Cipher Viola stood on the beach watching the sea. It was a hot June afternoon in the seaside city of Cochin in Kerala. But the heat was not oppressing to her, rather she liked the burning sensation on her skin. She wished if the sun rays could penetrate into her very being and dissolve her into ashes. She had carried the burden of breath in her for too many long years. Now she wanted respite… When she had burned herself enough she got up and walked back to the flat. Strangely she never called it home. “Home” after all was where the heart was and she had none! There was a leprosy center run by nuns that she crossed everyday from the beach to the flat. She always had the curiosity to see how it was on the inside but never had the courage to peep in. Today she decided to take a chance. The place seemed calm and serene. She opened the gate as in a trance and walked in. She was greeted by a nun at the entrance. She returned the greeting and asked if she could look around. The nun whose name was Sr. Maria said she would show her around. She was first led to the dining room as it was time for the evening tea. She watched as the more able inmates were standing in line for their evening tea and snacks. Those of them with no toes and fingers were being fed by sisters and some by their fellow inmates. The very sight of the leprosy infected people filled her with shame. She had all her life cursed God for creating her so plain. But now as she looked at these people she felt grateful that all her limbs and organs were in fine shape. She silently asked forgiveness of the Lord for her ingratitude of so many years. After they finished tea Sr. Maria showed her the dormitories where the inmates slept. It was done up in bright colors with the pictures of Jesus and Mother Mary everywhere. To Viola it seemed like a room where one could feel the presence of the Lord and sleep in His arms. While Viola was looking around Sr. Maria was called away. Viola had a strong urge to sleep and she lay down on one of the beds. Sleep had always been very difficult for her over the past few years. Now she saw it coming so powerfully… She was eighteen and she was standing on the beach feeling the sun burn her skin. She wanted the rays to kill her as life was simply unbearable. For she was the plain, matronly looking elder daughter of a ravishing couple. Her mother, Alice, was a regular beauty with eyes like luminous pools, a Grecian nose and charming manners. Her father, Thomas, was the handsomest man in the family, with accomplishments to match. By what stroke of misfortune she was born their first child. Things were tolerable till the birth of her sister, Diana, four years her junior. She seemed to be the culmination of the beauty of her parents. Truly she was the fruit of their union. Her mother was all rapture the moment she beheld this beautiful creature and promptly forgot her other ugly daughter. To add insult to injury Diana was gifted with every kind of accomplishment that brought her love, praise and attention. Though being sisters their lives could be anything but similar. Diana was intelligent and featured in the top five ranks of her class year after year. She was good in singing, dancing, elocution and all extra curricular activities. Alice spared no effort in encouraging the talents in her amazing daughter and conveniently forgetting the other. Viola on the other hand barely scraped through most of her subjects except for English and History. On the dance floor she never knew her left leg from her right and less said about her singing the better. Her father did not ignore her but treated her with restrained civility. She knew she was the cause of embarrassment for her family and her father only felt short of letting her feel it. She was rarely taken out with the rest of the family as she was bound to upset things or act dumb in company. Poor Viola! She tried hard but that only made things worse. Loneliness was her constant companion as she had no friends too. Slowly this friend inspired in her the birth of a talent. Everyday after school Viola used to retire into the old attic in her house which nobody entered and would be shut in there till dinnertime. Nobody bothered her anyways. There she wrote furiously as if her mind was a volcano and it was erupting lava endlessly after being dormant for so many years. She composed poems and wrote stories some long, some short in those endless hours over those endless years. One day she had the courage to show some of her poems to her English teacher but she was dismissed so entirely that she concluded that her work was as useless as her. Nevertheless she never stopped writing; it was only means of survival. As she watched the sun go down on the beach she remembered it was time to go home. She had spend her eighteenth birthday, like all her others, with the sun, the sand on the beach and the ageless ocean. As she reached home she could sense activity in the house. Enquiring she found that Alice and Diana were leaving home to go stay in Bangalore in Alice’s brother’s place. Viola had always known the distance between her mother and father but only just realized that it had become insurmountable. For a moment she had hope that event could bring her father close to her but Thomas turned to work for consolation and time still remained endless. Viola suddenly felt the weight of eighteen years come heavily on her and so she took permission of her father to go to another city to pursue her graduation course. Though reluctant, Thomas got her enrolled in a prestigious college for a Bachelors course in English. Life though did not change much for Viola as she still remained a loner. But she hung on to the thread of her studies which she loved dearly. She came home during vacations to silent dinners with her father, lonely sojourns on the beach and furious writing in the attic. Her father was killing himself with work and she could find no means to reach out to him. During her second vacation their house had a guest, Mr. Wilfred Anthony, her father’s best friend. His visit seemed to bring some light into their dark lives. Thomas started going out for fishing trips with Wilfred and Viola accompanied them on their beach walks. For Viola it was a new found experience to have someone talk to her and listen to her as well. She found herself at ease with Wilfred uncle and she spoke like she never had done in her life. He informed her that he was a publisher and for a moment she was tempted to show him her work but then thought against it. Thomas looked a little better than before and she was grateful for this small mercy but did not last long. She was almost at the end of her course when she got news from home that her father