Book Extract: Under The Rain Tree
ISBN: 9788122309812
Author: Vatsala Balachandran Warrier
Publisher: Cedar books (www.pustakmahal.com)
Basic Instinct
It was the day of the rally. The vast sands of the Marina Beach in Chennai were packed with a seething mass of humanity. Overhead, the sun blazed in all its fury, baking the sand red-hot. Dust laden winds scorched the tongue.
With dry lips, they looked skywards for a wisp of cloud that might give them hope of succour. That simmering summer day in May, mirages haunted the horizon, while illusion clouded the minds of the mob as they waited for their leader. “Puratchi Talaivar! – Our Messiah! Our Saviour!” The crowds chanted in frenzy. Muthu Raj, his wife Karpagam and their five children braved that blazing sun, listening with hope as their leader spoke of a brave New World – a world with abundant drinking water, health care, free rations, pucca houses and basic education; all dreams which never saw the light of day for people like them, the down trodden, the wretched of the earth!
Karpagam shifted the small, sleeping burden of her youngest two-year-old son Selvam and placed him on the ground beside her. The child’s soft hand clasped her own calloused palms trustfully as he slept blissfully. Karpagam watched him tenderly – her sweet bud, her innocent love! Two men near them began to brawl, disrupting the proceedings. Suddenly, one of them whipped out a knife and lunged at his opponent, inflicting grievous wounds.
As the bleeding man sank to the earth, staining the sand red, the man with the knife, inflamed with heat and passion, ran amok into the crowd. Panic, like a hissing serpent turned the mob demented. Somewhere a woman screamed, elsewhere men yelled obscenities, everywhere children cowered in fear, and whimpered restlessly. The crowd surged forward. All controls snapped as people ran helter skelter. Karpagam felt the small hand of her son slipping from her grasp as she ran forward, pushed relentlessly by the crazed mob.
The 18 thrilling stories in this book are images of human beings, from adolescence to adulthood to old age, experiencing love, fear, rejection and loneliness. There is a strong will to survive, to cross known barriers, and touch the unplumbed depths of the human spirit. The stories try to capture the reverberations of human life across a spectrum of human emotions.
“My baby!” she screamed. “My child is lost! Oh God! Where is my baby?” The anguished mother wept. She looked everywhere, gnawed by fear that her child would be trampled underfoot but there was no sign of the child. The mobs overwhelmed her like giant waves in a storm-tossed sea.
It was love at first sight. Agnes Ferraro, a middle aged spinster out on her early morning walk saw the little curled up form of the baby half buried under the sand. It was the most beautiful baby Agnes had ever seen. She picked up the little one, wrapped him in her shawl and took him home. It was a gift from God, Agnes decided and did not question why the baby had come to be left abandoned on that empty stretch of the beach. She fed him warm milk, washed him and lulled him to sleep. A spark of warmth spread across her sterile breasts as joy filled her vacant heart.
The moment she held him in her arms, her life changed. She was crystallized for eternity into “The Mother”. Her blood throbbed, as her basic maternal instinct enveloped her like a gentle cloud. There was not a moment when she didn’t watch him, hold him, listen for him. She was no longer alone, no longer an outcaste. Her life took on a new purpose, a renewed meaning. The days passed. Karpagam distraught and inconsolable, searched in vain for her lost child. The police were informed. In an initial burst of efficiency, they issued a missing person advertisement on local television and newspapers.
When there was no response, they lapsed into their usual state of apathy. Agnes never saw the advertisement in the Tamil paper, but she did see the notice on television. From the description given, she suspected that the child she had at home could be the missing Selvam. Discreet inquiries told her that Selvam’s parents were poor and that they had other children. This fact clinched the issue as far as Agnes was concerned. “I will be doing the child a favour as I can feed him well, educate him properly and take better care of him than his careless parents. The parents too will have one less mouth to feed. Besides they may have more children to compensate for their loss of Selvam.”
Thus she wrestled with her conscience. At times, she contemplated letting Selvam’s parents know that their child was safe and well but she feared they would want their son back, so she kept quiet. Day by day, her love for her adopted child grew stronger. Selvam was now renamed as James. Agnes moved away from her present residence to a new locality, where she was unknown, to avoid the curiousity of her neighbours, who might wonder about her new acquisition. Agnes now projected herself as a widow left with a small child.
She began to call herself Mrs. Ferraro. She left behind her past – a lonely, affection starved woman with average looks and a retiring nature. Nursing her old parents till they died after long years of ill health had sapped whatever spark of youth she may have had. She tenderly took care of her unexpected gift, the child.
Although she was not rich, her income was sufficient to enable her to feed the child good nourishing food, to send him to an excellent school; to buy him decent clothes and some toys. She had always lived frugally so she did not mind sacrificing a few of her own comforts if that meant something extra for James. She did her best to make sure he was happy and content. “I will bring him up better than his own parents would.” she told herself sternly whenever her conscience troubled her or doubts about her conduct assailed her.
Occasionally she did think of returning the child but the genuine bond of affection that had sprung up between James and herself assuaged her guilt. When the child gazed at her and called her ‘mother’, she felt incredibly happy and any ideas she had of giving him up were thrust away. If the child did have a fleeting remembrance of the lost face of his ‘amma’ it soon faded into the deep recesses of his sub-conscious.
