“Why do you need a week-long leave for Holi? Isn’t it usually a one-day festival ? I simply don’t understand you and your ways of working.” said the Boss in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. He was trying hard to maintain his composure, but I could feel the tension in his voice. I knew it was a struggle for him to be civil to me . I kept looking at him with a blank expression. I was not in the mood to care about the consequences of my actions. I was prepared to resign and not serve my notice, maybe even go absconding. ‘Let him keep my full and final settlement,’ I thought ruefully. My intentions that morning were clear. Either I would get my leave approved or I would walk away from this job.
“Why such a late request though?” he added, sensing that I was not going to say anything more.
“I just got confirmed tatkal tickets and I told you last month that I would apply for leave only if I got the tickets,” I said in the same emotionless tone that mirrored my face. I knew he was waiting to unleash his infamous temper on me. His temple was throbbing and he was fidgeting with his pen – both cues foretold the blessings that he would shower upon me in just a bit.
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if summoning all his demonic strength to destroy me with his words. But he needed a solid trigger. Maybe more of my defiance to light the wick that would set off the fireworks. I, on the other hand, was feeling good about myself. Securing confirmed tatkal tickets in the sleeper class, and that too on a long weekend, was not a joke. I was still reeling from the adrenaline rush of the past hour. Now I wanted to tempt fate.
I wanted to watch him implode right in front of me. I had done it earlier and it was well worth it. It always reminded me of one nasty school teacher of mine, who would lose his cool and make a fool of himself each time someone disobeyed him. I would always set him off and I would pay dearly with a caning on both my palms. But it always brought me great satisfaction to watch him crash and burn in the dingy classroom of my school.
However, the only boring thing about the tirade that the Boss would launch was that it was predictable. It was like the kind of things that you and your spouse bicker over for years together without showing any intention to resolve them . The attacks are known, almost too predictable, and if you do not defend the first few volleys then you also know what is going to come next. And then you stop because you are either exhausted, or hungry, or both.
His attack style was temporal, deeply personal but masked as a history lesson of all the times I had messed up. He would begin right at the start when I joined the Company; when I had forgotten to copy him on a routine introductory mail to the bigger Boss, and how disappointed he had been with me then. After wringing the email incident dry, he would switch gears and start recounting every other blunder in quick succession, as if my career lows were items on a menu at the local Udupi joint. He would go on until I would mumble an apology and leave, unable to take his long list of reasons that made me a bad employee.
I was at a crossroads now. On one hand, I wanted to enjoy my sweet victory over the other desperate passengers who had battled with me for those tatkal tickets and on the other, I wanted to kick the bull in his own China shop. I wanted to set fire to the wick, when someone knocked on the door.
It was the HR guy. He poked his head into the cabin and spoke to the Boss. He was simply “checking-in”, ‘whatever that meant,’ I thought to myself.
“All good here, man,” the Boss said in an effusive manner which was clearly forced, but the HR guy was not listening. He nodded and left. It was a routine check for him. But he had broken the tension in the room. I had also lost my appetite for drama. I only wanted to get home , pack my bags, and head to LTT (Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) for the train tonight to our village, to our homeland. So I stood quietly until he dismissed me, mumbling something about not repeating this behaviour again. It was nearing lunch time and I was exhausted and hungry. I did not care what he felt.
At my desk, I wondered why he got so angry at my request. Even after trying hard, I could not think of a reason. The last leave I had taken was during Ganesh Chaturthi and that too only for a day. Since then I had been diligent without giving him much to complain about. I had worked hard and saved all my leaves for this moment. It was Holi after all, the time of Shimga.
I come from Konkan, from a small village in the emerald district of Ratnagiri to be precise. And for our folks, Holi is not just a day-long festival, it is much more. It is a festive celebration of our village deity, which begins with the Holi – the lighting of the bonfire. It is the time when the village deities are carried in a palanquin from their abode with great fanfare, to every home where we receive them with immense devotion and gratitude. I even carry the palanquin on my shoulders on some days and look forward to it every year.
The village comes alive at night. It is the time for all of us chakarmani – the migrants of the city to return to their home land. We gather as a singular unit, lost in devotion, merriment, and even mischief. You have to be there to understand. It is electric, the atmosphere, almost addictive. We hardly sleep during those nights and spending anything less than a week in the village seems absolutely criminal.
