My Schoolmate's son 6

As my high fever persisted even beyond three days, I was taken to a hospital by my employer. The doctors performed tests and could not decide what was exactly wrong with me. They suspected that a poisonous insect or a snake could have bitten me when I lay on the stack of hay. My mother kept asking me why I went and slept there. But I did not give her a proper answer. Neither did I tell the doctors how I came to lie on the stack of straw. The doctors then told my employer to take me to a bigger hospital in Thanjavur. My employer took the responsibility to shift me and told me that I need not worry about the wedding arrangements of my sister. As the bridegroom was his relative, he said he would make all the arrangements and I could repay him later, either in cash or by working in his farm without a salary for a year.

I did not make efforts to send word to Mani about my illness. I thought that he might hear about it and send word through someone or come and see me himself, in my village. But obviously no news reached him. The wedding of my sister was to be celebrated in the month of May. The date was fixed and my mother told me that my employer called her to his house and finalized it with the ‘prohit’ (priest). Weddings are usually held in our village--in most villages in the Delta area of the Cauvery River, for that matter--in the month of May or June. Of the many reasons for choosing these months, the foremost was that it was the time just before the beginning of a new cultivation season, when all farmers would be free. A second reason was that it was the time when summer fruits such as mangoes, jackfruits and bananas were available in plenty. I was hoping and praying to my gods that I should be well by then and should get back to my village to witness the wedding. The gods heard my prayer and one day, at the end of April, I was told by the doctors that they would be discharging me the next day. I had been in the hospital close to three months! I was feeling weak but the thought of going home delighted me.

But on the day of discharge, a terrible news was secretly given to me by the doctors. I was HIV positive, they said. In other words, I was an AIDS patient! They advised me that I need to take the medicines they had prescribed, regularly without fail. How did I get the AIDS virus in me? The doctors too wanted to know and asked me whether I had any illicit sexual relationship with women. I said hesitatingly: “NO”. Was it possible that Mani’s wife had AIDS? If so, Mani should also be an AIDS patient, should he not? But he did not have any sexual intercourse with her due to their incompatibility. Both Mani and his wife had confided about this to me. And just then a thought came to me as a bolt form the blue! It was through Mani that I should have got it! Those two Sri Lankan friends of his, who were described by Mani as ‘sex maniacs’ had not only taught him the enjoyment of homosexual intercourse, but had also infected him with their HIV virus!

I was anxious that I should not pass on the terrible virus to my household—to my mother or particularly to my sister. I did not know then that the terrible virus got transmitted only through sexual contacts and not merely by living together in a house. The next morning I had to clear some payments at the time of my discharge. My employer had cleared most of it and had left some money with me. Fortunately, the amount was just sufficient to pay up the balance. I left the hospital and boarded the bus to the town where Mani lived. I went to his house. I hesitated a long time before going to the back side to knock on the courtyard door. It was open and Ponmalar was drying some clothes on the cloth line in the courtyard. I drew her attention by clearing my throat. She turned and looked at me. For some time there was no indication of recognition on her face. But then she identified. I had grown so thin and dark during the past three months. My hair was uncut and my face unshaven. No wonder she was not able to recognize me at first sight!

My gaze fell on her body and I noticed that she had put on some weight. But what struck me was the slight bulge in her tummy. She was pregnant! Mani had gone to the mill she said. I told her that I could not come to see them after I saw her last in the house, as I had fallen seriously ill. She told me apologetically that my appearance has changed considerably and hence, she could not recognize me at once. She also said that she and Mani had gone the next day after my visit, to see the man of god in the hill station and retuned only after a week. Mani had tried to send word to see me, but no one knew where I was. So, he had gone to my employer and had come to know that I was in the General Hospital at Thanjavur with a serious illness. He also came to know of the wedding arrangements of my sister and so had given my employer a large sum of money to be used for my treatment. He had also promised to attend the wedding after visiting me at Thanjavur.

