Chapter 13: chapter 13

9It was my habit to go near the Vemana Institute whenever I went to the Clock Tower. A white building. A tree. On the outer wall was a mural of a naked saint sitting under a tree sitting cross-legged. Inside, there were colour pictures of Vemana in a sitting posture. The pictures had thick and wide frames. Some more pictures with Telugu words were also displayed on the walls. These pictures and the pictures of government officials were strange to me! I had never gone inside. I just went past the building whenever I crossed the building.I had seen the young man employed in the institute in the streets of Secunderabad often. I had also seen him in the book exhibitions, wearing shorts that looked like and colour shirts. I couldn’t exactly remember whether he bought books or not. But I had seen him browsing through Tamil books. I understood that he didn’t know Tamil. That he was working in the Vemana Institute, I was sure. He had long hair. It was a mixture of black and grey, neatly groomed. He was lean and used to walk fast.One day I entered into the Vemana Institute. I was looking at the pictures and Telugu letters. The young man came near me with enquiring looks. As if he understood my hesitation, he started talking in Telugu. I said I wanted to know about the activities of the institute. He told me about the free yoga classes conducted there. I started walking after enquiring about the date of the next yoga session. I went to the Clock Tower Park and sat there.In the early days of Kanavu literary meetings, meetings were conducted in that park. We would select a place where ten people could sit comfortably and conduct the meeting. As there was much crowd on Sundays, I had to go sufficiently earlier and reserve a place by spreading a towel on the ground like one would do to reserve a seat in a bus or a train. I would arrange the books I had taken with me with gaps in between them- it would appear as though some people had left them there with an intention of returning soon. That’s how I ‘reserved’ the ‘seats’ for our meetings. Whenever somebody came to occupy a ‘seat’, the book sitting on that ‘seat’ so far, would return to my hands. There was a statue of a labourer posing with his raised hands. I liked it very much. I yearned to conduct a meeting under that statue at least once. But I was worried that we would be dubbed then as people belonging to a particular political party. Moreover, the space under that statue was never unoccupied.My friends used to say that the people who were loitering and sitting in the park were mostly Tamils. The pungent smell of beedi and the foul smell of dirt filled the air always. It would appear strange for many people that some ten people were sitting and discussing seriously about literature as the vehicles were speeding in all directions. The din of the vehicles was constant. I had seen the employee of the Vemana Institute there. Because of certain inconveniences we had in the Clock Tower Park, we shifted the venue of our meetings to the Cantonment Park. It was by the side of the parade ground. It was big and calm. There was a long stone table with some wooden chairs arranged around it. That arrangement was quite convenient. It was very convenient to sit around the round table on the chairs but when more number of people came, the circle had to be widened. At such times we would select some other place in the park. Books were awarded for good presentations. Those were the books sent to the Kanavu for review. Malkajgiri Mahadevan, Muthusamy from Second Bazaar, Ramanathan from Sitaphalmandi and Manickam from Barracksbala received the ‘prizes’ again and again. I had often seen the employee from the Vemana Institute walking in the Cantonment Park but I had never talked to him till i met him in the Institute. I was sure he knew Tamil.After he had told me about the yoga class, I was thinking seriously about joining it.I was suffering continuously from cold and sneezing. At times I experienced swelling in my knees. I thought that yoga would give me good relief from these afflictions. But the timing of the free class was from 6a.m. to 8a.m and this made it difficult. I was working in different shifts. If I had night duty, I could not leave my work to come to the class at 6a.m. The after-noon shift and the general shift timings alone were suitable. I decided that I would change my work schedule to these shifts for a month and attend the yoga class.Classes were conducted on the open terrace. I was happy to know that the Yoga master was already known to me. But he was talking fluently in Telugu. I was expecting that he would talk in Tamil but he never did.One Dharmalingam joined that session. His name sounded like that of a Tamil but I was surprised to know that his mother tongue was Telugu. He was above fifty. I asked him, “Why are you taking yoga at this age?” “My sons had got married and left me. My wife passed away. I could not stay with any of my children. None of my daughters-in-law was ready to look after me as I fell sick often. I have joined the class to see whether it could lessen my problems!” he replied.Dharmalingam and I were relegated to a corner in that class that had a strength of fifty. As I had frequent swelling in my knees, I had difficulty in doing certain asanas that involved folding one’s knees. Dharmalingam also had the same problem. The master had asked us to sit separately in a corner and do the asanas. I was doing them tolerating the intolerable pain.When I did the asanas, the master would correct my posture by slightly ‘beating’ my legs with a bamboo stick he held in his hands or sometimes touching my thighs with his foot. That was much humiliating. I even that of begging him not to humiliate us like that! Dharmalingam also received the same treatment. The style of that treatment did not change till the end of the session.I had learnt to do certain asanas and some breathing exercises to a certain extent. Dharmalingam was advised to come for the next session too as he had not learnt the asanas. “I want to set right my body somehow. I don’t want to be a burden to anybody!” he told me.I could not continue the exercises as my shift- timings changed. The swelling in the knees and the cold continued to give me trouble.After that, I saw the yoga master in the streets of Secunderabad many times. I often attempted to enquire about Dharmalingam. But I could never muster up enough courage. It was my dream that one day he would talk to me in a friendly way in Tamil!