On a summer breakas we sat in the Kottayam Passenger,Mehbubikka said:Teyi! Try putting your eye in your ear.Kollaththe Pappadam Gandan PappadamKollaththe Pappadam Gandan Pappadamiiis what the train’ssaying as it runs.
True!In the metallic speed of sound,that rap boiled over.As a twelve-year-old’s earsdived deep andsurfaced on some rail-bridge—
there was onlyGandan PappadamGandan Pappadam.
On the bridge, only Gandan Pappadam is heard, Mehbubikka!
Kollaththe pappadamam has fallen intothe Ashtamudi lake, Tey!
After six years,Mehbubikka’s letterfrom Delhi:
Now the trains are running here, Tey, saying,Koi bada ped girta hai tohDharti thhodi hilti hai.iii
Mehbubikka’s pedcollapsed across the railswhere till now only Malayalam trains, such asC.P.I.yil cheroo, Russiayil pokaamivGandhi entakki, Indyaye maantippunnakki,v ran.
Unaware of the meaningthat rose to the surface, bloated in that saying,I wrote him a reply:
So, trains would run in Hindi too, right?
Before long,Mehbubikka was transferred to Siachen.He sat in the snow and burned,not being able to come home even when Valyaappavidied—
My big tree has fallen, Tey…vii
Valyaappa had escaped from Lahore, it’s believed,leaving behind his own tobacco store,the famed Mahatmaji’s Paan Shop,and the young Sardarni of the neighbouring house,in a steam locomotive that howled its way to Delhi,Pakistan Partition,Pakistan Partition.
To the guns and swords,he seems to have said his name wasDakshinaamoorthi.
I am swimming across Raavi, Beas and Sutlej together, Tey,in that train that Valyaappa sang,Pakistan Hindustan Khalistan,reclining on the half-parapet of the house,holding me close and pointing intothe Kaja Beediviii smoke-rings he blew…
It’s Valyaappa who taught you to readthe language of the train, right?
It’s trains that taught me;Valyaappa too is a burning train.
The snow melted.Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Dholpur, Gangtok…
Mehbubikka roamed without fire or smoke.He didn’t even come to tie the knot.During holidayshe caught trains toSabarmati,Jaisalmer,Megha-aalayas…
By this time,buried deep inthe books from the University Libraryand the cannabis under the Nagampadam Bridge,other vehicles also had begunto drone inside my head.
Once I drilled my way inlike a silverfish:
You don’t know many things, Mehbubikka.
The handcart which set offfrom an interior rural crossroads, asThakur, Brahmin, Bania chhodBaki sab hai DS4ix,is now running riotall across the Gangetic plains, singingTilak, tarazu aur talwarinko maro joothe chaar.x
You haven’t seen it, Mehbubikka.
You haven’t heard the silence, Mehbubikka,lying solidified in the lower abdomensin the eastern hills with no railroads,and in the north, in Kunan, Poshpora.xi
But isn’t my national anthem the train, you lout?
About the suicide-squad vehiclethat came crossing the Pamban bridge, crawling,Sriperumpudur, Sriperumpudur,xiia postcard, with the postage stampof the one-horned rhino, camefrom Kaziranga, in 1991.
In 1992, common Gandhi-head postcardsrained infrom different places, one after another:
Sougandh Ram ki khaate haiMandir wahin banaayenge.xiii
Ek dhakka aur doBabri Masjid tod do.xiv
Ye toh ho gayaKaashi, Mathura baaki hai.xv
Emails are invisible trains, Tey—from Ahmedabad, in 2003.
In return,I sent him Auden’s lines from ‘Night Mail’to mehbubalone1961@hotmail.com:
‘This is the Night Mail crossing the border,Bringing the cheque and the postal order,Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,The shop at the corner and the girl next door.’
Mehbubikka translated it intoSabarmati Express:
Mussalman ka ek hai sthaanPakistan ya khabristan.
Godhra, Gulbarg, Naroda Patiya—Khoon ka badla khoon.xvi
As electric trains from Delhiwent on lowing go mata ki jai on four legs,Mehbubikka retired from serviceat the end of September 2015.
He returned to the single-man flathe had bought, back home…
AkhlaqAkhlaqAkhlaqxvii
Drinking the sound-kakolamxviii of Rajdhani Expressthat dashed southwards like a slaughter-knife,cleaving through the dry-uddered gaavs,xixValyaappa the Dakshinamoorthidanced the graveyard dancethroughout the night:
‘Tey, Muhammad Akhlaq is none other than me,your gypsy Valyaappa.’
At dawn,Mehbubikka’s WhatsApp message:
We must openMahatmaji’s Paan Shop in Kochi;I had to promise himduring the night.
19 June 2017.xx
Listening keenly, I am sitting in the Kochi Metroin a puthiyaplaxxi coachnext to Mehbubikka, who had taught meto translate the ‘kadakada’ of trainsinto all the sounds of the world.
Tey… there’s no need to put your eye in your ear;this train is runningwithout uttering anything.
True!The steel-speed without sound.
The sound has fallen off in the Kochi backwaters, Tey!
The national anthem of silence boomed;we got down at Kaloor.
Along the footpath,among the Dravida-Utkala-Vanga lands,xxiiawaiting the next contractor-van,Mehbubikka walked awayto one of the apartments that had come uplike Erakaxxiii grass in the marshland.
