1. The moving lanterns
Once a rumor was rife that the world was
coming to an end. There was this union
of eight planets , which signified that
the apocalypse had arrived. Strange ,
hideous creatures roamed the streets at
night .Headless monsters would be
knocking at your door at midnight and if
you opened the door you would freeze to
death at the sight of the devil .He had
terrifying nights ; while the whole world
had slept he stood wide awake awaiting
the arrival of the headless monster. He
spent countless hours praying to Hanuman
who alone could deliver you from out of
this danger. He always looked at the lone
tiled structure in the Jaggarao's garden
with a fear in his belly . That was where
the bodies were cut open for postmortem.
There was another low-roofed tiled
structure in Jaggarao's orchard which
housed the rain-meter which mystified him
.How did the meter gauge the rain and
measure it in so many inches of rainfall?
When there were heavy rains the roads

2. were flooded with knee-deep gutter water
He had to wade through to reach the
school only to find it closed. The rain-
gauge was a conical –shaped device which
collected rain-drops into a flask at the
bottom forming a column of water the
height of which indicated the rainfall.
When it rained it was for two or three
days at a stretch . The crows sat
listlessly on the mango trees
occasionally flapping their wings in
order to shake off the wetness. The rains
did not last the whole season . Soon the
hills became dry and devoid of vegetation
.The black-berry bushes yielded rich
succulent berries .The lizards came out
into the open as the bare hillside began
emitting hot waves of reflected sunlight.
The nights were opaquely dark and
bitingly crisp .The kerosene lamps on the
roads stood ominously like jack-of- the
–lanterns waiting to pounce on the stray
passers-by. He was deeply afraid of the
little flickering ghost-lamps that seemed
to be wandering in the vast expanse of
the moonless nights. He had heard of the
lamps chasing people walking on deserted

3. roads. He tried to rationalize to himself
the phenomenon of the wandering lamp-
ghosts .As corpses burned on the lighted
piers late into the night their bones
crackled to release flickering specks of
strange phosphorescence into the
atmosphere .At least that was what he
thought. He several times woke up in the
morning to hear the plaintive cries of
the tituva bird . The mournful cry of
this bird portended certain disaster and
death.
The world looked so unreal .Was the mango
tree and the kerosene lantern on the
court street real? The shadows of the
flickering lanterns stretched weakly
into the heart of the liquid moonlight
shadows but retained their gray textures.
The dried leaves at the foot of the mango
tree rustled meaninglessly as the
sleeping lizard suddenly woke up from its
half-awake state to catch a passing fly.
During the day he pursued stray dogs with
sharp stones and as they yelled in pain
he shook in sweaty fear at the prospect
of spending an eternity in burning
cauldrons in the deepest parts of hell .

4. On the outskirts of the town Dr.Gullison
, the missionary from Canada stayed in a
moss-laden bungalow which inspired awe in
the children .On Sundays the children of
the town ,many of them in rags, collected
in the portico of the bungalow waiting
for delicious blobs of European cheese to
be dropped in their outstretched palms by
the Doctor's servants. The children then
went to the Protestant church nearby
where they waited in queue to receive
free milk , made out of imported milk
powder, in over-sized brass vessels put
in their tiny hands by their greedy
mothers. The milk tasted good and was
found useful by the mothers for making a
part of it into delicious curd.
Dr.Gullison had a heart of gold .He
served the community with devotion . His
pretty nurse-daughter worked as the
superintendent –nurse whose broken Telugu
amused the poor patients at her father's
hospital. His protégé , a certain Dr.
Copullai , worked wonders for the
eyeless. The legendary Copullai restored
eyesight to hundreds of poor patients .
It was Dr. Puri , the native Oriya doctor

5. , who attended on the lower middle class
patients who believed in the efficacy of
the Telugu medicine .Telugu medicine
meant the the traditional Indian medical
system. When he had headaches with
vomiting sensation all the ladies
surrounded him attending on him with
motherly affection. When there was fever
Dr.Puri gave small pellets of lehya which
was supposed to take its effect only
under strict diet. Once he became
terribly ill .He thought that was the end
of the dream –state he was passing
through. He was delirious with high fever
and as he slipped away into another world
he almost came face to face with Him
.There was this confusing obliteration of
his physical self as the ladies pushed a
bunch of his house-keys into his hands.
The boy is getting into fits !The gaggle
of concerned women shouted. The iron keys
thrust into his palms would prevent him
from slipping into unconsciousness.
He dreamed of his father who had never
existed for him except in his dreams. He
had heard the silent moans of his mother
several times at the dead of the night.

