Kokila

My grandfather has been writing up material relating to the 1930s/1940s after a previous post expressing my interest in the period. This is the first part of a story that he wrote over four emails.  Bar the fact that my four part update over this week will not be chronological (in a nod to Three Times) and therefore some of material has been moved around, it remains unchanged.

____*_____

Around 1940 my father was transferred from the taluka headquarters, where he was stationed, to the district headquarters, Thanjavur. This set in motion a series of events for his young and growing family. I myself, then little more than sixteen, got a temporary job and left for Chennai. Returning home after several months I found my mother and sister pregnant, my mother in an advanced state. My brother, a beautiful child at birth, lived little more than eighteen months and died in my lap. My sister too later gave birth to a boy, who survived for barely a day. In the interim, my father had also purchased a cow and my infant brother and the cow occupied a great deal of my time. Eventually I looked for a job in earnest and my efforts resulted in a job in the revenue department. As was the custom, my own marriage was fixed with a girl whom I met only on our wedding day. In April 1944, I landed in Mumbai with a wife and an infant daughter and without a place to call my own began a new phase of life.

In 1945, my father wrote to me regarding a minor operation. As a dutiful son I went to Thanjavur where the family still resided. As ill luck would have it, the hernia got strangulated on the day of my arrival and my father had to undergo an emergency operation the same night. My entire leave was thus spent in the hospital. Here I met my old friend Seenu, who was attending to his tubercular brother-in-law. By now I was completely out of touch with my old friends. We talked at length about our old days, Seenu had stayed in touch with many of our friends and was thus able to update me. Seenu himself had managed to get a licence for a Burmah Shell petrol pump and he was prospering. With a broad grin, he said he was happily married with a loving wife and a bonny son. Then he asked me whether I remembered Kokila, the post-master's daughter at my father’s previous taluka posting. I hastily nodded assent. Seenu then said she had run away from home as her father was pressing her to join her husband. This marriage I recalled had been arranged overnight when Kokila at age twelve attained puberty. Her father, panicking, had got her quickly married to a boy who was staying in a nearby hostel and studying for his degree and had passed it off as a pre-puberty wedding. The outcome was that consummation was postponed for years. Even this I knew would be on an auspicious day with many rituals ending with the priest entering the bedroom along with the couple and chanting mantras to assure the couple's sexual compatibility and virtuous progeny! Kokila was no exception. She had seen her husband during his visits for festivals but the elders saw to it that they did not speak much with each other. Once when my sister asked her about her husband, Kokila laughed with amusement at his big tuft of hair, the ruby embedded ear-rings and the broad naamam on his forehead. It was apparent Kokila did not have any feelings for him, she remained a school-going girl living with her parents. So her refusal to join her husband was not surprising. But this refusal had cost her dear and resulted in a thrashing and confinement to her room. Yet she had remained adamant. Finally her father fixed a date to take her to her husband’s house but she had run away the previous night. Expectedly, this had proved scandalous for the small town and the postmaster had hurriedly asked for a transfer. To Seenu it was news but for me it was a shock. Had I had a hand in this domestic tragedy? However with a demanding father as a patient and other worries, Kokila was momentarily forgotten.