Appa’s Legs

When Appa entered the home that night and asked for a massage, it was about to rain and I was terrified. By the age of eleven, I had become an expert in kneading lower limbs which was, in my mind, all that there was to massaging. I knew the fresh wounds he got from drunk-kicking his Bullet, the scars, the bumps, the wrinkles, and the dirty brittle toenails like the back of my palm. I knew where it hurt him. Which areas to avoid. Around the ankles and right below the knees were no-nos. The calves were always good for a press. But I was an expert only in working legs. Had he asked me to massage his arms, I would have been as lost as a new-born calf separated from its mother. I would not have known where to start. And I was trained on one pair of legs alone – his legs.

He removed his clothes and put on a lungi. Then he squatted and curved his right arm under the lungi to remove his underwear – as if he was catching a small fish in knee-deep water – and displayed it on a jute rope in the corner of the house like a prized possession. This was his ritual after he came home. While crossing the hall where I was studying in a corner that was barely lit by a kerosene lamp – because electricity and Murugan’s blessings rarely reached our homes – he noticed me. After he climbed onto his bed in the centre of the hall, conveniently placed right in front of the tv, he went to sleep immediately without turning the tv on and watching it for hours as he usually did. Within seconds, the room was filled with loud snores. When I was relieved that he was fast asleep, the snores transformed into moans, which was the signal that he needed a massage.

‘Thangam,’ Amma who was lying on a korai mat in the corner whispered through the bedsheet which she used to cover herself. She called me Thangam when she needed favours and Thangapulle when she was affectionate. It was that time of the month when she was not supposed to touch anything.

I was terrified because I knew it would come down to me to massage his legs. I had my ninth standard half-yearly exams to prepare for. Only the previous week the physics teacher had told me that if I wanted to do well in a class full of town boys, I had to work harder. When I moved to the school in the town two years ago, I travelled four hours, two hours one way which included a cycle ride from my home to the bus stand, a bus journey to the town, another bus ride from one part of the town to another, and a two-kilometre walk to the school. Most of my day was already lost in travel. On top of that, the power cuts, then this nonsense and that … blood rushed to my head and blocked my ears. Muruga! Help me, I screamed in my head. I pulled up a chair, sat next to his bed, and felt a pinch of cold on my forehead that trickled down my face.

After teasing us for so long, the monsoon rain had arrived. It thundered on the terracotta tiles of the roof and on the leaves of the trees. It brought out the insects hiding in random corners of the house, corners I did not know existed, and they cheered to the tune of the rain. Between us three, there was only the silence that was intensified by the lamp’s light. Amma had covered the entire floor with jute sacks which caught the rain that seeped through the cracks on the roof. Appa and Amma were used to moving around effortlessly, knowing exactly where the leaks were. I had to find my way. I repositioned the chair closer to his legs.

‘Mmmm,’ he moaned, lifting his left leg a bit before letting it fall on the bed. I pushed the lungi to just above his knees with whatever light the lamp provided me. Had I brought the lamp any closer, he would have shouted at me. I was uncomfortable knowing that he was not wearing his underwear. His legs were just like mine – hairless and smooth – not like the hairy legs most men in my village had.

On good days, he would take my busy hands and hold them next to his heart. He would look at me and ask me about my day – have you eaten well? Have you finished your homework? After a few presses, he would look at me reassuringly as if to say enough. But on bad days, when he drank too much, it did not go well for me. Not that he always hit me but the possibility of it loomed large, like his shadow on the wall.

I started with the knee and worked my way down. What was left of his once-meaty legs were bones, covered tight with skin that felt like a stretched plastic sheet. There was muscle on the calves that I worked with. Everywhere else, I could only stroke the bones gently, resigned to the fact that it was almost impossible to relieve him of pain. He had scars all over his legs – gifts from his childhood, from playing outdoors and falling, falling like only he knew how to. They did not seem out of place. He’d had a few boils on his calves that had hardened over the years.

While I tried to work his feet which were dirty and cracked, he lifted his right leg and let it drop. That was my cue to switch to the other leg. The other leg was trouble because it was on the other side and I could barely reach it. As I began to knead the right heel, I accidentally scraped a swelling. ‘Pssst,’ he lifted his arm and shooed me away which was a mild response compared to usual. I sat there frozen while he kept waving his arms at me the same way he would at a fly that flew close to his face. I went back to studying because it felt like the only choice I had. Amma watched everything through the makeshift peephole in the bedsheet.

*

About a month later, life had come to a stop. There was plenty of life tucked away in our home but on the surface, in the hall, the doorway, there was only a silence. It was so quiet that the only sounds one could hear were of the insects. Many nights and many massages had passed. As usual, Amma had prevented much of the damage that a heavy monsoon could do to our home, but the groundwater seeped in through our cement floor anyway.

Appa was lying on the bed. He had met with an accident on the highway on his way back from our rice field. A newlywed couple, on their way to the Velankanni church, had smashed into his Bullet with their Ambassador. Whenever they talked about the accident, the village elders and Amma stressed that it was a newlywed couple, to hint at the fact that they had to be forgiven and that there was no justice for what happened to Appa. The Bullet was gone beyond repair. Appa made last-second evasive manoeuvres and walked away with a fracture on his left leg and bruises all over his body. This must have been Murugan’s doing. He listened to my prayers especially when it came to my studies. I wondered if he orchestrated the accident to punish Appa for not letting me study properly for the half-yearly exams.

