Fiction: An unnamed narrator wants to take revenge on the man who molested his sister 30 years ago

When I fell sick a year ago, I went through a phase of loitering around aimlessly. But since I did not wish to seek anyone’s sympathy, I stopped visiting Sharada. During my rare visits to her house in deference to insistent invitations from Sharada and her guileless husband, I would sit in a chair in the hall like a stranger and leave early. I would remind myself that there was no consolation to be had from her hospitality and attention. I knew it would be no easy task to remind a kind and mature woman like Sharada about a man like Karunakaran.

Sharada interrupted me fretfully as I described the circumstances in which I had met Karunakaran. It was not difficult for me to guess that a plan was taking swift shape in her mind. While she appeared to be calm initially, she became increasingly distraught – far more than I would have expected. Shutting and bolting the back door, she walked silently towards me. Though carrying the weight of her obese body was already becoming difficult for her, she reached the hall in quick strides. She lowered her voice until it was nearly inaudible. Then, without beating about the bush, she came straight to the point.

Reminding me of the vow I had taken thirty years ago to wreak vengeance on Karunakaran, she said that time had given us a miraculous opportunity to fulfil that vow.

“It’s destiny that has brought you to where he is,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

In a smoke-filled room above the post office that was housed in a rundown building in the small town where we lived thirty years ago, Karunakaran had been introduced to us as the kind owner of a loan shop. Now, as I waited like a foot servant on the same man who was used to ruining the lives of those trapped in his ruthless grip, Sharada’s ambition seemed pitiful to me.

I recognised him at first glance. Noticing the sudden stiffness in my bearing, the headmaster became perturbed. There was no major change in Karunakaran’s appearance. His moustache had greyed. His hairline had receded. He wore a pair of gold-framed spectacles. He was dressed in pure white handloom clothes. He appeared to be an important and respected man in that small town. I had just finished signing the attendance register when I saw the headmaster greet Karunakaran with folded hands and lead him to his seat deferentially. To avoid being seen by him, I lowered my head like a tortoise and slid back in my chair.

I don’t know how to explain what happened next. Teachers arrived in groups and stood in the headmaster’s room. The same fawning attitude was evident in their body language. After making polite inquiries to each group, Karunakaran listened with sympathy and condescension to their complaints about the quality of students’ education, the condition of the classrooms and some basic facilities that were yet to be provided, along with their personal grievances.

“I am going to Madras this week. I’ve already briefed the minister. ‘No big deal, maapla. Who am I going to look after if not the folks in our school?’ he said to me. In any case, prepare a report and give it to the clerk by this evening. Has the clerk joined? The district education officer had assured me that he would fill the position last week.” Only when I heard what he was saying to those standing around him did I begin to remember my childhood vow, one that I had given up long ago as a juvenile fantasy and an impossible dream.

Then the headmaster called me. Though I could hear him clearly, I sat paralysed in my chair. He became incensed. Since it had barely been an hour since I had joined, it was quite likely that his brain had not registered my name. He called out for me using different terms – such as “Sir” and “Clerk Sir” – and, unable to bear the insult, summoned the school’s night watchman, who was standing outside the door, by his name. Realizing that the situation could take a disastrous turn, the night watchman approached me, placed a hand on my numb shoulder and whispered, “Sir, HM is calling you.”

As she listened to this story, Sharada became as still as an embalmed cadaver. Already lost in a desert of helplessness, I watched the colourless and odourless apparition of hope leave her obese body and melt into the night.

Then it was time for her husband to return from office. Sharada surfaced abruptly from her reverie and got up. Leaving the front door ajar, she went to the bathroom to wash her haggard face. Just then her husband entered the house. In that agitated state, my face must have looked grotesque. By pretending to watch the news on television, which was playing at a low volume, I managed to keep my face away from his line of sight.

Excerpted with permission from The Solitude of a Shadow, Devibharathi, translated from the Tamil from N Kalyan Raman, HarperCollins India.