Placard Holder in the Pass

By Peeyush Maniyambath

Keshav, an itinerant worker, finds himself stranded in a small town in a mountain pass, delivered there accidentally by a truck driver who was a regular there. Locals bring him to the town eatery, where he encounters Aziz, the friendly proprietor of the place. There, he finds a home and a strange calling: standing by the highway and holding a placard advertising the presence of the eatery.

Keshav befriends Kili, an inhabitant of the surrounding hillsbefore reappearing with his stunning bride, Chameli. He also meets a wide variety of peopleWhite, a doctor with an ornithological slant of mind who traverses the pass regularly; his faithful driver, Babu; and Keith, a decaying long-term resident of the pass who tried unsuccessfully to live with Tina, his sister in the UK. The moodiness of the unique weather and topography of the pass remains a constant backdrop as Chamelis disillusionment with Keshav grows in the presence of other ardent admirers. Keith finds himself battling depression and alcoholism, despite Whites attempts to help him; Kili too suddenly disappears. Gradually the lives of those around Keshavthose who chose the pass as their home, perhaps not as a matter of choice but more due to compulsionbegin to disintegrate.

In this novel, a migrant worker builds a new life for himself in a small mountain town, only to see it fall apart amidst love, betrayal, and sorrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Dec 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543701487

Peeyush Maniyambath

Peeyush Maniyambath received schooling in Delhi prior to completing his medical studies in JIPMER Pondicherry. After spending most of the 90s working in London, he joined a corporate hospital in Coimbatore as senior consultant in anaesthesia. Currently he runs a pain management centre and lives with his wife, Manveen, a dermatologist, their son, Angad and Danny boy their furry companion.

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Copyright © 2017 by Peeyush Maniyambath.

ISBN:                         Hardcover                   978-1-5437-0150-0

                                  Softcover                     978-1-5437-0149-4

                                  eBook                         978-1-5437-0148-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

In memory of Rustom, Laila, Kutty, and George, who I know are always watching over me.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their valuable help:

• my cousin Chitra for digitising my scribbles

• Dr Nalin Mehta, Dr Karthik Selvaraj, and Sai Vivek for their encouragement and all technical support

• my young friend Avi for the cover photograph

• my son Angad for giving me a young man’s perspective of my work

• and finally, my better half, Manveen, who supported me throughout the period of writing and putting together this work in more ways than one.

I nk black clouds, pregnant with moisture, amassed against the rocky bluffs abutting both sides of the narrow pass through the mountain range. These clouds had started their journey far away over the sea and had an uninterrupted run towards land till they encountered this sudden obstacle in the form of a long line of sheer hills parallel to the coast. As the first few clouds thudded into the cliffs, they got squeezed by the unending onslaught of further oncoming clouds from the sea till such time that they were forced to move laterally along the hills until they found relief.

This succour came in the form of a break in the hills which was suddenly filled with clouds all seeking to make the run into the hinterland of the parched country to shed the moisture they had been carrying all along. The wind which had transported the clouds from the sea also funnelled into this very same gap and swept through relentlessly. The pass, being narrow, had to accommodate this massive influx of wind and clouds with the result that anyone standing in the gap felt the full brunt of nature at its most furious.

Slanting sheets of rain, along with the howling wind and the palm trees bent almost at right angles, made the pass a perfect example of the awesome power of the elements. The local people, however, welcomed this onslaught as it meant the arrival of life-sustaining rain, and for them, this was a yearly phenomenon which materialised regularly without fail just in time to soak the parched land, to fill the empty wells and ponds, to drench the dry roots of the trees, and to turn the browns back into glorious greens.

The atmosphere would lift and children would come out to play in the rain even though the stinging drops would hurt their cheeks. Happiness and gaiety would become omnipresent, be it amongst the people or the animals. And in the adjoining forest, grass would spring out of the drenched land, and the elephants would change colour from a dusty brown to a shiny ebony and would communicate their happiness amongst one another in deep, sonorous gurgles. Inevitably, such force cannot be completely resisted, so few trees would crash, some roofs would get dislodged, and some roads would become torrential streams, but all this would be taken without rancour and with a smile, as the rain had come and the sowing of paddy could commence. Sowing of paddy meant food and money for the simple people living on both sides of the pass, which in turn meant sustenance for the whole year.

