Chapter 18: chapter 18

14The Secunderabad Railway Station.If I walked even leisurely from my home, I could reach the railway station within five minutes.1. I was residing in rented houses in many areas opposite to the railway station, like Kumaraguda, Second Bazaar, Regimental Bazaar. They were thickly populated. The mosque and the Pillaiyar temple were adjacent to each other. The fluttering doves that were staying in the mosque would fly to the temple now and then. There were people doing different types of jobs, people selling ground nuts, people who cleaned the ears, rickshaw pullers and so on. The spittle from the pan- filled mouths of the railway porters was scattered all over the ground. In those days, platform tickets were not insisted upon. So, people entered the stations freely and roamed around, looking at the crowd. There were different tongues and the bustle of the trains would make one’s head spin.I last saw Bangalore Ravichandran in the Secunderabad railway station. He was wearing a pair of dirty trousers, shirt and a tie. When I told him that we could have a cup of coffee, he declined. He said that he would become a crorepathi soon and that he was writing play, a comedy full of jokes. It would be a sure hit, he said. People would then know who he was, he said. Then he vanished into the crowd. Almost fifteen years had gone! I didn’t know whether he was alive or not. If he was alive he would have shown himself in some way or other. He was a very brisk young man and his gait was very fast, like a frog. Nothing could wreck him and he knew that ‘wreck’ meant death. Perhaps, death had wrecked him. Writer Sujatha once said that I might be the last person to have seen Ravichandran. He also said that he would ask his friend, Karthikeyan, a C.B.I. officer, to make a search for him. Perhaps he might get some clue, he said.Once or twice I went to Sitaphal Mandi where Nirmala was living. But I did not venture to enter into her house. Her marriage with Ravichandran was conducted by Puviyarasu, one of the pioneers of Modern Tamil Poetry Movement. Nirmala went to Bengaluru and returned to Hyderabad within a year perhaps because the marriage was a failure. As her child also had died, I did not have enough courage to enter Nirmala’s house. I enquired through some friends who lived in Sitaphal Mandi, giving them her address. But there was no information about Nirmala. I very much doubted whether anything could crack Ravichandran’s sprit at all! What would have happened to his books in Malleshwaram in Bengaluru, I thought. “What would have happened to his portrait painted by Jeeva?” I asked myself. He vanished as if everything had evaporated in air suddenly!2. Jayamohan had come to Secunderabad to meet me during his train journey ‘Nehru Yatra’ which he had taken up on a concessional fare. If I could not take food at the right time, I would suffer much. I very much doubted whether it was possible at all to sleep and eat food at irregular intervals and take any train that was available. Jayamohan was 47 narrating his travel experiences. He undertook his journey with remarkable ease. His only luggage was his single bag.After seeing him off, I was walking on the platform towards the east. I walked about a furlong. The train track was extending… into infinity. Suddenly, a young man and a woman rushed past me. It seemed that they had just been married. Their clothes were new and it seemed that they had thrown their marriage garlands away somewhere just then. They were running towards the west. In about two or three minutes il I saw a group of people chasing them. No weapons were visible. But wrath on their faces and bodies showed that they were intent on killing the young couple. I didn’t know what happened to the young couple.3. I was looking at the moving train. There were waving hands and the noise of the moving train. There was a loud, piercing cry. The begging cry to save a life could not reduce the speed of the moving train. It was moving, untouched by human emotion. Suddenly a some people gathered in a particular place, which grew into a bigger crowd soon. There was the sound of loud weeping from the track. I could not see anything clearly because of the crowd. Still, I tried to look beyond the gathering. A man’s legs below his knees were cut and were dangling. It seemed that he was trying to jump into the moving train. The man was bleeding heavily. Droplets of blood came out when some tried to pull him up. His cries dispersed the crowd. What had happened to him? Whenever I saw somebody walking with crutches, I remembered that incident. He is one among the thousands of handicapped I see every day.4. I was transferred. I packed up my things and sent them in a lorry. I began my journey with Suganthi and my children. Leela Gopalan had come to the railway station to see me off. He was struggling with his old age; still he had come without minding his inability. He gave a box of sweets to the children. He moved all of us with his words that were full of affection. The train was moving and soon he became a dot. He was struggling to walk due to severe knee pain. He told me that every morning, when he could not raise himself up from bed, he would chant the devotional songs on Satya Sai Baba. As he progressed in his singing, slowly his legs would become vibrant with life and then he could get up from his cot. Now perhaps he was singing the songs on Baba, struggling to walk. That was a voice that blessed everybody. The voice and the movements of old men are always filled with blessings. But such a spirit to bless is not seen in everybody!