All fathers were once kids : P.V.Shaji Kumar ( A chapter translated from his memoirs written in Malayalam).

In an evening darkened by the rain, when I was returning home after playing Kabbadi in Kalichampothy’s cemented open theatre; my knees bloodied in an interesting hammer, sickle, star design, Muraliettan ( we respectfully address older people as ettan/chettan/elder brother) called me from inside the village library on whose walls the picture of the communist leader Azhikodan Raghavan was affixed :

‘ Eda, how come you are not picking up books to read anymore?’

His voice was softer than the wind’s murmur, and I found myself shutting my umbrella, trying in vain to scrape off the mud on my shins and stepping inside the library. My trousers, bereft of any button, was on the verge of slipping down and I tightened the knot above my belly-button. My tummy ballooned into a sky skewed sidewards.

Books are the souls of those who are doomed to wander even after death. In solitariness, one can listen to the peeves and mumbles of what they were denied when alive. It is a thought which congealed within my mind at an odd hour. From the lower wooden rack, covered by cobwebs, Muraliettan pulled out a book for me. A book devoid of a cover, yellowing due to age, and of great girth due to the extraordinary texture of the paper. ‘Read this…slightly old, but you will like it.’

Like the water snake gulping down the nedumchoori fish, darkness had wolfed down down the light. There was no one in sight to accompany me. The dead Choyiyetti would be searching for lice in her hair, shaking her dangling old breasts shaped like cucumber; seated inside the desolate house on top of Palankikunnu. As I go past , she will call out from the window, ‘ Da…you brat, come and give me something to drink…’ As if a red hot iron had been pressed against it, my chest burned in fear.

Without checking the book, I wrote my name in English as neatly as I could in the register and stepped out into the rain. Chandrettan who was returning from a dip in Kannachira canal, humming a cinema song and wearing his under wear as a head gear, encountered me on the way. ‘ Da, Thangetty has sent some rice to the mill…pick it up…don’t forget to take the bran too!’ I became the proverbial dog which was waiting to howl in despair; when, to add to its woes, a coconut too fell on its head. If I did not pick up the rice and bran, Thangamani- my mother, will surely give me hell. (Especially the bran for the cows. Amma loved the cows better than her own kids.) If I wait around the mill, Choyiyetti would move out from the house and sit beneath the tree by the street.

I gathered my courage and walked to the mill.

Instead of Shashiyettan, who was commonly seen, it was Kannettan who was working there today. Nobody knew when Kannettan would turn crazy. He was nearly fifty years old. He resembled a bear in both looks and attitude. When he turned nuts, he would crouch in a place and start hooting like an owl. For some unknown reason, the man loathed me.

Ah, such lay the matters ahead.

Clutching my umbrella and the book, I gingerly edged forward. There was a crowd inside. My classmate Manjusha and her mother Savitriyetti were there. From the door, I peeped hopefully at Kanettan. As he shifted the rice grains to the platform, Kanettan stared at me harshly. His deep seated eyes reddened… “Go stand aside. Let the others finish first. I shall give you the rice only afterwards!”

I felt as if I was evaporating into smoke. As if my trousers slipped all the way down in front of all. Manjusha’s round eyes sent forth an arrow edged with mockery towards me. (You round eyed girl! Tomorrow you will come seeking my help during arithmetic. I will show you then.)

I snucked away to the corner of the rice mill where coconut shells, burned bran, and an old cycle were dumped. The rain was like the wailing of the darkness. The rustling of the leaves. The humming of the mill. Shame, fear and pain came together to enwrap me. I clambered atop the cycle, and pressed down heavily on the pedals bereft of chains.

Leaning against the wooden pillar, seated atop the cycle, I opened the book which Muraliyettan had offered me. The book’s title (in Malayalam translation) was ‘Father’s childhood’. When his little daughter Sasha was suffering from ear-pain, Sasha’s father Raskin narrates an interesting story from his own childhood to soothe her. Soon afterwards, whenever her ear ached Sasha would plead …’ Daddy, my ear is hurting! Please tell me another story when you were a little boy!’ Raskin tells her more stories of his boyhood days.

Daddy is the hero of this book. His follies, sorrows, desires fill the book. I played with Sasha’s daddy to the tune of the pouring rain. When Daddy’s precious possession, the ball which he never shared with anyone else, something more beautiful than the sun itself, burst into bits when he threw it in front of a car, I grieved along with him as his pride died. Believing what the lion-tamer said about taming any wild animal by staring at its eyes, little Daddy emulates it in front of a dog in the park. As he stares at the poor creature with his big, round eyes covered by soda-lens glasses, the annoyed dog bites him in the tummy. My grief soon turned into a laugh. As the rain drops splattered on my face, I could see Manjusha hurrying to my side to tell me she was leaving; and I royally ignored her. The pictures drawn in shades of green and black tempted me to walk along with little Daddy, with my arms around his shoulder.

Little Daddy, on a reading spree, makes his aunt cry in front of her bridegroom by writing a poetic line, ‘Who could have expected, Aunt Liza to get selected!’ The story told me about few classics like Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels.