But for someone foreign to this land and to this celestial display, it felt as though the end was nigh, and the common reflex was to run for cover. Such was Keshav’s predicament when he had to get down from the cosiness of the truck’s cabin and into the street; as he felt the full blast of the wind and the rain, his eyes widened with fear as he recalled the only other time that he had seen anything like this in a faraway place. Though, in that case, it was more of a silent rain, an unabating falling of huge drops, the memory of the consequences of such continuous rain remained forever deeply etched in Keshav’s psyche. Strangely, it was due to that distant storm that Keshav had to leave home and travel many a mile to find himself in an alien land in another deluge.

But for this land, such annual soaking was part and parcel of life, and surprisingly for Keshav, there was no panic or fear amongst the people around him when he got down from the truck. Keshav was in the truck and was bound for the big city on the coast when it had been stopped by a police patrol to check whether all the papers were in order. Satnam, sensing that this stoppage would take some time even though the papers were in complete order, had asked to try to get another lift. Woken up from his reverie inside the warm and dry cabin, Keshav had stepped out and was immediately accosted by the wind, and luckily for him, he also ran into a crowd returning home from the local toddy shop. As was typical of the bonhomie that appeared after imbibing a couple of glasses of the smooth stuff, they decided that this alien-looking fellow needed to be helped, thereby Keshav was gently pushed along to the local eating place, which would eventually feature in more ways than he could ever imagine in his future life amongst the inhabitants of the pass.

Although none in Keshav’s group could fluently speak the only language he could understand, by the time the group reached the eatery, everyone claimed that they were experts in Hindi, and to prove the point, some in the party burst into snatches of old Mohammed Rafi songs. After sitting down in the eatery, many in the party suddenly remembered that they were actually heading home till they ran into Keshav. This realisation was further enhanced by the appearance of a fleeting apparition in front of their eyes of a more-than-miffed spouse waiting at home, so the suddenly chastened lot in the crowd left the eatery after hugging Keshav and promising to meet him the next day.

K eshav’s journey had begun eight months earlier in the foothills of a much more mightier but younger range of mountains up in the north. Life, in the barren terrain of his home, was simple, consisting of growing a few hardy vegetables and tending to a flock of goats and hill cattle which yielded little milk. Just like the downpour in which Keshav had landed in the town in the pass down south, a similar rain had started in his village, which was situated at the end of a long and narrow gorge. The downpour had started on a warm, sultry evening and continued relentlessly for four days, with the water level rising ominously with each passing hour in the narrow rivulet that ran through the gorge. Steep rocky ledges that formed the sides of the gorge prevented any runoff of water; the result was, the whole volume of water flowed by the side of Keshav’s village, which was situated in a relatively flat bit of ground.

Keshav’s family had watched the rising level of water with trepidation, and when it reached a certain critical level, they released the goats and cattle as the chance of entrapment became imminent. The family, with their precious possessions in several bundles, climbed the rocky ledge to try to wait out the crisis. The rains did not slacken, resulting in the top of the gorge giving way, and a massive wall of water swept away everything in its path. All the goats had climbed the ledge with effortless dexterity, but the cattle were swept away in front of the eyes of Keshav’s mother. She wailed loudly as the animals which she considered as her children disappeared down the gorge.

At long last, the rains stopped, and the whole family stepped gingerly off the ledge and walked beside the roaring river towards the village, which by now was engulfed by a solid sheet of water. Keshav’s father surveyed the scene grimly as his whole crop of carrots and potatoes had been swept away; the less fortunate who had not climbed on to a higher surface in time had also been carried away. Help came the next day in the form of helicopters dropping packets of food on which Keshav’s family subsisted. But the devastation was complete, and the whole way of life that these simple hardy villagers had led was wiped out in a flash.

After a month, it became apparent to Keshav that he would have to leave his home to find subsistence for him and his family, as there was nothing left in his village from which a life could be wrought out. Also, the aid givers had concentrated more on immediate relief rather than the equally important long-term rehabilitation. Thus, he left for the capital, which was where anybody who left anywhere headed to; he was one of the thousands who thronged the city to look for work and thereby money which he could send to his people back home.

