A Man of Eternal Fear - Short Story

“Thou shall not fear, Thou shall not fear,
Even if sky breaks and falls on our head”

Our Hero was born in the same district as Subramaniya Bharathiyar who wrote those everlasting lines. However our hero, Ramalingam, was an embodiment of fear. If only that patriotic poet had seen the way our hero had lead his life, he would have probably turned in his grave. Oops, a cliché, but it is the characters like our hero, who force the writers like me to keep repeating clichés.

To prove to you, that I am not exaggerating the “Fear” factor of Mr. Ramalingam, let us go through a concise tour of his typical day. His usual day begins at morning four. For he believes that early morning dreams will come true, he hinders them out with the assistance of an old alarm timepiece, that has been doing this task for a long time. As soon as he wakes up, the first thing he does, even before adjusting his now half-removed Lungi, is to keep his fingers near his wife’s nose.

His wife, who had been married to this man of fear, has never known that she is being tested if she is alive, every morning by her other half. After making sure, that her lungs are still pumping out Carbon-di-Oxide and taking in Oxygen, he does the next examination, as vigilant as an expert medicinal practitioner. He checks her pulse, and makes sure that heart is still doing its function of pumping out the blood properly. At this point of time, his wife nine out of ten times turns over in her bed. Though she never wakes up, for she is such an ardent sleeper, even an earth quake can’t wake her up before seven; leave alone her husband’s minor livability test.

So our Ramalingam, having made sure that his wife hadn’t passed away, in yesterday’s sleep, will now get up to make clear his other fear’s that has got accumulated over his six hour sleep period. He has to now make sure if his material processions are safe. He first checks his safety vault, the place beneath his bed, and makes sure that his ATM Card (given by his son that won’t have more than Rs.2000 max) and Rs.5000 in cash are safe. Though no sound logic could be proposed, on how some one could ransack that amount without his knowledge from under his bed, he does fear that the money had been stolen on daybreak. But I speculate if there is any burglar who takes such efforts of breaking open a house, and then finding ways of retrieving the cash from under the bed without the knowledge of two sleepers on it, for such a scanty sum. If there is really such a thief, he wouldn’t even get CRR4, if they have their appraisals. Pity thief!

Having done that, he would then go out of the home, and make sure no one has stolen his age old, TVS 50. He will also open the gasoline tank and make sure that the half a liter petrol inside it, had not been stolen. Then he would make a walk around his house and check on his still older bicycle, that will lye harmlessly near the well. Though his wife had repeatedly told him, that no one other than an archeological undergraduate would steal that, he can’t get the fear out that his bicycle had been stolen that day.

Satisfied that no break-in had been committed in his house, the previous day, he would turn on the television. But then there are some traditions to be followed before, turning on the television. He would check the voltage thrice to make sure there are no fluctuations, and then have a peek into the clouds to make sure that there is no chances of lightening any where near his proximity that could affect his television. He even thought of buying a telescope for this reason, but only his tighter purse, after retirement, prevented him from doing that. After the customs are followed, his television would slowly see the light.

His journey of browsing the channels would first begin with Tamil News channels, to get rid of his fear that no awkward occurrence has happened in Tamilnadu, then to NDTV’s and CNN-IBN’s to make sure India is safe and sound, and then to BBC and CNN to make sure the entire human race is secure. He is still waiting for some one to start a News channel to cover news from other planets and galaxies, so in spite of watching all these news channels, a fright would still loiter through his brain, of what if some thing dire had happened some light years away, which could possibly have an effect on him.

If it had been a year before, his next step would be to telephone his son’s family staying in the US to make sure, they are safe. Since his new Gujarati daughter in law had made it clear, that any more dim-witted daily calls from him, to check if they have not died, would force her to file divorce from his son, he had restrained from making that call. However he would call his old friend of him, who is also residing in New York now, and make sure there had been no issues there. After getting a pleasing answer from his friend, he would begin reading amalgamation of yesterday’s newspapers that would have been delivered by now.

He will read and make sure he hadn’t missed any significant news (read as “News that should force him to take additional safety measures”) from a variety of newspapers ranging from ‘The Hindu’ to ‘Dhinabhoomi’. Today, he had read an editorial about how hotel foods are not good for health. His daughter, now residing in Bangalore, would be getting a free sermon today, on why she should cook every day for her children, in spite of being a Project Manager in one of the MNC’s there. Little did he knew, that she would just put the phone on speaker mode, and go on to do her household tasks, whenever he calls. She would just come near the phone, once every five minutes, to say “Yes Dad, Yes Dad”.

By the time he completes reading his newspapers, his wife would have woken up, and would bring him his cup of _______. Now what is there in the cup would vary depending upon what scientific article he had recently read. One day he would say caffeine is good for health, the next day, he would read some where that caffeine is not good and switch from coffee to some thing else. Today what was inside that cup was a cup of buffalo’s milk. It had found favor recently thanks to the “Siddha vaidhya muraigal” (Ways of Siddha medicine) manuscript he had read in the Central District Library, the week before.

The quantity of milk in the cup before him was around half way mark. An optimist would have called it half full, and a pessimist would have called it half empty. But our hero of fear would only think about the possibility of microbes in the milk and the diseases that it would cause. He noted in his mind about the need to enquire about Milk Sterilization machines available in US from his son. It could be better if that apparatus could do it specifically for Buffalo’s milk.

