An Ode to a Comrade (A fictionalized account of a political tragedy in Kerala) | Sreejith K

On those evenings the weather stays clear, from her favourite spot on the ’charupadi’, she would watch momentarily the sun go down between the coconut palms in the distance, but today, she kept gazing at the western sky long after the lingering crimson of the day that just went by had faded into yet another starlit night after which, with her cloudy eyes, she browsed through the pages of the party newspaper which chirukandan has been dutifully dropping on her verandah every morning, since ages. Hovering over the obituaries, she wondered, with a wry smile, what the obituary of someone who was a panchayat president some fifty years ago would read like once her turn came.

***
In her advancing years, she would often recall, never without a shudder, how her world of hope and purpose suddenly came crashing down around her the day after she raised corruption allegations at the farewell ceremony of a transferred official, and the one-sided media trial that followed which made more or less inevitable the denial of her bail and consequent arrest.

The tragedy would scar her forever. Fifty years after the event, she still had nightmares of the agonizing moments before daybreak when someone, publicly humiliated, decides to take his own life while still in the dress he wore at his farewell the evening before, and of two teenage daughters at a railway station waiting in vain with their mother for their father who would never arrive.

***
While in jail, her spirit would slowly ebb. After they trolled the impeccable way she wore a sari at the time of her arrest, she shifted to wearing somber salwars, and when, to show that she was not yet broken, she smiled during her court appearances, and social media called her a remorseless ’yakshi’, she would stop smiling altogether. And, how she would curse her beauty the day they attributed that to her rise in the party ranks!

***

On release from prison, when elections came, the party assured her that they would consider her once people forgot, but that day would never come. Slowly, she lost her ability to articulate, and they stopped calling her for meetings until one day they would forget all about her after which, the party newspaper which Chirukandan brought without fail would remain the only link she had with the party.

***
The last time Chirukandan came to deliver the newspaper, there was, after ages, a smile on her face. She was looking longingly to the west, and a tear that had fallen from the corner of her right eye had frozen on her cheeks midway on its journey from the early morning chill of late November, a scene which Chirukandan would carry with him for the rest of his uneventful life. An obituary in the party newspaper informed its readers, in a couple of lines, of the peaceful death in sleep of an ex-panchayat president. No photo would be given, and, indeed, no mention was made of the fact that long before her death, we had all conspired to take the life out of her.

(Author: Sreejith K, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Government College, Kolkata | Email: sreeji1967[at]gmail.com)