The Kingdom

At 6:45 pm, I check my mail and see the offer letter attached for the post of a Senior Analyst in one of the most reputed audit firms in the world. The pay wasn’t much of a concern, but what was of concern was the fact that the posting was in this great hinterland - the abode of Muslim faith- The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I had been in the banking industry for around 3 years then, and the getting into the corporate side of things was a welcome break. Not that I knew what was in store for me, but getting out of the current bank job preceded any other reason.

The next thing that I did, was to Google “Living in Saudi Arabia” and the search comes up results that had a lasting and a profound impact on my psyche. All about Muttawahs (the religious police), the Saudi life style, and the profile of the job, all created a feeling which was reminiscent to the fear, a child gets when he bids goodbye to his mother, who has accompanied him the first time to school.

I board the flight and as I am about to reach King Khalid Airport at Riyadh, I am asked to fill a disembarkation form which has a Skelton – face and two bones criss-crossing each other, and a message that reads, “Death sentence for Drug traffickers”, the message had done its job. An initial jitter had gone through my spine and was thinking that I should have listened to my mother when she had asked me to lock the zip. As a person who had flown to Dubai a few times, air travel had been a piece of cake until that moment. Reached safely and the next day was greeted by a colleague from the Audit firm, who introduced himself as Ahmed Kamran a.k.a AK, and wanted to take me for lunch. It was a surprise as I was not used to any welcome lunch or dinner before my first day in office.

AK was a polished personality tall, half-bearded with his beard finely cut and shaped. He was wearing a black t-shirt and jean (little did I realize then that he always wore black t-shirts, I presume he had lots of those). AK gives me a walk-through on the new employer, their style of working and the people there. True to his personality he takes me to one of the best Italian restaurant in town. An Indian born desi taken to an Italian joint!! Well the closest I had been to Italy was when my mother used to make kheer using pasta for my birthday. But this was turning out to be a totally different experience. Made myself comfortable and the menu card came with words which was a literary delight. With a whole lot of polished words enticing you to try one of their Italian delight. Frankly speaking I went through the menu card twice looking for rice, dal and curd but all in vain.

Well, was getting used to the cutlery and the table manners and the fork fell twice on the floor, and the pastas could never make it to the fork. Had a half- hearted meal and went hungry the whole evening.

AK was a person who wanted the best of things for himself and his friends. Money was of little concern as long as there was quality. He was witty and all his wittiness ended in a sentence and the whole crowd, if they had understood his joke would go berserk. But the only thing that I hated was when he said “It’s complicated” when he wanted to avoid someone. I didn’t realize it then but overtime it got amply clear.

Life went off ok at this new place. Was working under a new manager and a lot of new friends and environment and things went quite smooth. A few months passed away until I came to know from a colleague that a new gentleman was joining in a few days. The man completed his education from Australia and the US of A and was a mallu. Riyyas joined a few days later and was getting adjusted to his new environment. We used to call him bunny for the way he looked and surely was Mr. Cool. He had an air of confidence around him and people were quite happy with him. As time passed the three of us got together pretty well. We had lunch together with the “Bens” (Riyyas couldn’t pronounce Bun) and cheese (low fat as AK was health conscious) and we used to walk along to the nearest supermarket to get them. This went on until summer, after which Riyyas and me convinced our manager to take us to a restaurant or his house in his car.

The journey to my village starts from the Municipal bus-stand in Palakkad with a distance of about twelve kilometers. There is apparently a bus every 5 minutes and the half-hour journey with paddy fields and palm trees on both sides could be quite soothening for the soul. Almost every bus stop has a tea-shop, and every visitor has a newspaper in his hand. A malayali in a tea-sop without a newspaper is sin. The other most common outlet accompanying a bus-stop has to be a cycle repair and a tailoring shop.The scenic beauty one is treated with and the smell of the hay being dried is inexplicable.

Understandably the bustop I need to get down comes with all the above accompaniments. Some of the shops are open while others are closed with wooden planks, neatly numbered. The planks have to be placed horizantally in the same count it is numbered. Clearly it has been very effective and steel shutters are a waste of money. The moment I alight the bus, I see an array of these shops and somewhere in between the shops, not easily visible to an untrained eye is a road which takes you to the village. The reason for one to think that the road would take you somewhere is because of a small culvert, with concrete projections on both sides that gives the entry to the road a colorful and a grandeur look. The projections get their color from the posters, reckoning the existence of politicians, acting as self-acclaimed custodians of the village.

Among the shops, the one shop that I has always welcomed me is that of Kashi's. Kashi is the village’s tailor and carries an iconic reputation. The skill sets of Kashi lies in the fact that he is a ladies tailor who spins his machine without any measurement. For, every kid the moment she is born in, is refered to the mighty Kashi. The shop is his home as well. The drawing room fully open, with a photo of his parents is his work area while the inner rooms covered with a curtain, which has never changed since I first stepped into his shop, is his bedroom- cum- kitchen. There is always a visitor sitting in a chair next to him, which he has placed to discuss topics ranging from America’s war on terror to the fireworks at Nemmara- Vallengi vela. And invariably the chair has someone on it.

While there are many more shops, the building also has another floor on it, which houses a day-care. The day- care, though the activity not true to its name also conducts dance classes. And the moment a few students mimics the step taught by their tutor, the eggs in the bakery below starts rattling. And the rattling has been going on for years.

