You are the wind beneath my wings

Mr.Weerasuriya watched his wife picking wathusudda with their daughter, Sachini, a six year old. Upeksha, his wife picked the flowers and cast them into the plastic bowl the child held in her hands. When she saw him watching them, she smiled at him the same dear smile she had given him when they had first met at the school some 15 years ago. It was clear that her youthful features had begun to fade faster than his. But, he knew they had grown dearer still to each other. And Sachini`s arrival into their lives had increased their conjugal bliss almost thousand-fold.

Mr.Weerasuriaya, in his early thirties, was a lecturer in Accountancy at Sabaragamuwa University. He was of medium height with an intelligent brow, sharp eyes beneath dense eye-brows and a small mouth that occasionally broke into a tender smile. His complexion was more dark than fair, but he was certainly not coal-black. Upeksha, his wife, was fair and buxom with a fine mouth, large brown eyes and cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. It was with her smile that she had bewitched him, he remembered with a smile. The folded newspaper lying on his lap, be now began to reminisce dreamily.

He met her while they were both studying for their A/Levels in Commerce stream. She outdid him at the studies and at the exams. In fact, it was from her that he got further clarifications about some concepts in Economics and some sums in Accountancy. When the results had been released, it was obvious that they were both qualified for university entrance. And she had outranked him. But so poor were their parents that it seemed that neither of them could afford to enter university and continue their higher education.

Upeksha, the unselfish girl, then suggested that he enter the university and told him she would secure a job at a garment factory. It, she assured him, would help him continue his studies at the university. First, he never liked her suggestion, his masculine pride forbidding him to depend on her and wanted to find a job. But, as she pressed him continually, he gave way and entered the University of Kelaniya to read for a degree in Accountancy. Despite her parents` warnings and admonitions, she got a job as seamstress at a garment factory nearby and gave him over ¾ of her monthly pay to meet his expenses. As he studied at the university, he was constantly driven by the need to excel at his studies as he always felt for her over her generosity. His parents too helped him in the small way they could. His hard work eventually paid off and he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kelaniya, which offered him the chance to join the academic staff as a probationary lecturer. Later on, he joined Sabaragamuwa University closer to his home town.

Overjoyed at his success, his parents brought him proposals from wealthy families, ready to offer whopping dowries. His mother was in earnest and constantly tried to persuade him to forget Upeksha and get married with a richer and more educated girl. But, he never heeded her reasoning and went on to marry Upeksha. Although his mother still chided him for his decision to marry her, he was more than certain he had done the right thing and he would never regret his decision.

And they were a happy family now. He knew it was love, pure love and not marriage that bound them to each other so strongly. It was Upeksha he knew who was the wind beneath his wings. He loved her for that so immensely, so completely. It was not the sort of love that evaporated with time; rather, it drew them closer and closer still to each other and strengthened their ties as time went by. Such love, he knew, worked wonders.

He felt a spray of cold water on his face, which awakened him from his reflection and saw Sachini grinning at him with a bowl of flowers with her smiling mother behind her.

 