Little Daddy who bit the dentist, this boy who drank vodka thinking it was water, always pouting at anything, who left his brother- tiny uncle Vic- all by himself…he took an avatar as myself and my father. It was as if my own self played a Theyyam ( when humans don the garb of deities in festival rites in Kerala) in front of me. The friends who teased little Daddy by saying it was a ‘ wedding’ when he played with his friend Masha, reminded me of my own friends. Indeed, very recently, for our merciless teasing of Shibu for playing with Mini, Yours Truly and his coterie had received a good caning from Bhaskaran sir!

When little Daddy refuses to eat his bread, the old Nanny tells him about how her little brother died due to hunger. Little Daddy stood in front of me, drenched in rain, upset, ashamed and wordless. After changing many ships of ambition of what he wanted to be, when he grew up : night watchman, ice cream seller, sailor, Daddy decides he would rather be a dog! He barks, scoots around on all fours, and tries to approach dogs so he can train himself to scratch behind the ears with his foot! A military officer, walking on the street, who gets annoyed at his pranks, advices him to ‘become a person.’ Though little Daddy could not decipher the depths of the words at first, he absorbs it slowly, and the next time he is asked what he wishes to become, answers firmly, ‘become a person!’ By the time my mind could understand his answer, someone kicked at the cycle viciously. I fell into the heap of burnt and dried bran nearby, head first. ‘Get out with the rice. I have to lock up!’

Behind me was Kannettan, panting heavier than the rain. At the first glance I could make out that the madness had begun and his clock had sprung ten minutes behind. Soon, Kannettan sat on his haunches in the foyer. He turned his face to the rain. His hands wrapped around his neck. He turned into an owl and started hooting.

I retrieved daddy’s childhood; and collected the milled rice and bran; tying the sacks together. Fearing that it would get wet in the rain, I inserted the book inside the bran. ‘Kannetta, would you please help?’ I felt fearless on requesting the old man to heave the sacks on my head. He scratched his thighs forcefully and came near. Having hefted the sacks on my head, Kanettan returned to the owl posture once more.

As I moved in the rain and darkness, I remembered my father. He was admitted in Mangalapuram hospital then. How was his childhood? Strikes, penury, isolation…I too became lonely in the rain . The wind wriggled inside my shirt.

It was after I reached home that it struck me: Choyiyetti had not beckoned me from the hills! I could not believe that I had crossed the Palankikunnu without an inkling of fear! At home, only my grandmother-whom I called Valiyamma- was present. As soon as she saw me, Valiyamma croaked, ‘Where were you till now? Narayani’s daughter Radha threw kerosene on herself… played with death. Everybody has gone to see her.’ A tremor took hold of me. I knew the woman. An enflamed human form shuddering to death silently, became visible to my eyes. I put down the sack of rice in the kitchen and went to the verandah. The rain had abated. The enigmatic silence of the dark. After feeding grass to the cows, grandmother returned and lay down to sleep on her mattress. The house and I were left to ourselves.. The chirping of the crickets and the frogs rose together in a crescendo.

I retrieved daddy’s childhood from the bran. Laying on my stomach, I opened the book. Hiding my mind’s trepidations, I went walking with little Daddy. Snow clad white mountains could be seen. Daddy had started school wearing his coat. Due to his love of sleep-the paradise on earth- Daddy reaches late to school and becomes a laughing stock. I started loving little Daddy who withered at the least of recriminations; and who was wont to shed much tears. Daddy who could not even manage to say a fib; the one who was easily tripped up by his friends…There is a depiction of Daddy, who wished to read his poetry through telephone, to the great Russian poet Valdimir Mayakovsky (who committed suicide eventually.) Daddy’s words would dry up like a desert whenever Mayakovsky picked up the phone! The picture of Daddy’s unceasing efforts for a week, which end in failure, jumped out from the book.

I laid on my back, having finished the book, my eyes on the shadows hanging onto the attic. When Amma, my aunt, and my brother returned and narrated the story of death, I did not panic as usual.

Today, after many decades, when I opened the book, that night rains in me again. I had no idea in my childhood that it was published during the time of the Soviet Union, by Progress Publishers and that a great man called Gopalakrishnan had directly translated it from the original Russian language. Only Daddy was in my mind, just little Daddy.

Now I feel that my conclusion, that death and madness are a big child’s play, became pellucid due to that night and this great book . Probably due to the incidents which occurred parallel to reading Daddy’s childhood, the book haunts me more than any other, even today. Not probably, let me say, for sure.

This is a book to be read by fathers more than their children. ‘When Daddy was a little boy’ by Alexander Raskin, forges a third eye which will not only force anyone to re-enter one’s own childhood but also to dive deeper into their kids’ own.

Alexander Raskin in his ‘Word to the children’ concludes thus: ‘There’s more to this book! Each one of you can discover the rest for yourself, for your own daddy can tell you about things that happened to him when he was a little boy. And so can your mommy. I would love to hear their stories, too.’

Maybe every reader feels the same. The book does not end here.

***

Note: In the English translation, it was not a military officer who advices little Daddy. It was just a man , passing by, who asks, ‘What kind of a boy are you, if you can’t even be a dog? That’s not what a person should be.’ When little Daddy asks, ‘What should I be?’ The man replies, ‘You think about it yourself’, and walks away. Little Daddy decides to become a person…a good person.

For those who wish to read this gem for themselves or for their kids…