Nero: Shavasamudra (Part I)

Ramanan didn't make for a pretty sight. The wrinkles on his face made him look twenty years older, his hair was white and ruffled, his clothes always hung loosely and uncomfortably on his frame, and he walked with a perceptible limp. The women who saw him as a young man swore that he was amongst the most handsome men they had seen. Twenty years ago, his shoulders were broad, his dark hair, ruffled as ever, glowed in the sun, his large eyes never expressed much, but gave one the sense that they hid many mysteries, and he had a glistening set of perfect teeth. That morning though, looked worse than he had in years. Poor man couldn't help it. He had no control over what he looked like anymore. His eyes were shut to the world, and his body, robbed of its heat, had stiffened. His face, hacked with the most brutal of weapons, was barely recognisable. Only his daughter identified him by the clothes he wore on the previous day.
The fisherman who found him in the morning reckoned that he'd been tossing about for a few hours. He must have been let into the sea near the fort, the fisherman guessed.

The Police arrived at the scene and asked the standard, pointless questions. His daughter cried in a corner in her fiancé's arms. His best friend, Sujata, looked on expressionlessly. A crowd collected and gossiped. He dealt with the wrong people, they told themselves. He was never a straightforward person, someone commented. Someone else pointed out that no one knew where he was from or what family he belonged to. He just landed up one afternoon and never left. This was his mysterious past catching up with him, a man suggested, much to everyone's agreement.

But Ramanan himself couldn't reply to all this. He just slept through it, and let the living slander his existence. He allowed his body to be dragged out of the sea and examined by various policemen and a doctor. He let them take notes in their pads on what they saw. When they were done, it was night, and he let his body be lifted on to a pyre on the shore and burnt.
***

Even today, if you take the third turn towards the sea from the road on which the Kapmannu Bus Stand stands, you will find yourself on a zigzagging road that narrows gradually until the two-storeyed buildings that line it almost converge into a single, indistinguishable mass of old-world construction, forming a canopy through which light struggles to penetrate. Then there are the wires - telephone wires, cable television wires, electricity wires, and these days, internet cables - all knotted in a disorganised mesh of struggle for survival, with the odd clothesline adding colour to the confusion. Constable Krishnaprasad dropped his nephews off at the Bus Stand, from where they would take a bus to Mangalore to their school, and turned into that street on his morning patrol. It was formally named after an obscure freedom fighter, Kapmannu's sole contribution to the freedom struggle, but was known only as Market Road, for its buildings housed myriad merchants - starting with the chilly sellers, their shops washed in the steamy red of dried chillies and chilly powder, and then the grocers with their rice and dals, followed by the silver shops, the jewellers, the dry fruits traders, and finally, in the most cramped parts of the road, the gold merchants with their glittering wares.

Its inhabitants had lived there for generations. Each shop-owner will be able to tell you about his ancestor who moved to here in Haider Ali's time, when Kapmannu was a bustling port town. Remnants of Haider Ali's port and fort stand unused now, except by mischievous boys playing hide-and-seek, and mischievous lovers playing their own form of hide-and-seek with the police. Back in those days, the merchants will tell you, goods that came in by sea from Cochin and Bombay were sold to wholesalers who sold all over the Mysore province. Kapmannu rivaled Mangalore for a while, but the British changed all that. In the Fourth Mysore War between the British and Tipu Sultan, the fort was captured by the Marathas, who were temporarily allies of the British, and the port was closed down. At this time, the merchants tell us, their ancestors made a mistake. Instead of surrendering to the British, they formed a civilian army and revolted.

News of the victory in Srirangapatna reached the Maratha soldiers camped in the fort, and they celebrated that night amidst talk of turning against the British and restoring Maratha splendour. The little civilian army, headed by the cult-figure, Kapmannu Nagendra, stormed the fort from the seaward side and caught the Marathas in the middle of their revelry. The unprepared, drunk Marathas made feeble attempts at putting up a fight but failed and fled. Nagendra, a muslin merchant by profession, declared himself the King of the new province of Kapmannu in a showy coronation. But in two days, the Marathas were back with a stronger, soberer and motivated force. Kapmannu fell, but Nagendra survived and hid amongst the forests of the Western Ghats near Mudabidri. In less than a month, Nagendra recaptured the fort for three days. But this time, the British quelled his resistance completely. He was killed in the fort, and his body was mutilated and left on the beach, tossing amongst the early-morning waves.

