Story That Must Not Be Told , livre ebook
168
pages
English
Ebooks
2012
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement
Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement
168
pages
English
Ebook
2012
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
18 septembre 2012
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789351182436
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
18 septembre 2012
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789351182436
Langue
English
Kavery Nambisan
The Story That Must Not Be Told
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Dedication
Prologue
Part One. Simple Simon
One
Two
Three
Four
Part Two. Sitara
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Part Three. Simon s Folly
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Part Four. Sitara
Nineteen
Twenty
Part Five. Suffering Simon
Twenty-One
Part Six. Sitara
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Part Seven. Simon
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Part Eight. Simon and Sitara
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Epilogue
Simon s Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Read more in Penguin
Copyright
About the Author
Kavery Nambisan is from the Coorg district of Karnataka. She graduated from St John s Medical College, Bangalore, and did her surgical training and FRCS in England. Since then she has devoted most of her working life to practice in rural India and has worked as a surgeon in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. She is the author of several children s books and novels. Her latest novel, The Story That Must Not Be Told , was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008 and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012.
By the Same Author
ALSO BY KAVERY NAMBISAN
The Truth (Almost) about Bharat
Mango-Coloured Fish
On Wings of Butterflies
The Scent of Pepper
The Hills of Angheri
For Kalpana Sharma (she will know why) and Karthik Sivaramakrishnan (he may not)
Laws thereof are set before us
In the heavens they move.
-Sophocles in Oedipus Rex
Prologue
Simon has a preference for silence. These days the only friend he can relish talking to is Thangam. His guru, friend, adviser, cat.
Simon sometimes thinks of the strangest things. But always, he thinks.
In the two years since he moved into his apartment, rising early has become an obligation-not joy-and the alarm clock an essential evil. For some days now, however, the hollow sound of a tin can bumping along the road has been his wake-up call. It is ahead of the screechy alarm, rescuing him from its bossy, wicked ring.
Simon has two hours of quiet before Chinna the maidservant, Velu the errand boy, and then the enemy, invade: the cement mixers, steamrollers, tractors, jeeps and bikes; the contractors, carpenters, masons, plumbers, welders and drillers, labouring men, women, children, screaming infants and a battalion of stray dogs stunned to a relative hush by the din of housebuilding; a din which pounds well past sundown so more suckers like Simon can exchange twenty-two lakh rupees for the unruffled dignity of Vaibhav Apartments.
This morning, Simon is worried that the tin can has forsaken him. Then the land breeze nudges it out of some pothole where it had rested for the night. Sheltered inside the mosquito net, he lets his senses drag along with the bruised can as it makes the five-hundred-yard stretch towards Vaibhav Apartments where he lives in Flat 3C. The guiltless can will soon be flattened by some juggernaut truck; or be kicked into a ditch from which it cannot climb out.
Today, Simon s thoughts are a soothing, limpid green. He sits in the balcony holding the still-warm cup and lets the coffee attend to his insides. Thangam has taken the chair opposite. Between man and cat there is understanding.
The coffee has turned out perfect. It reminds him of Harini and makes him weak and trembly. For forty-two married years, at seven every morning, she brought coffee in two steel tumblers and sat with him in the front room. They drank together, he luxuriating in the rare silent moment of the day when his wife chose not to speak; she, utterly still, her almond-shaped eyes busy with thought. Ten minutes, and Time for your walk, she would say, reaching for his empty tumbler.
A few years after marriage, Harini introduced yogic breathing into their morning routine and it led to Simon s increased olfactory perception. When he went to the toilet half an hour after the morning cup, his urine smelled strongly of coffee. Later in the day, needing more of the beverage, he would sneak off to the corner cafe for the secret pleasure of coffee that must always be drunk in unhurried calm. Viewing himself in the mirror behind the billing counter, he would primp his silver hair, the fulcrum of his vanity.
Even now, good coffee brings tender memories laced with guilt. Thoughts of his good wife might easily have captured him for an hour or two but the pain in his left shoulder and a sharp twinge behind the knees pull his mind back to a recent adventure. Pressing his back against the chair, Simon relives every moment of the week-old, thirty-six-hour-long journey. The memory of it aches fresh in his limbs.
