Kiran was only eight years old when the incident occurred. He was walking home tired and hungry, sweeping the tar road with his eighty rupees worth new shoes as he walked on completely exhausted. His school bag, he hung it up his head and lunch box was suspended to his right shoulder. The year was 1984; India had just won the world cup. Kids were playing cricket in every street and by lane of the city. The cycle repair man was pulling the air filled tube through a bucket of water to check for the air leaks, the tall man Kiran’s neighbour stood by the repair man’s side counting the leaks himself, lest he be cheated. ‘If I can reach the end of the incline before the limping man nearing it from the other side of the road, I will get first rank in class this summer’ Kiran challenged himself. He reached the incline that would ease his harrowing walk from the school to home; he descended down the incline with measured relief and took a left turn at the end of it. He left the limping man behind him and walked home triumphantly.
The lady in the small squared box like structure sat inside it knitting a cloth tightly affixed between two circular rings. She was a kind woman, sometimes, she would let Kiran buy 5 paisa chocolate on credit; she was an acquaintance of his mother. The drainage canal to his left was gurgling something phosphorous, a piglet was frolicking in it, while a couple of very athletic men caught the piglet’s mother, trapped him and suspended on a wooden shaft. Hung between the shoulders, the men carried him away with the pig writhing in pain suspended upside down by its legs. Kiran reached the crossroads where the man with only two fingers left on his left hand was sitting by the dilapidated structure. The tiles before the house were broken; windows hung loose and limp, walls were damp and brownish. The man had pale yellow eyes that dropped out with wrinkled skin hanging onto them caustically, he suffered from chronic illness, neighbours gossiped about his death. ‘If the street lamps are lit by now, mother would prepare a special dish tonight’ Kiran challenged again, walked homewards with his eyes sewn shut and imploring for the wish to come true. He neared his home, the street lamps were lit, and air was dusty and smelt of pesticide. He looked in the direction of the man with steel cylinders and a hose pipe in his hands, all the kids were running after him as he choked them with the trail of pesticide. The Municipality was spraying to eradicate malarial parasites from the sewage canals that were stagnant all through the year.
Kiran’s home had barely enough room for all the six family members. His father was an auto driver; mother a house wife who worked with a tailor during the day. They tried for a boy and in the process ended up facilitating Kiran with three elder sisters, all of them one year older than the preceding one. They had two rooms, one kitchen with an area in the corner behind curtains where they bathed and cleaned, another where they slept. The plaster on the walls broke and Kiran liked to peel at the scales, they had an old transistor which the father turned on every night for news. A lonely table fan oscillated hither and thither throughout the night spanning all the six members’ breadth, bulbs were suspended from the wooden shafts of the roof that creaked and dusted when someone walked upstairs. Rain trickled down the walls and electrocuted all the members once or twice on various occasions. The father bought a ceiling fan, but refrained from using it after a sad morning. The morning after, a dead sparrow was found in their bed sheets, the ceiling fan had cut its wings and left badly scarred its breast. Poor baby birds from the nest above the central wooden shaft cried all day long with no food, so Kiran’s mother fed them with nuts. And the family ceased to use the ceiling fan.
That night, Kiran woke up at two past midnight to find his neighbours fighting; the water tanker had come, people were clamouring near the water jet, most of them very agitated that none of them stood in a queue. And in the fierce battle for water, people fought with their buckets, tumblers, plastic water holders, just about everything. ‘If the limping man spills water from the tumbler in his hands, then I would be the highest run getter in tomorrow’s match with the other colony fellows’ with that monologue, Kiran stood transfixed watching the man intently. ‘Yes’, Kiran clasped his hands firmly against his chest. The limping man had spilled water. Kiran thumped his feet on the ground exuberantly, but the act bothered the limping man as he dropped the tumbler and savagely eyed the inhumane creature before him; such was his portrait of Kiran. While in the crowd and in the frontline defending oneself with a hand and inching closer with the other hand towards the water hose, a lady from the neighbourhood hurt herself severely. The lady, in a flash extended her arm with her pot as soon as the other lady’s pot was filled; it happened so fast the lady who was withdrawing let go of her pot and it landed on the former’s toe and the pot broke. The lady palpitated with pain, and did not let anyone get closer to her. Neighbours, some took the side of one who broke her pot and some for the woman in pain. While this was happening, rest ran feverishly between the tanker and their homes filling water in as many empty tumblers, glasses, buckets and pots as they can lay their hands on.
