Mistress by Anita Nair Page A

arrive. He got into a carriage and found a seat. Opposite him sat a man and a woman. The woman smiled at him. He smiled back and let his eyes drop. The train began to move and Sethu turned to look out of the window. ‘Where are you going?’ the woman asked.
    Sethu dragged his eyes away from the window, where the landscape seemed to have acquired a certain beauty he hadn’t noticed when he lived there. ‘Madras,’ he said absently.
    The woman looked at the man. He leaned forward and said, ‘But this train doesn’t go to Madras.’
    Sethu felt as if someone had kicked him in his gut. ‘But this is the train to Madras,’ he said, willing it to be so. ‘I checked the timetable.’
    ‘No, this isn’t the train to Madras,’ the man repeated in a gentle voice. His eyes were sympathetic. ‘The train to Madras is an hour
late. All trains on this line are. Didn’t you hear the announcement? This train goes elsewhere and the compartment we are in will be attached to another train in Coimbatore. This is the Rameswaram compartment.’
    ‘What do I do now? I have very little money left.’ Sethu’s voice crumpled.
    How could you, Sethu, a voice muttered. His uncle’s voice, full of reproof and sorrow. How could you? How could you be so silly as to not read the train’s name? Or ask where it was going? Speaking of which, how could you run away and abandon your mother, your family and me? How could you?
    It was the thought of encountering the voice and those eyes that caused tears to emerge in the eyes of fourteen-years-and-three-days-old Sethu.
    ‘Don’t cry,’ the man said, rising from his seat. He patted Sethu’s shoulder and sat by him. ‘What is the need to cry? Will crying help? Tell me, is anyone expecting you in Madras? An uncle, an older brother, someone?’
    Sethu shook his head. ‘No.’
    ‘Do you want to go back home?’
    Sethu shook his head again. ‘No, no.’
    ‘In which case, come with us to Rameswaram.’
    ‘But what will I do there?’
    ‘Do you have a job waiting for you in Madras?’
    Sethu shook his head again.
    ‘We are going to Ceylon. To Colomb,’ the woman said. ‘Come with us.’
    Sethu stared at them. All his life, he had shuddered every time someone mentioned Colombo. It was as if the very word resonated with the boom of the ocean. Wave upon wave piling on to the shores of a tiny island. Wave after wave conspiring to suck in boats and lives that rode on it. Colombo. But how easily she said it. Colomb. As if, by swallowing the ‘o’ at the end of the word, the waters that surrounded the island disappeared down her throat. Freeing the journey of his worst fear. Water.
    ‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘We’ll take you to Ceylon and I’ll find you a job there.’

    Sethu swallowed his fear of crossing the ocean with the countless questions that danced at the tip of his tongue. But all he would ask for now was why. His uncle’s voice wouldn’t let it rest: How could you trust a total stranger so?
    So Sethu cleared his throat and asked in his most polite voice, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?’
    The man smiled. He looked down at his fingers and said, ‘I don’t know. I am not an impulsive man. But something about you makes me want to be impulsive. To help you find a place where you can stand on your feet. I am not questioning my impulse; perhaps, neither should you.’
    So Sethu rode the train and crossed the waters, buoyed by an impulse. And there in Colomb—for he too swallowed the ‘o’ to erase the thought of the swirling waters—he found it was possible to make a life. Despite the unruly numbers. Despite the unforgiving waters.
     
    Later in his life, when and if Sethu ever referred to those years, he would say cryptically, ‘Maash was a good man.’
    He called the man in the train Maash. Master. Mentor. ‘Maash and his wife looked after me very well. I never needed for anything in their home,’ he would say if anyone probed further. ‘Maash found me a