Chapter 7: chapter 7

3When I was writing the novel, Marrum Silar, it was my pastime to roam about in the villages around Hyderabad. I used to go around places like Yapral, Moula-Ali and Venkittapuram with Rajan. He tied his bundle of clothes on his bicycle for hawking in these places. I’ll hire a bicycle to go with him.There were around 150 families which had migrated to Secunderabad from Chinnalapatti and went on a bicycle with bundles of clothes to villages around Secunderabad to sell them. Bojarajan was one of them. He lost his job as a Hindi Pandit in a school after the when the D.M.K. came to power after the anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu. When I planned to write a novel based on my experiences in Hyderabad, I focussed it on Rajan’s life with Telangana Agitation as its background.At times I used to go to Yapral. I wrote a short story, Kooda Varum AvarkaL. The central figure of the story was one Jayaraman, q portrayal of a person I had met there. Jayaraman was a T.V. mechanic. His family condition was pathetic. He had an aged mother, unmarried sisters and an unemployed brother. He left all of them in the lurch, to marry a girl whom he loved. The family members earned their living by sticking pieces of glass on ready-made garments. They worked at home.Yapral lived in Secunderabad Cantonment. It was a terrain filled with thick bushes that looked like a mini forest, hills and rocks. A section of army personnel and the people who were working as domestic servants in the homes of army officers were living there. They spoke the Chennai Tamil dialect. Almost every house had the photographs of Tamil leaders like M.G.R., Anna and Kamaraj. They stood witness to the fact that they had housed these leaders of Tamil Nadu in their hearts as their mentors.The places that were full of hills and barren grounds were used as firing ranges by the army. At such places cardboard or wooden targets were erected on mounds of sand built by the military. When bullets were fired, lead pellets that burst out spread all over the place. After the firing was over, boys gathered there in large numbers to pick up the lead pellets. As they had to rush through, they gathered buckets of sand. They didn’t have time to pick the pellet pieces leisurely. Afterwards, they filtered out the sand using sieves to pick up the pellet pieces. There were some agents too ready to buy those pieces. For many it was more or less a permanent job. I met Jayaraman’s brother whenever he was busy happily collecting the lead pellets. That boy told me casually that Rajan was helping them a lot. When he sang Gaddar’s songs melodiously I lost myself. When I heard Gaddar’s singing first time in Mehbub College I was simply fascinate. That same feeling I had, when I heard the boy sing.One morning, there was shooting in Secunderbad Railway Station bus stop. I was living in the second bazaar then. It was just a furlong away from that spot. A young man was shot down. The People’s War Group claimed responsibility for the incident.I met Rajan that evening. He was very tired and was walking in the Clock Tower Road with his cloth bundle tied to his bicycle. “I feel as though I’m wandering, carrying in my bundle, crushed flesh and bone and blood. The police suspected that Jayaraman’s brother was involved in the murder and the police had ransacked his house. This is an added misfortune. As if the misery I am already enduring is not enough!” he said.Till I left Hyderabad for good, the image of him carrying and wandering with a bundle of crushed flesh and bone and blood did not vanish from my heart!