Francis’s eyes go way beyond the walls of the basement
canteen he runs in the School of Social Sciences building, way beyond this
cliché I am forced to employ 26 years later: he does look far far away. It is Saturday and we have converged on
Francis’s canteen because on Saturday he cooks beef. It is a rare treat in a
life punctuated by slightly watery mess meals and dhaba paranthas or bun
omelettes. With his Malayalam tongue Francis calls me something that sounds
like Juggi – I love it because, even erroneously, it feels like a fellow soul
has chosen to feel affectionate enough towards me to give me a pet name. Most
of the time, he is in a T-shirt and folded up lungi, tall, smiling,
moustachioed, dignified, and during holidays gravely accepting of the drinks his
student-patron-friends share with him.
We visit him this Saturday in August. It has been raining
and we – young, heady on new friendships, able to quote just-learnt poetry and
sing very old songs in giggly tuneless choruses – are very pleased with life. Our hunger is perpetual
and pleasing. A hot parotta and beef curry meal awaits. Peacocks are calling
out from our hostel Syntex tanks.
It is raining, we tell Francis as we enter the canteen,
making the most of the drops on our heads and clothes, making the most of the
experience of getting slightly wet. We don’t realize it but already the act of
not carrying an umbrella has become an unshakeable brick in forming our
anti-establishment personas. We are not just sensual rain lovers, not just
adventurous risk-takers, we are also not that
which carries an umbrella in the rain. We are not family, or private
property or state.
It is raining, we gush, but Francis is not impressed. This
is not rain he says, in a Hindi picked up painstakingly over years in
conversations with employers, landlords, bus conductors, shopkeepers, students.
This is not rain. Real rain, toh,
happens in Kerala. Aah, Kerala, we say respectfully, and it sounds far, unreal,
redolent with possibilities of travel and discovery. We know it rains a lot in
Kerala. “It rains a lot in Kerala, na?” we ask.
That’s when Francis’s eyes look beyond the walls of the
basement canteen he runs, way beyond this cliché I am forced to employ 26 years
later. He does look far far away, and
says: I cannot tell you. It rains so much that it keeps dropping from the trees
much after it has stopped. It keeps raining for half an hour after it has stopped raining…