Men and Dreams in the Dhauladhar

Men and Dreams in the Dhauladhar

MEN

AND

DREAMS

IN THE DHAULADHAR

KOCHERY C SHIBU

© 2013 by Kochery C Shibu

All rights reserved.

E version International

First published; 2013

Published by; Mishan Designs

Designed by; Mini Varkey Shibu

Authors Note

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters and incidents to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental and not intended.

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission and consent of the Publisher.

Acknowledgement

I have been able to write this book with the unstinted support of my wife Mini and daughter Anjali. They have been my inspiration during the extended stay away from home when I wrote this book.

I am thankful to Keerti Ramachandra for editing the novel. We have had umpteen discussions and reviews on all chapters of the book. We agreed to disagree on many occasions. Numerous reviews of the book both in content and presentation have been possible with Keerti’s unrelenting support.  

I would like to thank Mini Varkey Shibu, Alumni National Institute of Design Ahmadabad, for creation of the e-cover of this book.

I am thankful to Amazon.com ad Mishan Designs for e-publishing this book.

Bangalore                                           Kochery C Shibu

India

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the men and women who strive to realise their dreams.

May all your dreams come true

Bangalore Kochery C Shibu

India

Nanda

Nanda got out of the auto rickshaw when he reached the Inter State Bus Terminus, popularly known as ISBT. The place was echoing with touts' voices, soliciting passengers to various destinations.

Chandigarh, Chandigarh, Chandigarh, a number of voices bellowed to his left, while a single one yelled, Ludhiana, Ludhiana, Ludhiana, to his far right.

Through this cacophony Nanda picked up a lone shrill voice, Ropar, Ropar, Ropar waxing and waning over the background noises. It reminded him of the AM radio songs of yesteryears. He looked for the ticket counter for the Dhauladhar buses and finally found it. He bought himself a ticket for the 6 pm bus.

He then switched off his mobile phone and removed the battery. The last time he had used it was to speak to Lalaji from the train as it was nearing Delhi. The conversation was brief and to the point. He was to get on a bus heading for Dhauladhar from Delhi and contact Lalaji's munshi on arrival. Nanda looked around him. He noticed the snobbish expression on the faces of passengers travelling by the Air Conditioned Volvo buses; the weary looks of those waiting for the ordinary buses, huddled together on the steps, watching hawkeyed for one of the few benches to get vacated. He too perched on the steps. The aroma of frying and cooking wafted through the air. He breathed in the smell and flavour of Delhi.

Suddenly, he tensed. The sound of shuffling feet behind had alerted him. His hands tightened on his belt as he peered over his shoulders, not daring to breathe. Focus, he told himself, trying to calm his nerves.

An old man dragging his worn-out slippers on the floor, came into view. Nanda let out his breath and relaxed.

His gaze was drawn to a group of foreign tourists at the Air-conditioned Volvo counter. The men in khaki were explaining that the tickets would be sold only half an hour before departure. They kept repeating this, as the tourists seemed to be taking turns to ask the same question. There was a sense of duty in the persistent repetition of the answer, Sahib, half hour before only. The man at the counter was not amused; he was not angry, nor was he indifferent; it was just a mechanical response. Nanda looked at his watch. He still had a couple of hours wait. He turned towards the benches and leapt up as soon as he saw a couple get up and move away. Before he knew, he dozed off.

The sound of footsteps close by startled him awake. Once again, his fist clenched, his jaw tightened as he sensed danger.

This time, it was an impatient passenger pacing up and down in front of the bench. He relaxed for a moment; he knew he could not let his guard down.

He sat there keeping a watchful eye on the people around. He felt hot and sticky as the heat and humidity of June made his clothes cling to his body like another skin.

It was almost six when the bus finally arrived. Nanda scanned the passengers as he entered the bus and sat next to a middle-aged man wearing a red turban and an awful scowl. The Hindi and the Punjabi banter around him reduced as the bus started moving out of Delhi and the air conditioning slowly took effect.

The bus reached Alamgarh early in the morning.

Oh, Nandji, you are here? Okay, there are taxis running from bus stand. Get down at the temple and phone, the munshi instructed him when Nanda called him from the public telephone booth nearby.

It took Nanda some time to figure out what he had been told in the mix of Hindi and Punjabi. As he left the booth, he heard a taxi driver calling, Temple Junction, get on quickly.

