Seasons of the Palm by Perumal Murugan

Author:Perumal Murugan [Murugan, Perumal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789386495129
Publisher: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Published: 2017-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Shorty wakes up with a start and rubs his head. He looks around but sees nothing. Yet, he knows something has fallen on him. Perhaps it is a palm fruit ripened to a nut. He sits up. The sky is glowing with the muted white of the late-night moon. A few stars are about, like scattered white corn. He listens carefully. Not a sound anywhere. Not even the buzz of insects. The sheep are quiet in the pen, a study in stillness. They are done with chewing cud. Time for them to shit now. But even that, they do quietly. The black pellets just drop off them, littering the ground on which they sleep. Selvan’s cot lies in the pen’s shadow. Swathed in his sheet, Selvan is a lumpy shape in the half-light.

Shorty knows that he won’t be able to sleep. The sun is nowhere near the top of Karattur hill. It won’t appear for some time. He wishes Selvan would get up. But he won’t unless he is shaken awake. Every morning, Shorty is up with the birds at dawn, when they call from the faraway tamarind trees on the road leading to the village. He has to make it to the cow pen before the grey hour gives way to light. Even if he is late by a few minutes, the Master scolds and complains.

Selvan, of course, sleeps through the early morning hours. Lucky fellow, thinks Shorty, standing up and stretching. Poochi looks up from his sandpit and growls softly.

‘All right, it’s me.’

He walks a little away from where Selvan sleeps and pisses. Just then he hears it again, the sound of something falling, a wet, thumpy sound. As if someone has thrown a ball of fresh cow dung against a wall. His heart skips a beat or two and he cocks his right ear in the direction of the lakebed. Another palm nut? He wonders from which tree it has fallen. There are at least two in the bed whose nuts are ripe enough to drop down. The pot palm and the red palm. The red palm bears nuts that are as red as ripe gherkins and as small. They usually fall one after the other. This must be the pot palm, he thinks. The nuts on this tree fall rarely. First one, and then only days later does a second nut come down. Each of these is large, bigger than the cup of his hand.

He wants to run and gather the fallen nuts. Should he wake Selvan? Something thuds down again, this time from the east. As if a stone has been dropped into a deep well. What tree is that, wonders Shorty. He leans back against the fence and stretches out on his sack. He shivers. A slight chill has set in.

He looks up. The moon is a faraway glow of light, rimmed by a misty aura. There is mist everywhere, and he fears it may not rain. Mist, it is said, keeps away the rain.

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