Tony and I grew up about the same time in one and the same neighborhood. Getting to his house on foot from mine would take as many ticking of seconds as it takes to boil an egg. His was a shelter nowhere near a house but more than a hovel, squeezed between a group of back to back tall houses like a lamb in the herd of camels, non-plastered, made of home-made, unbaked bricks with a roof of iron-sheet over head, round the corner of a shoddy alley. Mine was a single-story made of rust-color baked bricks, concrete-roof, standing alone like a winner behind a boundary wall, on the road.

 

We didn’t go to the same school. I have no memory of him ever walking to a thing called school with a bag of books, nor did I ever twist or bend my mind over why he didn’t. I myself seldom if ever walked to school with a light head. Before and after school, we’d be together kicking football, or shooting birds with a slingshot, or stealing guavas from a neighbor’s garden, or climbing a mango tree. He was a great tree-climber. I guess, only monkeys and squirrels could rival him.  I may be wrong.

 

Tony and Joseph were two brothers from two mothers and one father. All but Tony’s mother were dead. She was ailing and was a prisoner of her own bed. She had this chronic asthma. The image of her in my memory is of a wisp of a woman much older to her age, skeletal, in love and hate relationship with the bed she was in, gasping for a lungful of air, groaning and grumbling.

 

The family had patches of paddy in the village that came down to them from their ancestors. They lived off it. Joseph looked after the farm, saw everything through plantation down to harvest and lay in. Tony took care of his mother, ran errands for her, and did household chores like doing dishes, cleaning, sweeping, picking and tidying up things.

 

Off his bounden duty, he is there with me.

 

As it goes with nearly all the boys of fourteen, haven’t been to places and seen the world, I too, had dreams and would get my head in the clouds on and off. I don’t remember Tony having any, or maybe, he fought them down or lived them in private and didn’t show me. I can say this with absolute certainty that Tony was never ever an introvert, in no way. He’d crack jokes, laugh like drain, had amazing ability of listening, and taking and doing things industriously. He was a boy of action. He lived for action and not for consequences. He knew how to cut his way across when fallen into a mess.

 

I know, on several occasions, I would have my head elsewhere when the thing called “Me” was very much with him. As opposed to my ways, he was always one piece, I mean both physically and psychologically, not split between his “Head” and “Him”. He would be there with his whole being, the sum total of him, wherever he was. I mean no split and no conflict!

But then, there was one instance, I vividly remember, can’t get it off my memory, when I saw a cruel thing splitting him into two pieces – two Tonys looking at opposite directions. It was when he was right on the boundary wall, crumbling and full of cracks, with row of spikes on top, tugging and tossing branches of the guava tree that rose from behind the wall, plucking guavas, and me on the base of this side of wall, giving him cover, playing watchdog, keeping my eyes peeled on possible threat and danger. It was just then someone had yelled out at him the news of his mother’s death. As the words flew into his ear, it put him besides himself. He lost balance and unwittingly hurt himself peeling his skin on the spikes. His shirt was torn to shreds and had gotten bruises all over his legs. He had come crashing down the wall and frantically limped his way to his house throwing hard-gotten guavas for me to pick up after him.

 

In about a week or two, I left the place, didn’t see him for a decade. I came back after many years and gave a surprise visit to his house. My eyes searching for Tony fell on him bending over a cradle, gently rocking it with an infant in it lying on his back and a young woman round the corner winnowing husk from rice on a bamboo tray.  I had caught him off-guard, startled him with my sudden and unexpected arrival. No sooner he recognized me than he bounced back to his feet. I could see flush of sheer joy splashing across his face. Everything in him was smiling, his eyes, ears, whiskers, lips, cheek, forehead, and bones, just everything. It was a sacred and pure expression of pristine joy. Tony hugged me, the woman coyly stole a glance at the stranger, dropped her gaze as I shot a glance back at her. We sat down on the edge of the bed woven from jute rope, in one of the rooms of his two-room house. Tony introduced me to the woman who he said had been his sister-in-law and the infant his nephew. It settled in my head in no time that the woman was Joseph’s wife and the infant their baby.