I committed that crime last year. I cancelled my trip due to an urgent deliverable at work. I did not have the courage to stand up to the Boss and hold my ground. I did not get to work from home, like my friends in IT did, so I couldn’t even offer to log in remotely. I missed the annual visit and could never forgive myself for it. Since then, I had vowed to always return to our land of red laterite for Shimga. Though recently the HR guy had announced that we could work from home, once a week. But the Boss never permitted me . “Why?” you ask? I don’t know. You could ask the HR guy if there were any person-specific caveats.
I was a mere accountant maintaining the books of the Company. But to the Boss, I carried sensitive and confidential information that he wouldn’t risk leaving the premises. To me, my hard drive had just numbers stored in tables but to the Boss, it was invaluable information. He felt that it would only remain secure in the confines of this steel-and-glass building that housed the Office. Little did he know, if provoked, I could easily replicate these spreadsheets on the back of my notebook. I remembered everything perfectly.
I had always been good with numbers, so they stayed with me naturally. I did not need a calculator but I used one anyway to not worry the Boss, who had a hard time trusting my quick estimates, which, as you might have guessed, were always accurate. But if I were to ever reveal my prowess to him, he would make me an evil demon, an asura. I would be banished from the Office, ousted onto the streets, for stealing data – like Sankasur, who stole the Vedas from Brahma and was punished by Vishnu.
Sankasur, ah the demon! The one who runs amok through the lanes of our village during Shimga. He sports a jet black outfit, a conical headgear, long, flowing beard, and a menacing tongue, with belt of ghungroos tied across his waist. He carries a whip and chases anyone who dares to tease him. To the world he may look evil, but for us, he is revered and even loved. You see, Sankasur has always been misunderstood. My grandmother, God bless her soul, told me his story when I was a boy, spending a summer break in our village.
She told me that Sankasur was the king of the non-Aryan and that the Vedas originally belonged to them. So he was merely taking back from Brahma what had belonged to them . But we didn’t dwell much on the rightness of the actions of the Devas or the Asuras. To us village folk, he was our protector, the guardian and to experience his whip on our backs was to be blessed by him. As children, being chased by this affable demon was a thrill. His conical cap, flowing beard, and the jangling ghungroos over the jet-black costume seemed scary at first, but often we were delighted to see him race towards us through the village lanes.
A few years ago, a regional hip-hop artist made a song about Sankasur. The catchy number immediately went viral on our village WhatsApp groups. I had never imagined Sankasur being featured in a music video, and the artist had done such a great job of capturing the essence of our beloved deity. I remember showing it to my father then. He was not easily amused by the world and would hardly speak more than a few words towards the end. But the song and its visuals had made him smile. A memory I hold fondly.
My father, like many others from our village, was a chakarmani himself. He had come aboard a steamer to Mumbai to get a job at the booming cotton mills. As a mill worker or a girni kamgaar, his life was determined by the call of the bhonga (siren) that would go off at the factory. Those timely bhongas also kept our lives in order.
For example, the end of his shift also ended my playtime. I knew that within a few minutes of the evening siren, he would be home. Both of us would then sit by our west-facing door, and finish my homework before the light outside faded. But that changed when the mills shut down. He did not say much when they put the heavy locks on the gate after the protests failed. Our future seemed uncertain. But he was a decisive man. He sold off our house in the wooden chawl and we moved to the slums (which were also referred to as chawls in local parlance, a euphemism concocted to salvage the dignity of the slum dwellers) in the suburbs. He bought a second-hand auto-rickshaw and switched professions overnight . He would leave on his duty before I left for school, and often returned late at night.
But each night he would ask me about what they had taught me at school. I tried hard to stick to the evening homework discipline but it was often a chaotic time. For that was when the municipal authorities would release water into the community taps, and as children we were expected to go and reserve our turn. The wait was never uneventful. And by the time my mother would come to carry the filled pots and buckets home, a fight would have erupted between the competing women of the chawl. By the time we got home, we would often be exhausted, having just fought for our share of water with our neighbours only to repeat it all the next day.