The Ruler

I seated myself upon the threshold with my back leaning against the perpendicular wall, and stretched my legs forward, balancing myself on its narrow space. I was in the habit of sitting here in this posture whenever I had to ruminate on something that deeply affected my emotions or caused great rumpus in my mind, disturbing its peace. And I began to recollect what had had happened at the school or in the classroom. In reality, nothing noteworthy had happened at the school. But, I was feeling guilty, I felt like a man who had just committed a horrendous crime. I really was terribly depressed over the consequences to come.
It all had happened just when the social studies teacher had left the classroom. Had she stayed a little longer at the classroom, I thought, I would not have got myself into so much trouble as I had done now. Or if the mathematics teacher had come to the class on time, this terrible thing would not have happened either. ‘Had I stayed home today’, I thought remorsefully, ‘I would have been devoid of all these fears and worries.’ ‘But, what is the point in talking or thinking about different conditions or circumstances in which things would all have happened for better?’ I said to myself, ‘what happened has happened.’ Yet I was getting more and more anxious as I thought what was going to happen the next day. The worst was not over, it was yet to come.
I felt down in the dumps as some people put it. At the worst, I would be severely beaten by Rasanga`s father, that tall, lean, placid man with a stormy temperament; at the best, I would be thoroughly humiliated by him. ‘If the worst came to the worst’, I shuddered to think that, ‘I’d be both leathered and embarrassed.’ The future presented to me such a grim prospect that there was more or less danger in every possibility I considered.
When I had returned home at about three o’clock in the afternoon, I felt I was not myself. Usually, I would have stripped myself of the school uniform and put on a pair of shorts; then I would have sprinted to the well and had a brief wash; thereafter I would have wolfed down my lunch despite that I took lunch at the school too. But that day was different. I did take my school uniform off and put on a pair of shorts. I did have a brief wash too. I did so lest mother should reproach and perhaps punish me. But I had lost my appetite altogether; I did not even want to look at my lunch let alone eat it! Mother sounded rather incredulous when I said I would not eat. She said it was quite a remarkable thing to hear me refuse to eat my lunch and that it augured well for the whole family. If only I was in a mood to share her laughter!
If she knew what was going to become of me, her adorable little son the following day, she would indeed sympathize with me. But how could she know about my problem, when I myself remained so silent? She sure was to be totally ignorant about it for she was no clairvoyant. And when a fellow is in such great trouble as I did, does it matter whether he misses one meal or ten meals? How can a man enjoy himself today when he is so sure that tomorrow will bring him such great catastrophe?
I had heard that some people got killed when they were beaten, particularly if the blows landed on their heads, injuring their brains causing hemorrhage in the brain. ‘Tomorrow’, I thought with great fear rising in my heart, ‘I might be beaten to death.’ If I got killed in a skirmish with Rasanga`s father, the whole school would come to my funeral. My friends would have a great time eating biscuits and drinking soft drinks. I remembered how we had enjoyed ourselves at a funeral of a friend’s father. I had drunk several cups of soft drink and pocketed some twenty Mary biscuits to eat at home (in addition to what I had eaten at the funeral).The principal himself would make a speech at my funeral expressing his deep sorrow over my tragic but preventable death. No, he would not beat me to death, for if he did so, he would be put in the jail and would have to remain imprisoned for the rest of his life. Yet, he would embarrass me to death, and I should be made the laughing stock of the whole school.
‘Why do I think such gloomy thoughts over what tomorrow will bring for me?’, I thought while wondering if I could not be a little less pessimistic about my predicament. But the more I thought, the surer I felt that I was closer than ever to an ineluctable catastrophe. Oh! How so
stupid it was of me to do such a silly thing! I must be as mad as a hatter, no, still madder! Now I was beginning to realize why my wise, old father often called me a donkey. His calling me a donkey had always offended me, but now I was more convinced than ever that he was absolutely right in his judgment and that I was, in reality, a donkey in the human form. How is it possible that the parents can see in advance what their children are up to? It may be because they are older and wiser, or perhaps it is also possible that they can remember how they acted while they themselves were children and the little follies and stupidities they committed as children. It amused me a little to think that father was seeing himself as a child in me and that he himself must have been no less stupid in his childhood; this amusing thought lifted my gloomy spirits a little. But, presently, I relapsed into the old, fretful state of mind.
I shuddered to recall what Rasanga had told me at the school. He had told me that when they were living in Mahawa, a naughty boy in his class had broken his pencil box. He had complained to his father about that boy. The news of the broken pencil box, he told me, had infuriated his father. So both the son and the father had waylaid to capture the little culprit and settle the scores. In a fit of anger, his father had hit him on the head so hard that the boy in question had swooned. Rasanga had admitted to me quite frankly that he had been scared out of his wits by the blow his father had dealt that boy. I had felt curious to know if that boy had been killed in that deadly skirmish with his father, but could not ask him that since the teacher had come to the class. But, I guessed that he must have been killed by that blow. Now the disaster to happen manifested itself to me in such vivid detail that I shivered in fear. That he could have exaggerated the facts of the incident did never cross my mind.