had met with an accident. She rushed home to find him almost on his last breath. As she stood near his bed she could feel him mouthing a sorry but it did not make up for all those lonely years. Alice was eyeing Viola as a burden that seemed to have fallen on her. Right after the funeral Viola put to rest her mother’s worries by informing her that she had a job in Chennai and she did not need anyone to look after her. With that Alice and Diana left and it would be the last time that Viola set eyes on them. Viola plodded through being a teacher at the college she graduated from. Her students had fun at her expense and she again was filled with that overbearing feeling of nothingness. Cipher… Cipher… the word kept coming back to her. She was a cipher, a symbol of nothingness. She was awakened to reality with the gentle patting of Sr. Maria. After a moment of embarrassment she accompanied her guide on the rest of the tour. Viola asked a lot of questions about the financial position of the institution and how about the work force. Sister said that volunteers were difficult to come by but people did contribute monetarily. After thanking sister, Viola walked back to the flat. By the time she reached back she had made up her mind about donating her fortune to the institution and give herself off completely to the care and uplift of the downtrodden. In a week’s time she had made the financial arrangements with her agent and she plunged into what became the creed of her life. Just watching the joy on the face of the lepers when someone spoke a kind word to them was a heavenly feeling. Viola experienced joy, an endless joy and an indescribable peace for the first time in her life. She also used her position to build more such institutions in other parts of India. Little did she know that she was bringing happiness, companionship and solace into so many lives in an entirely different way. We have to go back once more into the past to let the reader know how Viola made her fortune. When the nothingness in life became unbearable Viola decided to do something about it. She wrote to her father’s friend, Wilfred Anthony and sent him some of her stories and poems. In reply he asked her to come down to Bangalore so that they could discuss the matter. When she did she was amazed to know that he was ready to publish and her stories and that he had full confidence they would sell well. Thus her first collection of short stories was published under the pen name cipher which was the name she always used for herself. One book followed another and she became a rich woman but kept herself from the limelight. She had asked Wilfred uncle to keep her identity a secret. It was enough for her that her work was recognized. That was sufficient for her self worth. But soon loneliness was eating her life out. So she decided to go back to Cochin in quest of some meaning to her life. Viola could not go back to her old house as it was full of old, hurting memories. That’s how she comes to live in a flat and take those lonely walks to the seaside and eventually find life, companionship in that institute for the destitute. Meanwhile Mr. Wilfred Anthony was going through some trying phases in his life. His only son, Jude, the pride of his life was experiencing his first heart break. His fiancée died in a road accident while he was out of town. Jude on hearing the news had just gone into pieces. Mr. Anthony could find no way to console his son but could not watch him destroy his life either. Jude would spend days locked in his room in darkness, crying till his heart and eyes ached. It was as if he did not want to live anymore. It looked as if he stopped living the moment she did. After three months of uninterrupted agony Mr. Anthony decided it was time he did something. He left some books by cipher all around Jude’s room. These books had brought consolation to so many hearts. He prayed and hoped it would bring some to his beloved son too. Well to describe it in short, cipher worked her magic on Jude as well. Slowly he picked up the thread of his life again. He started talking to his father who advised him to start working again as there was no therapy like work. He took his father’s advice but cipher added some new worries also into his life. Jude’s curiosity was building over who this cipher really was and he had lots of things to discuss with her too. There were many things in what she wrote that he could not agree with. Jude always referred to cipher as a she. His instincts told him it had to be a woman. He knew that it was their company that published the books so there could be no difficulty in tracing her identity. But he set about finding he was told that cipher dealt directly with his father and no one else knew anything about it. Jude was a little hesitant about approaching his father but when his curiosity grew beyond his control he decided to broach the topic with his father. Strangely his father refused to give him any information. When he pestered on his father divulged that she was the daughter of a close friend of his. She was a person who had suffered much and he did not want Jude to trouble her any further and closed the discussion there. Jude tried hard but cipher never went out of his mind. It was like an overpowering passion that seemed never to leave him. He did not think he could love another woman but his woman he had to meet. So he decided to disobey his father just this once. We don’t know how exactly he managed it but with some luck and some ingenuity he managed to find Viola’s address. That was cipher’s name, Viola Thomas and stayed in Cochin. Making up some excuse Jude landed in Cochin as soon as he could. When he enquired at the address mentioned for her he was told that she no longer lived there and the house owner did not know where she lived now, except that she frequented the convent close to the beach a lot. So he walked towards the beach. It was the time of the day when Viola took her customary walk on the beach. As soon as Jude so her sitting under the sun, burning herself he knew this had to be cipher. The beach, the burning sun and the sea were mentioned in a number of books. But instinct told him this was cipher he had been longing to know for so many months now. As he followed her to the convent he tried to understand why he wanted to meet this woman and why there was this ardent desire to know her. The answer came to him there. It was as if he always knew her, always knew what she went through because he had known loneliness too in his life. She was his doppelganger. And all he wanted to do now was talk to her. There was so much to say, so much to hear. But would she know him? He had to find out…
Copyright © 2006 Rachel Joseph |