6. His father , the angel of his dreams
,pursued him like the insubstantial
shadow that strode behind him in the lazy
afternoons . He was an exquisite dream ,
a fragment of his imagination that had
never existed .As he lay beside his
mother with his head on the bend of her
elbow he re-lived the electric pain of
his existence , a highly charged electric
existence that was finally to blow up in
a fantastic explosion of orange and
crimson phosphorescence. Several years
later ,in 2003, he encountered the flimsy
nonexistence of his father once again in
the foggy outreach of a fish city .As he
prayed at the temple he could instantly
recognize , through the unbroken
connectivity of the Lord's photoelectric
refulgence ,the blinding luminescence of
his all-knowing smile
Satyanarayana,his grandmother's
brother ,was the landlord of the house
where the family stayed. The one-room
thatched house always contained roomful
of people. Satyanarayana, a thin wiry
angry man,enjoyed exercising his
masculine authority over his helpless

7. wife. When he spoke his eyes flashed as
though a live volcano erupted through
them .His angry mouth was full with half-
eaten betel leaf with pungent pan
masala. He charged a full Rs.15 for the
one -room thatched house he had let out
to the family. He faced him always with
trepidation. At night he slept alone on
the veranda and sometimes on the road
facing the house .He was deeply afraid of
the old man because everything about him
suggested an imminent explosion which
would burn him off without leaving a
trace. When Satyanarayna uncle spoke the
lava spread like from a freshly erupted
volcano. The expletives in his speech
issued at the speed of a stengun .
Bhaskar , the little boy of ten ,one day
came back from school and complained of a
stomach upset .The next day he was laid
out on a bamboo stretcher with his eyes
wide open and the eyeballs protruding in
a most undignified manner. He could not
understand what happened to Bhaskar. Why
was he not getting up and taking his
schoolbag to accompany us in our daily
trudge to school ?From out of the straw

8. bed on the bamboo stretcher Bhaskar
stared at the Tituva bird which made
circular motions in the sky above the
Jaggarao's garden crying quot;Ti Ti Yaquot; .He
thought with a shudder when the bird
would sing titiya for him .He spent
sleepless nights waiting for the bird's
mournful song .When he woke up in the
morning he heard the plaintive cry every
day from out of the blank space that
stretched above the lone tiled structure
in the Jaggarao's garden where they cut
open bodies for postmortem.
In the Sharad ritu , on the third day
,the moon shone more beautifully than
ever. Girls worshiped the moon praying
for a very good husband. They woke up at
4'O clock in the morning and ate cool
rice and curd , had their pretty palms
filled with the beautiful leafy-redness
and played the hide-and-seek game .Their
delicate frames swayed like the wild
jasmine bushes that trembled in the face
of a strong gust of wind .They laughed
intermittently for no apparent reason .
When they laughed their oiled plaits
shook against their alabaster necks and

9. cast ethereal shadows on their fairy-like
existence. He shook with apparent unease
each time they laughed .He almost always
feared that they were laughing at him and
did not know why.
He spent time , when alone, walking on
the four-foot compound wall of the court
delicately balancing himself .There was
this hall in the center of the old tiled
structure of the Court where the Judge
sat holding his court. Above him
oscillated the pull-punkah , with a
string one end of which was pulled by a
peon sitting in the veranda outside. It
was very funny how they called out names
of the witnesses. A peon called out the
name of the witness in a singsong fashion
twice and then paused for a while before
calling him for the third and the last
time .The heat outside was very
oppressive and the clients and the black-
coated lawyers huddled to the shade of
the only tree in the compound. He
wondered what finally happened to the
disputed property . Has the claimant
finally got it ?The lawyer's Adams apple
went up and down in a most comical
fashion as the client looked at him with

