder. Her mother doesn’t yet know of her daughter’s death. Perhaps she is living in peace, believing her child to be well, somewhere far away. She must have just had a stomach-full of kali or ganji, oblivious to the burning pangs of her womb.’ She paused to blow her nose, wiping it with the loose end of her saree.
The pause only lasted a brief moment. Her tears flowed again, relentless. ‘I grieved that mother’s grief today. I experienced the pain in my heart that she should have experienced today. Who knows for certain? If tomorrow, my son is killed, perhaps another mother will mourn him in my place.’ There was no end to her sorrow.
‘Please stop Chinnamma, people have started to gather around us, let us go now.’ Aruna tried to lift her up, holding on to her shoulder.
But, she wouldn’t get up. She became indifferent to all around her. Not listening to Aruna,she cursed, ‘Those who said one has died in place of another, let death fall upon their house. Let them prepare for the funereal departure. How can they kill a woman, and then give out the name of a man? Sinful creatures, what do they know of a mother’s pangs?’ Her grief now turned to fiery rage.
And then again, as though some new thought struck her mind, she continued, ‘To think of the mother who even after two days, knows not how her child, the infant she birthed out of her womb, now lay dead somewhere…Ayyo! How terrible! How terrible! Her daughter would have returned to the dirt here, even before her mother had heard of it. She would have become an unidentified, anonymous corpse, unknown to her own kin. Ayyo, bidda! Which mother’s daughter are you, child? Today, you made me weep over your death, you showed me the pain of losing a child. My child, I feel as if you too are now a child of mine.’
‘Calm down, Chinnamma. In another life, and another time, maybe we have known this stranger. That’s why we have all wept over her death as though she was our own.’
‘Not another life, bidda. We are her kin in this life. My son, this daughter, they all walk the same path. That is how we are related’, Kamalamma said as she continued to weep.She seemed to represent the eternal sorrow of many mothers.
By this time, a large crowd had gathered around them and started commenting on the situation.
‘They say she is in that room, that nameless child.’
‘They say she is not even twenty years old.’
‘May the curse of death fall upon them! How could they kill such a young girl, so cruelly?’
‘Vile creatures, they only live to take lives.’
Most of the people in the crowd were in tears with women wailing openly.Kamalamma’s grief became a collective grief.
Some police personnel tried to disperse the group. They thought resentfully ‘While we are sharing sweets and celebrating that we killed one of them, howcan these people cry and mourn? Why such an outpouring of grief?’
And thus, that collective grief became an act of great defiance.
***
(Dedication: For Damayanti, the comrade who was ambushed and killed in a police firing on the Andhra-Orissa border on 30-3-2003, whose martyrdom inspired this story.
For Vijayakka, who, giving me a kiss, when I wrote ‘MetlaMeeda’, said, ‘I reserve my kiss for another story’, and who passed away before she could keep that promise.)
***
Glossary
Bidda: The word ‘bidda’, literally ‘child’ conveys much more than the meaning itself in Telangana. It is a show of love, affection and deep familiarity with a younger person and often packs a feeling of great closeness.
Peddamma: aunt, typically mother’s elder sister
Chinnamma: aunt, typically mother’s younger sister
Anna: elder brother
Pedananna: uncle, typically father’s elder brother
Chai: tea
Jeep: The word jeep is used synonymous to any large 4-wheeler or even a small transport vehicle and should not be confused with the actual Jeep automotive company.
Tiffin: The word tiffin, is used in a synonymous way with breakfast, snack or even a small meal eaten at any time of day.
Oggukatha: Oggukatha is a narrative telling of folklore including songs and skits, usually performed in praise of local deities.
Ganji: Ganji is a gruel-like thick white rice water obtained from over-boiling rice in excess water.
Kali: Kali is also obtained while cooking rice by draining the excess water from it and then fermenting it overnight – in short, fermented rice water. This was done in olden days when rice was cooked in earthen pots, it is no longer in vogue.
Translation of ‘EeSokamEndaridi’ (First published in Arunatara, November 2003)
Translated byJabili
