Sharath Komarraju's Blog, page 52

Sunday Story 21: The Man Who Knew

MADHAVACHAARI SHOOK ALL over as he stepped into the dimly lit office. A faint tinge of cheap lilac room freshener worked its way up his nostrils. Two orange lamps were lit behind the seated figure of Velayudhan, the man’s long face shrouded in shadow. The desk at which he sat was neither ornate nor expensive. Just four slender legs and a thin plank of wood resting on top, fastened with a nail at each joint. There were only two chairs in the room, one on which Velayudhan sat, and the other fa...

Sunday Story 20: Doghouse

WHEN I CALLED HIM on the phone and asked for directions from Dhavaleshwaram to his house in Palem West, Mr Yug Awasthi laughed heartily. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you that.’ I might have asked him to recite the salient properties of the Binomial Theorem.

‘All I know is that you catch any bus that leaves Dhavaleshwaram,’ he told me helpfully, ‘and tell the conductor you want to get off at Rudrakshapalem.’

But what was I to do after that? Did he not know the way to his own...

Sunday Story 19: Ladies Hostel

DOCTOR ANNAMALAI HID his contempt with practiced ease. The man sitting across his consultation desk, Lingababu, was a near stranger. Besides the fact that he ran the ladies’ hostel on third cross road in Palem West, Annamalai knew little about him.

He was a squat, square-shaped man with a round head. He sported two silver-coloured rings: one around his nose and one at the top of his left ear. His thick mop of hair was black and ringed with curls. He had a nervous, fidgety way of looking a...

Sunday Story 18: Under the Circumstances

I asked Mother where you went. I don’t think she knows.

(I don’t think I know either.)

Sometimes she says you went to sleep.

(I did.)

Sometimes she says you went to a place far, far away. A place where you cannot return from.

(I did that too.)

But it’s a nice place, she says. I think she is lying about that, though. Because she cries. Like a lot. When she is doing the dishes. When she sits by me and watches me eat. When she is giving Father his lunchbox.

Which is funny. ...

Sunday Story 27: Reclaiming Ellamma

‘SHASTRI,’ SAID AZGHER to Rama Shastri as the two of them sat on the granite floor of the shivalayam, under the biggest of the five bells hanging from the roof just outside the inner sanctum. The February sun was about to set, and a steady breeze blew their way from the direction of Ellamma Cheruvu. It had been a hot and cloudless day, one on which Azgher had had to cycle his way around Palem to fulfil his agarbathi orders. On such days his thighs ached, his knees clicked, and his lower back fel...

Sunday Story 26: Disruptor

UNCLE BHALERAO HAD a way of whooshing into rooms. He was a large man, and not even his closest friends would call him a nimble mover on two feet, especially while carrying his black umbrella, and taking utmost care with the ends of his cream-white dhoti to keep it off the muddy paths of Palem. Like any man with much to lose, he navigated his surroundings with care and caution.

Despite this, after he had come and gone, witnesses had been known to describe him in words usually reserved for formidab...

Sunday Story 25: English Teacher

WHEN KALYANI, THE first-ranking student of Class Ten walked into the staffroom, Matthew put aside the paperwork he was pretending to work on, and cast a wary glance around himself at the empty desks and chairs. It was the second week of June, the fourth day of the school year. The old round clock perched above the Sarvepalli Radhakrishna portrait on the wall showed ten minutes past five. Both the tube lights in the room were on because low rainclouds had gathered in the sky, bringing with them a...

Sunday Story 24: Lest We Remember

‘I don’t need to tell you the exact memory.’

‘No.’

‘Is there any way you can know – after I am gone?’

‘No.’

‘The machine – it doesn’t have a log or something? It doesn’t remember?’

‘It doesn’t remember.’

‘Okay. Okay. So I go in there – and take the chair – and slide my head into the slot – heh, this feels like I am reciting a lesson to a teacher – and then when I am ready – I flick the red switch. Correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if I feel like I cannot –’

‘You touch the green button and I will close the switch fro...

Sunday Story 23: Panchayati

PRAKASH PAI, THE forty-eight year old sole proprietor of Savitri Studios – the second-biggest film production house in the state of Andhra Pradesh, headquartered in Hyderabad – glanced at Sister Agnes and thought to himself, again: heroine.

The priest with the triangular head was a character artist; perhaps he could be trusted to play the role of a comedian in a low-budget affair. The mullah – skull cap, powdered white beard, shifting green eyes that never stopped to focus on anything for longer ...

Sunday Story 22: Sampangi

THROUGH THE SQUARE window of the kitchen of Babai Hotel, Sampangi looked out at the seating area. Babu Ram was taking the woman’s order, and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry about it. She waved her arm in that urban way of hers, and tilted her head just so, in order that her hangings glinted in the afternoon light. Her legs were crossed, of course, underneath her maroon-coloured skirt that came down to her ankles. Just the other day Sampangi had dreamed of this woman and Babu Ram dancing in the...