Translated from the Tamil by M.S.Ramasamy
A block of wood close to the seashore. An old, hard-cored one. A toothless, lean, uneven face. If we look at it closely, it will be like a madman laughing. People will envy it when they see it lying on its back, quite uninterested ,unconcerned. A lot of jealousy and annoyance over this block. The countless waves that continuously pound over it day and night. Also the block looked as though it mocked the waves. They couldn’t suffer the sight of this block lying immobile.
Four waves would join together and whisper, “what business has this oldie here?”. Some other waves, as if they had come there for an entirely different purpose, would tease its legs and retreat. A wavelet would come noiselessly, dig out the sand below the block and laugh derisively. A huge wave would daringly splash a lot of water at the block’s face, ask, “Do you still feel drowsy?” and wait for a reply.
But the block did not stir at all. It went on smiling. No trace of anger. Water entered up the block through one ear and it threw it out through another. Unaffected it lay. A shameless, wily wave named Neeli watched all this for quite a long time. Neeli is a variety of Menaka (a veritable danseuse). She had a desire, an obstinacy to move the immobile, the block.
Slowly she curled her skirt, dashed it against the block. She came round and round the block, slightly touching and at the same time not touching it. Shedding false drops of water from her face, she asked, “Block, what exactly do you need?”. The block smiled, did not reply. “If you don’t say a word, do you imagine yourself to be a great person?”, said the wily one and hit the block on its hip playfully. Even then, the block did not move a bit. Shame on one side. Frustration on the other….
“Do you think you are performing a great penance if you like on your back in all laziness? What do you think you are going to do?” She shouted as though she were addressing a deaf one. The block looked as though it were moved a bit by the wind. The sound of the wind mingled with the faint tone of someone speaking. “Now, what do you do here?”
“I am a wave…I…”
“Why do you hang around?” intervened the block. This touched the wave to the quick.
“I do not hand around. I dance and sing. I jump and frolic.”
“No…you are very much upset.”
“I laugh heartly like a child.”
“You babble as though you were an agitated hag.”
Neeli got wild, screamed like an attached porcupine spreading out its quills.
“Do you think you know a damn lot. You are a veritable corpse. All these days I’ve been washing your shore and decorating it wearing out my fingers. Don’t you have even the common courtesy to thank me for that,” she shouted.
The block smiled to itself.
“You idiot, what do you think of yourself. From your very birth you’ve been backscratching (entreating) the sand. What do you imagine you’ve achieved except this slavery?”.
Unable to hear these words, Neeli cried aloud and ran swearing vengeance.
Throughout the night all quiet on the seafront. The usual babble and gossip had subsided and everything remained calm in the dark. But it did not appear that their anger had subsided. When it crossed the limit the waves slapped directionless here and there.
The block went on moving slightly in the whirring wind.
The whirlwind roared devastating land and water.
The first streak of dawn. At once all the waves joined together as if in a conspiracy, surrounded the block, attacked it on its back, chest and face. The block rolled, laughed as it rolled, rolled as it laughed.
In a trice when the waves began trumpeting, the block rode on their crest and danced.
Each and every wave wriggled, jumped. The block leap-frogged, jumped over like a fishling. A wave said, “Ayyyo, stop, stop”.
The big wave obstructed, said, “Don’t go”.
Neeli enticed, “Come on”.
The block did not at all turn its face. It has realized its direction. A bright splendour as though it were a rain of scarlet on the horizon.
When there was dazzling light the waivers came hurriedly round and round the place where the block lay. They circled the pit searching for the block.
That block was a stumbling block to those fleeting creatures. Now that too had gone. What was left was only this: The longing that the block was not there and the anxiety that it would have been better if the block had been there. Even now the waves feel like that.
To read the original story in Tamil, click here
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Note: The above was Vaidheeswaran’s first short story, published in Ezhuthu magazine during 1961.
S.Vaidheeswaran is one of the major voices in contemporary modern Tamil Poetry. Born in September 1935, he started writing in the 1960s. A poet, stage artist and musicologist, his first book of poems Udhaya Nizhal (The Shadow of Dawn) was published in 1970. His second collection, Nagarach-Chuvargal (City-Walls) was published in 1994. His third book, a short-story collection titled Kaal Mulaitha Manam (The Heart With Feet) was also published in the same year. He has also written numerous short stories and is also a painter.
