The Misfit

By Payam Sudhakaran

He was like a kite severed from its thread. The world and his people didn’t understand him. He belonged elsewhere. He was a misfit.
Jagadeesh, a Kerala youth, runs away from home after discovering a ghastly reality about his father and his lover, Meenu. In an attempt to leave his sordid past behind, Jagadeesh travels to the farthest corner of India, the Northeast. Dramatic events take him to Nagaland, a state boiling in separatist crisis. As he attempts to build a life in the land of the Nagas, working as a teacher and falling in love with a Naga beauty, fate strikes again, this time in the form of betrayal from a close friend.
Escaping the blood-thirsty tribals, he flees the hills only to befriend a Naxal leader, Venkanna, on a train journey. Jagadeesh accompanies Venkanna to Andhra Pradesh, to the heartlands of red revolution, determined to join the movement. But Venkanna has other plans for him. Jagadeesh is dispatched to Hyderabad, to start his life over.
But will he find solace in the City of Nawabs? Is there a place for a man with no past among its regal ruins?
The Misfit is a thrilling saga of love, loss, friendship, deceit, and hope. Payam Sudhakaran manages to capture the pulse of Indian villages and cities, from the South to the North East, with relative ease, always keeping the reader at the edge of his seat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zorba Books
• Release date: Aug 28, 2017

Payam Sudhakaran

Payam Sudhakaran was born in 1970 in the valley of Western Ghats in the tiny State of Kerala. As soon as his post graduation was over, he roamed across the country aimlessly for two years and then came back and settled in Hyderabad. Payam is a journalist by profession. He has worked with several Indian and international publications including The New Indian Express, Vijaya Times, The Times of India, Deccan Chronicle, News9 TV, The Hans India and a host of other journals. Though his first novel was published as a series in a Malayalam journal way back in 1991,it lost somewhere with the passage of times. There are several short stories, poems and articles to his credit. As a passionate writer, he spends most of his time in seclusion. An ardent votary of Bacchus, Payam is a travel freak. The Misfit is his first work of fiction in English.

Book preview

The rickety old bus moved slowly downhill through the zigzagging road full of potholes, some as big as craters. It was early winter and a cold breeze was blowing, though it was just past noon. Vast stretches of coffee plantations sprawled over the whole valley and the soft fragrance of tender coffee leaves lingered in the air.

After a steep descent, the plantations receded, and the bus now passed through a deep jungle, which stood in pregnant silence, broken only by the creaking sound of the age-old engine and a sudden tumble of tyres into a gutter every now and then.

His journey had begun some fourteen hours ago, in a sleeper coach, in a teeming megalopolis and had stopped some three hours ago in the southern city of Mysore. From there, he had to catch another local, state-run bus, devoid of any sophistication. Despite an excruciating back pain, the beautiful valleys of Coorg enchanted him and he felt a pang of nostalgia spreading somewhere deep in his heart.

It was in this picturesque valley he grew up, along with thugs of all sorts, pseudo-intellectuals, radical leaders, harlots and homosexuals. The very thought of getting down in his hometown in another few hours had caused mixed feelings in him. He felt elated. He felt miserable. Two extreme emotions. Who did he want to meet there? No one, if truth be told. He just wanted to go. He knew perhaps it was the last time he would ever go there. Thoughts flurried, back ached, a lump rising in his throat made his eyes moist. What for? Who knows...

Lost in thoughts, he felt drowsy and slowly dozed off for a while. Suddenly he got up as if on an intuition and found that the bus was crossing 200-year-old bridge in his hometown, which was built by the British. It was time for him to get down. He took his backpack and got ready to step down. The bus crossed the bridge and came to a screeching halt.

It had rained some time back in that town; an untimely shower, and the road was obviously wet. As he got down, he could smell that alluring scent of drenched earth. He stood in the wayside, with a cramp in the muscles and a twinge deep within.

He went to the bridge; obviously, no one noticed, hundreds of people travelling to Bangalore stopped by that godforsaken town… But he was sure of what he was doing. He just wanted to see the river, nay, reservoir, that took so many lives, hundreds to be precise, but among them, two of his dearest ones…

Once again, he felt the same lump in his throat, his eyes turned moist just the same, his body trembled. He stood staring at the water for long, lost to the world, as if in a trance. He stood, oblivious to the penetrating sounds of fleeting vehicles, absorbed in thoughts, lost in a world unknown…

Slowly, darkness started descending around him and the sudden screech of a truck startled him from his stupor.

