MOMENTS OF TRUTH

In a retro journey, while the hot water flowed down my back, soothing
the constant painthe adolescent teen began to bathe, under a shower
without the restraining sprinkler I remove, to feel the gush of water as
under a waterfallthis room where one is alone and free,
unrestrained, to know what this body is all about when the first change
comes about, with fine little silken darkness shining as the water
droplets flow through them

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

the water flows down the rivers of Time...what started in innocent

inquisitiveness to know this body gave him cognition of pure
pleasure...not tainted by anything beyond....but he came to know as
he read magazine stories and watched films that his mom told bogus
stories that he was bought for a sac of tamarind!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Thinking of the reeled off story from Mom, I understood why condoms
came into existenceman wanted extricate pleasure from the pain of
reproduction! And then they bought babies in the market, white or
black whatever may be!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Theres the typical bulb horn sound at 5.30 in the morning followed by
the cycle bellMother gives the inimitable order Go fast get 2
litreshalf will be water anywaymurmurs my motherTheres a
typical odour that he brings along with him; one cant forget for life
certain odours! The milk vendor hangs cylindrical long containers on
either side of the handle bar of his bicycle and supplies the
proportionately diluted milk! He has a long stemmed measuring
vessel which he dips into the milk container and pours it into the
stainless steel(EVER SILVER!) vessel which I hold in my young arms! I
hear mother again Tell Govinda to get us some banyan leaf plates
when he comes in the evening.
 MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Mothers are always special. Children of mothers are always the apple
of her eyes. No exceptions ! when exceptions do occur on either of the
realms, there is nothing more unfortunate ever.

We all sat together. One could smell the deep frying of chillies soaked
in buttermilk and dried in the sun, wafting through across from the
kitchen to the place called Thinnai in Tamil which denotes the
raised up platform just outside the main door mostly on either side of
the door, from which also stem the pillars on either side to hold the
rafter for the ceiling frame, the ceiling made of tiles, resting on a
network of wood! The Thinnai is mainly meant for relaxing and for
sleeping when the inhabitants in the house are more, or on occasions
when some visitors to the house prefer to sleep with the breeze
blowing across the front, making them feel the cosiness.

Let me go in and see what we have now with the deep fried sour
chillies which will be black in colour and of course I know that a
starkly contrasting white creamy curd rice will be the main course!

AhnhahnGovinda had brought in the leaf plates and all is set!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Dad was particular about a periodic Castor Oil purgation for all of us.
The house portrayed earlier and such houses enclosed a central
courtyard, for the purpose of adequate ventilation and even rain water
collection! In addition some of these houses had a built in stone bench
which served the purpose in our home for jumping a few times from
the stone bench to the floor, to augment the action of the purgative.

Mother had a special menu for us on that day. It was simple food with
rice, a sort of decoction made of cumin seeds and a condiment made
by grinding dal i.e., split pigeon peas with ajwain. Invariably this
manoeuvre fell on a Sunday morning and Sundays were busy on many
account.
 MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

My maternal grandmother is callingI distinctly remember her voice

Return this to S grocery store(the grocery store was
referred to not by the name of the owner, but by the community
he belonged to ; I refrain here from using that name).she
didnt pause a moment for me to ask, why?

This is not quarter kilo. And this is old stock. Ask him to replace this
and give you quarter kilo of fresh cardamom.

I heard that something went wrong with the cataract surgery

performed in quick succession on both her eyes and she became
blind quite early in her life; I had known her only as a disabled
and also as a differently abled person. For those who would like
to have an insight into the history of cataract surgery, here I
have pdf link. http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/42710/InTech-
The_history_of_cataract_surgery.pdf

She was differently abled for sure on many counts as it happens with
many who have lost precious natural endowments or have never
had such endowments by birth.

