Kombai

I am all nervous. First time on stage. I love dancing. I love singing too. Mother says I sing like a fox howling. I love singing. I know many songs by heart. I sing when I walk from home to school and back from school to home. I love dancing. I close all the doors and windows and dance for the songs I love. I wish I can properly learn to sing and dance like in movies. I love dancing and singing. There are no such learning places in Kombai. I am going to dance on stage today. I am very nervous.

It is annual festival in school. Sports events are all finished. This time of the year is a real festival time in school. Radhika won several prizes in sports. She runs very fast. There were other competitions too. They were all finished well before the actual celebration days. Anandhi won first prize in singing. I sang a good song too. I guess one has to sing a popular song to win the competition. I won a prize too. I came first in the essay competition. I was surprised myself. It was sports day yesterday. I didn't run. I don't run. I don't do well in sports. Not my thingy. But I like the festive mood the sports day creates. I like to assist teachers in conducting competitions. It gets me involved in the fun. It is so exciting. I love sports day. I just cannot participate though. I love watching the excitement. It is so exciting.

I am dancing this year. Solo dance. Teacher borrowed clothes from some boys. Identities are kept secret so that they don't bully me later. I am gonna wear a hat too. To hide my long hair. It is not that I am playing a boy in the dance. It is just dancing in boy's clothes hides all aspects of a girl, my teacher told. It can disguise who I am too. It will be good. no one would know that it was me who danced. Hope it saves me from my family. They don't like me singing at home. Dance? They will kill me if they come to know.

Our ground is really big. Middle school joins us for the celebrations, although I don't know in which event they join us. The stage is set up in middle school area. There is no hard separating line between the middle school and the high school. Still we high school people don't go to the middle school grounds. We have got proper grounds for proper games. It is all trees in the middle school area. Tamarind trees. But it is good for the viewers to sit on as the ground under the trees is much cooler.

We are all set and ready to perform. We are all waiting back stage. I can see the crowd from behind the stage. Some villagers come to watch the show too. Some parents come to see their children getting prizes. Thankfully mine haven't come. It is all hazy for me. I cannot see any familiar face in the crowd.

I am going next. It is the famous duo dancing now. Disadvantage of being involved is that you cannot see the show from the front. I have seen all the dances, all steps. I have also seen all the performers in their full make up. but it would be nice to watch the final version in full make up from the front. I can see it from the side here. Looks like the dance is a hit. I am next. I am next. I rehearse some of the steps and their sequences in my head closing my eyes.

"ha ha ha.... en ennam inippatheno (why my thinkings are so sweet?) ha ha ha..."

The announcement says my name. I go next. It is all hazy. The song starts. "ha ha ha"... I start the first step.. the music follows. I change the step. "en ennam inippatheno" ..The song continues. I concentrate on the next step and the next change. I remember that I have to move around on the entire stage as it is a solo dance. I move around and change steps to suit the music and the words. Before I knew, the song has finished. I bow and thank the crowd. I hear cheering.

All done. It was like automated. I don't remember anything. I didn't see anything. It is all done now. Teacher appreciated. I heard claps. Back to the changing room. I changed quickly . Ready to go home. Bye teacher.

You looked like Shivaji Ganesan! Some voice behind me commented while walking back home. Gosh. So they recognised! My head looked down and legs started walking fast. I must get home before anyone notices me.

I see mother and Nahamani akka standing on the steps at the front of our house. They look a bit not so happy. Hope it is all my imagination.

"So, I heard that you danced today. What have you done? What have you done? Is this why I raised you all these years........."

Mother greeted me.

In My Grandmother's House I wrote:

"Grandpa has his small sections of territory staked and claimed - the fish tank, the outside room piled high with old junk and his own bedroom filled with fascinating things. If I am good he will take out the old tin boxes full of war photos. Then he fills his pipe and sits by the window, puffing his pipe and telling me the stories behind the photos. I knew about Mussolini and the war in North Africa before I was eight. Grandpa has other photos too. Stationed in Egypt he went to every ancient monument he could. Here there are photos of the real pyramids and sphinx."

