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Rahel tried to walk past unnoticed. It was absurd of her to
have imagined that she could.
“Ay-yo , Rahel Mol!” Comrade K. N. M. Pillai said,
recognizing her instantly, “Orkunnilky ? Comrade Uncle?”
“Oower ,” Rahel said.
Did she remember him? She did indeed.
Neither question nor answer was meant as anything more
than a polite preamble to conversation. Both she and he knew that
there are things that can be forgotten. And things that cannot–that
sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds with baleful,
sideways-staring eyes. –
“So!” Comrade Pillai said. “I think so you are in Amayrica
flow?”
“No,” Rahel said. “I‟m here.”
“Yes yes.” He sounded a little impatient. “But otherwise in
Amayrica, I suppose?” Comrade Pillai uncrossed his arms. His
nipples peeped at Rahel over the top of the boundary wall like a
sad St. Bernard‟s eyes.
“Recognized?” Comrade Pillai asked the man with the
photographs, indicating Rahel with his chin.
The man hadn‟t
“The old Paradise Pickle Kochamma‟s daughter‟s daughter,”
Comrade Pillai said.
The man looked puzzled. He was clearly a stranger. And not
a pickle-eater. Comrade Pillai tried a different tack.
“Punnyan Kunju?” he asked. The Patriarch of Antioch
appeared briefly in the sky and waved his withered hand.
Things began to fall into place for the man with the
photographs. He nodded enthusiastically.
“Punnyan Kunju‟s son? Benaan John Ipe? Who used to be in
Delhi?” Comrade Pillai said.
“Oower, oower, oower,” the man said.
“His daughter‟s daughter is this. In Amayrica now.”
The nodder nodded as Rahel‟s ancestral lineage fell into
place for him.