we walk on blistered feet.
Hands on the stone well, looking deep into the water and hearing the steady plink plink
of the water dripping from the bucket, he wondered how it would feel for the water to fill his lungs, or how they would get him out of the well, when it was all over.
In the end, it was the money that saved him. He knew they couldn't afford to dig another well, if this one was a mess.
--
Rajan knew he had failed the exam as soon as he left. The petroleum distillation had turned into a black, sticky tar in the bottom of the glass funnel and nothing he could do would restore it to the clear orange it was supposed to have been. He didn't know what went wrong - was the funnel dirty? Did he forget a step? Five hours later he walked out of the hall and white stars kept crashing into each other in front his eyes, legs like a sailor; the taste in his mouth like metal, but sweet.
His life was over. His father would arrive, walking precisely and parting the mud roads from the train station to his college like a newly sharpened dissection scalpel. His father would arrive, and kill him. Or worse. He couldn't imagine worse but he knew it was possible.
There was the last time - arriving home to their small flat where the cold pinched at the soles of your feet, with the small sweaty square of questions in his hand, clutched and wrinkled like a used handkerchief. The same dizziness and general miasma of too much expectation hammering inside of his brain; his father snatched the paper and smoothed it out.
In an unexpected show of affection he spoke to Rajan - "Tell me, boy, what did you write for this first question? 'Discuss the use of metaphor and simile in Wordsworth's poem The Daffodils'"
Rajan froze. Daffodils. Yellow. Clouds drifted and the smell of pencils being sharpened in the examination hall. The yellow of marigolds being crushed by feet at the Murugan temple where he prayed fervently before every test. Whooshing of the field hockey stick hitting a ball.
"I....I ... the question was... simile...I wrote.." he stammered uselessly and in one almost-elegant swoop his father removed the belt, seasoned with sweat and sliding effortlessly through the belt loops.
All he could remember is the sound of the ball, hitting the stick whoosh whoosh whoosh as his father shouted and he slipped without stammering into a fog of red, red sleep.
---
He was their only hope. There were four more, younger than him - two to be married eventually. He knew how they scraped and scrounged to pay his college fees and the 75-rupee-a-month scholarship was all that was holding him there.
His father had already told him - he would go abroad, to Europe or Canada or even the United States, to make money for the rest of them. This was his future, his obligation.
You idiot! You devil ascended from hell! I curse you to Saturn, the shameful planet! How dare you go and fail your examination like this? Don't you know the future of this entire house rests on you? What did I do to be cursed with such a useless firstborn? What?
Rajan's ears echoed with his father's taunts as he walked away from the well, slowly into the village house of his uncle.
--
They had locked him in the empty room with Kannan, the youngest of his uncle's sons. Kannan threw the cricket ball on repeat against the lime-washed walls as he heard his father heatedly arguing outside the room.
Something important was going on. Kannan was unconcerned and bored, only wondering if Big Muthu would agree to play on their cricket finals tomorrow - they really needed a better batsman.
The room was emptied of everything. Save for a thin reed paai mat on the floor, all the light fixtures, wardrobes, bedsheets were removed. They knew he would try and there wasn't even a single rafter beam to hang from.
Rajan just looked out the window dejectedly to see Kamakshi and her twin Govind playing Ramayana in the dirt; soon they were wrestling wildly over who got to play the coveted Hanuman part and he found himself engrossed, her angry childish screaming mixing with the ping ping ping of the cricket ball and his mother's sobbing outside the door.
He had the strange calm of someone about to be executed, watching everything with a detached clarity, colours and sounds strung together into some slightly-skewed calliope of events.
His uncle and his mother's sister's husband, his Periappa, had saved him in the end. They offered to secretly pay his college fees for the next year, scraping together what little they had from overtime work at the textile mill. Nobody would tell Rajan's father about the failure.
--
Winter of 1967 and it is snowing thickly in Fredericton, New Brunswick as Rajan steps off the plane into Canada. The Montreal Canadiens would win the Stanley Cup.