Reaching my house involves a 15 min walk and the village road with its twists and turns, highs and lows, takes one through varied lifestyles, cultures, houses ranging from huts to concrete palaces.Certain patches are greeted by the wind that flows through the fields while certain others with the smell of dry hay. Once I enter the road after a few meters the gentle roar of the check-dam could be heard. The water flows in gallons, from Walayar Dam a few kilometers away to feed the paddy fields in the village. From this point on the roads are not visible, as they are all covered in hay. And the roads as far as the eye can see is rest assured to be free of any pot-holes. The smell of the dried hay, and the breaking of the twigs as one works on it, could be some music to the ears.

The village road as you walk along gives you a glimpse of the lifestyles of the people. The houses made of mud starts emerging, and the children sitting on the road half-naked and watery nose, are in their own world playing "Thayam" (call it a Malayalam version of Ludo). While the men, with a beedi behind their ear, just come from work, are planning for two quick shots at the nearby toddy shop, the women folks are grooming their counterparts by picking the lice. Lit with a kerosene lamp, and a dog giving vigil, the house is fully equipped to stand the vagaries of Mother Nature.

A few meters more and you get to see the granduer houses with twenty and thirty rooms. The roof made of teak with all the artistic impressions, and a grandma the lone occupant, sitting in the balcony floor reading the Ramayana. Quite an irony that her children are all in the Gelf and the house is still on the brink of collapse for lack of maintenance.

Once the initial in-habitants are covered the road turns a bit creepy with high-rise walls, dried leaves and vegetations on both sides. A few things crawling here and there is quite a regular sight.

The road leads directly to one of the most prominent temple in the village, behind which is my own sweet house. The temple has a giant banyan tree; under which all the major decisions ranging from the next budget for the temple festival to whether Israel should attack Palestine is taken.

I belong to this dusty greenish village, where the day starts with alarm bells ringing at 5 a.m quite blatantly from the temple in the village. The alarm incidentally is a single point in time, when the village wakes up quite wildly and gets ready to take full control of the day ahead. The lady charm of the house is already on her way to the sanctum sanctorum to offer her prayers, while the kids sleeping tight under their blankets, fully aware of the upcoming monotonous wake- up call.

Early morning 5 A.M to 8 A.M quite be an interesting time to brood in this small hamlet. One could hear kids shouting for their uniforms, the noise of the bucket dropping into the well and the resultant screeching of the pulley , auto-rickshaws and bullock-carts filled with students and school bags hanging on either side, occasionally brushing the unsuspecting pedestrian. And then not to forget the smoke filled kitchen, smell of thin doshas and onion chutney flavored with a tinge of coconut oil and the occasional chiming of the temple bell.

Grandmothers are out with their respective delicacies to be sun-dried and the umbrella is placed beside to ward-off the crows. Time is on her side at least for now, as her son still has a month to fly back to the Gulf, by which time they will be just ready.

Things change dramatically, with a twist. The morning dews have long dried, the temple has closed for the deity to rest and the first period in the nearby primary school is over. The commercial activity now takes grip of this hamlet, with the men folks gathering in the nearby shop discussing the marriage they attended the day earlier and how the whole affair was mismanaged….and then the topic shifts to BJP’s defeat in the elections. The cigarette smell engulfs the atmosphere, while in the background one could hear, the children repeating the lines with their teachers.

And lo one of the folks sees a figure (Sethu) heading towards them, Raman asks” Isn’t that Sethu…from Thekkat house, what’s he doing nowadays”, “Yes” says Kunjan and adds "he is software engineer at Banglore and his mom was saying he is expected today", and before Sethu reaches the shop where the gang is housed, his entire past, future and family is discussed. And then the epitome of all emotions, be it respect, gratitude, enmity et al is gestured, in one single movement of the head, bowed to the right, by both the parties. The bowing very typical of Palakkad, and the emotions the act covers includes “I am fine, my family is fine, I know you and your family is fine, I know you, You know me, I know that you know that I did that thing which I was not supposed to do and I still know what you did the last summer” and the list goes on.

By noon the sultry look of the village is magnified. The village road steaming and the barren sharp tips of the stones shining reiterating its existence. Its lunch time and the village roads depict a deserted look and brings in a pregnant silence. The folks have just finished their lunch and the only sound one can hear is the humming of the bees. The dogs have treated themselves on the left-over’s and now dozing off, exceptionally lazy even to stretch their legs. Not a sign of life to be seen and the scene is reminiscent of the village depicted by R.K Narayan in Malgudi days.

Things could be quite interesting after the first nap. This is the time when the school bells ring and there is a sudden exodus of human life. Sights and sounds take a dramatic turn. The heat from the sun and that emanating from the ground is of little concern for the kids, as they wall along, making their presence felt on every living and non-living things on their way. The dozing dogs are woken up with stones getting fired from unseen quarters. The gooseberry and the mango bunch are hit with alarming precision and confectionary sale in the nearby shop sees soaring business. The temple ponds are filled with activities with kids jumping into it from coconut trees and from the nearest high-rise.

The songs are played again at the temple and every household with atleast one old member could be seen chanting names of gods, praying and wishing for her family. As time goes by,the village turns itself again to a ghost-town, and silence finds its way. The lamp-posts with bulbs blasted by school children stands tall, while a few lucky others that remains untouched shines occasionally. The village sleeps again to see the dawn, which surely the morning alarm at 5 would help.

And miles to go, before I....