If you haven't shown some love already to the first part of this story,
please do consider The Fallen Mango Tree(part 1)
Her father was no more. He had felt some discomfort and was taken to the hospital. He took his last breath as the doctors tried to bring him back. In the presence of his beloved wife, he joined death.
Rima and her family got on the very next flight and reached Kerala. From Nedumbassery airport, they booked a taxi to Thrissur.
The rays from the morning sun teased the darkness. Even the birds were not up to chirp. One could not expect anything different during the July rains in Kerala. It was kalavarsham when the skies poured down like a deluge. On days like these, the sun would be pretty lazy to show up. And, the rain would be seizing the chance to sing its song as long as it pleased.
Rajesh fondly called Rima’s father ‘Achachan’. He remembered his Achachan as a big man. In fact, he was the biggest in the family and the tallest in the neighbourhood. He was even taller than the grandfather of Rajesh’s playmate, Unnikrishnan.
Rajesh was closest to his Achachan. Hence, the demise of his father hardly affected him as a five-year-old. But, moving away from his Achachan and his tharavad in Kerala was beyond the reality young Rajesh could comprehend. He struggled a lot during the initial months in Singapore. However, he figured out his space in the new world eventually.
By the time Rajesh could write properly, he drafted letters to Achachan about his life in Singapore. He tried to draw pictures of his enthralling new world. He also found space for his newly met friends and stories of the school in his letters. Achachan would wait eagerly for the postman. Those letters were his tickets to his grandson’s world. He had to read them to connect and live with his grandson. However, with time and the advent of technology, letters became less frequent, and phone calls replaced them.
Phone calls lacked the soul then. There was an entire generation, who found their souls within letters, being transferred to the new technology via cables. One can talk to a person face to face. Achachan thought differently. “How can one talk to the phone, an electronic device which least resembled a human?” was his question. And for the same reason, his calls were brief and unanimated. He often paused to frame his words to make them short. He was worried that they might get lost while crossing the ocean to reach Singapore. And this created a wave of silence between their dialogues where their words got lost.
To be continued…