The first time he picked up an ice hockey stick, shivering underneath his new polyester jacket, all he could feel was the thick heat of his uncle's village.
of the water dripping from the bucket, he wondered how it would feel for the water to fill his lungs, or how they would get him out of the well, when it was all over.
In the end, it was the money that saved him. He knew they couldn't afford to dig another well, if this one was a mess.
--
Rajan knew he had failed the exam as soon as he left. The petroleum distillation had turned into a black, sticky tar in the bottom of the glass funnel and nothing he could do would restore it to the clear orange it was supposed to have been. He didn't know what went wrong - was the funnel dirty? Did he forget a step? Five hours later he walked out of the hall and white stars kept crashing into each other in front his eyes, legs like a sailor; the taste in his mouth like metal, but sweet.
His life was over. His father would arrive, walking precisely and parting the mud roads from the train station to his college like a newly sharpened dissection scalpel. His father would arrive, and kill him. Or worse. He couldn't imagine worse but he knew it was possible.
There was the last time - arriving home to their small flat where the cold pinched at the soles of your feet, with the small sweaty square of questions in his hand, clutched and wrinkled like a used handkerchief. The same dizziness and general miasma of too much expectation hammering inside of his brain; his father snatched the paper and smoothed it out.
In an unexpected show of affection he spoke to Rajan - "Tell me, boy, what did you write for this first question? 'Discuss the use of metaphor and simile in Wordsworth's poem The Daffodils'"
Rajan froze. Daffodils. Yellow. Clouds drifted and the smell of pencils being sharpened in the examination hall. The yellow of marigolds being crushed by feet at the Murugan temple where he prayed fervently before every test. Whooshing of the field hockey stick hitting a ball.
"I....I ... the question was... simile...I wrote.." he stammered uselessly and in one almost-elegant swoop his father removed the belt, seasoned with sweat and sliding effortlessly through the belt loops.
All he could remember is the sound of the ball, hitting the stick whoosh whoosh whoosh as his father shouted and he slipped without stammering into a fog of red, red sleep.
---
He was their only hope. There were four more, younger than him - two to be married eventually. He knew how they scraped and scrounged to pay his college fees and the 75-rupee-a-month scholarship was all that was holding him there.
His father had already told him - he would go abroad, to Europe or Canada or even the United States, to make money for the rest of them. This was his future, his obligation.
You idiot! You devil ascended from hell! I curse you to Saturn, the shameful planet! How dare you go and fail your examination like this? Don't you know the future of this entire house rests on you? What did I do to be cursed with such a useless firstborn? What?
Rajan's ears echoed with his father's taunts as he walked away from the well, slowly into the village house of his uncle.
--
They had locked him in the empty room with Kannan, the youngest of his uncle's sons. Kannan threw the cricket ball on repeat against the lime-washed walls as he heard his father heatedly arguing outside the room.
Something important was going on. Kannan was unconcerned and bored, only wondering if Big Muthu would agree to play on their cricket finals tomorrow - they really needed a better batsman.
The room was emptied of everything. Save for a thin reed paai mat on the floor, all the light fixtures, wardrobes, bedsheets were removed. They knew he would try and there wasn't even a single rafter beam to hang from.
Rajan just looked out the window dejectedly to see Kamakshi and her twin Govind playing Ramayana in the dirt; soon they were wrestling wildly over who got to play the coveted Hanuman part and he found himself engrossed, her angry childish screaming mixing with the ping ping ping of the cricket ball and his mother's sobbing outside the door.
He had the strange calm of someone about to be executed, watching everything with a detached clarity, colours and sounds strung together into some slightly-skewed calliope of events.
His uncle and his mother's sister's husband, his Periappa, had saved him in the end. They offered to secretly pay his college fees for the next year, scraping together what little they had from overtime work at the textile mill. Nobody would tell Rajan's father about the failure.
--
Winter of 1967 and it is snowing thickly in Fredericton, New Brunswick as Rajan steps off the plane into Canada. The Montreal Canadiens would win the Stanley Cup.
The first time he picked up an ice hockey stick, shivering underneath his new polyester jacket, all he could feel was the thick heat of his uncle's village.