My Days in My Years

Chapter 5 (continuation)
 Appu was a reasonably well built boy. He used to come to the school  with vermillion applied on his forehead and a talisman tied around his neck with a silver pendant hung on it. He was not in my class. He must have been in a lower class and I do not remember the class he studied. I knew him through another friend of mine- Balakrishnan- who was his neighbor. Appu was very jovial and talkative. He did not have any inhibitions in talking to people and that way he had made many friends in the school, irrespective of the classes they  studied.
We had some properties closer to Appu's house. Sometimes, when my cousins come home during the holidays, it was our habit to saunter around that area. There was another attraction. The road that leads to Appu's house ends at a river front  and beyond the river is another  village. There was a small  island between the two banks of the river. Beyond that island, there is a confluence of three tributaries of River Perriyar that surrounded  the land mass of several villages nearby. That confluence is incidentally the largest river front in Kerala known as Elenthikara.  I shall explain about this place later, since I feel that it is the most beautiful river front that I  have seen in my life.
Appu's home is on the way to the river front, a few meters away from the main road. But his house can be seen from the road. I had met Appu several times during our visit to that place. Appu would be in his court yard   grazing  the cow and I believe he had a goat also, whom he tied down to a tree. Appu always used to run to me once he saw me. Our talk on the road would last for anytime between few minutes or hours together. Sometimes, he accompanied till the river front. Those times also vermillion was there on his forehead. At home he was  bare chested. If he wanted to accompany me to the river front, he would charge back home and wear a shirt in seconds and the buttons he would put in place on the way. I also had seen him in dhoti sometimes, although he was too young for that dress.
Once I was passing though my cousins to the river front. Upon reaching near his house, I turned to look around for Appu. He was not there. But Appu's sister Ammu who was also studying in our school saw me and immediately howled to Appu that I was on the way. Appu came immediately to meet me running. I could see his mother also coming out running after him. She overtook him and gestured us to move fast. The reason  I came to know later that Appu was  afflicted   with chicken box and was confined to his house. The moment he heard  my  name, he hit the road and that was the spontaneity of Appu: always cheerful.

 A few  years later,  I went to a boarding house after my seventh standard and Appu joined a school across the river. I do not know whether he had completed his matriculation. Once for the holidays I came home and a friend of mine told me that Appu died of snake bite. He had the habit of grazing the cows for long hours and after that he would take a bath in the river flowing nearby. Always he used to carry a torch or a bunch of dried coconut leaves  lighted at one end with a long holder on the other. On that fateful day, for some reasons, he did not carry any of that. That friend told me he was bitten by the most poisonous snake in our area.

Even now I remember Appu  when I pass through that road. Once, several years after, I had seen Ammu on the road. That time she was grown up. I walked as if I did not know her. I do not know whether she had noticed me. I did not  want to face her for I thought that I could not control my emotions.

The other friend of mine was Balakrishnan. We were classmates till the fifth standard. He was small in size, fair and always agile. We maintained good contacts with each other even after our college. There was a time after my post graduation, I was confined to home for I did not get any job. I think that period lasted for close two years or so. During that time, we used to meet every day in the evening and share our thoughts. Later,  I was told he got a job in Mumbai and a few years later moved to Gulf. The last I heard about him was an year back or so. He is doing extremely well financially and moved to a nearby town. Despite my best efforts to meet him, I could not do so. I was told that he is extremely busy traveling.