The vehicle was an old jeep with a seating capacity of ten. A few villagers wearing colorful Kullu topis were already seated inside the jeep. Oye there, lift your bag on top, the driver yelled. Someone helped him to put away his bag on the top. The jeep spluttered before starting up and chugged along, creaking and groaning. Suddenly, Nanda felt himself shiver. There was a sharp nip in the air.

Temple Junction, shouted the driver's assistant as the vehicle came to a halt in a large parking lot in front of a temple. Nanda got out, picked up his bags and waited.

His watchful eyes scanned the area and he was relieved to see only the locals around. His attention was caught by someone waving from a motorcycle parked across the road. It must be the munshi, he thought. In a minute he joined him and they drove off in the opposite direction. After a while, they stopped in front of a small double storied building with a board in red and white that read L.C.C.

Lala Construction Company.

Munshi pointed to a room adjacent to the office, indicating his place of stay. Nanda left his belongings in the room and they set off for the market with Nanda perched on the munshi's old motorcycle. The Moving Sensation was painted on both sides of the bike in white letters. He wondered if the munshi knew what the words meant. They stopped in front of a stall with a heap of woolens with a prominent Flat 40% off discount tag that hung from the ceiling. They picked up a few items and soon they were back at Nanda's new abode. Munshi told Nanda to come back after he had put on something warm. He would wait for him outside. Nanda took a quick look around the room and noticed four cots, a metal locker beside each one, a wooden cupboard, and a writing table squeezed into one corner. All along the wall, clothes hung on an improvised clothesline. A strong smell of stale sweat pervaded the room. There were two incense sticks burning in front of a photo of Lord Ganesh hanging on the wall. The toilet and the bathroom were outside, and a small washing machine stood by the door. There were more clothes drying on the line outside. Nanda heard the munshi's persistent honking and rushed out. They went up the tarred road and then turned off onto a kacha road with a board that read Hydro Electric Project. Nanda noticed the paint peeling off in places, mud splattered all over, smudging the already faint letters. The motorcycle bumped and rocked over the potholes and puddles, splashing through the mud. On one side of the road, farmers were ploughing their fields, the narrow ploughs cutting through the fresh earth. The fields were small, four to five cents on an average, step cut into the steep hill. It formed a picturesque sight with the people working at different levels and in close proximity.

Nanda was awestruck by the sheer majesty of the mountains towering above everything else in the vicinity. The Dhauladhar range, also known as the Outer Himalayas, started from Dalhousie in the northwest of Himachal Pradesh close to the Pir Panjal range and extended all the way to Badrinath near Garhwal in the east. The snowline of the mountains rose to nearly 6,000 meters in the center and the peaks of the Dhauladhar changed colour every season. From the white shroud of winter, they put on a streaked pattern of snowlines in summer. The locals believed that the mountains had a mind of their own, and the patterns of the snow reflected the moods. The people living in the hills used a well-defined network of routes along the ridges of the Dhauladhar and the Pir Panjal range to traverse into Kashmir and back.

The project road, as it was called, was in a state of disrepair. They reached the worksite —a freshly reclaimed area that had been leveled, with a row of tin sheds on one side. A plate-bending machine for fabricating large pipes stood in one corner. A number of men were walking around. Nanda noticed an officious looking middle-aged man staring at him. But as soon as the munshi led Nanda up to introduce him, he turned away. Nandji, this is our Magar Sahib. He is a big mechanical engineer, he has worked in Dubai and in many big projects, the munshi said. Nanda sensed trouble. The man was deliberately trying to ignore his presence, but Nanda caught him stealing glances at them through the corner of his eye.

Just then a loud voice boomed, Let's go, Nandji. A stocky man called him towards the rolling machine. It was Kartar, he was told.

Nanda looked at the faces around him as he approached the machine. There were no familiar faces from his past. He relaxed as he went near the machine. The manufacturers called it a plate bending machine, but he and most of the workforce referred to it as a rolling machine. It was a second-hand light-rolling machine which could roll twelve thick plates and if they were lucky, even sixteen. It was customary to refer to plates by their thickness. Thus, twelve meant plates of 12 mm thickness. He was told that a heavy rolling machine had been ordered from Mumbai for the heavier plates.

Nanda had been brought in to set up the machine and start operations. The labourers were standing by for directions. It took him just a few minutes to focus on the task at hand. The work progressed fast with one labour gang working on excavation and another one on the concreting. By evening, they were ready. As the sun dipped, there was a sudden drop in the temperature and Nanda felt the chill from the mountains seep into his body. He pulled off the sweater tied around his waist and put it on. It was 8 pm by the time they went back to the pick-up utility van. Nanda was silent and did not respond to the many queries of the team.

