Koman
The rain fell. Sheets of rain that separated us from the rest of the world. A haze of water that dispersed people and sound, trapping colour and light and refracting forbidden desires.
When the rain stopped and there was a lull splattered only by the trickle of water down the eaves, the drip from the leaves, I knew with a start that I had sinned again. That despite being separate, each in a designated space, I the teacher, she the pupil, the distance had dwindled and we had enmeshed, limbs and souls touching fleetingly and yet with the impact of two heavenly bodies colliding. A teacher and student in harmony. I knew, however, that there was more to it than harmony. I feared that she knew it as well. I could smell it in her sweat. Did she in mine? Our bodies longed to leap the distance. This is lust, I admonished my vagrant senses. An aashaan cannot lust for his student. An aashaan must not.
In the afternoon Angela came back for the theory classes. Her eyes were blue and her hair a deep brown. There was a mole above her lip, on her left cheek. Freshly bathed, with her wet hair falling to her waist, she sat before me cross-legged. Her skirt swirled around her like the petals of a lotus. The familiar stranger, I thought.
‘The Madaama is turning into a Malayali girl,’ Sundaran remarked.
I looked at her with Sundaran’s eyes. He was right. Angela was adopting the dress and mannerisms of her new world. She wore her hair like Malayali women do, with two strands drawn from behind her ears and braided into a narrow plait. It held the hair away from her face, exposed the curve of her ears and the line of her throat. Between her brows was a tiny red dot. Her eyes were lined with kohl and anklets dressed her feet. When she walked to the kalari, her
long-legged gait abruptly became the nimble steps of the Indian woman. When she sat with the boys, she remembered to lower her eyes. I am besotted, I thought. This softening of my heart when I see her, what is it?
I tried to stop myself from doing so, but my eyes followed her as she danced the man’s dance. I saw how it enhanced the tilt of her breasts and the arch of her buttocks. Again, the softening within. How could it be?
Now I watched her perform the navarasas, is part of the preliminary routine of the theory session. She is my student and I must remember that, but how can I not feast on the energy she radiates? She loves what she is doing. How can I not love that love?
‘Koman Aashaan,’ Angela’s voice broke through my crazy spiralling thoughts. ‘I know this will sound silly, but I didn’t dare ask Aashaan.’ She spoke in English.
The other boys, her batch-mates for now, paused. Their faces reflected their perplexity. They had understood just one word. Aashaan. Even they realized that the Aashaan she was referring to was not me. The long-drawn vowel of “aa” bore the awe of reverence.
I smiled. ‘Entha?’ I asked in Malayalam. What?
One of the boys couldn’t hold back his curiosity. ‘Aashaan, what is the Madaama asking?’ He spoke in Malayalam.
‘Do your work,’ I snapped.
‘It is one more of the Madaama’s questions. Don’t you remember how she tired out Aashaan last year ?’ In the silence the whisper was amplified.
I groaned. Didn’t the boy know she understood Malayalam? Angela hid her smile. She drew her lips in. I felt the beginning of a smile stretch my lips. Our eyes met and we burst into laughter.
The boys stared. They had never seen me laugh before.
‘What is it?’ I asked, wiping the amusement from my face. This would not do, I rebuked myself sternly.
Angela placed her palms sideways on the ground. ‘Why are the sides of the feet used? Like this? Rather than the flat of the feet?’
‘What she wants to know …’ I translated her question into Malayalam, turning her query into a lesson. ‘Anyone?’
The boys stared at a point behind my ear. I sighed. Could standards really have dropped so much since my time? Or were the
boys not interested enough?
‘If we placed our feet flat on the ground like in bharatanatyam, for instance, the impact would be brutal.’ I stood up and performed a step. Then I turned my feet sideways. ‘The steps in kathakali are vigorous. This is a masculine dance. Even the slowest of compositions has an underlying vigour. Think of the damage it would cause the eyes and spine, the vital organs. With your feet placed sideways, the impact is gentle and it gives the steps a lightness.’
Angela nodded and turned to her book.
Rain fell. The questions didn’t cease. She was like I used to be. A vulture, I thought, picking between the bones of kathakali. How? Why? When?