For example she knew that the cardamom packet was not 250gms and
it was not fresh stock; she would tell who was in the room among
the family members, relatives and friends, by the way one
walked into the room; she would with utmost ease grind flour in
the stone grinder, with never having given her fingers between
the grinding surfaces, she would chop and cut vegetables, with
alacrity in the cutting blade fixed to a wooden block, held firm
on to the ground by her calf, and she would remark and tell my
mother, Ask your son, he has eaten something from outside!.
She would walk across from the rear of the house to the front
slowly and latch the front door, realising that the front door is
ajar!
 MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Like the house we stayed as the image tries to portray, there were
many such houses. The one opposite to the house No.4, wherein we
stayed in the fifties, also was a memorable house, not for its
inhabitants, but for a visitor.

This visitor was a white man. Lets call him Claude for I dont know
his name. He must have been a retired French Soldier, commonly
called in French as Soldat where the t is silent.

The queer matter about him was that, he was dressed in an off-grey
suit, with stitches here and there, a soiled white shirt, a hat which we
see in the Cow boy movies on all the Good, Bad and Uglies, a
shoulder bag with rolled drawing papers, which he some times took out
as if he was drawing a rifle out, and marched up and down with the
orders spelt loudly in French, and after a due attention and salute
settled on the Thinnai opposite to our house, to open up his
possession of paints and brushes and drawing pencils. I have seen from
a distance the wonderful drawings he had made; I didnt dare to go
near him. I was warned not to go. He was seen to be furious when
some urchins on the road called him namesone specific call out was
this in tamil, which meant Fowl shit on the hatIn tamil it was
Thoppi mela Kozhippee!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

I noticed another queer and magical event one day. My elder sister was
yellow in her eyes. And there was a doctor, Dr.Selvanathane, a
graduate of Medicine from the "Ecole de Mdicine de Pondichry",
whos office was in the first floor of an ancient French architecture,
somewhere near the St. Joseph of Cluny High School in the town limits
of Pondicherry. The approach to the surgery was a cement on bricks
staircase, built outside the main entrance to the house, enclosed
within a high compound wall, whose insides were covered with
creepers forming a wall carpet. One is overwhelmed by the smell of
something which I learnt to define as Selvanathane doctors house. It
turned out later that this smell was non methylated pure ethyl alcohol,
used for skin sterilization before injections.

Well, I am straying away. To come to the moment of truth, I remember

to have accompanied my elder sister along with my parents to visit Dr.
Selvanathane. I sat with my mother in the waiting lounge, while daddy
took my sister inside after waiting awhile . Both of them came out and
daddy handed over a piece of paper to a man dressed in white. He in
turn went inside a farther room, and returned back a few minutes later
with a bottle of deep pink liquid. There was a thin strip of paper stuck
on the bottle, with diamond shaped cuts from the bottom to the top of
the bottle.( The magic is yet to occur)

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

I am not sure whether my sister took that medicine from Dr.

Selvanathane. But I remember what happened subsequently. My sister
and I walked to a place called Ezhu veedu, which from Tamil
translates roughly to The Seven Houses complex. The row of seven
apartments on the West Boulevard Street ( later christened as Anna
Saalai), housed people of different types. The Milk man Govinda stayed
in one of the apartments. One more person who was staying there was
a mendicant, who raised my curiosity as we approached his house.

My sister has had visited him earlier and this time I was with her!

We were asked to sit down on the floor in front of this mendicant, who
looked a lot older to my father. There were two tiny stainless steel
bowls with water. He had spread a set of stainless steel needle like
objects , but with no eyes nor sharp ends over a small white towel.

He mumbled something closing his eyes and then asked my sister to

close thee eyes. She did. I was wondering what was going to follow.

(Will continue)
 MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

I was watching him. He picked up a needle in each hand. He rested

both his fore arms facing upwards on his thighs, with the needles held
by his first three fingers. I have seen a similar picture , when Dad used
to be sitting in the prayer room, with the flow of incense and the
beautiful bronze lamps glowing with the cotton thread wicks, carefully
placed in oil. There my Dad was holding fragrant white flowers in his
right hand, in the same fashion, to be offered with every verse of
praise to God the Almighty. Whereas here the mendicant was holding
needles in front of my sister!

The next moves he began to operate were also somewhat familiar.