Nandji, do you know Lalaji from before?

Nandji, are you related to Lalaji?

Nandji, are you the mechanical expert?

Where is your family, Nandji?

Where are you from?

Magar says he does not require anybody's help.

Nanda smiled in reply to the volley of questions, answering them in his mind.

I do not know Lalaji from before.

I am not related to Lalaji.

My family is back home, but I cannot give you more details.

I am from the South, and I cannot tell you more.

I would not have been here if Magar had been competent.

Oye, he is a serious engineer, leave him alone, Kokki remarked, with a laugh, and the whole vehicle burst into laughter. He knew that for the time being, they had given up on trying to pry into his background.

Nanda entered the musty room and tried to settle down. He was far removed from the loud chatter in the room. By the time he finished his dinner, the others were also ready. He knew they had consumed a good amount of alcohol.

Nandji, this is our Thapa special, it is like lightning. If you light it, it will burn, take a swig and see, Vijay said.

Nanda declined and closed his eyes as he lay down.

He could still feel the knots of fear in his stomach. But he was tired and eventually drifted off to sleep. There was the sound of running feet; men were chasing him. He heard a swishing sound and ducked instinctively as he saw a sword swing. He froze. Gasping, he woke up drenched in sweat.

He looked around. It took a while to register and adjust to the new environment in the darkness. The Lalmahal team was sleeping around him.

He tried shutting his eyes, but the images kept dancing in his mind. Opening his eyes, he strained to hear the night sounds. He had to shut out everything to keep his mind blank. He started praying, and mercifully, sleep overcame him.

His body clock woke him up early in the morning and he went outside to the small concrete area on the ground floor and started his morning kalari routine. He started with surya namaskara—salutations to the sun and got on to the kalari sequence exercises.

He kept a look out for shadows and strained his ears for footsteps.

He knew he had to be alert to stay alive.

It was a full two hours before he finished his kalari routine. When he returned, his roommates were in different stages of getting ready. He removed the SIM card from his mobile and switched it on. The room was filled with a low volume chant—‘Kousalya Supraja Rama Poorva Sandhya Pravarthathe…’

Nanda felt a sense of belonging and tranquility as the morning prayers soothed his mind and body.

There was last-minute running and shouting as they scrambled to get to the site on time.

Kokki gave Nanda a rundown on the project as they waited in the vehicle and introduced the LCC team. Kokki was one of the supervisors and was handling the heavy machinery and the surge shaft. Vijay was the supervisor for civil works on penstock, and Rahul was responsible for the de-silting tank and the tunnel. The main project was called the AM Hydro. It was an acronym combining the first letters of the two rivers Aher and Matora, at whose confluence, the dam was being built for the project. The dam was touted as the biggest in the Dhauladhar. The AM Hydro project was a joint venture between an Indian and an Italian firm and was being executed directly under the supervision of the Italian team at site. Matora was a linked small hydro project that was being executed by the Indian company. The LCC was the main contractor at the Matora site.

Stay clear of the Gorahji, Kokki said, laughing as he finished. Nanda could sense a trace of fear in the laughter. He wondered why. Nanda had heard of the Gorahji, the popular term for Antonio Pascucci, the Italian team leader at the project site, but had not seen him.

When they reached the site, they were told that the heavy-duty plate-bending machine from Mumbai was delayed. Nanda knew that it was not possible to roll thick plates with the light machine. But the company was pressurising them to get forty thick pipes ready for work.

Nanda got the team together and started assembling the light-rolling machine.

What's the big fuss about rolling forty thick plates? Lalaji asked him, over the phone.

Nanda explained to him at length about the relation between the roller dia and the plate thickness, of the pre-pinching length and the bending motor capacity for handling the thick plates, and the strength of the gears required. They needed good-quality welding machines and a steady source of power from a dedicated diesel generator—the DG, at site. There was a momentary silence at the other end, and he knew that Lalaji was thinking on his feet. Promising to organise organize the material and speed-up the heavy-duty rolling machine from Mumbai, Lalaji hung up.

