They went to the terrace and talked about ordinary things.
Teachers, cricket, people they knew. ‘Nothing deep.’ After it got dark, Somen walked on the narrow ledge with his arms stretched out. He slipped, almost fell. He turned to Unni and they laughed as if it was a great joke. Later, there would be many times when they would treat death as something funny. When they saw a funeral procession on the road, a body being taken for cremation, they would giggle.
Sai began to meet them every evening. On the terrace, Unni and Somen showed him the open window in the neighbourhood through which he could see a very old man try, for hours, to achieve sex with his old oiled wife, who hit him and kicked him to save herself from certain death.
The three boys went on long walks or on Somen’s scooter, at which times Unni showed Sai the weird people he knew – a short, brisk man who worked in Canara Bank, who locked his extraordinarily beautiful wife in the house every morning when he left for work. An architect who had suffered a head injury and after that started drawing flowers that do not exist on earth. A middle-aged woman who had the ability to open the dictionary at exactly the page she wanted. A scientist who was part of a team that was researching the desire in homeless madmen in Madras to direct traffic.
Unni and Somen then introduced him to the nun who had taken the vow of silence. Later, they took him to a slum in Choolaimedu to show him a very old man with flowing silver hair, who walked along the narrow unpaved lanes humming in the Carnatic classical style, pointing his finger at the lumps of human excrement deposited at short, equal intervals on both sides of the alleys, his pitch dramatically increasing or decreasing depending on the size of the shit. People stood outside their huts and watched without anger or amusement as their own shit determined the music of the wandering hummer.
‘I thought Unni and Somen were trying to tell me something,’ Sai said. ‘I thought they would soon explain everything to me.’ But that did not happen, and as the days went by Sai began to get impatient. He kept asking Unni, ‘When are you going to show me how to go to the next level?’ Unni never answered the question. He would laugh and maintain a knowing silence. But Sai was relentless. One day Unni asked him, ‘What do you want me to say? What is it that you want to know?’
‘What is everything, what is the secret, what is going on, why does the universe exist?’ Sai said, which made Unni and Somen laugh hard. But later that evening, as Unni and Sai left their friend’s house together and walked down the narrow lane, Unni whispered, ‘It is dangerous, Sai. We must not talk about such things.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is dangerous.’
‘Why is it dangerous?’
Unni did not say anything for a while. They had left the narrow lane when he spoke again. He said, ‘Somen is trying to get his hands on a bit of
Mycobacterium leprae
. Do you know what that is?’
‘No.’
‘It is the bacterium that causes leprosy. Somen wants to become a leper, he wants to sit on a roadside without fingers and toes and die the most painful death. He wants to beg to survive, he wants to destroy every bit of ego in him, he wants to crawl on the road, Sai. Why would a boy want to do that? Because ego is what stops us from seeing. What you want to see, what we all want to see, is not easy to achieve. That is the thing about this path, Sai. The path we are seeking does not pass through beautiful Himalayan mountains, the path does not take us to tantric sex. It passes through unimaginable pain and misery. Have you wondered why I meet Somen so often? Because I want to ensure he does not harm himself. That is why I come here. But you know what is the scariest thing of all? I don’t know why I am stopping him. I know what he wants to do to himself is the right thing. That is what is scary.’
Sai was so terrified and confused by the moment that he ran away at a full sprint, he just ran and ran. But, after a week, he returned to Somen’s house because he could not resist being with them. As the weeks passed he felt that Somen and Unni were beginning to transform.
‘Many times they would just sit without uttering a word, sit like that for hours. One day, Somen told me, very softly and with great sadness in his voice, “Sai, some days I want to go to the terrace and scream, just scream, ‘People, can’t you see, can’t you see.’” I asked him what exactly did he want the world to see, but he and Unni just looked at each other and they did not say anything. A few days later, I saw Somen with a large, very sharp knife. He kept patting his wrist with the edge of the knife. He did it gently in the beginning but slowly the knife started landing on his wrist harder and harder. I got so scared I ran to the door. That made them laugh.’
One evening, Unni told him that the Superman comics
contained many secrets, which could be understood only if he practised the Superman pose – the flying pose. ‘He made me lie on the floor, on my stomach, with my arms stretched and head looking up. It was tougher than I thought, but I lay like that for God knows how long. When I could not bear it any more, I got up and went to find them, they were on the terrace. They burst out laughing when they saw me.’