My eyes became moist when I heard all that Mani had done for me. My employer had not mentioned anything about Mani to me or to my mother. I then understood that he had used the money given by Mani for my treatment as if it was his own! However, I could not be angry with him for that, because he was to perform the marriage of my sister in a few days’ time. As per custom, it was the bride’s people who should carry out the wedding and all other formalities. But my employer, knowing our economic background and my illness had taken it upon himself to conduct the wedding. As I was thinking of all this, I did not notice Ponmalar asking me to stay and have lunch with them that day. She said that Mani would be back only by about 3 o’clock in the evening. I told her that I would not be able to stay that long and I have to go to my village immediately as my mother would be waiting for me. Before taking leave, I looked at her tummy. She noticed my gaze and said with a shy smile:

“It is all Bagwan’s grace. The sage in the hill station is a powerful man. He blessed the two of us and gave me some ‘vhibuthi’ to consume every day. And within a fortnight, I conceived. God is great. He has heard my prayer!” She had either forgotten that night of bliss that we enjoyed or was trying to hide it from everyone, including me! Whatever really happened when Mani woke up that morning, soon after I left their house remained a mystery to me. I could not ask her about it nor did she think it necessary to tell me.
I told her that I would come to see little Mani when he was born. She then said:

“Mani too is confident that it is going to be a boy. But I do not mind. Whether a boy or a girl I will accept it with gratefulness. If it turns out to be a boy as you have said, then Mani would be overjoyed. Pray that it should be a boy.”

I looked up to heaven, raised my two hands, put my palms together in an attitude of ‘namaskar’ and took leave of her requesting her to inform Mani about my visit. She asked me to stay for a minute, went into the house, came back and gave me a hundred rupee note, saying that Mani wanted it to be given to me whenever I came looking for him. I accepted it with both hands, thanked her and then walked away briskly to the town bus stand to catch another bus. I did not get back to my village. If my ailment was to be known there— I knew it would soon become known—no one will come near me. I will have to be an outcast in my own village. I decided to go away somewhere. I had the money given to me by Ponmalar. I boarded a bus going to Vedaranyam—a coastal village from where many people escaped to Sri Lanka, illegally.

I crossed the Palk Strait in a catamaran, along with others and landed in the northern region of the Island Nation. . I took up a job in one of the coffee plantations there and survived with my illness. I lived near a Tamil family of a middle aged man, his wife and their teenage son, all working in the tea-estate owned by a European. The teenage boy, 18 years old, became very friendly with me as we lived in the same row of tenements built for workers like us and also because I spoke Tamil. He used to come to my tenement after dusk and sit chatting with me in Tamil. When he came to know that I was educated up to the tenth standard, he wanted me to reach him to write and read. But there were no books with me to teach him. So, I used to read the news from a Tamil daily and tell him to learn the letters. He used to appreciate my physique very much as he was very lean and skinny.

One night he came and sat down next to me on the mat where I was resting after my evening meal and began to feel my biceps and my chest and started to appreciate their hardness. He put his hand to my nipples and caressed them, intently looking up at my face. When I allowed him to handle my body, he was became bolder and said that he would like to see my cock! Thinking he was joking, I told him that he must first show his. He promptly lifted up his ‘lungi’ and showed me his cock. It was black and thin, and about 3 inches long. It was not erected, but lay limp in front of his ball sac. When I put my hand on it he looked at me approvingly. So I began to pull it lightly. As I did so, it rapidly expanded to its full size of about 6 inches. He looked at my face, smiled and then looked at my crotch. I understood what he wanted. He wanted to see my cock. My cock was beginning to expand then, as I was handling his. So, I loosened the strings of my underwear and drew out my cock. He gasped when he saw it!

“I wish I could have one like that,” he said as he put his hand to it, with some hesitation.
“Why do you want one like this?” I asked just to keep up the conversation.
“I will then be able to attract the girls who come to work in the estate. They always keep talking about the cocks of men. When they look at a man, they do not first comment on his face or body. But begin to wonder how his cock would be—particularly, how long it would be,” he said, with a giggle!
“Don’t worry, I will massage your cock every night and it will grow longer and thicker like mine,” I said and I began to demonstrate it.