The hysterical neighbours went on arguing violently, they screamed, spat and bullied each other while the tormented lady fled into her home. The one with the broken pot also left, but the battle went on, the torch bearers on both the ends exhausted all their venom and went to bed. The next morning being a Sunday, Kiran woke up late. His father walked him to the nearby salon; his mother gave him a plastic bucket to leave near the street end tap. The tap was already ornamented with colourful tumblers, pots and buckets. Kiran left the one in his hand by the roadside, a man pulled out the toothbrush from his mouth and spat into the sewage canal right next to the tap, a kid ran sluggishly and cleaned the cricket ball in the pool of water by the tap. The heavy banyan tree on the other side of the cricket ground drooped its branches awkwardly on a hut beneath. The batsman struck the ball quite well, but it skated into the dilapidated house through the opening in the door. All the kids rushed to help the lonely fielder who was presently craning his neck through the opening to see where the ball had landed. The house had a sinister look to it, word was that an old lady stayed in the house and would only come out on a full moon day.
Kiran’s return from the salon was greeted with a crowd gathered before his home. The lane had a series of houses with roofs laid out of small grooved ceramic tiles. The tiles were laid in the shape of an overhanging thatched roof hut so the rain water won’t stay afloat the roof. Only one house had cement slate roof, a series of slates were laid one over the other, the crest of one would sit firmly on the trough of the one beside it. The owner of that house was an auto driver himself; he had a teenage son, sort of a rowdy. The slight altercation broke out between kiran’s father and the cement roof owner. Kiran’s father accused the latter’s rowdy son of misbehaviour with the former’s elder daughter. Kiran waited outside while the crowd gathered and watched the two parties pouncing on each other with harsh criticisms of their backgrounds. The rowdy teenager’s character was slightly of dubious quality, but the cement roof owner was disconcerted with the accusations, for he defended his rowdy kid ‘your daughter is a nymph, she would go to any extremes if she can get away with impunity’ he retorted. Kiran’s father lost his temper, his face was flushed with blood; he pulled at the other’s collar and banged his head against the auto that was parked outside. Neighbours pulled them apart, the cement roof owner left the scene swearing to vanquish the other, kiran’s father shouted out loud that the rowdy teenager’s actions and reputation stand to vindicate his daughter.
The unpleasant turn of events bothered everybody in the house; each of them excused themselves to breathe some fresh air. Kiran went to play cricket, the father on his trips with the auto rickshaw, mother to the wet grinder fellow two streets away, the two sisters also left to learn sewing with a lady who ran a sewing shop in the neighbourhood. Kiran bowled, fielded, scooped out the ball from sewage canals with coconut cords, broken bottles or sticks and cleaned them in the pools of water near the area’s tap. And, it was his turn to bat; the kid standing behind the pole with charcoal marks that indicated three stumps slipped and fell into the ditch while attempting to keep the ball from behind. He bruised his knee caps and his arms, the commotion aroused the lady from the house behind the ditch; she launched into the field with her corrosive tongue and ensured that everyone fled from the scene.
The lady’s house was slightly on the rise, and she had a rose tree in her house. Kiran’s mother bought roses from the lady for quarter of a rupee; she usually sent Kiran to do the buying, so the lady recognised Kiran and immediately mellowed and with a pitiful face called Kiran. She enquired if Kiran had been playing for a long time; Kiran seemed puzzled with the enquiry. The lady locked her door and walked Kiran homewards. At first Kiran assumed that the lady was annoyed and might be complaining to his mother, but as they got closer and others from the neighbourhood rushed in to grab Kiran and steal him away from the scene, he grew suspicious. He could see from a distance that his sisters and mother were sitting on the floor huddled together, crying their heart out.
The limping man walked into the cement roof house, Kiran’s eyes followed him. In haste the limping man fled the scene through the backdoor and Kiran slipped into the lane, watched him from a distance. The rowdy teenager met the limping man on the other side, they hush-hushed something imperceptible to Kiran. They notice Kiran and as if panicked by Kiran’s noticing them, slipped through the small lanes and ran away in a fitful frenzy. Meanwhile the crowd before Kiran’s house had upped the clamour. The crowd suddenly parted and his father came running down the lane, his steps haphazard, and with a muffled thud he banged into the floor and lost consciousness. As crowd lifted him and someone shouted for an auto rickshaw, Kiran was snatched away by a close friend of his father’s. There were others too. All the auto rickshaw drivers, friends of his father’s grabbed hold of the unconscious body and lodged it in an auto. The mother learnt of what had happened and rushed to her husband’s side. Within minutes, the body was rushed to a nearby government hospital with the mother and Kiran by his side, while the sisters sat before the dead body of their elder sister who doused her body with kerosene before burning herself.
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