Hundred Thousand Names of the Lord

It was a small, stolid, stodgy little dusty town like several others. And the old man with a weather-beaten but shiny as well-worn leather face that normally would have been weighed down by the worry lines had it been anyone else trundled up the few flights of steps to his house. He carried a large U of White Chalk with a thin bright ochre streak of clearly defined line sandwiched in the centre and blitz-fading itself into his widow’s peak that had peaked quite high as one of those high Colorado mesas on his forehead. Even at this time of the night he was energetic. Not that it showed in his walk. It was more of internal energy that came from well-wrought beliefs on what he wanted in life and how life can be contented if one knew to draw lines where one’s wants and abilities coalesce. He was wearing a faded white shirt, whose left breast was weighed down by the pocket diary, several apparently important papers and a twig of thulasi, contained in the right pocket, the top crease of which was starting to seam apart, and whose top button on the right side of the shirt had parted itself from holding itself to the buttonhole that consequently lead to exposing a bit of the beginning of his sunken dugs that told the story of his life weighted down by the burden perhaps of having to shoulder the entire family responsibility.

Ranga Bhattar was no different from several hundreds of his ilk on the Vaishnavite map of the central southern part of Tamilnadu. He carried a small cloth bag that perhaps carried some broken shards and hemispheres of coconuts and bananas that came as part obeisance paid to the priest in the temples when they chant divine names of gods for the sake of several devotees who pay homage to Lord Vishnu in his several respective manifest forms dependent on the legend around the concerned temple towns.

“Srinivasaa…!” exclaimed his wife, to the Lord, before continuing, “Yaen-na, where had you got stuck? So late today? The temple must have got closed a while back! Kannan had called… all the way from Germany. We were all there vying with each other to catch up with him… and he was asking for you. Whatever one says… the boys always take up to their fathers! After so much struggle it took to get a phone connection, the boy calls home from such a distant place and his father was not there to talk to him. He was so disappointed!” his wife – a vegetative woman of age and wisdom acquired from tradition and kitchen – chided him in a not so harsh tone. He took no offence. It was a relationship that had matured through sheer plodding along through thick and thin, where wants and needs bottled and behaved themselves at the sight and caress of souls reaching out to each other with no vaulting ambition or overweening objective in life except that of giving their children a basic education and good chances to survive in the material world till they too followed suit into the karmic cycle of Bramacharya-Grihasta-(Bharanyasa)-Vanaprastha.

Bhattar just reached out to relieve his bag into her hand, removed his rubber slippers that was more thinned out than a Sub-Saharan child that UN and UNESCO and WHO show on those CNN and BBC prop-ads, moved to the area where a large cylindrical brass vessel stood in a dull corner ill-lit by half-moonlight, reflecting itself on the water. A small aluminium cylindrical vessel floated lethargically. He filled it with water, rinsed and gargled his mouth with inchoate sounds, spit the water into the corner drain, took some more water and carefully washed his legs, rubbing the sides of feet with each other to clean any mud stuck to the soles. Looking up and sighing, he removed his shirt. His vest inside sported an airy latitudinally ovalish hole just below the left armpit as he raised his hands to relieve the shirt.

Hanging it on to the hook on the wall, sighing he muttered: “Just as I was closing and leaving, some people from Madras came. They had come all the way from Nanganallur, Madras. They went straight to Krupasamudhra Perumal Kovil, managed to land up here on their way back just on time. I started talking to them and one thing led to another. They wanted to book for one year of pooja. By the time I completed that and closed the temple, it got late. Why, couldn’t you have sent your younger son to let me know? I would have asked Ambi from Car Street to do the honours and come. He was just sitting down the yard and talking with some others who hang about!”

“All this talk won’t fill your son’s heart tonight. Always temple affairs. Never time to think of us at home! Hmmm… it hasn’t changed in 30 years, it is not going to change. Come… finish your bath and late evening pooja soon… food is already getting cold,” that tone of concern that accompanies a marriage of minds soothed Bhattar as he tied the towel around his waist and started pouring water on his head. “Aarthi, serve food for Appa”, she called her younger daughter, the last of the family, thirteen years old, growing fast enough into nubile-ness to attract the boys in the small neighborhood. The young girl with big eyes full of kohl and neatly centre-parted hair with two well-plaited tails closed her history book to serve her father. “Appa, Anna said the place is so calm and beautiful with nice colourful parks as huge as our temple tank. And the buildings are so clean and quiet, the roads soooo wide. He said he would take me there in two years time if he gets settled there!”

"God willing, you will do your higher studies, child. You are intelligent. You will go high!" he mouthed, caressing her head as his subconscious was chanting God's hundred thousand names before he settled down to eat. As she started serving him, his mind wandered.... and the girl looked up concerned, lovingly, with the slightly frightented but affectionate eyes of a little she-goat that tries to hang on to its mother for fear of being marooned when a motorised vehicle hoots and blares its monstrous horn to weave its way through a flock of sheep crossing the road. The rasam from the ladle in her hand slightly tilted and a few drops fell on Bhattar's hand...

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