Serial Killers

I am a serial killer. I kill a lot of life each day. Today morning while i was draining the soap water that had been used to rinse my clothes, i deluded a few ants with cascading water. Poor ants, had all been carried away in the inadvertent flood. The tiny black and harmless ants are the victims of such whimsical acts of humans, though the killing is also unintentional. Babies when put on floors look for these tiny black ants and try to play with them by wiping them off with a crushing sweep. There are creatures that are clever and dodge these sudden attacks of humans by being nimble and fidgety. Mosquitoes are very clever and they attack humans in the regions that are impossible to be reached by the arms. House flies are too quick for any swatting. If anyone thinks of making much less effort in destroying life around him, then he is a misfit in the modern world. All means of transportation is hazardous to insect life. Hundreds and thousands of insect carcasses adorn the windscreen of vehicles that evade through the fading light of the evening. Many a reptile has got trampled with the sturdy tyres of locomotives. However there still exists the following of the great 'Mahaveera", the last of the twenty-four ford-makers of (thirthankars) Jainism.

Jainism has two sects; "Digambara" and "Svetambara" (space-clads and white-clads). Of the two, Svetambara does not believe in asceticism. There are many saints still living and practicing a very austere life. As a strict Jain of Digambar sect, one should abstain from eating meat and eating any plant that's life is ceased while it has been procured for cooking. They do not consume carrots, spinach and the vegetables that grow under the earth, like potatoes and onions. They must tie a small cloth around their mouth by covering it completely for a possible inadvertent entry of insects into the mouth. It does not mean that they practice hygienic and healthy living but for saving an insect that would perish by gorging itself to the cavern of mouth. They must not travel on any modes of transportation as each acts as killers and must go only on foot wherever they wish to go. They must procure feathers of peacock to sweep the earth ere their tread, to stop treading on tiny insects. The procurement of the feather of the peacock should not be an act of plucking but visiting the places that are frequented by peacocks and waiting for them to shed their feathers and collecting them only after. The smooth peacock feather will gently push away the treading insects onto the path of the saints.

The Jain saints must abstain from undergoing any treatment through the other systems of cure like the English method of treatment. Capsules are made of using cow fat and there are drugs that have the innards of animals as ingredients. While embracing sainthood they must undergo the ordeal of their hair on the head being plucked strand after strand to immerse themselves in the act of losing sensation. Surely Jainism is a harsh religion to follow and adhere to even as principle. One even wonders at the possibilities of following all these harsh practices in the modern world. William Dalrymple features an article on a nun in his book "Nine Lives", who lives in Shravanabelagola and practices sainthood. She has chosen to end her life through 'Sallekhana', a process through one minimises the intake of food and water and in the end stop eating anything and succumbing to weakness, another harsh practice to put an end to existence. The fate of her now is not known. Such lives in their wake may create some awareness and forbid a few from crushing lives and leading life of petulance.

A Cup of Hot Coffee

The title attracted me to it, as i was reminded of the short story by Katherine Mansfield with the title 'A Cup of Tea'. This short story with the title 'A Cup of Hot Coffee' is by a Konkani writer Edwin J F D'Souza, that runs only to three pages. It is narrated by an elderly woman who is frail and spends her time alone in a palatial house that her son constructed for her. She needs hot coffee to give warmth to her physique. As she goes into the modern kitchen to prepare coffee, she goes into a reverie. She had three sons; the first one died in an accident and the second one succumbed to some illness. She was left alone in this world by her husband with three of her sons. She was not rich and could not afford money for the treatment of her second son. With much pain and difficulty, she brought up her third son who did study well to become an engineer. He found a fantastic job in Dubai and kept sending money to her mother.