Let’s skip an uneventful his next one hour spent on walking, and once he returned back, he felt a slight soreness in his knees. And now it has set alight a new horror wave of thoughts through his mind. He straight away switched on the computer. Ever since his son had taught him how to use the Internet, that was Ramalingam’s place of visit, during times of panic. He goggled “Knee pain” and came out with thousands of cures, each of which will be tried out in the coming month. Meanwhile he also came up with a list of diseases whose earlier warning sign was a knee pain. That was a even bigger list than cures, and he decided to set up an appointment with doctor to make sure he wasn’t infected with any of those diseases. His instincts told him that the disease that had implicated him was the one with the longest unpronounceable Latin name in the list. Little did he knew, that the disease came only to Africans and that too only for one in one million people. Still those facts wouldn’t have made a difference to him and his fears.

Having been worn out, thanks both to his light sleeps in the night, and his browsing to find out the cause of his knee problem, he decided to take a short nap after his lunch. As he was having his lunch, of carefully selected food substances that he believed would safe guard him against various diseases; his monthly “Reader’s Digest” copy arrived. The edition had an article advising the perils of sleep during the day. Thankfully he didn’t read it before going to nap. However he would be definitely read it by evening and this would be his last mid day nap in the near future that is until he gets to read yet another article that points out the rewards of having mid day nap.

As he is sleeping, we can just skim through his memoirs to know more about his fear factor. No one knows for sure, if it was heredity that his responsible for his fear factor. As none of his old relations are alive now, we can’t find out if he had any great grand fathers, from whom he inherited this great trait. However from his friends, we could know for sure, that he was like this right from his school days, and he was born like that.

Especially his friend, Namasivayam, now a District secretary in a party run by an actor, would tell never-ending stories of his fear factor. For Namasivayam was the greatest beneficiary of it, as he would intimidate him for no cause and get pockets of ground net, slates, pencils as bribe. Our heroes parents thought he was a spend thrift. Little did they know he was actually being bullied. It would be ironical to see Namasivayam threaten Ramalingam, as the latter was actually better built. However, the fact that Ramalingam would fear for every thing right from a Harmless PT Master to the gardener on the way to school, helped Namasivayam to build up his supplies. It’s not fair to say that Ramalingam feared only Humans, as he also feared for every thing right from “Muniyandi God” in village entrance to tiny chameleons.

As he came to Chennai, to pursue his college degree, the only thing that accompanied him besides his luggage, is his fear for every thing. Chennai, then called as Madras, offered him more occasions to dread. He sat in the first row of college for fear of his professors, supplied free cigarettes to his rowdy classmates, for the fear of last benchers, but never smoked any of them for the fear of his parents. By the time he had completed his degree, he would have written more than fifty records (for almost most of his class mates), and did day to day help for half the professors who took classes for him. No one knows even for sure till today, why he even feared college watch man, and supplied him with free Beedis every alternate Fridays.

Thanks to his father’s friend, he some how landed a job at Indian Railways. There people were only too pleased to welcome him, as he show cased his fearing abilities the very first day. He did the work of almost all his colleagues, but still got the admonishment of his superior. Of course the manager could only vent his fury on a guy, who won’t report any thing to the unions, what ever he said. It doesn’t mean that Ramalingam was not a member of any union. He joined the very first day, not wanting to upset Union leaders, who looked like Tamil Film villains. However his manager knew very well, that he was not daring enough to report anything to them, so he continued to irk him.

Mean while Ramalingam feared that even looking at the girl’s features might land him in prison, and he must have been the only guy in Chennai, not to know where Queen Mary’s college was present at that time. As a preventative measure, he began to consider all the girls he knew as sisters, aunts or grand mothers depending on their year of their birth. So it meant unless his parents assisted him in selecting a good girl, he would remain a confirmed bachelor all through his life. And that’s how he was married to a girl, who wasn’t even half good looking as he was.

The girl understood the very first day of their married life; of how uncomplicated it was be in command of him. From then on, Ramalingam had one more human being to dread in his life. Though that didn’t prevent him from loving his wife, but the only concern was he didn’t know how to portray his love for her. He believed that listening to all her hysteric shouting mutely was the best way to show his love. In site of all that, they did help in increasing India’s population by two. Sooner his son and daughter also joined others in utilizing his fear.

The lowest point of his life would be when his son threatened him to sign the mark sheet, without the knowledge of his mother when he had flunked all the subjects. He obliged; and he later used the same fear factor of his father to get support to marry his Gujarati girl friend. His meek threaten of “We will commit suicide” was way too much for this feeble soul.

On the other hand, his daughter also helped herself to what ever she wants. Even now she makes sure she got half of her father’s retirement benefit, spending just a solitary tear as investment. That tear was enough to set panic waves and made Ramalingam give what ever she asked for.

As we had skimmed through Ramalingam’s biography, he had also gotten up from his nap. We could go on and on about his fear for every thing, but I think I have established the fact that he was a man of eternal fear. Hence I am no longer interested in taking you through more of his fear filled life, I would rather take you fast forwarding to the day of his passing away.

He died of massive cardiac arrest. No one knows what news brought about sudden cardiac unrest in him, but as we are sure that could have been more probably due to some inconsequential issue, we not going to be too concerned about it. In fact, we are not even going to spend time watching the reaction of all those people who had a lost a person whom they had threatened all through their life. We will rather move to Heaven to see the discussion regarding his death there, as it might prove more fascinating.


In the Heaven

“Ramalingam is dead”, said the fairy.

After being quiet for few seconds, God replied, “Send him to heaven.”

“But God, he is the lifeless soul that feared the entire life and didn’t do any thing positive. I don’t think he deserves a place in heaven”, the fairy looked offended, and began to doubt why God is having a soft spot towards him.

“Oh, you know the hell is so over booked now days. You know I need to book places for so many corrupt politicians and mean while sports authorities have also started competing with them now,” God said.

He then after a minute of silence added, “I don’t want to squander a place in hell for this guy, because with his fear, he won’t enjoy heaven any ways. So even Heaven would only be like Hell to him”.

Fairy approved and smiled positively towards God.