In the evening, Nanda was back with the team at their abode, fondly referred to as Lalmahal. The staff had coined the term by combining Lal from Lalaji and mahal the local term for a bungalow, so that the name had an allusion to and rhymed with Taj Mahal. Nanda smiled politely as Vijay explained the genesis of the name to him. He had noticed the importance of names in the short time that he was there. Everyone had a nickname, and every place, every event, everything, a colourful one. The dreams of the men were hidden in many of these names.

Nanda had dinner and retired early, listening to the lively chatter of the Lalmahal team. Sleep would not come.

He could hear screams as he closed his eyes. He knew they would come. He was not sure if they had tracked him down. He closed his eyes, and the figures jumped out at him; the dying man was glaring at him.

He had not spoken to anyone since arrival. He knew they would be tracking all the calls to his near and dear ones. He felt his body go taut as the knots of tension kept building, as the thoughts of his mother started churning in his mind. He had not said goodbye to her.

He got up and went outside.

Nanda looked at the Dhauladhar range. He wondered what those peaks had witnessed over the years. He thought he saw a snow-capped peak nod as if it had read his mind. They knew of that life far away and the people he loved.

Indumati

Mathathil Madhavan Nair was born on a hot Sunday in 1924. An only child, Madhu, as he was called by his parents, belonged to a family that had large land holdings. Madhu started his schooling at home with an Ezhuthachan, a home tutor, and was later admitted to the well-known Brennen School at Thalassery. Brennen School and Brennen College were reputed educational institutions in the early twentieth century. In keeping with the tradition of the family, at the age of seven, Madhu was initiated into the Mathathil Kalari, a martial arts school run by the family for generations and bearing its name. In 1942, when the nation was reverberating with Gandhi's Quit India call, Madhu joined Brennen College. He was the first one from his village to do so. He was struggling with the Bachelor of Arts, popularly called BA, degree course and was about to give up when he was summoned home. His father had passed away suddenly after a brief illness and he, at eighteen, inherited the responsibility of looking after the family property and the handloom factories. His father had started extensive farming of inchi pullu (lemon grass) to keep the considerable tracts of the family land under cultivation. Lemon grass extract, known as thailam, was in great demand during the Second World War. Madhu set up a small factory to extract the thailam and made a fortune from it. The villagers gave him a pet name—Inchipullu Nair.

The Kerala society was in a state of transition in the forties and the fifties. The war had brought in miserable conditions for the working class. Communist ideology had taken firm roots in many parts. The feudal families, who ran the kalaris and provided warrior men for the native rulers, were insecure. There were rumours of the elected government confiscating properties of the rich. Some educated and modern liberals, among the affluent landlords, were appalled by the conditions of the poor and joined the communist movement. The violent ways of the feudal landlords and their kalari, which was hitherto unchallenged, was countered by these families who were familiar with the modus operandi of the kalari. They also brought in the unwritten code—every killing must be avenged. The retribution invariably targeted those who had perpetrated the killings. Somewhere along the line, there were a few families on both sides who were bearing the brunt of the killings. The issues became personal and the kalari honour mandated revenge and an unending cycle of violence followed. It was mostly for family honour more than anything else. Inchipullu Nair and his sons could never fathom the radical changes in the society with the end of the Diwan rule, as the British Raj was popularly called. Many, in the generations to follow, also never stopped to think; there was always the killing of a family member to be avenged.

India's independence was celebrated with Madhu's marriage to Laxmikuttyamma. He was happy when he was blessed with two sons from the marriage. He wanted them to be in the league of the legendary martial arts experts, the Chekavars, who could send a chill down anyone's spine with their prowess. Then, of course, there were the family panans, the folk singers, who would go around singing the glory of Mathathil Kalari, which was an effective way of spreading reputation. It was another tradition continued when both his sons also joined the Brennen School. However, they were more into kalari and less into studies, and it did not surprise many when they did not make it to college. The family standing came in useful when finding matches for the two boys. Ramakrishnan and Prabhakaran were married early. Prabhakaran's wife, Indumati, had just joined college at the time of her marriage.

