வெக்கங் கெட்டவர்கள்….!

Translated from the original Tamil short story vekkaṅ keṭṭavarkaḷ (வெக்கங் கெட்டவர்கள்….!) from the 1974 collection of short stories titled tolaivum iruppum ēṉaiya kataikaḷum (தொலைவும் இருப்பும் ஏனைய கதைகளும்) by A. Jesurasa. The original collection is available at noolaham.org. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact ez.iniyavan@gmail.com.

As he approached James Cafe, Yēsuthāsaṉ noticed his friends staring under the portia tree.

With a smile, he slowed his bicycle down to a complete stop right next to them. “When did you come back?” asked Alphonse.

“Just last night …,” before he could finish the sentence, Johnpintan interrupted, “Master, big things are afoot here… …..” He had a smile curling at the corners of his mouth. He was always like this, looking like he hesitated to elaborate further.

“Dēy! Out with it… what’s with all this silly embarrassment?” Emiliyoos teased Johnpintan, nudging him on. Christurāsā clasped his hands behind his back as he drew patterns on the sand with his toe. Kulasiṅgam, who was repairing a fish net some distance away, got up and walked towards them.

The suspense intrigued and confused Yēsuthāsaṉ.

“What is it? Give it to me straight,” he asked Christurāsā eagerly.

“They are proposing a marriage for you,” responded Christurāsā. Yēsuthāsaṉ felt a weird sensation. Curiosity and shyness jostled each other to occupy his face. With an embarrassed smile, he looked at Johnpintan directly and said, “Is that so? OK tell us; we do have to know, don’t we?”

Emiliyoos said, “Let’s talk inside the cafe.” They walked into James Cafe and sat down on a bench. Emiliyoos ordered tea.

Johnpintan overcame his hesitation and came directly to the point.

“Your uncle Selvanāyakam asked us to discuss it with you. They are prepared to give twenty thousand rupees in cash; jewelry for the girl; the house by St. Sebastian’s church… …He asked us to sound you out”

“It is all right, isn’t it? All in all, it will come to about seventy thousand… a good family, related to you,” Emiliyoos piled on.

‘These guys! Money will be enough to satisfy them….. This capitalist system builds relationships on money and possessions, and sweeps these people along by its force,’ Yēsuthāsaṉ mused.

He never cared much for money or the rich. On the contrary, he had developed hatred and anger towards them. He was certainly not waiting for an opportunity to ride on the coattails of his marriage to join the ranks of the village elite as a fishing-fleet owner or a fish auctioneer.

His thoughts and yearnings were elsewhere. He was seeking a meeting of minds, someone with mutual understanding, someone who would be his intellectual equal.

That search had led him to her…

The memories came flooding back to him like strikes of lightning.

He remembered knowing her for about a year at the university in Peradeniya, the desire that sprouted within two or three months, how in the last couple of months, she would shyly bite her tongue and cast her eyes downwards as they sat chatting at the round table in Sanghamitta Hall, how the shyness in her eyes shone against the backdrop of her face, how delightful it all was!

When she invited him home during the university vacation, he visited her home and understood her family’s situation very well. A small house; an aging father; the family dependent on the elder brother alone. There were no rewards waiting for him there. But he did not expect any rewards in the first place.

He resolved to overcome the differences in caste and religion that stood in their way.

“Malar! If you are willing to commit to us, I will, too.”

His reverie was interrupted by Johnpintan, “What is there to ponder over? A marriage proposal from your relatives, just say yes.”

“What can I say? Tell them to ask my family,” Yēsuthāsaṉ deflected the issue. After a bit of back and forth, they all fell silent.

After the others left, as they walked towards the beach together, Christurāsā asked jokingly, “Good money, a girl who is related to you, why don’t you marry her?”

Yēsuthāsaṉ felt a spark of anger. With a dismissive smile, he started, “Christurāsā… relatives… What kind of relatives! They haven’t spoken to us in a dozen years; the haughtiness of wealth. They socialized only with other rich people… but now they want a trouser-wearing groom with a government job. That is why they come running to me. Even now, it is not me that they value, it is the trousers and the job. Whether it is a relative or stranger, what matters is to choose good people to build relationships with, does it not?”

The old, painful incidents flooded into his memory. When the term for the loan ended, his aunt evicted her own brother, his father, to take over the house and the land that were collateral for the loan. For a loan of a mere four thousand rupees, they cheated him out of property that is now worth at least thirty-five thousand rupees.

‘How they cheated the poor lower caste paṟaiyar families from their plots of land near St. Sebastian’s church! How the evicted families, some with unmarried daughters, were forced to spend days and nights in hastily erected makeshift gunny-sack tents by the lane,’ he mused.

‘This is how they accumulate wealth,’ he thought, ‘These ghastly rich people ….’ Anger welled up within him.

He said with utter disgust, “Who wants this money?”

II

Yēsuthāsaṉ came home on vacation after three months. When he was returning from the public library at around noon, he saw Emiliyoos waving at him from the municipal council building and stopped.

Emiliyoos hurried down from his upstairs office, “Master, I didn’t know that you were back in town. Your uncle came by at around ten, saying that you had returned, and urging me to sound you out. That is when I realized that you had returned.”

“I arrived just this morning… perhaps he saw me when I was going to the library,” said Yēsuthāsaṉ.

