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Authors: Manu Joseph
Tags: Contemporary
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brushes are not thrown away until almost all the bristles disappear, and after the brushes do die in this autumnal way, the two postgraduates and their son use their fingers to clean their teeth until Mariamma somehow makes new brushes appear. Soaps are used until they go missing in the crevices of the body. Ousep has seen the strange sight of Mariamma staring at an empty oil bottle left standing inverted on a frying pan.
She said, without turning, ‘The last drop, Ousep Chacko, is not a literary hyperbole in your home. Apparently, it really exists.’
‘How grotesque this looks, Mariamma Chacko. I thought you had more class.’
That made both of them laugh, their laughter rising in pitch in competition, neither willing to stop and grant victory to the other.
The foam sofa in the hall, which is shrouded by an oldbedsheet, has a giant secret hole in the centre. The landlord, who arrives every month and screams for his rent, was invited in by Mariamma only once; she made him sit on the sofa, and as he sank into the hole she laughed. Other men come asking for their money, including an enormous red-faced Afghan moneylender in his Pathani suit who twists Thoma’s hand only partly in jest. And there is a sad book salesman who begs to be paid for the books he delivered five years ago – a complete set of William Shakespeare, all the great Greek tragedies, fifteen volumes of the
Encylopaedia Britannica
and the best English short stories from an innocent age when short stories were really stories.
The Chackos are poor because Ousep is poor and too proud to live within his means, not because he drinks. People who do not drink do not understand drunkards. He does not have to buy his drinks, he has many friends who want to buy him liquor. That is the quality of drunkards, they have a lot of friends. Because what men find most endearing in other men are their tragic flaws. That is why alcoholics never run out of friends. In the light of day, Ousep is too strong, too clever, a solitary man. But when night falls he belongs to all men.
He takes the screwdriver, opens the back panel of the long-defunct radio, and removes the folded sheets of paper. This is Unni’s final comic, he finished it the morning he died. It is called
How To Name It
.
Ousep has not been able to make sense of the comic. Only Mariamma would be able to decipher it for him but the problem is that she plays a significant part in it, she is a part of the riddle, which is bizarre. She is probably hiding something about the boy, something important. But why? If Ousep is going to show her the evidence that implicates her in themystery of Unni’s death, he has to do it when the time is right. She is a crafty woman. But he too is crafty. Equals, that’s what they are. To each other the only equals.
Three years ago, after Unni died, Ousep had set out to find an explanation. Through the memories of the people who knew the boy, he discovered a son whom he had not imagined. Unni Chacko, who appeared to possess a superior detachment, apparently also had an unnatural curiosity about the world around him, as if he could see something extraordinary hiding in plain sight. In the days that immediately followed the boy’s death, people opened up to Ousep and told him what they knew. But nobody could explain why Unni did what he did.
They said, in their lame ways, he had dark thoughts, he spoke a lot about death, he went to the funerals of people he did not know to see the faces of the newly dead and draw their portraits. Friends insisted that Unni must have had a deep secret grief though he never showed any signs. Behind the light on his face there must have been an ordinary sorrow. Find his sorrow and you would find his reason, that was what they implied. Even now, people want to believe in the theory of Unni’s sorrow because that is what they want his death to be about. The tragic defeat of the unusual, and so the triumph of the normal.
This is how people resolve
She said, without turning, ‘The last drop, Ousep Chacko, is not a literary hyperbole in your home. Apparently, it really exists.’
‘How grotesque this looks, Mariamma Chacko. I thought you had more class.’
That made both of them laugh, their laughter rising in pitch in competition, neither willing to stop and grant victory to the other.
The foam sofa in the hall, which is shrouded by an oldbedsheet, has a giant secret hole in the centre. The landlord, who arrives every month and screams for his rent, was invited in by Mariamma only once; she made him sit on the sofa, and as he sank into the hole she laughed. Other men come asking for their money, including an enormous red-faced Afghan moneylender in his Pathani suit who twists Thoma’s hand only partly in jest. And there is a sad book salesman who begs to be paid for the books he delivered five years ago – a complete set of William Shakespeare, all the great Greek tragedies, fifteen volumes of the
Encylopaedia Britannica
and the best English short stories from an innocent age when short stories were really stories.
The Chackos are poor because Ousep is poor and too proud to live within his means, not because he drinks. People who do not drink do not understand drunkards. He does not have to buy his drinks, he has many friends who want to buy him liquor. That is the quality of drunkards, they have a lot of friends. Because what men find most endearing in other men are their tragic flaws. That is why alcoholics never run out of friends. In the light of day, Ousep is too strong, too clever, a solitary man. But when night falls he belongs to all men.
He takes the screwdriver, opens the back panel of the long-defunct radio, and removes the folded sheets of paper. This is Unni’s final comic, he finished it the morning he died. It is called
How To Name It
.
Ousep has not been able to make sense of the comic. Only Mariamma would be able to decipher it for him but the problem is that she plays a significant part in it, she is a part of the riddle, which is bizarre. She is probably hiding something about the boy, something important. But why? If Ousep is going to show her the evidence that implicates her in themystery of Unni’s death, he has to do it when the time is right. She is a crafty woman. But he too is crafty. Equals, that’s what they are. To each other the only equals.
Three years ago, after Unni died, Ousep had set out to find an explanation. Through the memories of the people who knew the boy, he discovered a son whom he had not imagined. Unni Chacko, who appeared to possess a superior detachment, apparently also had an unnatural curiosity about the world around him, as if he could see something extraordinary hiding in plain sight. In the days that immediately followed the boy’s death, people opened up to Ousep and told him what they knew. But nobody could explain why Unni did what he did.
They said, in their lame ways, he had dark thoughts, he spoke a lot about death, he went to the funerals of people he did not know to see the faces of the newly dead and draw their portraits. Friends insisted that Unni must have had a deep secret grief though he never showed any signs. Behind the light on his face there must have been an ordinary sorrow. Find his sorrow and you would find his reason, that was what they implied. Even now, people want to believe in the theory of Unni’s sorrow because that is what they want his death to be about. The tragic defeat of the unusual, and so the triumph of the normal.
This is how people resolve
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