The bed did not suit him; neither did sobriety. His immunity was down. He was feeble and sick, perpetually spread out on the bed. The tv came to his rescue. Star Movies, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and HBO were on perpetual rotation. In between my studies, and whenever there was power, I gradually started watching tv with him. We watched Brazil lift the 1998 FIFA World Cup trophy and the Prime Minister announce the successful Pokran II test. Appa was more excited about the football game and I, the nuclear bomb. I was happy that we had found something new to do together even though we had not spoken once. We barely spoke during his massages. Slowly, his curly hair thickened and engulfed much of his face. When we watched Cast Away, I thought he resembled Tom Hanks from the movie, and it struck me that I had gone a month without massaging him. After that, some nights I tried to picture his legs and see all the scars, the scabs, the boils, and the swellings that he carried.

In the past, I mostly feared him and that protected me from making mistakes that he did not appreciate. But there were also the sudden unfoldings of love for him that took over me like an untimely monsoon. There was not much in between. I was never angry at him, for anger required finding fault in him and I could not. I did not feel happy around him. Nor did I feel sad. Sadness would have only made me sloppy. But for the first time, I felt pity for him. In my stomach, I felt the urge to do something.

Amma took charge of things when he was tethered to the bed. She milked the cow twice a day and I sold the pails of milk to our neighbours. The money helped run the house and pay for my bus tickets. She took out our horoscopes, called the astrologer, and came to the conclusion that something had to be done about the house. She cleaned and mopped it – a combination that only happened during Purattasi and big festivals like Pongal or Deepavali – and got rid of all the rats, bats, and lizards. When Amma and I went to the temple, she discussed the matter with the priest, did three pujas for Murugan, donated 50 rupees (an above-average sum) and reinforced her conviction that the accident was a sign of some sort. That this was the tragedy that would turn things around overnight, just like it happened in Tamil movies aired on K TV. I pleaded with Murugan to make Appa okay again. ‘I am sorry,’ I told him, ‘It was not his fault,’ and deposited twenty rupees into the alms box for the first time without being asked to do so. When we returned from the temple, I had never seen Amma happier. She must have imagined us as a happy family, going to temple fairs, buying ice creams and slurping them while laughing at something that had happened in the past.

At home, Appa was melting on the bed. The sharp lines of his body – his legs, the way his ankle turned, how his sharp nose plunged into the air, the big flashy rectangular forehead, the deeply set eyes – they had all melted away into a puddle that was Appa. He did not scream, did not demand anything. When Amma tried to apply the ash she brought back from the temple, he pushed her hand away. When I offered to press his right leg, he simply said ‘no.’

I received the third rank in the half-yearly exam. From then on, my scores plummeted and I only got the seventh rank in the first cycle test. I even started scoring low in Physics, my favourite subject.

When the physics teacher enquired about my performance, I started telling him about the accident and how worried I was about Appa’s situation. He listened to me patiently, occasionally nodding his head. When I finished talking, he paused briefly and told me it was not my fault. I was stunned by his response. He continued concernedly that it was hard for a man to be at home for so long and that real progress happened when we moved out of our homes, with the same conviction with which he taught us Newton’s laws of motion. Then he offered me as proof of his theory and asked me to take a look at how much I had transformed by travelling from a small village to the town. I did not tell him that I came to the town because I wanted to get away from home. I had taken a liking to studies only much later. When I was on the bus, I thought about the conversation, the things Appa wanted, and the things he wanted to get away from. When I reached home on my bicycle, I was sure it was all my fault.

*

Amma nursed him back to health like he was one of her wounded cows. Even when the cows kicked and crushed her hands, she would tend to them patiently, cleaning their dung-smeared wounds and applying ointments. Like Appa, she carried many swellings and bruises on her body. But they were of a different kind than his. They had gone unnoticed by me.

Three months later, Appa started limping out of the home for his smokes. His friends started coming over frequently, carrying him out on their shoulders in the morning and dropping him back late at night. The cast on his left leg began to disintegrate gradually at the bottom, leaving a trail of white particles on the floor that Amma carefully cleaned up.

*

When he came home without his cast one night, he was drunk. He slurred and moaned until he removed his clothes. Then he got into a lungi, pulled off his underwear, showcased it on the jute rope, and hit the bed as if the past five months were only a long dream. He lifted his right leg and let it fall on the bed with a big thud.

Amma’s hands trembled to support her when she tried to get up from the floor to massage him. I placed my arms on her shoulders and told her that I would do it.

‘Thangapulle.’ She said it almost involuntarily and sat back, her gaze still fixed on me. I pulled up a chair, sat next to his bed, and looked up at the roof to make sure I was safe in case it rained. My feet were soaked with the water that had seeped through the floor. I placed a jute sack underneath and wiped my feet with it. For a brief moment, I surveyed Appa’s legs and noticed that his left leg was smoother and brighter than before. But all the scars that I knew were there and now, a new bright one. I began with his right leg.