He had a dream of putting his mother in a comfortable home. His mother had seen only a mud-walled house with thatched roof, where she had lived most of her life with memories of her days with her husband and the dear departed children. In all her life, the mother, an illiterate had had not a single dream of moving into a comfy and cozy structure. The boy wanted to make the mother's efforts in bringing him up requitable with his gesture of building a fully furnished concrete home. The Dubai money made them rich and the mother received a lot of money from her son and she communicated with him with the local vicar whose home received a lot of charity from him. He married a working woman and brought her home and convinced his mother of the destruction their ancestral mud house and the construction of a brick house in its place. The rubble of the old house took away with it the past memories. In the new house she is trying to make coffee, as instructed by her son, as he would say that she would get everything in the new house with the turn of a switch. She has turned the knob of the gas stove and is looking for the box of matches. As it is not found in the kitchen, she goes to the bed room of her grandchild and finds one near an ash-tray. She is assailed by an obnoxious smell in the kitchen. However she is ignorant of its source and cursing the modern living and its consequences, she ignites the stove and self immolates herself unknowingly.

Malayatoor's Yakshi

This is the story of Srinivasan, who is a teacher of Chemistry in a college. He is a very handsome gentleman in his late twenties. Srinivasan tells his story from a hospital to which he has been admitted by his friend Chandrasekar. It is a home for mentally deranged people. Srini, for his close friends and his wife, has lost his charm on his countenance very recently in an accident in the college laboratory. Much before the accident, he was planning to go to the US on Ford Foundation Scholarship, that would be available only to talented and hard working people. The accident prevented him from going to the US as he had to spend many days in hospital like the present stint of him in a different one. He was very proud to be a man of charm and beauty. The accident had corroded the left cheek of him reducing the part to veins and bones. His nose was smudged and made out of its shape. The doctor who removed the swathing bandage was very kind enough to say a few words of solace to him. The appearance of him in the mirror took away his confidence and bundled him into a puny figure. His dreams of marrying a heavenly beauty to suit his standards of outlook turned nightmares as the rejection came from his first love: Vijayalakshmi. She is a literature student who has fallen in love with him. Though they spent a lot together before the accident, Srini had never made love with her.

The rejection leads him to take interest in 'Black Magic" and he starts collecting palm scripts and is spending a lot of time reading about performers of black art. While he is in the fad of exploring the forbidden art, he meets a great beauty Ragini, in an unearthly hour standing lonely in a thoroughfare. She calls out to him and seeks his help in reaching the railway station. She even calls him 'Srini' in the first meeting. He meets her again in a cinema hall after some months and the relationship turns to love. She shows him her house but as he reaches it the next day it remains locked and no one nearby is aware of her stay. After sometime he meets her and brings her home and they decide to get married. The witnesses are Chandrasekar and his wife and Ananathan and his wife, his neighbours. He fails to make love with her in his honeymoon and shows symptoms of impotency. A strong inclination grows in him that she must be a 'Yakshi', a blood sucking vampire who is after his blood. The reasoning is that why such a great beauty has come forward to marry a man with an eroded face. The suspicion grows much assisted by nightmares and some suspicious activities. In the meantime, Srini, while rummaging her suitcase unearths a diary written by his yakshi. It reveals certain things about her however all has been taken with a pinch of salt by Srini. He confirms her origin and practises ant-ablution, not a sacrificial washing but burning of them to kill her as she is a yakshi, since there is no other means of wiping her out. On one occasion she swirls her grabbing on to her tresses and raps her at the wall. He even tries to nail her head with a stone like an exorcist to get rid of her. In the end she reveals herself to him before the Yakshi temple that she is really a yakshi who came to the earth three centuries ago with her friends. It is a practice among the yakshis to visit the earth by travelling on the tails of comets to suck blood from humans once in a month. She wavered and got lost and when she went back her feet were touching the celestial scarlet carpet, a symptom of losing her power. She was then ordered by the head-yakshi to stay on the earth until she sucks blood from one thousand men. She pardoned a poet already in another set up who did stay without being emaciated with sucking. She has chosen to do the same with Srini and accept the punishment of becoming a wisp of smoke. The world does not believe in this and accuses Srini of murdering the wife and arrests and convicts him though he lacks sanity.