 

I noticed no residues on his face deposited by the upsides and downsides of life over the past ten years nor had they made any dent on him except things that age brings. I mean stubbly beard, moustache, the size of him, more flesh on face etc. Tony was just the same, plain, easy-going, carefree, jolly, living now or never, cracking jokes and laughing like drain. It was not him alone but the whole of him or his whole being rocked when he laughed, like a little house quaking on passing of a heavy lorry. I found him living in totality as always, everything in him bustling and awake, and not just existing in the manner of a saint in a cave or snowy wilderness. I can possibly never know what a secret he was born with that propelled him to live every moment in its fullness and not merely exist, empty and hollow.

I don’t remember him ever going to a school. If he really had some secrets in him, I bet he was not aware of it, nor did he get it from the world around him.

The one change I noticed in him was that he’d let tobacco make inroads in his life, fond of it, smoked lighting one up after stubbing the other out. I didn’t want to ask him what led him into it, fearing it could kill joy.

 

Tony begged the young woman or his sister-in-law or Joseph’s wife to get us tea. She gave a smiling nod, got up buoyantly, and disappeared into the other room.

In about five minutes, she emerged from the room holding a plate with two cups of tea on it. And within this time space, between her disappearance and emerging with tea, Tony had turned a different page of the book of his life for me to look at.  That literally gave me a jolt. He was laughing like drain.

This woman was Tony’s wife in bed and Joseph’s wife or his sister-in-law out of bed. The infant was his son in the cradle that the women knew and others didn’t.

Isn’t that a taboo? Is that a done thing or undone thing? How it all came about! Where is Joseph? How does he take it? How could he sleep with his sister-in-law, knock her up, and bring forth baby?  Why is there only one woman and not two under the roof? I was wandering in the jungle of questions when his words brought me back.

“I know what is going through your mind!”, he said, blowing rings of smoke from his mouth, showing a row of teeth. “I can’t keep the truth from you and I do it for my own good. I want to live light, not heavy”, he said.

And then, he said that Melanie was legally and customarily married to Joseph. Joseph had a problem. He was asexual and had erectile dysfunction. Tony blamed Ganja (Grass) for ruining his virility, sexual prowess  or masculinity. Joseph was pathetic in bed and the sadness and gloom it brought about cast dark shadows on Melanie’s face. She wouldn’t laugh at his joke, bury herself in room, herself to herself, and cry in lonely hours. Joseph lived away from home, seldom visited her. It fell to him to take things in hand and put everything right. He did it. Joseph is happy, Melanie is happy and he’s happy at their happiness. He said, “We are back on track”.

We drank tea, cracked jokes, lived our memories and parted.

 

I returned to the village last week after a gap of 25 years. I went out of my way to find Tony’s whereabouts. I was told that they had sold the house and lived somewhere on rent. Tony didn’t have a cell phone. Without him having the device this point of contact was out of question. I wrestled for couple of days and ran into some half a dozen people before I got the place he lived in.

 

I was led to him by a young man. A young woman was doing dishes in a corner of the corridor leading to his room a I walked to his room. Tony was confined to a bed, just like his mother with a blanket rolled over him and balaclava on his weak, stubbly face.  An infant in a cradle next to his bed was asleep. Tony had a serious accident recently. In the hours of morning blanketed in fog he was crossing the road and was hit by a motorbike. Waist down, he was immobile, taken to bed.

This time it took him long to recognize me. But he did. A flicker of smile ran across his lips. He struggled to rise from bed in vain. I sat down on the bed edge. His joy on seeing me came alive, struggled to find way to his face through clouds of pain and misery eclipsing his face.

They had rented two rooms. The young man who led me to him was his son or nephew! The young woman doing dishes was his wife. Their baby was asleep in the cradle. Melanie had been a teacher in a primary school. Joseph was dead. Melanie and Tony lived together with their son, daughter-in-law and grandchild.

Tony lit up a cigarette, blew smoke rings. Melanie got us tea. We chatted, laughed. He cracked jokes, laughed like drain. None of us lived our memory. He didn’t want to go into it nor did I. The dark room he was in bed lit up with joy. We all lived fully the moment we were in. Tony had natural acceptance for everything that came to him and so was Melanie. They had neither past, nor future nor even present. Their life was frugal, colorless, and a wonderful nothing. The family was just a momentum. In that moment I was with them, I could see that the happiness was bound to bed but joy was bouncing around. Tony didn’t go to a school. I did. I had nothing to teach him. He taught me without teaching what it is that I am beyond my thoughts.