“I like to suck your cock,” he said. I would have let him do it; but I was aware of my illness and I did not want him to contract my HIV virus. So, I told him that he should not do it as it was not a healthy practice and one is likely to contract serious diseases by doing so. He gasped and said that he had done it with a man whom he met at the tea-estate some years ago. On asking him who the man was, the boy evaded my question. But on insisting, finally said that the man was dressed as a soldier and carried a heavy gun on his hands. He had come into the tea-estate alone and was wandering through the tea bushed when he came face to face with the boy who was urinating in one corner. When this boy asked him who he was and what was it that he was carrying, he had said in Singhalese language that he was a guard sent by the estate owner to spy out on the workers and to shoot down any estate worker who did not do his or her work properly. Terrified the boy turned to run away.

But the soldier had caught hold of him, and told him that he had another gun that was not so terrible and asked the boy to stay and see it. Then the man took him to a lonely spot among the tea bushes and unbuttoned his trousers and pulled out his cock and brandished it before the boy’s face. The boy was perplexed and at the same time fascinated by a man’s cock that had expanded fully. Then the soldier had asked him to come and put his hand on his new ‘weapon’. When the boy hesitated, he caught hold of the boy and made him open his mouth and shoved in his cock and asked him to suck it, holding the boy’s head firmly. The soldier had threatened the boy that if he did not suck it till he ejaculated in his mouth, he would have to catch hold of some woman worker and fuck her in front of the boy. Complying with the demand, the boy had sucked the soldier’s cock till he spurted his semen into the boy’s throat and had made him swallow it all! Further, he ordered him to lick his cock dry before releasing him and asking him to run away and not breathe a word to anyone about what had happened.

When I asked the boy whether he met the soldier again, he said hesitatingly that it was a regular feature after that and he had to go to the lonely spot on certain days of the week to satisfy the man. The soldier had asked about the boy’s family, and when he came to know that he was the only child to his parents, he had threatened him that he would catch hold of his mother and fuck her in front of him, if he did not satisfy his desires every time they met. When I asked the boy whether the soldier did anything else to him apart from asking him to suck his cock, the boy blushed and told me that the soldier made him remove his clothes and fucked him in is ass hole violently on several days. The boy had pain in his ass, to begin with, on such days and tried to hide it from his parents. But his mother noticed his awkward walking one day and asked him what was wrong.

The boy had said that he fell down from a rock while climbing the hilly terrain and hurt his bottom. His mother had informed her husband about it and the boy’s father had then made him lie on his belly and lifting up his lungi, had applied oil to his bottom and massaged it. But the real trouble being in his ass hole, the boy tried hard to bear his pain and walk normally from the next day. The boy wondered how he was going to manage with the soldier the next time. But fortunately, for some unknown reason, the soldier did not appear again.

On hearing all this, I had hatred towards the Sri Lankan army, for I was sure that it was one of the army men who had committed this atrocity on the boy. I took pity on the boy and told him that he can whack my cock as long as he likes, instead of taking it into his mouth and sucking it. As he began to whack my cock, I whacked his. After a while I felt like ejaculating. I wanted to be careful to avoid my cum coming into contact with the boy’s hands. So I removed his hands from my cock and took it in my own hand and whacked it till I ejaculated. Seeing me masturbate, the boy took hold of his own cock in his hands and did the same. We both enjoyed doing this at night on and off by way of releasing our pressure. Because of this release, I did not feel like seeking out a woman for my sexual desires, though many prostitutes were living in that area, especially to gratify to the estate workers. Some of the unmarried workers spent all their earning on women and alcohol and used to boast that their aim in life was to “eat, drink and fuck!”

Twenty years passed away. Somehow, I was still alive. It was a great miracle. Except me, no one else knew of my illness. The boy who was staying nearby, got married and moved to another tea estate. He found a girl among the estate workers who fell in love with him. I asked him, jokingly, whether she fell in love after seeing the length of his cock! He said I was the other way round!