10. fervent hope .The Bilwa tree skirting the
compound wall yielded rich pulpy
fruits ,hard from outside and inedible so
unlike the Sitaphal tree on the other
side of the compound wall whose delicious
fruits he had plucked many a time .
The Sitaphal tree which skirted the other
side of the compound wall bore green-
petaled flowers which tasted funny .The
children ate the petals for their
astringent taste so different from the
Ramaphal which ,sweeter and rounder
,tasted even better when ripe. The
Sitaphal bore Sita's name while its
cousin , the Ramaphal took Rama's name.
Before Sankranti the children collected
firewood for the ensuing Bhogi festival
when there would be a bonfire to
celebrate Rama's victory over the evil
forces represented by Ravana .He wore a
new shirt , a silken one for the
festival with several large floral prints
.Somebody threw a flat-stone onto the
sloping thatch of his house-roof which
slided on to the ground and landed on his
head .He felt that he reached the end of
his earthly journey as warm blood began
to ooze out of the deep gash on forehead

11. and started trickling on to the shirt
with the bright red floral prints. The
blood was excruciatingly purple and
flowed intermittently on to his silken
shirt forming lovely floral patterns
synchronizing so precisely with the
shirt's floral design. The purple wound
was made to eat crystals of sugar for
that is how one did first aid for a
superficial wound.
On the veranda slept the ancient granny
on a string cot .Blind and unaware of the
world she thought she ruled the world
.For twenty years she lay on the cot
mumbling to herself all the commands she
would like to give to others. She thought
she was at the center-stage because all
decisions of the family get referred to
her . Which was a delightful illusion
perpetuated by her children. Her world
existed behind her visionless eyelids
.There she presided over all the affairs
of her family .She had, over the years of
darkness, developed a keen sense of touch
with which she could instantly recognize
people. Deep within she saw herself in
the center of the frightening hell-fires

12. of a useless existence .Nothing mattered
to anybody .She would one day be made to
lie supine on a palm mat on the ground
and await death with drops of holy Ganges
water being dropped into her open mouth.
She knew that. Not only would she be made
to sprawl on the floor but they would
take her away on a bamboo stretcher to
some unknown place where they would light
the fire to her with the smoke rising to
the skies. After that they would
partition the place where she is now
lying with a new bamboo mat to indicate
that for six months nobody should go
anywhere near the place.
Sharada the over-sized daughter of the
head-master always played with girls with
pigtails .When she played hide-and -seek
it was so easy to spot her behind the
wooden pillar .He who played with the
girls on the wakeful nights of shivaratri
found it was tragic for Sharada to get
caught out so easily merely because of
her over-size.On the Shivaratri all the
boys and girls of the street kept awake
for the night in order to keep vigil over
Shiva who had drunk poison and was lying

13. unconscious. On these nights strains of
film music came wafting on the breeze
while most of the world slept .Sharada
prepared tea for all the boys and girls
so that they would remain wide awake
throughout the night. Having prepared tea
she would immediately go off to sleep
only to wake up after an hour and resume
her vigil.
Women worshiped the Goddess of Gauri
during Shravan for the welfare of their
husbands .The black beads in their
luminescent necks shone in wifely pride
that their husbands were alive and would
live longer than their wives so that the
women would die before the husbands .It
was the lifetime ambition of these women
that they would die before their husbands
.The women loved their husbands and
obeyed them unquestioningly not because
the husbands were so lovable and deserved
their love but because that was what
their mothers had done in their time
.They would get up in the morning and rub
their mangalasutras to their eyes in
respectful adoration. The wife would
gently press the tired feet of the man

14. who would lie on the cot with his legs
stretched so that the wife would do her
job unhindered . The husband would growl
if the quality of her work was not to his
satisfaction .He would sometimes get up
and give her a painful blow so that she
would do the job better. The wife would
take the blow stoically and get on with
the work as usual. After half an hour the
husband would start snoring and then the
wife would get up from the floor stopping
her work . She would touch his sleeping
feet with her hands and touch her fingers
to the eyes praying to God for longevity
to her husband so that she would die
before him and earn merit for the worlds
beyond .