Which Is The Way? A clerical job for four months in a wholesale rice shop. No job for six months. Three months in a jewelry shop. No job for four months. Two months in a hardware shop. Again for five months without a job. This was the cycle of events for the last four years and not of a worthy mention. Until four years back, I was in a good position with a good job that could take care of my minimum domestic needs. But it was short-lived. I was removed from service consequential to heavy retrenchment in my office. The accrued benefits received from my employer did not last long. Since then it was a swim against the tide with my wife, a daughter to be married and a teen-aged son. I had a good circle of friends in my youthful days, that are presently occupying high positions and I had exhausted all of them for hand loans. I was fully aware of the remote chances of repayment. I fought shy to approach a friend for a second or third time. But pressure on survival or existence had driven me to approach friends again and again and a stage had come that most of them were scared of meeting me and avoided me. I lost all contacts with them one by one. One early morning my wife woke me up to announce, �No rice in the house.� �Why are you worried, it is the case many a time.� I said as it was a routine sentence she used often. I tried to be funny but my voice was not totally audible. However I went pale in spite of myself lying on the bed and still drowsy. �I should go out now. Search for a new source, but who?� I had no idea as to where to and who to but my nerves in the brain were tightened. I got up from the bed and said, �Where is our hero?� �He had gone out.� My wife said casually. �And what is that urgency at such early hours?� �What could he do in the house? He goes to meet his friends.� �Friends? How silly, he goes to meet his friends early in the morning.� I was irritated. �It seems the contractor�s son asked to meet him.� �All the contractors� sons invite all the fools to meet them before sunrise. After all for what? To loiter on the roads.� I was annoyed, but could not say more. It was my incompetence, sheer incompetence. I dressed up within the next half an hour and involuntarily I kept my hand in my shirt pocket. There were only two rupee and a half rupee coins but like a bolt from the blue there was a ray of hope. It was the letter received from an old friend a couple of days back. I picked it out. �This is really the day.� I thought. I read the letter again. And that was the third time I read it. �Dear �Pinako one�, Don�t be scared of this and me and my existence. I am still alive in the capitol of the country. I go to Hyderabad often but I never knew you are residing there. Recently one in our group of �Pinakos� told me that you are there. It is more than two decades since I saw you. Here in Delhi everything is mechanical and my job and life are also mechanical. This time I can�t miss you. I would love to speak to you and know all about our �Pinakos�. I am coming to Hyderabad on 12th. We should meet on 13th morning at my sister�s house in Himayat nagar. It is the ninth house to the right in the lane opposite to the cemetery. Bye Pinako four.� Tears were rolling from my eyes but I controlled. How affectionate, how closer the letter was! It was just like speaking to him in our salad days calling our group of friends as �Pinakos�- and kept the code to us as a secret. In fact there was no secrecy about it, but it was a thrill for all of us in the group. We numbered them, and in the process I had the distinction of getting the rank No one. I still remember our Pinako four, a robust figure that took full half an hour to walk a few yards with difficulty dragging his huge body. He took everything sportive like many in our group. But that was in youth. Now everything had changed. I was thrown where I was destined and providence pushed our Pinako 4 to such a high place that for persons from bottom was not easily accessible. But he was coming to see me and I felt that God Himself was coming closer. It was 13th now and our P 4 must be in his sister�s house waiting for me. I started early on foot from Adikmet because I could not afford buses with what I had in my pocket. I was habituated to walking irrespective of the distance. But I should not appear tired and exhausted and I should be No1 of my younger days and I would take few minutes rest before finally entering into his house so that I looked fresh. For the fourth time I opened the letter while walking and quickly glanced through where he had written our numbers. I was searching for the topic or other matters that could be discussed with him. He had risen very high in stature and might be in knowledge. What would be my answer if he were to ask me what I was doing? Should I tell him that Pinako No 1 has been begging on the streets of the twin cities? Oh, no. I should get into our younger eventful days of our roadside romances and how some girls were teasing P 4 and also me. I recalled the day when P 4 handed over a love letter to his neighbouring girl and the consequential warnings he received from her brothers and also from his parents and the increased teasing by the girl about his massive body calling him �road roller�. If it were nostalgia, my present state of affairs would not crop up. My shirt and pant were also decent enough. I was walking fast but I was not nearing the Himayat nagar circle yet and I increased my speed. �What a fool he is. After all he could have indicated another landmark to locate his house-a pan shop, a post-box, or at least a kirana shop. It�s funny he indicates a cemetery. Would any fool indicate such inappropriate landmarks! I will certainly admonish him not to repeat such writings or indications in future.