In time, Somen started asking him to go and buy groceries, post letters, drag his scooter to the mechanic, even clean the ceiling fans with Somen’s mother trying not to laugh. ‘They treated me like a servant. Can you imagine that? The exams were just a few weeks away. The board exams, JEE, the regional college exams, all the exams were just a few weeks away and here I was cleaning ceiling fans.’
When his servant phase began, Sai was reminded of the kung-fu films in which Zen masters made their disciples perform all kinds of menial labour. He imagined that he was being drafted as a disciple. He thought Somen and Unni were trying to break down his ego so that he would begin to see the world through their eyes. So he endured all the humiliation and hard work without resisting. But, finally, some events helped him escape from their grasp.
On Marina Beach one Sunday evening, Unni and Somen started swimming, and kept going farther out. Sai sat on the sands and watched. Slowly, he began to get nervous. People on the beach started gathering to watch until they could not see the heads of the two boys. Sai sat there and cried. An hour later, a fisherman’s catamaran arrived with the two boys, who looked peaceful. ‘I heard the fishermen say they had never seen anyone swim so far out. By the time they found the boys they were too tired to even move their arms, but they were floating on their backs and laughing. Unni told me later that they knew
this part of the sea well, they knew that they would be rescued by one of the many fishing boats that were going home.’
A few days later, they did something more dangerous. ‘They told me that they wanted to show me something and took me to a railway bridge near Perambur.’
It was a single-track rail that ran over a canal, an isolated spot where nothing much happened for hours and then, suddenly, a train hurled past at full speed. Sai shuddered visibly when he recounted the incident. They convinced him to stand with them on the track and wait for the train to arrive. They stood in a tight line, in a huddle, holding each other’s waists.
Unni was in the centre. He was holding Sai’s waist tight. ‘I didn’t know how strong he was until that moment, he had an iron grip.’ The game was simple – they had to stand waiting for the train, let it approach them and they would jump off just a moment before it hit them. Sai stood looking at the horizon, waiting for the train. But nothing happened for a while. Then he heard the train’s hoot. He shut his eyes, clenched his fists and waited. He could hear the hoot grow louder and louder, and then the sound of the train on the track. He opened his eyes, but he could not see the train. It struck him then that it was coming from behind. When he turned to look, the train was just a hundred metres away. ‘I wanted to jump off but Unni was holding me so tight I could not free myself. He and Somen were laughing. I started hitting Unni but he did not let go. I thought I was going to die with them. I thought they had come there to die.’ Sai shut his eyes, he could feel a great breeze on his back, and then he remembered flying. Somen and Unni were on the side of the track, rolling on the rocks and laughing. Sai was too stunned to even move.
That was the moment he ended the friendship. He stopped going to Somen’s house. He ignored them in class. ‘They
didn’t care. They didn’t ask me why I was not talking to them. They just didn’t care. I did not speak to Unni after that. When I heard that Unni had killed himself, I was not surprised. Have you wondered why you have not been able to meet Somen Pillai?’
‘Why?’
‘Can’t you see?’
‘No.’
‘Because he is dead.’
‘And his parents are hiding the fact? That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘There is a good chance his parents don’t know. Maybe he just vanished one day and they don’t want to admit that their son has gone mad and abandoned them. I think his bones are at the bottom of a canal under a railway bridge.’
‘You say that, Sai, because you wish it. If I meet Somen Pillai and he talks to me I’ll figure out how much you’ve not told me. Isn’t that true, Sai?’
Sai let out a sad chuckle. ‘I’ve told you everything. Except one bit. And I am going to tell you that now. If I had told you this before, you would not have let me talk about anything else.’
Sai was right because what he had to reveal, very simply, was that Unni’s final comic,
How To Name It
, was meant for him. The only thing Unni hated about cartooning was filling up the dialogue bubbles with text. He found it tedious, probably the reason why he usually devised stories that did not need prose. But, apparently, several of his comics did need text and for that he used Sai as a mule. What Unni used to do was finish his comics, leaving the bubbles blank, and write out the story on a piece of paper.
‘I was supposed to read the story and make a rough draft of
the storyboard and show it to him for approval. He would make a lot of corrections and I would write another draft and another until it was good enough for him, then I would sit and carefully fill up the bubbles in capital letters. But many times, after I finished, he would just tear up the comics and throw them away. He was not happy with most of his work.’