I remembered that my blind grandmother, made us (brothers and the

elder sister) sit, brought clenched within her right hand something,
stood in front of us and made clockwise and anticlockwise movements
as if she was drawing oblong circles in the air, and then went to the
kitchen. A sharp acrid, pungent smell emanated with smoke coming
out of the kitchen wooden stove! Sometimes there was no smell of any
kind, which according to elders was indication of peoples eyes!

I wont today go off without unfolding the magic of the mendicant.

I watched him with more curiosity. He extended both his hands

towards my sisters eyes. I began to get tensed..what was he going to
do. He moved is hands in synchronised clockwise and anticlockwise
fashion around her eyes and then brought the needles to the two
containers with water and stirred the water with the needles. He
repeated this manoeuvre 7 times and as I watched, I saw that the
water was getting yellowish and the needle ends wore a tiny blob of
yellow slimy stuff.

He told her, todays treatment is over and directed her to come on the
following Friday for the final sitting. We went the following Friday.
And I had in the meanwhile noticed that the yellow tinge in her eye
was waning and almost gone. He repeated the manoeuvre once again
an told her that she was healed. I saw that the water was not as yellow
as it was on the previous sitting! It was almost clear too!
 MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

A late evening on the Pondy - Chennai highwayone of those evenings

when the shack hotels, provision stores and petit shops across the
highway on the other side of the Medical college-Hostel complex
are closedthere reigns a silence deep except the noise of a
passing motor vehicleand that from a lone tea shop, the Nair
Kadai busy even at that timeJagadeesan called Kili and
myself walk across from the inroad between Lister and Osler and
reach over the culvert adjoining the highway in the dimness of
the evening becoming night, when a flickering street light dies
with an orange yellow glow, we see the silhouette of a bullock
cart across on the highway staticon the middle of the road
one of the bulls buckled and on the earth below, while the other
stood majestic yet strained by the yoke slanting down on the
neck of the bullock buckled downthe frail old man behind the
wheels or to put it right, the frail old man between the wheels,
is helplessKili, let us give a hand I say and both of us lift the
yoke at one go and then the bullock rises up as if resurrected
from deadthe huge horns meaning no harmthe old man smiles
in darkness, his teeth then glow a red and brownas we move
over to Nairs tea shop!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Some scenes described here will be graphic. Readers discretion is

advised

JIPMER Campus 1969 Freshers orientation program The whole

campus is abuzz ,alive with activities. Vasishta is busy hanging a
placard around the neck of a Fresher. Vashishta is in his second year of
the Integrated course of Medicine. He becomes conspicuous more by
his absence than by presence in any place.every one of the Fresher
has a placard around their neck with inscriptions on the front and
back! This guy in the picture shows what Vashishta decorates him for
the dayA comparative image of how his face was looking prior to the
declaration is appended along.

The truth of the matter is that perhaps Vashishta is a clairvoyant, for

in a future this guys chronic problems, changes in the physiology and
morphology due to reasons known to him, are going to fulfil the
prophesy in some way or the other!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Back and forth the exercise of recollections and Beingwas never in

this consciousness while growingwas never a moment of looking back
until one day in life the pages started wafting and stuttering in the
wind of a window opening the yesterdays! Since then it has been a
rewinding and replaying eventsmemoriesof having read Paul
Brunton or an Enid Blytonback and forth in different layers of the
thick mist, sometimes clearing, sometimes as hazy as the winter glass
pane windowof having played games with siblings hopping on a leg,
hide and seek, and a particularly remembered indoor game played
by two with a wooden board carved with pits and cowry shells or
tamarind seeds.( Have uploaded an image)life a game of games which
people play as Eric Berne said!

MOMENTS OF TRUTH (contd)

Premchandran stood, nay moved and swayed in the centre forward

positionthe ball is yet to be on play. Vincent to my right and
Mohandas between the posts looking straight ahead at the ball
Mohandas never leaves his eyes off the ball, unlike some who looked at
the movement of the legs. Kili (jagadeesan), is eager on the right
extreme position and Jagannathan on the left. Subbu is just behind
Prem, dangling his legs in turn to keep them agile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAwKegTX9Gs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKIi7gWY2N0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCXw2QFBiiY&t=36s