For Keshav, the capital was an assault on the senses. For someone who had lived his whole life amongst the tranquil surroundings of his hills, the noise, the crowds, and the general disregard for the neighbour was stunning and confusing. He had come to the capital with a purpose; that was to help his people back home, so he decided to stick it out. In the capital, there was work for everyone, as the building contractors were always short of labour in order to handle the booming real estate business.

For a city which had witnessed many an invasion and many a building boom, this recent influx of immigrant labour to fill the void seemed but natural. On arrival, Keshav was employed by a contractor building never-ending extensions to a premier medical institution of the capital; thereby, he ended up working the full day, carting mortar, and living in the aluminium sheet–lined shanty town created by the contractor.

Keshav even stopped travelling around the city, which he initially attempted, but after getting lost once and experiencing total lack of help in directions to get back home, he gave up such excursions. Buses never stopped at the designated stops and took off before one climbed on to them. Many a time, Keshav was deposited at a distant spot. These episodes took their toll, and he decided to hang around in the immediate vicinity of his workplace, like a friendly pariah dog content in his surroundings. Within a few months, Keshav came to the conclusion that he had to move from this strange city, where people starved right next to sheer opulent luxury.

After his shift was over, Keshav regularly walked around the huge market nearby, marvelling at the goods on display, scarcely being able to believe the price of some of the items on offer. In the same market, he chanced upon a bunch of girls who looked very different from the regular clientele and spoke a quaint language. They often frequented a few shops which sold magazines and newspaper in an alien script. The feeling that these girls were also foreigners to the city made Keshav very curious, and a natural bonding began to rise as he observed them at the very same shops on most evenings. The faces changed daily, but the features and the language remained the same. As a result, he had to find out what calamity had brought them to this city, as he could not envisage anyone coming to this place voluntarily.

One day he mustered up enough courage to ask them where they were from. The reputation of the city made the girls move away in a bunch, but seeing the innocent, wide-eyed look in Keshav, they slowly, over a few days, started talking to him in a strange, singsong kind of Hindi. Keshav found out that the girls were nurses from the very same hospital where he was carting mortar and were from a far-off state down south. Just like Keshav, who had come looking for money for his family, these girls had also come seeking the same. But to Keshav’s surprise, it was not to send money to their folks back home but to collect for their dowry so that they could get married. He also found out that these girls would continue to work as hard after marriage to run the family; it did cross Keshav’s mind to ask what the menfolk did, but he decided not to ruffle any feathers at this stage.

When he expressed his unhappiness in continuing to work in such oppressive conditions, the girls suggested he move down south to their state and look for work. They assured him that work was in plenty, conditions were much better, and people were definitely less aggressive. One of the chirpier girls in the group piped in that men in her state were loath to work and that plenty of money poured in from outside the state. For the girls, it was a pleasant change to talk to this friendly stranger; otherwise, they’d spend their whole day talking amongst themselves or dealing with their patients, which was a difficult and very often an unappreciated task, not to mention completely emotionally draining.

After a few months of gentle assurance from the girls and armed with a letter to a contractor, Keshav decided to head down south to seek his fortune, so one day after he had got his weekly wages, he booked a ticket on the train to the coastal town referred to by the girls. Amongst the many trains, the cheapest was also the slowest one, but for Keshav, terms like hurry and rush were totally foreign. So he found himself in a train moving slowly south, away from the hustle and bustle of the capital, which had always welcomed and expelled foreigners with equal disdain.

Finding the fare served on the train frightfully expensive, Keshav made do with a diet of puris and potatoes served hot on every platform as the train made its way across the arid landscape of the north to enter the greener vistas of the south by the second evening. Much to Keshav’s chagrin, people speaking the only language he knew also dwindled as the train journey progressed. Keshav had been told that he would reach his destination by the third morning of the journey, so he had packed his meagre belongings in a small bag during the night to make quick disembarkation easy. Due to the paucity of the Hindi-speaking travellers, communication had also become difficult for Keshav, with the result that when the train stopped at a station at dawn, his frantic enquiries were misconstrued and he alighted from the train.

As the train pulled out of the station, one of the workers on the platforms who spoke a smattering of Hindi pointed out to Keshav that his destination was still a further four hours away. Finding himself in this odd predicament, Keshav was advised by the same worker to go to the nearby highway and get a lift in a truck, as the next train was hours away. Heeding this advice and after fortifying himself with some puris as sustenance, he reached the highway, and as the only entry to the coast was along this