Minor revolts broke out every now and then for almost six years, and control over the port changed every few weeks. Each change of control would be marked by the body of the opposing leader being left on beach in the morning, tossing amongst the waves. The beach is known till today as Shavasamudra, the Corpse Beach. Kapmannu's economy sutffered badly as ships preferred the more predictable Mangalore. Slowly, the population of Kapmannu thinned until it was considered too unimportant to fight for. The British, who acquired control over the area, didn't bother to redevelop the port or reinforce the fort. Trade through land revived, though, and the merchants who stayed on in the troubled years, exist in their idyllic world to this day.

The descendants of Nagendra all inherited his name. Even if a Nagendra had two sons, they were both Nagendras, and their sons were more Nagendras. Only the daughters were spared this torture. In the early twentieth century, Nagendra the Eighty-Third will tell you, there were twenty-one Nagendras, all living in his ancestral house on Market Road. That was when a new system of nomenclature was devised. They would all be called by their number. Nagendra the Fifty Seventh, called Aivatyelu, a man who had studied Political Science in Madras University, objected to this system because he thought it was communist. His name was immediately changed to Sonne Nagendra, or Nagnedra the Zeroeth by the head of the family, Nagendra the Fifty First. Sonne accepted his new name proudly, and gave it to all his descendants. He also moved with his family to Bangalore.

Embatmuru (eighty-three in Kannada), the last Nagendra still living in Kapmannu, ran a tea stall on Market Road. It was where Krishnaprasad had breakfast each morning.

"Idlis and tea," he called out, getting off his motorcycle.
Embatmuru peered at him through his glasses and said, "Seven hundred and nine rupees, including today."
Krishnaprasad didn't reply to the pronouncement. He just adjusted his hair in front of the little mirror. Ganesh, who was sitting at one of the two tables in the stall asked Embatmuru, "You really think a policeman will pay you?"
"He did pay me some time ago when it reached a thousand."
"He paid the whole amount?" he asked, sipping his tea loudly.
"No. He paid me five hundred and asked me to adjust the rest."
Krishnaprasad behaved as if he hadn't heard a word, and sat down at the same table as Ganesh. His idlis and tea were kept on the table by the boy who worked in the stall. Ganesh kept up the chatter about corrupt policemen and how they take the world for granted. When Krishna finished his idlis and poured the tea into his saucer for cooling, Ganesh got up to leave.
He was paying Embatmuru at the counter when he suddenly asked, "I completely forgot to ask you! What about Ramanan? What have the police found out?"
Before Krishna could react, Embatmuru said mockingly, "He cant tell us. Its confidential."
"He cant tell us because the Police know nothing," Ganesh said, laughing.

Krishna finished his tea and left on his bike without paying. Embatmuru reminded him of the amount again, and Krishna nodded. He got a call from Lalitha. She said, "Come back here quickly? This inspector is asking us all kinds of questions." He said he would.

Like everyday, he stopped next at the little paan and cigarette shop - a box of steel, really, adorned by a tray with ingredients for paan, variety of mints in plastic containers, colourful, shiny, hanging ghutka packets, a daily supply of nippat and chakli, packets of chikki, an odd collection of unsold biscuits, and Veeresh. Veeresh was an index of the mood of the town. His eyes, magnified by the large, brown glasses he wore, his nose, mangled in a street fight years ago, his greying hair, thin lips and Gandhi ears were bursting with information. His face brightened on festivals and fairs, and shrunk when there was a death or epidemic (even if it was an outbreak of the flu). On days when exam results released, many people looked at Veeresh before the results, because a look at him would tell them what the general trend was.

Krishnaprasad barely got off his Police motorcycle, when Veeresh held out two Kings' accompanied by a sombre expression. Krishna expected this, it was understandable. Veeresh, though, didn't fail to ask him the same question he asked him every morning, "I thought you have quit, saar?" The constable replied, like he always did, "These are my last two."
Today, Veeresh had another question, "Police found out anything?"
Krishna put the cigarette in his mouth and picked up a match, "About?"
"Ramanan."
The match hissed and the flame neared the tip of the cigarette. An orange glow was followed by grey smoke, "I cant tell you."
Veeresh allowed himself a half-smile and added, "Your boss will tell me when he comes this afternoon."
Krishna smiled, mounted his motorcycle, cigarette in one hand, kick-started it and sped along Market Road towards Shavasamudra where, after two-hundred years, a body had been tossing in the morning waves.
***