It is summer in South Africa, 1990. I'm sitting in a garage, holding an old tin box. It is so worn by age that the colour has no description in the English language. I rub my hand across the scratched and worn away surface, feeling old friends inside. I know their faces without having to see them. If I open the box... when I open the box... I will know them and they will know me, but for now it is enough to sit here and listen to them whispering within their tin tomb.

The sun is bright outside the garage. I can hear cars in the distance and birds nearby. My grandfather would sit here for hours, squatting on his haunches with ease, even in his seventies. Sit and watch the world... smoke his pipe. Now he is gone and I am here in old clothes to help family remove grandpa's collections.

Grandpa was a pack rat supreme. There are at least twenty jam jars of screws and nails so rusted no-one could ever use them again. There are five books of wallpaper samples he used to decorate two generations of doll's houses and eight tins of World War two tank paint used mostly to repaint the concrete garden gnome that now sits on the front steps. There are Rhodesian TV magazines dating back to the sixties. Their covers show girls wearing mini skirts and enormous hair. Their adverts are for products and companies long gone and their TV listings are heavily nostalgic - Star Trek and Twilight Zone, Fred Flintstone and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

My dad puts them alongside the rest of the junk to be recycled or dumped. So much of my grandfather's collecting was junk and yet he could create wonder from it. Like the penny farthing cycle he built from scraps of wire and metal or the castle forts and doll's houses he meticulously glued together from old empty matchboxes. I actually hated the doll's house. I'd wanted a castle, but even at eight I'd been awed at the craftsmanship that was needed to create a luxury double-story, with cardboard roof tiles and real windows of thin plastic sheeting, out of matchboxes.

Sitting amongst the dusty dregs of a lifetime's collecting I sit with "the box" and remember. I can't lift the lid. As long as the box is closed the memories inside are dormant - frozen. Inside this box time stands still. As long as the lid is shut my grandpa is alive and we are sitting in his room in Rhodesia as he tells me all the small histories. Once I lift the lid it will be over. The photos are not mine - they are going to other family members as keepsakes. So I sit and hold the memories a little longer. I have asked permission to scan as many as I want, but it won't be the same. I have no-one I can tell their stories to, as my grandfather told me, and scanned pictures on a screen aren't the same as brittle dry paper held in the hand.

Perhaps my heart is as sad to let them go as it is to let him go... but I have one consolation. I have the tales and the memories - the small histories. No-one can take those from me.

I smile and open the box...

Pachayamma is my mother’s best friend. From her childhood days. Best buddies they are. They gossip a lot and they claim that they are the best in bitching in town. They can bitch about you when you are sitting very much next to them, still you wouldn’t know a thing. They might even get you to nod or laugh for some of their remarks. Yeah. That bad they are. They can name nick names and form code words then and there. They understand each other perfectly well. Don’t know how. Chithi on the other hand, tags along them all the time, but understands nothing. Chithi doesn’t have any best friend of her own until she found her kind, the working kind. Now they have many things in common no one else can understand, but just them, you know, CL, PF and such things. Still chithi gets attracted to the gossiping experts when they start giggling with their famous start line, “ela, what are you doing”?

I guess murugeswari akka is my best friend as we have some common things to discuss about. Maths teacher, history teacher and stuff like that. We don’t gossip. We don’t know to gossip or we don’t know anything to gossip about. That is the truth, actually. No one tells me their secrets that I can tell my best friend and ask her to keep it a secret. No one gave me an opportunity to keep a secret a secret either. I guess lack of practise made me the worst secret keeper. No secret to gossip about means, no best friend. I have study friends, play friends, but no best friend.

“Do you want to come with for the drive?” asks my dad… and I’m running for the door. I love going with my dad. Since we moved to South Africa he has been working self-employed and that means I can go with him to jobs. Sometimes it’s a bit boring, but almost every time I can find something interesting to look at or discover or do.

Today he is going to meet a builder and discuss work. The builder lives on a farm. A farm! Yaay! This is exciting.

