The Tailor's Son

Vella Murugan was the tailor’s third offspring. The center of his forehead flaunted a vermilion sun, against a neatly painted patch of sandalwood paste. If there were glory written clearly on someone’s forehead, it would surely have been on Murugan’s. Yet, the tailor was not happy with him. Unlike his older brother and sister, Murugan, tiny in size, was naughty, disrespectful and disobedient. Three vices packed in one small body: how was that possible?

Murugan, along with his older siblings went to a public school and to after-school tutorials. He left home at 8a.m. and returned at 8p.m., and he was only eight years old. “Poor Murugan,” one might think, “being robbed of his childhood.” No sir, not Murugan. Instead of going to school, he preferred playing marbles and looking for kites stuck in trees from the previous evenings. He was apt at fetching them and repairing them in order to fly them again, at some point. But, most of all, Murugan liked climbing trees. Many a time, frustrated neighbors would deliver him to his apologetic father, holding him by the ear, complaining that they had found him dangling from their mango tree, stealing fruits. If it wasn’t the mango tree, then it was the guava or the sapota . Murugan could even climb coconut trees, but, he did not enjoy the tediousness involved in consuming a coconut fruit. “Why don’t you teach him to cut and stitch and sow buttons,” I would ask the tailor. But, no, he had envisaged a better future for his children: he wanted them to grow up and find nine to five jobs in offices, wear suits and ties and Cuban heels. He wanted them on a leash.

“Good afternoon, how are you?” I chirped the first day he came to my after-school English class.

“Good afternoon,” he repeated lazily, his eyes fixed outside the window, following a crow’s flight. Thereafter, he skipped to his desk and sat down. He took out some tattered books and notebooks and a dirty, orange-colored pencil-box and arranged them on the desk. “How was school today?” I asked. He drew a blank stare as though I were talking to the wall. Not one to give up easily, I posed the question again. “Was school today,” he tried to repeat. His older brother Kumar, 11, and apple of the tailor’s eye, snickered. He then went on to translate it for Murugan in Tamil. Murugan’s face lit up as neurons kicked in. “Nalla,” he answered.

“Say good,” I goaded, encouraging him to at least pick up the three most easy words of the English language, `yes, no and good’.

But, “say good,” he repeated like some parrot in a cage.

At first I was annoyed. And then, it hit me. I realized that this is what they do, in a lot of public schools in India. The teacher says something aloud and the entire class is expected to repeat after the teacher, even if the kids have no idea whatsoever as to what it all means. This was going to be a challenge, teaching Murugan the basics of English. I gathered a few objects around me: pen, notebook, eraser, notebooks, bottle…I even picked up Murugan’s pencil-box and Kumar’s bicycle key to put in the assortment, to make it more interesting and personal.

While I was busy making this nice ensemble of everyday things, so we could build up the basic vocabulary, I saw Murugan cautiously get up and grab his pencil-box from my table. Once, he had it safe in his hands, he ventured to open and then, deciding against it, slid it under the stack of ragged books and notebooks he had taken out earlier. The stack wavered a little. While some kids enjoy their things being used as class-room tools, perhaps, it did not amuse Murugan, I concluded. “Sorry Murugan, may I please borrow your pencil-box for the lesson purposes today,” I asked, apologetic for my bad behavior. But, to my surprise, Murugan did not relent. He clung on to his pencil-box, as a drowning ant clings to a drifting leaf. I sighed. At long last, Murugan withdrew the squirmish pencil box from its hiding place, opened it halfway, swept up a `handful’ of something and shoved it in his mouth with lightening speed. The box was duly returned to its assigned place.

“What are you eating?” I asked, curious.

“What is are edding?” Murugan echoed, still happily chewing.

Exercising my rights as a teacher, carefully, I picked up the stack of books and notebooks, which lay so precariously on top of the pencil-box and looked in. Sharing the space with a gray, burnt-out eraser and a two-inch long pencil, were at least fifty green gooseberries, freshly plucked. Tempting, to say the least. I now understood why Murugan’s eyes sparkled so much and why he couldn’t concentrate in the class. His mind was on better things.