Thammaiah - 12951 Express

Thammaiah was the youngest of eight siblings and the only one living. He had four children, three daughters and a son. By God's grace, all of them were alive. While his son was now settled in Cyprus, two of his daughters were in Bombay and the youngest in Delhi. Like his father, he owned a small but respectable carpentry shop in the small village where he was born and he had never stepped out of the place, not even when his son got married in Bombay. In fact, he was terrified of leaving his village, and no power could persuade him against this. One day, this fear would prove fateful. Thammaiah was his grandfather’s favorite as a young boy. His father was a good carpenter with a flourishing business, but he lacked imagination. He was very good at making simple and functional furniture; he guaranteed they would last a lifetime and his promise was good. However, it was his grandfather who was God-gifted. He could take any piece of wood and breathe life into it; he would create the most exquisite pieces – bunches of grapes with leaves, angels with wings, faces of lions, well-adorned paws for tables or chairs. They were carpenters for six generations and theirs was the only furniture shop in the region. People from far-flung villages would come to place orders and almost all of them would order at least one piece that would be carved with some motif or the other. Thammaiah took after his grandfather. As a young boy he would spend hours on a piece of wood, chipping away to make something unusual. His father berated him for wasting his time but the old man would encourage, helping him hone his skills. ‘I will live on in your hands,’ he would tell the young boy. He would teach him to make intricate designs and Thammaiah would better it with his strong and steady hands. As time passed, they became a team; the old man would carve out the designs and his young apprentice would add the finer details. Finally, when the old man died, he bequeathed his own instruments to his protégé. Thammaiah, now a strapping young lad, got married to a tender-aged Nirmala. They would have had more children had he spent as much time on her curves as he did on those he created out of wood. The only time he would seek out his wife was when his muscles and hands ached due to the long hours he spent holding a wrong posture, gripping his tools. And instead of being aroused by her hands kneading away at the sore muscles, he would drift off to sleep. When finally Nirmala died after being married to him for over 35 years, this was the one thing he would miss most about her. His elder daughter took over the responsibility of pouring the warm oil on his shoulders after her mother’s death, and with her nimble fingers, she would ease the stress out of the stiff muscles. As it happened, this lasted till she got married and moved out. To Thammaiah’s credit, he got his daughters married off into respected and educated families in big cities. His son eloped to Bombay in his late teens and, five years later, married a woman three years older than him and moved out of the country – Cyprus to be more specific. He would visit his village and family once every three or four years and never for more than three-four days. He would come alone, leaving his wife and two sons back in Bombay. ‘This is no fit place to bring my children,’ Rudolph would say when his father asked to see them. Though he would meet his daughter’s children once a year, he yearned to see his son’s children as well and it is this desire that would be the undoing of Thammaiah. By the time Thammaiah was over seventy, he started to slow down, one suspected more due to his loneliness than his failing health. His son had not been to the village for over ten years now and his daughter’s visits were few and far between. Most of the work was now done by the people he had taught. Though he was taken good care of by his neighbors and his faithful man Friday, his health kept deteriorating. Often he would forget to eat his food and would wander off into the woods. Sometimes when he sat down to work he would just sit and stare at his tools with a faraway expression on his face. He would sit down for his bath and weep like a child. There were times when he would be told his daughter or son was on the phone – he would walk up to the table, pick up a magazine and start to read, ignoring the cackle coming from the instrument. It was a very worried and irate elder daughter who finally landed up at the village to take Thammaiah to Delhi. He resisted as best as he could but when finally he was told Rudolph would also be there with his two sons, he relented. His few belongings were packed in a small suitcase in which he sneaked in his tool bag when his daughter was not looking. Thus, Thammaiah set out for the biggest voyage he could have ever imagined. Bombay scared him; he spoke less, smiled less often and clung to his daughters like a lost child. With each passing day he would look sadder and he nearly stopped eating. His daughters and sons-in-law started to get worried and took him to one doctor after another performing some test or the other. He was fed more medicines than food and only once in a rare while would he brighten up and launch into a one-way animated conversation, most of which was lost on everyone around him. The one thing that he missed was his cigarettes, for he was not allowed to smoke or buy them anymore. Once he did steal from his daughter’s purse but by the time he reached the shop, he had lost the money; devastated, he returned home after six hours to an extremely agitated and distraught family. From that time on, someone or the other kept a watch on him lest he repeated the feat. He would make do with stubbed out butts in the ashtray when no one was looking. Finally, after a month, he boarded the train to go and meet Rudolph’s sons. It was quite an entourage – his elder daughter and her husband, five children, three of them his youngest daughter’s, and Thammaiah. An equal number came to see them off at the station and they almost got separated on two occasions. Suddenly he perked up for it was like the fair at the village with so many people, all shouting at the same time and no one listening. It was a big picnic for Thammaiah; they all ate with the tray perched on their seats. Surreptitiously, he dropped his medicines behind the seat and felt elated. By nine, all of them were fast asleep except Thammaiah who kept getting bursts of images as soon as he closed his eyes. Once when the train stopped he quietly got off and, seeing a man smoking, walked up and asked for a drag. The man was kind and bought him a cigarette. He tried thanking the man and blessing him but he did not understand and he himself did not know what the man was trying to say; he only understood when the man said his own name and asked his. When the man turned away, Thammaiah panicked and dropping his cigarette scurried back into the train and onto his seat. They were all asleep and no damage was done. But he could not sleep; for a long time, he lay, his body rocking to the rhythm of the train. It stopped once and he considered getting off to see if the good man with a cigarette was still there but before he could make up his mind the train started again. This time he hummed the song that his wife used to sing to her children when they were small. Suddenly, after a long time, he could see her face very clearly, as if she was standing next to him. He did not make the mistake the next time and when the train stopped again, he was ready and got off. He looked around and did not see the man with cigarette anywhere. He started to walk along the train, hoping he would meet that man. The station was more or less deserted at that hour except for a few tea sellers and passengers either getting off or getting in. He heard the hoot and looked up. He had to do something, he knew, but he could not recall what. There was a train in front of him and it had started to move slowly; he knew there was something that had to be done. He tried hard; screwing shut his eyes tightly, he tried to remember. The train was moving faster now. He heard a shout and he looked up and he saw the man with the cigarette standing at the door waving. He heard him yell out his name. The panic started to rise in him; bile rose up to his mouth choking him and he wanted to throw up. His eyes burned, blurring his vision. What was it that he had to do? Why was he so afraid? He wanted to scream but his mouth was full of his own vomit. He watched in horror as the train slipped out of the station.