Boys in the Strip(p)ed Pajamas

I am Bruno. I lived in the German city of Berlin during the Second World War. I was not an intelligent boy. Though i was living during the time of the German occupation of Austria, Holland and other countries i did not know anything of the ruler of Germany. My father was German Army officer and he was transferred to the countryside of Auschwitz and we all moved to the countryside. I in particular was very reluctant to move as i missed my friends and my big house in Berlin. By the way i am not the boy in the striped pajamas the story refers to. He is Shmuel a Jew. I first met him in one of my exploring trips. I was not allowed to go out of my house as it was heavily guarded with the German soldiers. However i found a sneaky letout in the backyard attic and went through it to the nearby farm. The farm was barb-fenced and Shmuel was inside it sitting with his sagging head.

He was wearing a striped uniform with a number stitched on to it. I met him very often afterwards and befriended him. My father had made arrangements for my schooling to continue here. For a change i did not go to school on the other hand the school did come to the house in the guise of a tutor. I was not interested in books much, save the adventure books that i relished reading. That never betrayed the political history of Germany. My elder sister Gretel, though only four years elder than i, behaved as if she were an elderly woman. She was coquettish and spent a lot of time with one of the guarding soldiers in the guise of knowing 'the history in the making'. She became interested in the symbol of 'Swastika' and pasting newspaper cuttings on the war on the walls of her room.

Once i found Shmuel in my house cleaning the goblets with a small cloth. I gave him a biscuit to eat. While he was eating a soldier got in and chided both of us for the act. I lied to the soldier that i did not know him and he himself took the food without anyone's permission. I tended his apology later and felt sorry for making him receive a gash above his right eye. In the mean time my grand mother was not happy that her son being a Colonel in the Fuhrer's army. She never visited us our countryside home. We soon received the news of her death and her funeral was conducted much against her wishes of placing the Fuhrer's command on her coffin. My mother objected to this and after the grandma's funeral the relationship between my mother and my father strained very badly and she decided to move us children with her to another place. I was not interested in parting with Shmuel. Meanwhile, Shmuel told me that his father had been missing for sometime. I assured him that i could find him. I did find his father in the end when Shmuel and i were put in the gas chamber of the camp, into the camp i went by digging a small trench and crawling through it and wearing the striped clothes that Shmuel, i do not know how, brought for me. Now i live in the book of John Boyne along with my friend in stripped pajamas. In 2008 i was born in rolls of films and i still inhabit it with colour and health.

'The Tamil Pandemic'

The Tamil country has recently celebrated the antiquity of the language of Tamil by organising the first World Classic Tamil Conference at Coimbatore. However the Tamil country is in the firm grip of an illness that is seeping into the blood veins and streams of all its inhabitants. It is an epidemic that has slowly built its nestle in the minds of them. It is the fad of the people of the land of 'High Tamil', which lured to it so many western scholars who came to the land to proselytize the inhabitants of 'Dravida Land' by trapping them with its charm and glory, to get their wards educated in English Medium schools.

What has so far remained an intention only in cities has now percolated down to fertile soils and dry land of the Tamil country. The mushrooming English medium matriculation schools do follow a well organised campaign to procure students to their premises. The well maneuvered fleet of vans that reaches the nook and cranny of the countryside of the land gives ample opportunity to the parents of the countryside to fulfil and materialise their dream of listening to the lisp of 'mom' and 'dad' from their wards. The disease has cut across all sections of the Tamil society by overpowering even the proletarians to educate their children in English Medium schools.

The pass percentage at the +2 level has been very high for quite some time. However it does not reflect on the quality of students who come out 'in flying colours'. Students who spend their entire early life in English medium schools do not show any mastery in the language of English. Neither are they proficient in their mother tongue 'Tamil'. The disease has had its effect in benumbing the faculty of mastering one's mother tongue, thus triggering a rupture in the faculty of comprehension. The students who study in English medium schools suffer from the same handicaps as the students who study in Tamil, in mastering the language of English. A lack in basic understanding of things and an inability to come out with creative sentences of their own are because of the shaky foundation in being familiar with their mother tongue. A recent feature on a television news programme showcased a government run primary school in a village in the district of Dindigul with only one student. The school became a point of attraction as the lonely student decided to obtain transfer certificate to move to an English medium school. There seems to be no cure to this disease as many are under the strong spell of the materialistic attraction that the language of English projects to subject them. A transition may be possible once these new generation learners have come out and found them quite odd in society and may look for some changeover in their outlook.