They are everywhere. They were in Chennai and they are here too, selling different sorts of things ranging from paper clips to Silk saris. I am not saying that I hate'em. Its just that I don't understand them. They aren't too ignorant to realize that the huge shopping malls do provide these small things too and people tend to buy these from there. There was this guy who used to deliver stationary items in our apartment in Chennai, when I was living with my friends. His delivery items include paper clips, pens, catridges for printers, A4 size papers and all from a nearby shop. Over the time, we got into talking terms and I should say that it helped to improve my Brahmin Tamil (which nobody apparently understands there) to local Tamil. Even though we used to meet only once in a month (maximum twice), he became a good local aquaintance to all of us.
One night he came and knocked on our door. My friend, Shweta opened the door and saw him looking quite upset. We asked him the matter and he asked if he could borrow a 1000 Rupee and he would give it back next week. We gave him the money and he folded his hands and said thank you and left running. Next day morning, we were shocked to hear about the murder of a woman not very far from our apartment building. In that whole week we tried to gather as much as details we could. We naturally doubted this guy and conceded to each other that it could very well have been one of us. The sheer terror in the thought made us shiver in the middle of the night when the surroundings were drenched in darkness and silence. We were eager to gather even the tiniest detail about the murder and after the dinner we tried to put together these horrifying and intriguing facts (as well fiction) to make up a story. Shweta and Tessa even boasted that they have been reading Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes to get the punch on the story. One of the facts we collected was that this guy was seen around the victim's house the day before the incident. My argument was that the house was situated near a public road so it was easy to spot anyone living around there. Anila was on my side and backed me up on this by saying that if we had gone to the shop around the corner, we also could have been spotted there. This stirred up an agitated argument for two hours and all of us got late for work the next day. These brain-storming sessions including making up and considering possible scenarios of the murder. Some of us (including us) even started watching investigative thrillers suddenly. We went out that weekend, a combined effort to divert our poor, overworked brains from the setting of crime investigators to common, weekend-humans.
Monday woke up with the shocking news that the special investigation team has caught a man from the neighbourhood in connection with the murder of the woman. We waited till the murderer appeared in the local TV network's mid-day news. To our surprise, it wasn't our seller. It was somebody else and the more shocking news was that he confessed committing the crime by saying that he did it for the gold ornament she was wearing. The police closed the file but we didn't. The seller became a mystery story among us. I once gathered courage to ask in the stationary shop about their delivery man and to my horror the manager said they never had a delivery man in that shop. I ran to my place to break the story to my friends. They were equally horrified and nobody talked until the dinner time. That night, after dinner, Anila proclaimed that she won't allow anymore talk on the topic since it has become an obsession for some of us. We welcomed the decision and applauded. Things became normal gradually and two of us, Anila and Tessa, shifted to Pune. Shweta and me started enjoying the newly allowed freedom and extra space and started advertising in our offices for possible roommates. Nobody was interested, to our secret happiness.
Then, August came. I resigned and went home for a family emergency and later got a job in Bangalore. In December, I shifted to Bangalore with my mother. In Januray, I again went to Chennai for getting some of my stuff and meeting some old friends. I was in my old apartment and Shweta had gone out with her new room mate for shopping. The door was open and I was sitting far away but still facing it. Suddenly, the lift opened and the seller stepped out. I stood up immediately, horrified but pretending to be deadly, as if I was facing Dr. Hanniball Lecter. The seller smiled and apologized for startling me. His hand went to his left pocket. I suddenly remembered reading in some book that the most deadly criminals keep their weapon in their left pocket. I looked around for possible weapons for hitting and set my eyes upon the bright yellow flower vase on the table. His hands came out from the pocket with two weirdly folded 500 Rs currency notes. He kept it on the table and apologized for the delay in paying. He said he never thought it would take him 7 months to return instead of the 7 days he promised. When I felt a little better, I asked him where he was all this time and where did he go that night. He sat near the doorstep and started his story. He had lost his son a few years (9, to be correct) back and has been searching for him since then. He had registered his son's name in a special police group investigating such missing cases. That evening, he got a call from Rameshwaram, informing him that his son's name has been identified in a group of young men captured by Indian Navy off the coast of Tamil Nadu. He rushed (after borrowing money from us that night without knowing that a murder has happened in the neighbourhood) to Rameshwaram and located his son in a camp by the police for refugees from Sri Lanka. He identified his son but it took the police two months to clear his papers to enter the mainland. The boy was captured in when he was 14 years old and now spoke only a few words. He was kidnapped by the L.T.T.E agents for developing their army against the Lankan government. The man sat on my door step and cried and said that if it wasn't for the money we gave he would not have got his son back. I could not say anything. I could not tell him that we made stories and spend countless number of nights speculating his involvement in the murder. He stood up and thanked me again and left. I couldn't wait for Shweta to come back. I called her up and narrated the entire incident. Unfortunately, I was leaving for Bangalore that evening so we could not have a talk for the completion of the story.
These days when I see sellers on the road or the narrow corridors of our building, I think about the stationary seller in Chennai. And the stories we made.