Society was going through a period of change, and there was fierce dislike and discontent brewing against the feudal landlords and their brute ways. Madhu was still steeped in the past and had no inkling of the changing times. It was on a Tuesday, when his sons were away on a tour, that Inchipullu Nair's car was blocked on the road. In broad daylight, he was pulled out and hacked to death in front of his wife. What followed was inevitable. The brothers vowed revenge. It was a matter of family honour. There was tension in the atmosphere. People feared another cycle of violence. The brothers had to be sure about who had committed the murders and were prepared to pay any price for the information, which ultimately came through their connections in the police force. Vayanadan had hatched the plot. The brothers bided their time. On the eve of their father's first death anniversary, they raided Vayanadan's village by night. Vayanadan and two of his accomplices were brutally murdered. But before they executed their plan, they had registered a police complaint at a faraway police station against Vayanadan for threatening to kill them. There were witnesses, procured at a hefty price, who had seen the incident. The retribution killings brought back the tension in the air. The scent of death was said to be stalking the brothers, Ramakrishnan and Prabhakaran. They moved around with their kalari escorts at all times after that incident. For the family, it was a time of constant tension and stress. The most affected by the cycle of violence was the newly wed Indumati.

Indumati Menon was born on 26 January 1954, in Purambur village, on the outskirts of Kozhikode town. She was the eldest child of her parents, Appan Nair and Indulekha Menon, with three brothers younger than her. She studied at the local Malayalam medium government school till the tenth grade and thereafter joined the Providence College in Kozhikode town. She was married off to Prabhakaran soon after she joined college. However, she was disappointed with the marriage for several reasons. Indumati considered herself to be fair-skinned. Marriage to an intimidating figure, many- shades darker than herself, was not what she had dreamt of. She vented her frustration by referring to him as a kappiri (a derogatory term for dark-skinned people) in front of her brothers. That he was an active leader of the Mathathil Kalari, living in the constant shadow of danger, made things worse. She was also worried that she would have to discontinue her studies but was overjoyed when she was allowed to go to college.

Indu found refuge in her studies. She dreamt of travelling abroad to study someday. Lady Luck shone on her when her professor, Bharathi Nair, in the university, offered her a scholarship to study food-processing technology in Helsinki. This was through a Dr John Varghese from Thiruvanathapuram whom Bharathi had met during a conference in Bombay. A PhD in education, Dr Varghese had migrated to the USA in the sixties, but his educational pursuits had taken him to Helsinki where he met and married a Finnish woman, several inches taller, called Elina. John had mentioned to Bharathi about the scholarship programme for Afro-Asian students, partly sponsored by the Finnish student community. When Bharathi asked him if they would consider an arts student for a food processing technology programme, he had replied, Yes, if it is the right student.

When Bharathi offered the scholarship to Indumati, she was overwhelmed. It was a rare honour. In the seventies, most students in Kerala looked to UK and USA as dream destinations. This was the first time anyone had mentioned Finland. It was with trepidation that Indumati filled in the forms. She was thrilled when her application was accepted. She announced boldly to everyone that Helsinki was a day's journey from London. Prabhakaran was happy at the turn of events, as it would keep Indumati safely away for a few years. The threat to the Mathathil family was real and looming and the tension still high.

Indumati was received at the airport by John, his wife Elina, and their daughter Cheryl. She joined the student hostel soon after and started attending evening classes in Finnish from the very first day of joining the college.

Learn to speak Finnish, and you will be okay, John had told her as he gave her a handbook.

John had also found her a part-time job at a local bakery. Although Indumati had been introduced to life with a man, she was completely taken aback by the freedom with which men and women interacted in the campus and outside. She shared her room with a local girl who was also her student sponsor as she could converse in English. Leija Moya was scantily dressed most of the time. Her boyfriend Goran had a collection of Jallu magazines, which she kept reading. Indumati was in for a shock when she went through the magazines one day and discovered the sexually explicit photographs. Indumati went for walks when Leija's boyfriend came over during weekends, and they would make noisy love on the rickety bed. Jumalauta, jumalauta, she could hear Leija's scream from the distance. She did not know the meaning, but the passionate sounds said it all.

Every evening, Leija would put on her LP records of Finnish music and ask Indumati to dance with her. She kept talking endlessly of the discotheques in Helsinki. Leija seemed to know them all. There is no life without dance and the discotheque, she would say peering over a small pocketsize magazine called the Diskosusi. It had details of all the DJs and events in the discotheques.

The lifestyle of Leija and her free and uninhibited approach towards her love life was to have a profound influence on Indumati, who was from a conservative and traditional background. The unquestioned individual freedom of campus life and the prolonged separation from her family made her even more vulnerable. It was a casual introduction to Yakov, a Russian friend of Goran, who introduced Indumati to the discotheques. Indumati was swept off her feet by the charming Yakov, who was a married man. She did not realise when or where she crossed the line, as she drifted with the winds of change.

It