� It was around nine by the time I reached the Himayat nagar circle. It was mid summer and hot winds were already showing up. Yet I increased my speed further so that I could reach early and could take few minutes rest to wipe off the sweat on my face before I entered his house. Again I was in fix. Suppose he said that he would come to my house. Mine was only a two-roomed rented portion of a house in a congested locality and he should be living in a posh area in a spacious building. I should try that he avoided a visit. But I should at least invite him for a cup of coffee in a hotel, but it was also not possible because of the paltry amount I had in my pocket. Moreover the basic purpose of my visit was to borrow money. Oh God What made You to remind P 4 to write to me- or was it to help me! My heart was beating fast as I was nearing his house. At that moment-Just at that moment, On the left side of the road, and closer to the waste matter bin and in the trash, I saw a beautiful paper! It was a currency note folded into four! I watched it closer and it was certainly a fifty-rupee note! Though I was amused that I could find a currency note as if God had blessed me to overcome my present predicament, I was hesitant to pick it up. Someone might observe me and claim for it. Did it belong to the scootarist that just now passed past over me? Or whether it belonged to one of those coolies just now gathering at the site where a new house was being constructed? Or did it belong to the contractor who engaged these coolies? Whoever lost it, It had come handy for me and there would not be a problem in the house for today and I could confidently at least invite my friend for a cup of coffee knowing well that he would not come out for the sake of a cup of coffee. I looked all way around, confirming that no one observed me, I bent down hurriedly and picked up the note and put it in my pocket with the same hurry! A sudden burst of laughs, sounding mischievous! Laughs with loud clapping of hands! �Hey, you, Drop that down-drop that. It�s ours.� The laughing continued. In a fraction of a second there was a sudden oozing of sweat from my temples. I was ashamed and slightly frightened. I turned my head with a jerk and found four teenagers playing on the road. They were still laughing and surely mischievous and they were about to approach me from the other side of the road. And to my shock and disbelief, I found that one of them was my son! It was a matter of shame and disgrace. I felt like a criminal standing before justice. My son also saw me. Perhaps he might dislike me for having collected money like this and pocketed it. He might have thought, �after all is this the way you make money and supporting us? What do my friends think if they come to know that you are my father?� I dropped the note and disappeared from the place with the quickest time possible. The other boys were laughing and I heard one among them saying, � Old fellow, He is running away.� And the laughing continued It was perhaps a prank schemed and monitored by the contractor�s son and my son might not have expected that his father would fall a prey under his very nose! Anger, helplessness, weakness � It was everything and I could not contain any more. Above all, I was ashamed of the moment when I was caught red-handed in the presence of my son. �Oh, God what a fateful day! I am made a thief before the eyes of street urchins including my son.� I wanted to crash my head against a hard rock and end up on the very road from where my body could be shifted to the nearby cemetery. Now I knew why my friend had given this landmark. I wanted to cry aloud into the cemetery, �Hey you over there, take me in. Burn me alive. I am a fit-for-nothing human being. Oh God, let my heart stop beating.� But the heartbeat continued and I continued my steps towards my friend�s house. I was in helpless state with a primary domestic need. I could not go home with empty hands. I proceeded to reach the ninth house to the right and I stopped in front of the gate and with a deep sigh; I opened the gate and entered inside. There was no one in the verandah and I pressed the calling bell with a shiver in my hands. In a couple of minutes, a fifty-year-old woman opened the door. She did not wait to know who I was but said, �Are you Pinako one? Come in, It�s a funny name isn�t it?. Your friend is my brother. He told me that you are coming now. But he left for Delhi yesterday night by flight. He said he had to go and would like to spend time with you on his next visit. Please take your seat, I will get you some coffee.� �No please no, don�t bother.� I came out from my friend�s house immediately. His sister must have thought that it was the name given by my parents after my birth! Should I thank my friend who named me as Pinako one and affectionately calling me with the same name or should I be cross with him for not being available in spite of his invitation. Or did he deliberately avoided me after hearing my plight through our old friends here? This was also possible. I heaved a sigh of relief because I escaped the chance of his knowing my present state and even if met him I might not have asked him for money. I didn�t know. I entered the main road and by the time I reached the place where I pocketed a note, there were no boys except the busy office going public. But the place taught me a lot. Again I reached home on foot and laid down on the bed with weakness. My wife asked me, �Are you successful?� �Yes, I am successful my dear wife, I am successful in realising that ones� sadistic pleasures would shatter the minds of others, and sons would laugh at their fathers who struggle for the survival of their children either begging, borrowing or stealing.� *
Copyright © 2001 Sreenivasa Murthy Govindaraju |