- Sneha
One night he came and knocked on our door. My friend, Shweta opened the door and saw him looking quite upset. We asked him the matter and he asked if he could borrow a 1000 Rupee and he would give it back next week. We gave him the money and he folded his hands and said thank you and left running. Next day morning, we were shocked to hear about the murder of a woman not very far from our apartment building. In that whole week we tried to gather as much as details we could. We naturally doubted this guy and conceded to each other that it could very well have been one of us. The sheer terror in the thought made us shiver in the middle of the night when the surroundings were drenched in darkness and silence. We were eager to gather even the tiniest detail about the murder and after the dinner we tried to put together these horrifying and intriguing facts (as well fiction) to make up a story. Shweta and Tessa even boasted that they have been reading Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes to get the punch on the story. One of the facts we collected was that this guy was seen around the victim's house the day before the incident. My argument was that the house was situated near a public road so it was easy to spot anyone living around there. Anila was on my side and backed me up on this by saying that if we had gone to the shop around the corner, we also could have been spotted there. This stirred up an agitated argument for two hours and all of us got late for work the next day. These brain-storming sessions including making up and considering possible scenarios of the murder. Some of us (including us) even started watching investigative thrillers suddenly. We went out that weekend, a combined effort to divert our poor, overworked brains from the setting of crime investigators to common, weekend-humans.
Monday woke up with the shocking news that the special investigation team has caught a man from the neighbourhood in connection with the murder of the woman. We waited till the murderer appeared in the local TV network's mid-day news. To our surprise, it wasn't our seller. It was somebody else and the more shocking news was that he confessed committing the crime by saying that he did it for the gold ornament she was wearing. The police closed the file but we didn't. The seller became a mystery story among us. I once gathered courage to ask in the stationary shop about their delivery man and to my horror the manager said they never had a delivery man in that shop. I ran to my place to break the story to my friends. They were equally horrified and nobody talked until the dinner time. That night, after dinner, Anila proclaimed that she won't allow anymore talk on the topic since it has become an obsession for some of us. We welcomed the decision and applauded. Things became normal gradually and two of us, Anila and Tessa, shifted to Pune. Shweta and me started enjoying the newly allowed freedom and extra space and started advertising in our offices for possible roommates. Nobody was interested, to our secret happiness.
Then, August came. I resigned and went home for a family emergency and later got a job in Bangalore. In December, I shifted to Bangalore with my mother. In Januray, I again went to Chennai for getting some of my stuff and meeting some old friends. I was in my old apartment and Shweta had gone out with her new room mate for shopping. The door was open and I was sitting far away but still facing it. Suddenly, the lift opened and the seller stepped out. I stood up immediately, horrified but pretending to be deadly, as if I was facing Dr. Hanniball Lecter. The seller smiled and apologized for startling me. His hand went to his left pocket. I suddenly remembered reading in some book that the most deadly criminals keep their weapon in their left pocket. I looked around for possible weapons for hitting and set my eyes upon the bright yellow flower vase on the table. His hands came out from the pocket with two weirdly folded 500 Rs currency notes. He kept it on the table and apologized for the delay in paying. He said he never thought it would take him 7 months to return instead of the 7 days he promised. When I felt a little better, I asked him where he was all this time and where did he go that night. He sat near the doorstep and started his story. He had lost his son a few years (9, to be correct) back and has been searching for him since then. He had registered his son's name in a special police group investigating such missing cases. That evening, he got a call from Rameshwaram, informing him that his son's name has been identified in a group of young men captured by Indian Navy off the coast of Tamil Nadu. He rushed (after borrowing money from us that night without knowing that a murder has happened in the neighbourhood) to Rameshwaram and located his son in a camp by the police for refugees from Sri Lanka. He identified his son but it took the police two months to clear his papers to enter the mainland. The boy was captured in when he was 14 years old and now spoke only a few words. He was kidnapped by the L.T.T.E agents for developing their army against the Lankan government. The man sat on my door step and cried and said that if it wasn't for the money we gave he would not have got his son back. I could not say anything. I could not tell him that we made stories and spend countless number of nights speculating his involvement in the murder. He stood up and thanked me again and left. I couldn't wait for Shweta to come back. I called her up and narrated the entire incident. Unfortunately, I was leaving for Bangalore that evening so we could not have a talk for the completion of the story.
These days when I see sellers on the road or the narrow corridors of our building, I think about the stationary seller in Chennai. And the stories we made.
- Sneha
Wow!! That was some story :) Also goes to show our natural inclination of making servants, laborers etc the first targets of our suspicious minds. I remember as a kid, I used to think all the hawkers carrying their wares in big sacks were actually looking to put children in those sacks and taking them away.
ReplyDeleteAlso goes to show the interest in thrillers-both cinematic and academic :)
A nice narration of a thrilling but painful experience. I kind of know a similar story. Our old driver was from Madurai, T.N. His sister's son was kidnapped by L.T.T.E but was found 2 years later near some coastal district. According to a news report, the year 2001 top in the amount of kidnappings in T.N and most of the victims were male between 15-23 years. Most of them won't survive their training camp and some of them were killed during escape attempts, according to our driver. This problem has a more complex side because it is found out that those who escaped and came back to India had problems in adapting to the society and some of them were seriously unstable. Anyways, you got your 1000 bucks. These things never matter to most among us as they care only about the bucks in their wallet.
ReplyDeleteOh man. To think that this has actually happened to you. I'm just really glad that your seller managed to find his son...and you guys helped him. It is sad that we do jump to conclusions about people not as well off as us. I wonder what that really says about us.
ReplyDelete@ Sneha: Touching story, brilliantly narrated. I think you should work on it a bit and get it published... It sounds really good to me, the kind of stuff that magazines would publish. You should definitely try.
ReplyDelete@ Soumalya: That suspicion of hawkers with sacks was probably a remnant of some childhood admonition to behave or else... or else you'd get taken away in a sack! I think almost all parents have some version of it used to terrify their kids into good behaviour. Do this or else monkeyman will come take u away?
@Swati Exactly. And I think this distrust and air of menace that elders weave into our psyche at that impressionable age, nurtures our negative feelings about people not so well off as us?
ReplyDelete