Sai then asked how Ousep had got hold of the comic. As Ousep was explaining, the boy did something unexpected – he collected his cheap shoulder bag from the floor, stood up and looked set to leave.
‘Sit down, Sai.’
‘I have to leave.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘How were you supposed to fill in the dialogue bubbles when you didn’t know what the story was?’
‘I knew the story. He had written the story and given it to me but got down to finishing the comic only weeks later. I never saw the comic, until you showed it to me.’
‘Sit down, Sai, we have just begun.’
‘I know what you’re going to ask me.’
‘What am I going to ask you?’
‘You are going to ask me, “What is the story of the comic, where is the story of the comic?”’
‘Where is the story?’
‘I gave it to Unni’s mother this morning.’
A soft moan may have escaped Ousep’s lungs. ‘Why would you do something like that, you idiot? You go and give something that I have been searching for to that woman!’
‘Because the story is about her. It is a private matter from her life. I have a duty to the memory of Unni to protect his mother’s past.’
‘Wait, wait, wait, Sai. Wait right there.’
‘Unni’s comic was about something that concerned his mother. I will not tell you what it is about. You must ask her yourself.’
‘Sai, you’re making a mistake. What’s the story?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘But he told you. So his father can surely know. What was it?’
‘Unni said that his father must never know because that is what his mother wishes.’
‘Sai, sit down. Sit down and tell me more.’
‘Do you know that Unni went missing for three days?’
‘No. I didn’t know that.’
‘You didn’t know anything that happened in that house.’
‘Why did he go missing? Where did he go?’
‘Why is the comic so important to you?’ Sai asked, walking back a few steps.
‘Because, a few hours after he posted the comic to you, he was dead.’
‘And you think there is a connection?’
‘Obviously.’
The way Sai looked, it killed something inside Ousep. The honest compassion of a fool, how humiliating that is. ‘Is that why you started probing his death again?’ Sai said. ‘Is that why you did everything you did in the last few months? Because you found this comic? I feel sorry for you. The comic has nothing to do with why he died. If Unni’s mother ever tells you what the story is, you will understand what I am saying.’
‘Tell me the story, Sai.’
‘I have to go now. I’ve told you everything I know and everything I can say. I don’t want to see you again. You and Unni and Somen. I am done with all this. I am an ordinary person, I want ordinary things. I don’t want to know the truth.
I don’t want to see beauty. I am just another boy in Madras who wants to escape to America.’
FOR THE REST OF her life, Mariamma Chacko would tell herself that it was a mistake to let Unni know what had happened to her when she was twelve. For all his swagger he was just a child, and as his mother she should have protected him from himself. But then Unni had been persistent. He had pieced together many of her monologues and figured that at the heart of her indignation was an incident in her childhood. He asked her almost every day what had happened. He was relentless, and in a moment of weakness she yielded. They sat on the kitchen floor and she told him about that day. A happy twelve-year-old village girl without a grouse, that was how she had begun, that was how she had described herself.
She is in her village, walking down the south stream at the foot of the hill towards a giant rock from where the half-naked boys dive into the water. She has walked alone on the banks many times and it is an unremarkable part of her life. She cannot see the rock yet but it will appear after the bend in the stream. There is a familiar stillness all around her and she tells herself that she likes the peace of the hill more than the fuss of the big cities. She sees someone approach, a young man with smooth fox-like strides. When he gets closer, she realizes it is Philipose, a man who is described in at least eight villages as the ‘talented young man’. He reads from the Bible on Sundays, sings in the choir, organizes boat races, heads protest marches to the collector’s office and demands black-tar roads for the rubber hills. She smiles at him. Unexpectedly, he stops and starts talking to her. She smells liquor on him, so she begins to
walk away. ‘Wait here and talk for a while,’ he says. She says she has to go. But he holds her hand and says, ‘Why are you in a hurry today?’ She tries to extricate herself from his grip but he holds her tight. She begins to scream. He covers her mouth with his palm and pushes her down on the ground. His hands begin to grope her, tearing her clothes. She struggles but he is too strong. She manages to poke his eye with a stone. As he howls, she screams too. People run towards her. Philipose flees. Nobody chases him. ‘It is Philipose,’ they say. ‘It is Philipose.’