It was one of my inveterate habits to sit in front of the television from 5.30 in the afternoon to at least 9.30 in the night. There were many days when I watched TV for even longer time. My parents would often berate me for my addiction to the television which my father had rechristened as “Devil’s box”. Many a time he had threatened to smash it or sell it off to some fancy buyer. But it was pretty obvious that he was only blustering out. No sane mortal would ever buy an over-used black and white television with a broken knob, a twisted aeriel, and a dusty tube. Besides that, it needed the expertise of a rocket scientist to tune it to get clear pictures; I alone knew how to tune it setting the aerials at the right angle to get at least moderately clear pictures. That day, however, I was too depressed to watch TV, and opted to remain on the bed in my room under the pretext of reading a book. So great had been my father`s consternation at my absence before the television in the parlor that he himself came to my room and asked half-mockingly and half-anxiously, ‘Are you ok?’ I nodded my head to imply that I was well. I feigned to be so engrossed in the book I was reading that father presently left the room. To be honest, I felt great fear that he would dig deeper and force me to creep out of the shell into which now I had withdrawn.
At the dinner-time, unlike on all other occasions, I did not take my plate to the parlour, but sat at the table pecking at the meal. Father did seem to have noticed my change and cast an inquiring glance at me. What if he began to interrogate me? The very thought that he would grill me gave me quakes since I had known him to be a relentless interrogator. And he was about to pose a question to me when the grandfather asked him about the fertilizer subsidy offered to paddy growers. As he was expatiating on the matter of fertilizer subsidy of which I had hardly any idea, I slipped out of the kitchen, like a stealthy cat, into my room. Soon I was on the bed, with the quilt thrown over my body, covering it from the head to my toes. But all night I lay tossing on the bed, and was unable to catch even a wink of sleep….
To me the following day was more or less the day of Last Judgment. I felt like a criminal to be hanged in a short while. Yet I knew I had little choice but to go to school, since my parents would never abide my staying home on a school day even for the fairest of the reasons. The rule was so stringent that I never dared to transgress it. I literally trembled as I thought, ‘This may perhaps be my last day at the school.’ It was, however, both frightening and comforting: frightening because I would no more be living on this earth; comforting because I would no
longer have to get up so early, go to the school, and get punished by those horrible, unkind teachers for neglected homework…
I was about to cross the road, when I saw Rasanga and his father coming from the right on a scooter. I could not venture to look in that direction, and felt my heart beginning to beat faster than ever….As I crossed the road, the previous day’s incident flashed across my mind in the vividest details. I had been toying with Rasanga`s ruler, a precious gift from his aunty who had just returned abroad. Suddenly I had wondered if it could be bent in two placing it between my thumb and forefinger. I tried to bend it in two, and was applying pressure from both ends to bend supple ruler, and make the two ends meet in the end when Rasanga warned me against breaking it. And I replaced it in his pencil box. Yet soon when his attention was focused on a neighbor, narrating some adventurous story, I resumed working on it. Suddenly, to my consternation, it cracked in the middle and broke into two parts. I was beginning to wonder what really had happened when an angry Rasanga yelled, ‘You, you broke my ruler, you stupid donkey…’ and threatened to complain the matter to his father. I made many an attempt to mollify his anger but to little avail….
When I was about to enter the school premises through the huge iron gate, trembling like a fish out of water, I heard someone calling me. Turning back, I found Rasanga signaling me to stop. He and his father too were crossing the road and were coming towards me; I knew that the moment had come. That decisive moment between life and death! My fears were doubled, tripled and quadrupled….I felt like running away from them as far as my short legs could carry me. Yet, how could I even walk let alone run when my feet were so stamped to the ground? I had no doubt that the worst was just a few inches away from me; and the gap was getting narrower and narrower with each second passing. I heard the sound of water rushing through the gutter, which ran by the wall encircling the schoolyard. What if he picked me up and plunged me headlong into the gutter? I looked in terror at the gurgling gutter and felt sure that there was water enough to drown me, a dumpy fellow…
Now that they were as close to me as ever, I felt it could happen at any moment. I tried to smile but felt as difficult to move my lips as if they had been sewn together. To my vast surprise, that lean, tall man asked Rasanga with a genial smile, pointing at me, ’Is this your friend Thanula?’ Rasanga nodded with a smile. ‘Glad to meet you young man we’ve heard a lot about you from Rasanga.’ I wanted to speak out something for the sake of politeness but felt too astonished to do so due to that anticlimax, so I tried to grin as broadly as I could. To be frank, I was still suspecting that the volcano would be erupted sooner or later. But, soon he wished us a good day and walked back to where he had halted the scooter….Now that we were going towards our classroom, talking about the Test match between Sri Lanka and India to be commenced that day, I asked as casually as if it was the world’s most ordinary thing, ‘Didn’t you tell your dad about the broken ruler?’ I used the phrase, ‘the broken ruler’ as if to imply that the ruler had broken itself or that it had happened to be broken and that I had no connection whatsoever with regard to its` being broken. ‘Yes, I did’, said he, ‘and he told me that such type of rulers were available even here and promised to bring me one today itself on his return from the office.’ Oh! I sighed with great relief, and hoped he did not notice my sigh….

