Devi

When you see her face, the first thing you would notice are the eyes- Big innocent ones looking at you with the same earnest as the stray dog brownie that we would feed our left-overs to. She wore the same pavadai-sattai-davani everyday and her oily hair was plaited in a tight knot and you could smell oil when she came too close to you. Sometimes you could see the lice in her hair. That was devi and she came to learn type-writing at the lakshmi institue that was situated in the first floor of where I lived. She lived in Vijayaragapuram - a slum that was situated across our community. My friend Radha was the one who introduced her to me. Devi was the daughter of a weaver and was one among many children. What caught our attention was that she wanted to learn typing and always was interested in learning and doing something worthwhile with her time. She didn't follow her mother when she went for household-work. She wanted to be different. So me & Radha set about on the task of educating her with an all-important attitude at this sudden responsibility. Everyday we would whisk her away and started with our English lessons on the extended sunshade in the mottai madi. We started out with English words and then went on to sentences complete with instruction on active & passive voice. Sometimes we would give her homework from Wren and Martin or from our school's English lessons. We even made her cry when she made mistakes and reward her with choclates or biscuits if she did well. I, on my part, would keep thinking of what to give her as homework all day in school. The zeal was infectious and I even tortured my dad to find a job and that too I wanted him to find a nurse job for her. We would teach her more nurse related sentences like: How are you? Good morning! etc. I have to admit that with my little hospital experiences in India I have never been greeted by any nurse. I have been yelled, of course. But in our minds our instruction had to be perfect for devi. Now thinking about it our fathers (both mine & radha's) joined in this koothu (comedy) to either instruct devi or go about scouting for the nurse's job ;-). One day Devi insisted that we come home with her and we went. She lived in a hut that had 2 rooms - in one room there was this huge weaving mill, and in the other small room they would all huddle into. We got a free weaving tour and we were amazed at all the hardwork this family had to put in to earn their daily bread. We were their special guests for the day and were made to sit in the only 2 cane chairs that they had. Coffee was bought from the nearby tea kadai and served in the only stainless steel cup that they had. All her neighbours sort of peeped in and stared at us. Her mom was in tears and thanked us profusely for helping her daughter. We came back home - happy and contented with a feeling of accomplishment. We strove to do more for her.

Then one day, Devi stopped coming to the institute. We asked around and no one had a clue. We didn't know the way back to her house and plus our parents were not too happy about us wandering into Vijayaragapuram. Months passed by and one day her mom came to radha's house and asked if she could pluck some ari-nellikai from the huge tree that was in their backyard. She said nothing about Devi and we sort of burst out and asked her. The answer she gave is something I can't forget- Oh! She married my brother 3 months ago and is in the family way. She asked for something sour and I knew you had a nellikai maram so I thought I'll ask you a favor and see if I can pluck some.

Disillusionment and Dissapointment are not words enough to feel what we did that day. That was the last we heard of devi.

P.S This is not fictional. It is a true story and it happened to me.