my maternal grandfather had made a pond in his house.as years passed,the people of his locality started using it to bathe themselves and gradually,the pond became a public pond.
i cannot swim in ponds so i have never swam in it.but my mother and all her four siblings had learnt to swim in it.
i can only remember one man whom i had seen swimming in it.a thin,bald,dark old man.i think i had seen him wearing a blue lungi once,it might have been some colour other colour also.i didnt know what his name was.we never exchanged words or pleasantries.
i came to know his name today.the day he died.
in the same pond.following a heart attack while swimming.they found his body hours after his death-floating along the sides of the pond.right where the coconut trees grow.his red towel was lying on that cemented embankment around the pond.it still is,perhaps.
his name,as i came to know today,was Neelu.
9 comments:
compliments might sound appropriate for such an experience. Sometimes life takes us through such experiences, like the one you've written about. One really can't react after such an incident. I dunno why but your piece reminded me of the writings of Garcia Marquez. Little details of a strange happening and how it brought back unusual memories.
Life is full of these odds and evens...one is moved in strange, inexplicable ways by them...you want to put it coherently, but somehow, the associations seem too random to pen down in any organized manner...maybe these constitute the seeds of our involuntary initiation into what we usually call 'experience'.
God, Riya. I got goose bumps when I read that. I like your style of putting this story. Good.
oh god!
:O
Neelu...I may be wrong,but for a moment I thought it was quite ironic for him to die like that.
my father's house, mother's house, all my native houses have been surrounded by waterbodies - some owned, some shared.
i remember a man who had drowned near my mamabari when i was younger. he was quite a young man, and he had a defective leg, and everyone called him laengda (that's all i ever knew). he apparently swam that jheel everyday until one day he just... drowned. no one ever found out why. i used to know that man, though with a child's vagueness for all those paratuto mamas. for years i couldn't stop myself from getting creeps everytime anyone mentioned his name.
i agree.. with the fact that it was ironic..
Is it possible that life is a rummage sale of sorts... odd ends handed out to fill up life stories when imagination can go no further...
oh!
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