‘Sometimes you have to forget all the questions and let your mind slip away. Ignore your doubts and become the character. If you let your mind dominate, then you will be Angela playing a character and not the character,’ I said. I was repeating the words with which Aashaan had once chided me. I looked at her bent head. I was once like her. Is that what drew me to her? When I saw her, I saw a reflection of myself. Was this love? To seek in someone a mirror image of one’s own hopes and dreams, one’s own soul?
My head ached. I knew I was unhappy, but I couldn’t understand the desperation I felt.
Rain fell, ushering shadows into the late afternoon. Angela rose and put on the light. The naked bulb glowed. It caught the glint of her gold stud. I felt my breath catch. She lights up my world, I thought.
Karkitakam passed. So did kanni. Two months of knowing Angela, and yet I know nothing of her, I thought. She is the crown I wear as part of a vesham, precious and sacred, inviolable and, despite its beauty, a burden. The weight of this crown will snap my neck. The sanctity of our relationship demands that I keep her at a distance, but how much longer can I restrain myself?
Why did Aashaan do this to me, I asked myself every now and then. And if he knew, he would be furious. I sighed.
Then I sat up with a start. Where was Aashaan? It was almost two months since I had seen him. Every now and then I told myself that I ought to go and visit him at home. But the pace of my routine
left me with little time.
This weekend I would go to his house. He was probably lonely …and drunk. I felt guilt coat my tongue. Bitter, acrid guilt.
For the first time I began to understand Aashaan’s anguish. Without a vesham, a kathakali dancer had no place.
Later, and for as long as I lived, I would never forgive myself for abandoning him. ‘It isn’t your fault,’ she told me again and again. ‘It isn’t neglect that did it. He knew. Don’t you see that? He knew that he would never dance again.’
‘But if I had been there, I would have been able to talk him out of it,’ I said.
‘Could you have got him a performance? Even if there was someone willing to listen to you and take the risk of having him play a vesham, do you think his pride would have allowed it? Don’t do this, Koman. Don’t blame yourself. Let him go. It is sad, but you must respect his decision.’ Angela laid her hand on my arm.
I realized that for the first time she had called me by name and not Aashaan.
I covered her hand with mine. I felt the need to cling to someone. I wanted to lay my cheek against her breast and weep. Each time I shut my eyes, on that darkened screen, the image appeared—Aashaan hanging from a beam.
I was in the middle of a class when Gopi, the pettikaaran, came looking for me. ‘There is a man here from Aashaan’s village. He died early this morning,’ Gopi said.
His eyes filled. The pettikaaran and Aashaan had known each other a long time. Gopi had transformed Aashaan into so many characters. He probably knew every wart and wrinkle on Aashaan’s face.
I felt a leaden weight settle on my brow. ‘What happened?’
The boys and Angela paused in the middle of a kalasham. I turned on them furiously. ‘Who asked you to stop? Go on, finish the sequence and then scene three from Uttaraswayamvaram—
Gowri
,
Gowri …
I have to go now. I expect you to continue as if I were here. Do you understand?’
Gopi and I walked towards the office room. ‘I am going to see him,’ I said. ‘Will anyone else come?’
Gopi nodded. ‘The principal has called for a taxi. Some others are coming as well. The man said the panchayat president is trying to hush up the whole thing. He was a drunk, but every one respected him. When he was sober, there was no one like him and never will be …’
I stopped mid-stride. ‘What do you mean, hush up?’
Gopi looked away. ‘They found him hanging from a beam in his house. The maid found him, in fact, this morning.’
‘But how? Wasn’t anyone else in his family there?’
‘What family? His wife died some years ago and they had no children,’ Gopi said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
I felt guilt rail its fists against me. I had burdened Aashaan with my worries, real and imaginary. My relations with my family, my dreams, my speculations about characters and interpretations, but I had never once asked Aashaan if he had demons of his own, burdens I could have helped lighten if not alleviate. I had been so wrapped up in myself. If I had known, I would have brought him to my house and looked after him. But Aashaan hadn’t wanted charity. He hadn’t wanted to lose his dignity. It is better to be dead than a veshakaaran without a vesham, he had said again and again. And Aashaan had no vesham left. On stage, or in life.
I watched a distant nephew light the pyre. The flames leapt and burnt. Are you at peace now, Aashaan, I asked.
The flames cackled, hissed and spat in reply. It could have been Aashaan answering me.
In my home by the river, I knew a remorse that tore my soul. No matter how much I tried to rationalize Aashaan’s death, it was hard to not grieve. I sat on the steps leading down to the river and wept.