Koyakka

    

Boys in my place these days make fun of Koyakka. They laugh at his rather strange uniform, his odd appearance, and his rickety pushcart on which he sells vegetables. After all, it is very easy to make fun of the old man. If it is a good joke he will join you with a hearty laugh. If it is rather painful, as youngsters are more prone to do these days, he would smile sadly and walk away.

Of course, you do not know Koyakka. In the recent past, when many of these youngsters were yet to be born, Koyakka was a security guard. That is where he got that uniform from. In those days he used to wash it with starch and press it to finish. He was proud of it. It was much more respectable to be a guard then. Simple folks in our place held guards in hospitals and film theaters in high regard. But now they are all the same. There is nothing enviable in being a guard these days. Most of them are boys barely out of their teenage years, always scared of something. Looking back, I think Koyakka was the only guard I knew by face, by name, and in fact he was the only guard I knew was a man like us. Other guards I come across later had always one face, rather grim and expressionless, and had only one generic name, 'guard!', and we never knew what kind of men they were.

Koyakka was not even a guard to begin with. He had a small, I mean very small, shop in the corner of our street. There was not many things worth buying there. He had only one kind of soap, the colorless and odourless lifebouy, that too old and dusted. The bananas in his shop were black and about to fall apart. He kept cheapest candies in his shop that, incidentally, sold well. Among the old curiosities in his shop, he also looked another worn out item. But by evening he was a transformed man. His shop was a gathering place for local intelligentsia where they discussed the collapse of eastern Europe and fate of Poland. Koyakka thought about everything, and had read all newspapers during his eventless day-time, and participated in these discussions as passionately as the headmaster of our school.

He had a penchant for international affairs. Koyakka did not know or care much about who played for Santhosh trophy, but always knew about latest additions in Manchester United.

He was a far more cheerful man those days. He had a small house in the woods, with a nice garden in the courtyard. His grand daughter used to be a local beauty, and he would spend most of the money on colourful frocks and hairpins. His days were spent between his rose plants, his grand daughter, and his shop. Though he was rather poor, he did not seem to mind it, and though he borrowed money from almost everyone, they all spoke to him with respect.

But then gradually city started invading our little hamlet. One by one big buildings started appearing, Cadburies became a rage, and kids were no longer interested in the candies he sold. His shop became drier every day, and occasionally he did not open his shop to attend a friend's house warming or a neighbour's wedding. Then his shop was left closed for a week. We slowly learned how to buy dry fish or tapioca from nearby shops, and when he understood that we could get along without him, he closed it forever. Along with his shop Koyakka also whithered away from our landscape.


He came weekly back to the place. He bought new and expensive chocolates from the city that he generously showered on all of us, his former customers. He said he is now a security guard in a big hotel in the city. That was a very big hotel, he said. A tea was forty rupees there. We gaped with amazement. For us, who always sacrificed tea worth fifty paisa for an extra parota, that was the ultimate wastefulness. He was full of stories about his new job. Rather funny stories that made us laugh our inside out. He showed us how he held the door and did his salute, banging his foot on the floor, when
customers came to the hotel. We were all laughing mad when he imitated how a 'society lady' scolded him in English- with lots of 'shoo shoo's and eneded with a 'bludddy ffool!'. He also laughed heartily with us. Of course, we did not notice the slight twitching of his lips or the sparkling in the corner of his eye when he laughed. You see, Koyakka was a proud man.

When I saw the guards in my institute in Bangalore, sitting shelterless in heavy rain,or in the harsh Banglore winter, trying to make maximum out of their torn jackets, I thought of him. What he might be doing. In cities I saw them in front of shopping malls, restaurants, with the cloak of servility, I wondered how did he manage.

But as I heard later, he did not manage. Not because he could not learn to be servile- he learned it very fast- or because he was not willing to endure hardships. But boys from his dream-land came in large numbers to Kerala for jobs. Boys, barely out of their teenage years, came from Bengal and Orissa, closely packed in general compartments and trucks. They slowly replaced construction workers first. These boys were amazing, willing to work in any condition and for lesser wage, they camped on construction sites, worked like donkeys from dawn to dusk and slept in nearby tents. They would start work early after a heavy breakfast, and would continue non stop till evening, unlike the worker from Kerala, who wants a break for food every two hours. A Bengal version of perpetual motion machines - contractors just loved them.

Koyakka would not have grudged losing his jobs for Bengali boys. Koyakka, like many in his generation, loved Bengal and Jyoti Babu. So when they came ready to do any job, he only praised their hard work, calling them "that's Jyotida's boys". When someone mentioned that Jyoti Babu's only boy is a big businessman he got into a heated arguement. He then picked up an old pushcart and started selling vegetables in our village.

The village was no longer the old village, and Koyakka and his cycle had no place in it. His odd appearance made all of us a little uneasy.

We would rather see him in his spotless white shirt and dhoti, scoring a point with our headmaster. How much we love to see him sitting on an easy chair in his villa tending his rose garden and sharing a sweet with his grand grand daughter! How much more comfortable all of us would have been if he was dead and gone!

But that it is not to be. He wanders through the town in his ridiculous old uniform, with a rickety cart, carrying rotten vegetables.

When Jyoti Babu passed away, he pasted red portrait on the cycle.

[image from: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/319730022_41d8aac3e9.jpg?v=0]