Thangam is holding Simon fast with his eyes, listening to his thoughts, prompting him into a confessional:
I, Simon Bosco Jesukumar, seventy-four years old and still going, am an old man. Old men are sad, prickly, weak-bladdered and bombastic. Their lungs creak, their teeth wobble and they emit rude noises. They shuffle and snore and, at least some of them, masturbate. They never come up with a single original idea. Not one novel idea and still hell-bent on handing out advice. Some old men believe they have a moral obligation to posterity.
As old people go, I m a spring chicken. The thing is, after a certain age you start to live two lives. The cranked-up, ever-lengthening memory life, and the present-day existence which gets more embarrassing by the hour. You travel between two worlds-five minutes here, ten minutes there sort of thing-all the time. Inevitably, if you decide to tell stories, the skeins get interlinked.
This is not going to be a story about old men, dragging tin cans, south Indian filter coffee or the ghostly presence of dead wives. It is about a rising star called Sitara.
It gets told my way.
Part One
Simple Simon
One
In the two hours of quiet between waking and noise, massaging the tender spot behind one knee, I remember.
The ritual of the two-yearly trip to Delhi has remained the same. Within the parameters of my son Mitra s solicitous care and his wife Rashmi s maternal control, they re kind. They escort me where I want to go and have friends over to be nice to me.
The duration of my stay is never discussed. I simply know when they begin to wilt under the strain and oblige them accordingly: Time to book my ticket, you think?
Calls are made and the ticket purchased. A surfeit of affection for the remaining days and Mitra will drive me to the station.
Oh! How did I produce such a son? A PhD in chemistry and a sinecure scientist in the department of agriculture; a benign intellectual with a passion for hijacking conversations. Rashmi is a calamity, an indestructible plastic rainbow with maddening virtues as firmly in place as her chikan-work saris.
My daughter Sandhya is different. Whatever her flaws, she does not tell me what to do.
This time-giving and taking a little-my behaviour at Mitra s had been above reproach. As usual, armed with the spiral-bound manuscript, I made my round of publishers. Rashmi s driver took me to little office rooms jammed with forgotten manuscripts, computers and uninterested-looking copy editors. In the last few years there had been several encouraging signs, with one publisher offering to take it if I paid a part of the printing costs. When I m with these publishing people, I m nothing if not courteous and a little sly. Only once, a toad of a publisher made me see devil-red. He told me that this classic of indisputable brilliance which my wife had taken forty-two years to complete wasn t worthy of publication. I was angry. I referred to, among other things, the pedigree of his forefathers before stamping out of his office.
I know that somewhere sits the publisher who will spot the riches in the 759 pages of Harini s magnum opus. Riches! That s an irony, considering the subject matter. Meanwhile I m content to do the rounds, return to Madras and come back in two years with the manuscript (bound as always in stiff yellow chart paper).
My stay in Delhi over, I boarded the train. The journey promised to be restful. AC two-tier, lower berth. I leaned on the recoiling softness of a railway pillow, inhaled the cucumber breath of Rashmi s sandwiches, read one of the Short Stories from Goa and waited for the chaiwalla. Watching him dole out see-through chai in trembling thin plastic cups, I declined. There would be a fifteen-minute halt at Mathura where I could fill my flask.
A longish wait at the signal on the outskirts of the town and the train pulled into the station. Clutching my flask and my red shoulder bag I hurried to the tea counter. A flat-nosed youth poured tea from a kettle, expertly measuring the level in the cups with his eyes. Yet again trembling plastic but a tea of better quality.
Two or three? the youth asked, plucking the flask from my hands. Four, I said and could he rinse the flask with hot water? The boy obliged but when I wanted him to go easy on the sugar, he shrugged. Readymade.
I was ferreting for change in my wallet when I heard the train and saw passengers jump smartly back into the carriage. Run! Hands beckoned, faces screamed. Flask in hand, I stood motionless as coach after maroon coach of the Madras-bound Express blurred past.
I was utterly disgusted with myself. Screening my eyes against needles of light through the chinks in the platform roof, I took stock. I had with me the flask and the red shoulder bag with my toilet things and Harini s manuscript. The suitcase with my clothes and several packets of dried apricots and nuts were on the train and forever lost. (I did not even have the sense to complain to the station master.)
It could have been worse.
The station bubbled. Hawkers, porters, sadhus, agitated ticket-men and the journeying multitudes. A withered old woman, balancing