Blood!Blood! Blood!

Kathirinahami seated herself on the pila and looked into the distance, her stare blank. The weedy compound where their house was located in looked more like an abandoned paddy-field than an unkempt home-garden. The mango tree opposite the doorway was being smothered by the creepers of pila, draining its life. Nature, it seemed, had willed it to die in the stranglehold of pila. Had she also willed this woman to die in the stranglehold of insanity?

She was in her mid fifties, tall and had a thin triangular face. With sunken cheeks and bleak eyes and streaks of grey hair, she looked wasted, care-worn. Her jutting front teeth were stained with betel juice as well as her lips. The expression on her face, however, was serene. Was it possible that the silent water always ran deep?

Sapin, her husband, returned home from the paddy field half a mile from their home. He was but an andha goviya(a quasi-farmer), that is to say, he aswaddumized a paddy-field that belonged to someone else. His landlord offered him ¼ of the harvest as a reward for his efforts. From an acre of arable paddy-yard, this amounted to a substantial quantity. Still, his share was far out of proportion with the sweat he shed to aswaddumize it. But, he rarely complained about it. Incidentally, some 25 years ago, it had belonged to him.

He was 60, a stout man with thick-set features. His hair almost grey receded on the forehead. He was almost as hirsuite as a grizzly bear and black as pitch. He was precisely the picture the word ‘demon’ painted in children`s mind. He too used to have a demonic temper in his youth. But, he had so mellowed with age that he rarely raised his voice now. He knew he had suffered a lot due to his ungovernable rage.

As he was about to put down the mammoty on his shoulder, Kathirinahami stared at him, wide-eyed and yelled, ‘Blood! Blood! Blood! You see it is blood! Blood! Blood!’ As she shrieked, her whole body shook and hair fell over her face. It was as if an evil spirit had taken possession of her. He walked over to her and calmly shepherded her into the house as she kept yelling,‘Blood! Blood!Blood!’ He laid her down on the bed covered with a coarse thunhiriya mat and picked up a bottle of ointment which had been lying on the table facing the bed. Taking off the stopper, he poured a thimbleful of oil onto his palm. As he massaged it into her forehead he remembered the day when he had brought all this misery upon her and upon himself.

It all happened one Saturday almost 30 years ago. They had just been married and were both young and healthy. They raised a puppy. Because they did not cage it or had it chained , it used to roam around the neighbourhood. Their next door people who were not on good terms with them always complained about the puppy sneaking into their kitchen, peeing and turding in the garden etc. That fateful Saturday, when he had just returned from the paddy-field, he heard his neighbour`s wife Sisilin chasing away the puppy. When he reached the fence in the backyard where the sound came from, she exploded, ‘Why do you rear dogs unless you can keep them caged or chained? Can we always put up with your bloody dog?’ Without saying so much as a word, with cold eyes, he regarded the puppy now lying curled by the pila near where the mammoty stood. The devil came over him, and his fury knew no limits. He covered the distance in just four strides and picked up the mammoty. He held it aloft and with all the force of his demonic fury, he bore the sharp blade down on the puppy`s neck just as it looked up at him,’Blam!’ So effective was the stroke that its neck was cleanly severed from its body.

With his fury yet to subside, he lifted the headless carcass, dripping blood by its hind legs walked over to the fence and showed it to Sisilin, ‘Are you happy now, bitch?’ who ran back back crying. It was at the same moment, Kathirinahami who had been taking a bath at the well got there. She had heard Sisilin scolding but had not given it much thought as such altercations were little foreign to them. The moment she saw the bloody carcass in her husband`s hand she froze on the spot, and shrieked, ‘Blood!Blood!Blood!’

Sapin heaved a deep sigh as he heard his poor woman mutter ‘Blood!Blood!Blood!’