On the riverbank, a glowing neon signboard of a bar beckoned him. It was a local watering hole that served cheap liquor to the unfortunates of the region, most of them daily-wage labourers, auto rickshaw drivers and local thugs. He slowly made his way to the bar, settled himself in a grubby corner, under a dimly lit bulb. Someone came to take the order and he asked for half a bottle of brandy and some vegetable salad.

The bottle came, along with salad and a free bottle of filthy water. He poured a large and started gulping the drink, smelly and nauseating. But that was fine; he was not aware of the taste and smell, he was just there to drink, to forget things he wanted to forget…

He drank and drank and finished the bottle. Then he ordered another half a bottle. He sat there drinking, until he lost his senses. A bearer-type guy came in with a bill. He settled his dues in the height of intoxication and walked out of the bar, slightly swaying.

He knew where to go. To that dilapidated old house in the middle of thick shrubbery in the nearby hamlet, where he was born, defying the trusted, locally-made, deadly concoction his mother drank to terminate the unwanted foetus growing in her womb. The very thought of his childhood in those scary circumstances made him smile, though unknowingly.

It was like a haunted house, that ancient, double-storied building his mother had inherited. So many people had lived and died in it that house, the children always believed that there was a poltergeist thriving in the dark, spooky corners of the palatial building, causing the wooden ceiling to creak every now and then. In his childhood, he kind of imagined the creature sliding down the rickety old staircase with its imposing balustrade.

Evenings always brought with them such terrifying visions and he never dared to venture into the backyard, beyond which there was a hillock with innumerable cashew trees that resembled a dense forest. To make matters worse, close home there was a family graveyard, where according to the Hindu customs, dead bodies were cremated. Like any traditional Kerala home, his house, too, was situated in the middle of an estate, full of coconut and areca nut trees, mango trees bearing pepper vines and overgrown coffee plants scattered all around.

But it was all way back in the early seventies. Times have changed and now he was not sure how the house and the hamlet looked. His subconscious mind led him to the dusty road to the village. By then it was completely dark, with no streetlight to show him the way.

It was difficult for him to walk steadily with all the alcohol and his heavy backpack. He staggered on for almost two kilometers and then realised he was so exhausted that he couldn’t lift his legs anymore. Suddenly, he stumbled and fell face down, knocking himself out.

Vaduvankulam village woke up to the cacophony of birds and crowing of roosters. It was the milkman who first spotted the stranger in the pale light of the dawn lying unconscious on the roadside. Within no time there was a small crowd around the man, whispering and wondering at the strange sight.

A young man stooped and turned the stranger’s face for all to see and started making wild guesses. Must have drunk like heck and lost his way, he said while someone added, Haven’t seen him anywhere before. Why the hell would people drink like this?

Looks like he is a traveller, and why on earth would someone come to Vaduvankulam? exclaimed another.

Hey, you silly hairs, can’t you recognise our Jagadeesh? Oh my God, this is Jagadeesh! Oh my God! someone screamed. What happened to him? Is he dead?

There were sighs of relief and murmur about vague memories of Jagadeesh who left Vaduvankulam some twenty-five years ago. While old people started making statements, good and bad, the younger ones stood around, wondering.

Pappettan, the village elder, managed to get some water from the nearest tea stall, a popular haunt with the early birds of the village to sip some tea and spread some gossip. He sprinkled the water on Jagadeesh’s face, who uttered a disgusting sound and then opened his eyes in bewilderment.

Someone helped him to sit down and offered him a hot cup of tea from the tea stall. He sat there sipping tea, staring at the crowd, at the same time trying to reconstruct the previous day’s events. His memory stopped as soon as he exited the bar.

He yawned, scratched his head and offered a futile smile to the crowd. His long and unkempt hair slightly moved in the morning breeze. His greenish eyes glittered for a split second and then he managed to get up even as scores of villagers gazed at him in awe.

It’s horrible, that filthy liquor they serve at that pussy’s bar, he muttered and walked away with an enigmatic smile this time.

Hey Jug, where have you been, you son of a bitch? asked someone stopping him by his arm. You don’t recognise me, I know. Do you, you bastard? You forgot the days we both went fishing in the river early in mornings, didn’t you? You forgot the days when we both went to that ugly slut Ramani at the dead of the night, fucking drunk, didn’t you, you swine’s son? You forgot me, you grotesque! You imbecile, I will fuck your mom, you devil!

Jagadeesh looked on in embarrassment for a while and then burst out laughing. "Hahaha! You