“I saw her vagina when she was urinating near a tea bush once,” he said excitedly. “I saw it distinctly, because I was standing at a lover level in the hilly region and she was squatting at a higher level. There were thick tea bushes between us and she did not notice me urinating on the other side. Through the gap in the tea bush her vagina was fully exposed to my view as she sat down to urinate. In order to see who the person was, I went round the bush and found that it was one of the young girls who used to eye me often when I was working. So I went near her and when she saw me, got up in alarm. But I told her she need not hide anything from me, because I have seen everything and I liked it very much! Upon hearing me say that she blushed and ran away. But she came to the same spot again expecting me. I too went there and that is how our love developed.”

“So, you will no longer come to me for your gratification?” I asked.
“If you need my help, I will certainly come,” he said and giggled! There was a lot of meaning in that. He was pointing out to me that I was not sexy enough to attract any women there! I began to think of Ponmalar, my school-mate Mani, my village and my home.

Then there was the persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The LTTE was no doubt very strong then. But many innocent people were being killed in the fight between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army. The tenement where we lived was destroyed in bombing and life became miserable. The European owner of the tea-estate sold the property to someone else whom we heard was a relative of one of the ministers in the Sri Lankan Government. I thought of my home land, my village and the home where I grew up—Pundit Meganatham’s home more often. An uncontrollable force drove me to the northern shores of Sri Lanka, where I had originally landed 20 years ago. I stayed around the seashore for many days hoping someone would agree to ferry me across to the main land. I developed sores on my feet, being exposed to the salty sand and breeze. Finally, a kind fisherman, who had come from India to look up his folks in Sri Lanka, agreed to ferry me across in his boat.

After landing in Tuticorin, I literally begged my way to reach Mani’s house. Despite the passage of twenty years, the place looked practically the same. On my way, I stopped at a tea shop and enquired about Pundit Meganatham’s house-hold. I was shocked to learn that Mani and his wife Ponmalar had died in a car accident a year ago. Mani’s son Meganathan (it is customary in many Tamil families to give the name of one’s grandfather or grandmother to the grandchild, more as a mark of remembrance) and his young wife were now living in that house. Meganathan-Mani’s son-- was the owner of a flour mill in town.
“It is Saturday, so you might catch him at home, if you went there before 9 o’clock,” said a man who was drinking tea and looking through the morning papers.
“How do you know Pundit Meganatham?” asked the tea-stall owner, a middle aged man.

I thought for a while. Should I say that I was Pundit Meganatham’s servant or his son Mani’s school mate? I then said:
“My father from the village nearby used to work in his house. I am now coming from Sri Lanka after many years. I wanted to see Pundit Meganatham’s son Mani who was my play mate in my childhood. But it is shocking to know that he and his wife are no more. His son may not know me. So, most probably, I will go and look at the house where my father worked and then quietly leave.” So saying I walked away from the tea shop towards Mani’s house. On the way, I saw a board in one of the houses that read: ‘Home for Destitute Men & Women’. It was run by a Charitable Christian Organization.

The board announced that one Fr. Philipose Milo was in charge of the place. The name rang a bell in my brain. Was it not the name of a classmate of mine in the school? Could it be the very same person? As I was wondering, a Catholic Father, dressed as a priest, came in a moped, parked the vehicle opposite the entrance and went in. One look at his face confirmed me that it was the same person. I had half a mind to stop him entering the place. But on second thoughts, I decided against it. I wanted to first go and look up Mani’s place and meet his son, if possible. So I walked towards the house, which I knew so well.

* * *

Was the young man who came out of the house, to drop a coin for me, Meganathan--Pundit Meganatham’s grand son? Was he born out of the blessings and the ‘vibhudhi’ given to Mani’s wife, Ponmalar, by the sage from the hill station? Or was he conceived through the love-play Ponmalar and I had that night, more than twenty years ago? God only knows! But the look and skin color of Meganathan was neither like that of Mani nor his wife. Both were very fair. But this young man, Meganathan, was not that fair. Nor was his skin color a dark tan like mine. But one thing was plainly evident. His features were certainly not like those of Mani—my master, my school mate and my best friend!

I picked up the coin which my son—no, no—Mani’s son, dropped on the road and walked towards the ‘Home for Destitute Men & Women, to meet my other school mate.

The End.