The years rolled by. James grew up into a fine, young man. He believed he was the natural son of Agnes Ferraro. Once he asked Agnes about his Father. She was ready with her answer. “Son, your dad was in the army; he was a young Captain, serving in the North-East. His convoy was ambushed by terrorists; he was killed instantly. We were married only for a few months. He died before he even knew you were on the way. If I did not have you, I would have died of grief myself.” Agnes sobbed.
James thought no more about it though he would have liked to have a father like his other friends. Agnes was relieved that he accepted her story so well. She renewed her efforts to keep his happy. She loved her son with an intensity that she herself found difficult to understand. When she looked at James her face bloomed with joy, pride shone in her eyes and love engulfed her very being. She asked for nothing from him. She was complacent sitting across the room admiring his graceful gestures, his good looks, the movements of his lips and eyes as he talked.
She felt possessive with pride and a kind of fulfillment of motherhood. When she smiled at him, there was so much understanding, so much love and when he smiled at her or gave her an occasional hug she forgot that she had not really given birth to him. “I am the real mother, what is the value of just giving birth, even animals do that, it is the caring and loving that makes a mother. James is better off with me.” She told herself resolutely. It was a bolt from the blue, when one day; James chanced to meet an old lady named Jane Thomas. James had been to Salem for an interview. It was on his return that he found himself in the same train compartment, his traveling companion, the old lady.
They struck up a conversation, and when James politely introduced himself, mentioning his name, the old lady asked interestedly, “James Ferraro, did you say your name was? Any relation of Agnes Ferraro?” “Agnes is my mother.” James told her smiling. “Do you know her?” “I knew an Agnes Ferraro from Chennai, a long time ago. We were in school together, also we were neighbours.” Jane Thomas said. “But the Agnes I knew, never got married. She was a confirmed spinster like me.” She blurted out. “Must be someone else.” That conversation somehow lodged in a corner of his mind, refusing to go away, stirring in him a vague, uneasy memory. He decided to look for his birth certificate or Agnes’s marriage certificate.
Somehow it became important for him to discover who his father was or if he had any relatives on that side of his family. James searched through the documents in Agnes’s cupboard looking for some proof of his parentage. He found nothing. The seeds of doubt were sown. He began to brood about it.
All the people he knew, all his friends at school or college had some relatives, either a grandparent, a cousin, or an aunt or uncle. He had always wondered about his father and the strange lack of a single photograph of his father or any member of his family agitated him. Was his fictitious father just that – a figment of Agnes’ imagination? Agnes’ explanation of her brief marriage no longer satisfied him. A bewildered James confronted a shocked Agnes. “Tell me the truth.” he urged. “Are you really my mother? Am I illegitimate, a bastard?” Timidly Agnes shook her head, uncertain what and how much she should tell him. The truth hurt.
She couldn’t bear to lose him, the very prop of her existence. “Don’t lie to me,” he shouted, “or I shall never forgive you. Tell me the truth about my origins. I must know. It’s important.” Weighed down by the secret of the past, Agnes sobbed out the story, all the facts about his natural parents as she knew them. “I love you,” she wept. “It was for your good. I have given you the best of everything. James, you are my son in every way except by birth.” James was shocked. He couldn’t believe what he had heard. A blaze of rage shook him. Full of anger and confusion, he taunted, “How could you steal a helpless baby from its parents and then deliberately conceal the fact even after you knew their identity? It’s kidnapping. It’s a crime! Are you a monster?” “No,” wept Agnes, “not a monster, only a mere woman with her basic instinct for mothering and nurturing. I’m just a poor human who needed to love and be loved!” “I cannot forgive you. You stole me from my family. I have a father, brothers and sisters, a mother, who must have gone crazy with grief when she lost me! I must find them. Goodbye Miss Ferraro! I shall never call you ‘Mother’ again.” He stormed out of the house. Agnes lay shattered with grief. Her spirit was broken and her body was weary with her advancing years. “What have I done? Will he never call me mother?” she cried for hours inconsolably. J
ames never came home that night or the next. Weeks turned into months. Agnes was devastated. There was an intuitive core of dread lodged at the back of her mind that James would never return. She started drinking. A genteel, discreet nipping at first, then more, till she became numb and no feelings were left. A single, strangled sob emerged from her aching throat.
As the bottle ran dry, her cup of painful memories overflowed, till darkness numbed her heart. James tried to trace his parents, but had no success. But during his quest, he met many families like his own lost one and he realised what his life might have been if a kindly fate with a little help from Agnes had not intervened. James had scarcely thought of Agnes for months, so he was bewildered when one day he awakened with a memory of her so vivid that he could almost smell the scent of her Lux soap lingering in the air. Her face was so instantly familiar he felt he must have carried the memory of her face stored like a seed in the dark and fertile soil of his mind.
One sizzling, summer night, James came back. He found Agnes in a stupor, semi conscious, muttering his name. Frightened he rushed her to a hospital. For two, full agonizing days, he sat at her side, holding her close, willing her to emerge from the tangled confusion of her mind. “Mother, I have come back. I’ll never leave you again. Mother, can you hear me?” Out of an unknown arid wasteland, Agnes Ferraro fought her way back into a green oasis of peace. “Son, my son,” she whispered as the tears coursed down her cheeks.
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