And then he would write some more. This was the hardest part of his day. His children would wake up. His youngest son, Vishnu, would cry about having to drink milk and then about school and then about having a bath, all of which Devan shut his ears to. He would clutch his pen and think about the serenity outside, only to hear the incessant scraping that the sweeper woman made. The swish of the newspaper through the air, its thud on the gravel, the screeching pressure cooker, the fisherwoman haggling with his neighbour, his wife shouting at him to go out and buy some fish, pots and pans and other kitchen noises; he would give up when his father woke up and switched on the radio for the morning news. Forty five years old, Devan liked to believe he had everything he measured life by. He pursued his poetry with a vigour that matched his khadi clad, chain smoking days in Kerala University. He also had a job which paid for his wife and two sons. Reporting for a Malayalam daily, he liked to say that he liked his job.
After a day of ceaseless discussions and driving in the unremitting Thiruvananthapuram heat in his dark blue scooter, he would go to the Press Club and have his whisky, neat and in solitude, and smoke his beedis. Only when the photographers and reporters from his office started singing would he get up from his regular table - in the darkest corner of the bar. And then, disgusted at not being drunk, he would leave for his house.
His wife would be chopping onions or tomatoes or beans in front of the TV, both eyes on the soap, leaving Devan wondering whether she was crying for the dying grandmother or if it were the onions. His dinner would already be on the table, cold and closed with a stainless steel plate. He would dig into the rice, make balls with it and the red fish curry and down them with water. After rinsing his mouth, he would sit at his favourite place by the table lamp and stare at the recycled sheets of paper, the jingles boring holes into his skull. Sometimes his patience would not last and muttering, he would stomp to the bed. And when it did, and the TV was switched off, he wouldn’t write a lot, the alcohol weighing his eyelids down.
At his father’s house in Nagercoil, a smaller town to the south, Devan had stopped trying to find out when his day started. He did not know when he slept and there was no clock in the room to find out when he woke up. Sometimes he did not even know when he was awake and when he was sleeping. And even if he was aware of it when he woke up, it was difficult to let another person know. After a few weeks of trying, he had given up. Sometimes his wife would chance upon him and see his open eyes and make him a cup of tea. Perching him up on pillows, she would hold up the cup. Once in a while, he would remember that he was hungry or that he had to go to the toilet, and would mumble for his wife. Occasionally he had to burble for a few hours, but usually she came in a few minutes, from one of her sewing classes, the end of her sari tucked in, to shift him on to his wheel chair. His wife had stopped trying to speak to him a long time back. The classes and the tailoring paid for the children.
Whenever, he knew he was awake, Devan would stare at the ceiling and at the fan and the cobwebs. Sometimes he would gaze in the direction of a ceramic Taj Mahal in a glass case on the shelf, a relic from his wedding. Nobody knew whether he was looking at it, because his eyes were always wet. The confusion was compounded because the shelf also contained his books and his unfinished sheets. Everyday, some time before night, his youngest son, now twelve years old, would sit beside him and talk. About school, about his new friends and teachers and about football. He would also tell his father about his grandfather’s paddy field and the price of fish. Devan rarely replied to his son. His eyebrows would flicker when he heard something interesting. Sometimes a solitary drop would brim over and hide itself in his hair. Now and then, Vishnu would catch a smile on his father’s face, especially if he were talking about school.
At night, Devan would gaze at the darkness, willing himself to go to sleep. Often, his thoughts would drift on to his table lamp and his dark blue scooter and his own dark corner at the bar. Still awake, he would think of that night, five years now, after enduring his whisky for longer than usual, he had crashed into a parked Fiat. Paralyzed from neck down.
And sometimes he would think of his poetry. And when he did that, he would long for that fisherwoman’s voice.
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