We follow a dry bumpy dirt road through low thorn trees and bush until finally I can see clear fields and an old white-painted farm house. There is a car waiting for us; it’s the builder man. I know him. He’s nice. I get out and climb the fence while they talk. Across the fields I see another man coming towards us.

“That’s Ed.” The builder says, “He’s slow.”

He seems to be walking at a normal speed to me, but my dad explains that “slow” means Ed’s brain, not his feet. Ed’s parents rent the farm from the builder. Only his dad is dead now so it’s just Ed and his mom. The builder says how sad it is. Ed has no brains and can’t do anything. He’ll never be able to take over the farm now his dad’s gone. Ed’s no good for anything, but he stops talking there because Ed is close now.

He’s old! I’m surprised. Ed looks older than my dad and my dad is 35. Pretty ancient.

Ed is tall, skinny and brown. Everything about him is brown, his clothes, his old dusty hat, his leathery skin and even his bright deep eyes. He’s sort of drawn thin and dry, like something left out in the sun too long. Ed has stubble on his chin and his clothes look raggedy, but he has a nice smile. He says “Do you like puppies? We have puppies.”

I look at my dad. Puppies! Dad nods, it’s okay. I can go to see the puppies.

Ed and I walk back across the fields to the farmhouse in happy silence. We don’t need to talk. It’s spring and there is so much noise. Birds, cows, wind in trees… I can walk in happy silence and listen to spring… and think about puppies.

At the house Ed opens the front door into cool deep shadows. Inside the walls are peeling paint and the ceiling has holes. It feels like a ruin, but it smells like a home. The scrubbed wooden floors echo under my feet. An old lady comes out the kitchen. She’s dried out and brown too, but her hair is white. She’s wiping her hands on a big white apron. She says “Ed, you haven’t put the horse out yet.” Ed nods… and opens the door to our right. I can’t believe my eyes! There’s a HORSE in there! I can see a big farm dresser and a table against the wall… and straw all over the floor. A horse in the dining room! It’s a beautiful pure white horse. It looks like the horses you see in fairytale books. It comes to the door and “huffs” gently. I can feel sweet hay breath on my face. Ed tells his mom he’ll take the horse out later. He smiles, “I’m going to show her the puppies.” He tells his mother. His mother frowns, but says nothing. She goes back into the kitchen. The horse peeks at us from around the door, then goes back to eating hay in the dining room.

Ed takes me to his bedroom. It’s a huge room full of giant old wooden furniture and in the middle of the floor is a rug and on that a blanket. There’s a dog lying in the blanket... and the puppies.

Ed tells me to stay by the door. He explains that Jessy is a new mommy and very protective. We must be quiet and calm and not scare her. Jessy will bite if she thinks we are dangerous. He explains how Jessy needs to feel safe. I am quiet and I do as he says. I walk in slowly. I go only as fast and as far as Jessy is happy with. Every time she growls… I stop.

Jessy is some kind of farm work dog. She’s brown, like Ed, and she has long floppy ears. I don’t remember much else. I’m too busy looking at the puppies. They’re all the same brown and their eyes are still shut. They’re little wriggly brown squeaky blogs. Ed lets Jessy get to know me and once she’s relaxed he picks up a puppy for me to hold. It’s tricky. It wriggles so much and its fur is so silky. I’m scared I’ll drop it, so I give it back to Ed.

Ed tells me the rug always belongs to Jessy, but the cats have their kittens in the hatboxes. Hatboxes? He shows me. There’s a big old wooden wardrobe standing half open against the far wall. There’s a long shelf at the top. It’s filled with old hatboxes, probably Victorian. Big round ones decorated with faded stripes and roses, square ones in dark rich colours. He knocks on one… and a cat looks over the edge. Another cat peers out from another box further along. He sighs, “Can’t keep them out,” he says “The cats just love those hatboxes.”

His mom comes to call us. My dad is leaving, time to go. I say thank you. Ed waves goodbye as we drive away. I will never forget today, it has been a magical adventure.