“Aiyō, master… he has become a real nuisance. He bugs me every time he sees me. It seems he is getting restless because many other people are also trying to arrange a marriage for you.

This is out of control. I am tempted to give him a piece of my mind, I am holding back only because he is an elder,” The irritation from the repetitive nagging pervaded Emiliyoos’ words.

“Emiliyoos, if he asks you again, you don’t have to do anything. Just say to his face, ‘Talk directly to Yēsuthāsaṉ or his parents!’”

When he reached home after the chat with Emiliyoos, he thought he should warn his sister about this.

She was in the kitchen making lunch. Conveniently, Ammā had gone out to the market in town.

He relayed everything Emiliyoos had said and asked, “Did they come here proposing marriage?”

“They did come two or three months ago. But Ammā told them that we are not inclined to accept.”

“They came here! It must have been hilarious, no?”

“Mmm.. Uncle and Aunt came by. Aiyā was at the door. He invited them in. They sat in their chairs looking at one another silently. Aiyā nudged them to state their business. It was only then Aunt said, ‘We came proposing marriage.’ Aiyā remained silent.

Ammā then said, ‘He doesn’t yet want to get married,’ and Aunt said, ‘We came here because we just want my brother’s son to inherit all our assets.’

Ammā interrupted her saying, ‘Aiyō, your family is rich… it is better for you to continue as you always do and mingle with other rich people. We are dirt poor; we will mingle with the same people that we always mingled with.’

Uncle and Aunt were taken aback. They sat quietly and then left.”

Yēsuthāsaṉ was overcome with a newfound respect for his mother. ‘The woman doesn’t care about money, she cares about people,’ he thought. He felt a growing revulsion towards Aunt and Uncle.

‘Chee…. They didn’t care about us until now. When they want something from us, they make a beeline for us. Shameless people with no self-respect, pure selfishness, they thought they could throw money around and make us dance to their tune.’

As anger and disgust welled up within him, he thought, ‘If only they had asked me directly, I would have given them a good talking to.’

III

When he woke up from his siesta induced by the post-lunch drowsiness, he put on a vētti and decided to head out on his bicycle.

The foot traffic on the streets had subsided because the fish auction market had been already shut down for the day.

Some women were arranging dried fish into baskets; A woman sitting on her haunches puffing her cigar, pointed to him and said something to the other women there.

He bicycled on, pretending not to have seen them.

He pedaled past the dried-fish huts, and as he turned the corner by the ice-cream factory, he thought he saw his uncle Selvanāyakam standing by the tobacco godown. As the bicycle neared him, he confirmed his guess. He remembered his uncle boasting once, ‘If Selvanāyakam casts his net, nothing can escape…,’ his lips curled into a sarcastic smile.

Selvanāyakam signaled him to stop, saying, “Thambi, I have something to ask you….”

Yēsuthāsaṉ intentionally rode on a little past him and stopped. Selvanāyakam jogged to where the bicycle had stopped, his paunch jiggling with the effort.

Yēsuthāsaṉ did not dismount. Selvanāyakam said, “Thambi… Emiliyoos would have explained everything to you…. Tell me what you think…,” he spoke hesitantly in spurts. His voice was excessively deferential.

Yēsuthāsaṉ’s eyes settled on his uncle. A double-strand gold chain hanging around his neck lay resting on his round belly, tracing its curvy contour. Three fingers in each of his hands glittered with gold rings. He was the type of fishing-fleet owner who had amassed a fortune by spending his time at home or at the fish-auction market, without ever getting his feet wet in the salty seawater…

‘What disgusting people …. All these days he was blinded by money; now he is restless…’

As his thoughts crowded his mind, anger and hatred welled up within him, and he remained silent.

Thomas and Aruḷseelaṉ walked past them carrying a fishing line on a punt pole. They grinned at the pair. Yēsuthāsaṉ was too livid to be able to politely return the grin.

Suddenly a motorboat started, and noisily drove away, tearing the sea apart.

A lone hawk was circling above the sea by the ‘Victor” mound, formed by dumping the soil excavated by Victor machines while deepening the Dutch-era canal.

Perhaps Selvanāyakam mistook Yēsuthāsaṉ’s silence for consent. He took a step forward, gently.

“Thambi… why should my wealth and my boats end up with some stranger? Francisca is your cousin after all…”

Yēsuthāsaṉ wondered, ‘Perhaps he is afraid that a groom from the outside may demand to split the assets and be given his share… He couldn’t get my parents to consent, so now he is trying to influence me…. Perhaps he thinks that he can sway a young man by dangling money and a girl in front of him….’

As these thoughts rushed into his head, he felt a strong emotion bubble up from the depths of his heart, ‘They are insulting my self-respect!’ Anger pervaded his entire body. He glared at his uncle.

Selvanāyakam had not expected the sudden change of expression in Yēsuthāsaṉ’s face. He stared dumbly at Yēsuthāsaṉ.

Against the backdrop of the reddening sky by the Paṇṇai beach, Yēsuthāsaṉ made Selvanāyakam grow fearful.

Yēsuthāsaṉ’s anger leapt out of his body.

“Look here, we are not crazy. After ignoring us completely for ten years, if you think we will grin and acquiesce just because you dangle money in front of us, you are barking up the wrong tree.

We only see people, not money.

We have self-respect, we are not shameless like you.”

The seawater was lifted above the breakwater by the southwest monsoonal wind, showering the road and receding away.