My mother had always been a strong woman, devoted to all of us. In the city her identity was limited to being my mother and my father’s wife. She did not seem to mind . But back in the village she was a person of her own. There, she was known for being the first girl from the village to secure distinction in the matriculation exam. She was the scholar whom all envied and admired.
Everyone thought she would go on to become a nurse or a teacher but she chose us instead. However , after moving to the city, she always yearned to go back. So, before every Shimga, she would start coaxing me to book railway tickets. Even after my father passed away, her excitement to return to our village never faded. But when I asked her if she wanted to settle down there, she would scoff and say that she was far too much of a city person now. Still, she never missed a chance to visit the village.
That morning of the conversation with the Boss, and before my Tatkal victory, she had kept to herself, knowing fully well that I had not booked tickets on time and all I had were waitlisted tickets that were useless in the new regime. I reached home and told her that all of us were going to the village on three confirmed tickets (the third ticket was for my wife who had come into my life a few years ago). She was elated and went to thank the village deity, whose picture she kept in the devara in the kitchen. Her momentary relief soon gave way to panic as she started packing our luggage, which seemed like an endless task. She roped in my wife and me and we all got busy putting things together for the trip.
After a light dinner, we took the train to Dadar and then another train to Kurla and then the final connection to Tilak Nagar. She protested against taking a direct auto-rickshaw. It hurt her back, she said, and it would be expensive, she would add. But I knew that the rickshaw rides reminded her of my father. On days when we would be travelling to our village, he would take us to Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in his auto-rickshaw. He would park it at the stand close by and we would board the train together.
We reached Tilak Nagar and from there I led the way to LTT, following all the other migrants returning home to their villages. This year many of them were carrying their belongings in big plastic drums. Just at the entrance of LTT, a big, bright LED board glowed in the darkness, like a radioactive material that had spilled over in a laboratory. I walked closer to read it clearly and there it was.
LTT-MAO SPL Delayed, Now Departing at 3 AM. Inconvenience is Regretted.
Had it been any other day I would have punched the board. But this evening I was in good spirits. It was Shimga and some delay was acceptable. Before I could say anything about the delay, my mother spoke.
“I had told you, we should have gone by Konkan Kanya”.
I smiled at her. It was midnight, just three hours more and then we would be on our way. I apologised to her and promised to be prompt next year. “Come, we will find some place to sit” I said, signalling them to follow me.
The waiting room was full, and not free of cost either. I did not mind spending some money but there were mosquitoes everywhere in that dingy room with the AC barely working. Moreover, I had forgotten to carry Odomos. Now, the next three hours seemed daunting. My wife suggested that we explore some other spots on platform one. We set off and found a row of steel chairs. There was only one lanky man sitting awkwardly, reading a book. I let my mother take the seat next to him while my wife and I spread out a bedsheet and sat down on the floor.
There were some mosquitoes there too. All of us began slapping our exposed limbs as the mosquitoes launched their attack. Seeing us suffering, the fellow with the book reached into his bag and offered my mother his tube of Odomos. She hesitated but I told her to take it. I also took some, and applied it all over. The menace stopped temporarily. He was travelling alone to Goa. I found that strange— where was his family? we asked . “Around,” he said and resumed reading. A strange fellow indeed.
I got up and went to buy some water for all of us. And right next to the shop, I saw a friendly face. A former colleague, who was also from Konkan, from a village not far from mine. He too was returning home with his family. I invited him to join us at our spot and he immediately agreed. His mother and he sat on the floor next to us, and they began speaking in our local dialect.
We didn’t speak in that dialect so much at home; we often spoke in Marathi, that too in the Mumbai way, which had a peppering of Hindi, English, and even some Gujarati. But I enjoyed listening to them speak this sweet dialect, it prepared me for the next week in the village. As the conversations deepened, we lost track of time, and also made plans to meet later in the week. The train rolled in at the promised delayed hour and we made a dash for it. Once both my wife and my mother were settled on their berths, I went and stood by the door, thinking about the day that had been and the days to come.
At around three o’clock, the motorman sounded the departure call— the loud honk that probably woke up all of Tilak Nagar and jolted the train into motion. I was happy that I had made it onto the train with three confirmed tickets and now I was finally going home to be with my people, to carry the palanquin, worship our deity, and of course to be chased and blessed by Sankasura.