Umbrella

The umbrella is your inevitable appendix if you live in Kerala. It used to hang on my shoulder as I trekked to school in my childhood. There were no folding umbrellas or pocket umbrellas in those days. My umbrella like most people’s was a half-metre long canopy with a ferrule that jutted out so that you could use the whole thing as a walking stick when it did not rain. The men’s umbrella had a curved handle which enabled you to suspend it on your shoulder if you didn’t want the walking stick. The rains lashed Kerala for nearly half the year in those days and hence the umbrella was a loyal friend and as cumbersome too.

The fidelity of the umbrella continued when I left the state to take up my first job in Shillong as a teacher. Shillong too had quite a lot of rains in those days with its proximity to Cherrapunji. Eventually, however, the rains in Shillong became as flighty and coquettish as the place itself and Cherrapunji lost its designation as the place of heaviest rainfall to Mawsynram.

Shillong gave me the Umbrella Man who became a perennial presence in my life there.

I read the short story, ‘Umbrella Man,’ in one of the lessons of the creative writing course of IGNOU. The protagonist of that story is hit by an umbrella on the back of his head as he sits in a bus. He thinks it happened by mistake. But the hit is repeated. He warns the fellow on the back seat, who is the Umbrella Man, not to do that but to no avail. Finally he gets up and gives a punch on the Umbrella Man’s nose which starts bleeding. But the knocks continue at regular intervals. Finally the protagonist alights near the police station in order to file a complaint. The Umbrella Man walks close behind him awarding the knocks on his head religiously. When they are about to enter the police station, the protagonist thinks that he might become the culprit since it is the other fellow’s nose that is bleeding. Hence he chooses to be worldly wise and retraces his steps. The Umbrella Man follows him home and enters inside even before the door could be shut. The knocks on the head continue wherever the protagonist goes, whatever he may be doing. Days give way to weeks and months. Eventually the protagonist gets used to the Umbrella Man’s knocks. He falls in love with them. He cannot now live without them.

A few years after I read that story, I got an Umbrella Man in Shillong. A Catholic priest incarnated as the Umbrella Man in my life though he was as invisible as his God and as irascible too. The frequency and intensity of his knocks depended on how he judged my actions. The Christian God is a terrible jurist, if you know Him, and I must confess that I gave Him ample occasions to wield his canonical umbrella on my sinful head.

Unlike the protagonist in the story, I got tired of the knocks after a few years. That’s when I quit and landed in Delhi where umbrellas had little role. Delhi is a desert as far as the scientific measures of rainfall are concerned. However, I did buy an umbrella. Nostalgia is as soothing as the scratch you give to the healing wound.

The umbrella I bought years ago from Delhi continues to be my companion even now when I’m in Kerala once again completing the circle of my travels and travails. The umbrella lies in the little box near the gear shaft in my car ready for any eventuality during a journey. Though it is seldom used, its very sight fills me with a gratification that Freud would associate with my dark unconscious demons.

The umbrella makes me happy. Strangely.