Skip to main content

The Umbrella Man

 These days I'm constantly reminded of a short story I read as a young man. It was titled The Umbrella Man. I don't remember the author. There are only two characters in the story: a man and the Umbrella Man (UM). 

The man is travelling home after work by bus. Suddenly he feels a knock on the back of his head. He turns back to see a nondescript middle-aged guy sitting in the seat behind him holding an umbrella. Our man thinks that the knock was accidental. 

But the knock is repeated. Man turns back and bestows an annoyed look upon UM. That doesn't work, however. The knock is repeated again. And again. Man gets up and gives a punch on the nose of UM. Even that doesn't deter UM from gifting the knocks at regular intervals. 

Man is obviously exasperated. He gets down when the bus reaches near the police station. He has made up his mind to file a case against this eerie intruder in his life. UM gets down and follows the Man, awarding the umbrella-knocks at regular intervals. Just before entering the gate of the police station, Man looks at UM. The latter's nose is bleeding profusely because of the punch it had received. 

"The police is more likely to arrest me for that punch," Man thinks. Nobody in written history has ever been arrested for knocking a guy's head with an umbrella. He turns back and goes home. With the umbrella landing on his head at regular intervals. 

He closes the door as soon as he enters his house in order to prevent UM from following him but is not successful. UM is strong. (Did he have a 56 inch chest? I wonder.) 

UM is there with Man wherever he goes, whatever he does. Awarding the umbrella-knocks with unfailing frequency. UM is there in the kitchen when Man is cooking. He's there as an abiding companion even in the washroom. He's everywhere. Even in bed. With the knocks. 

Days pass into weeks and months. Man has no worries now. He has got used to the umbrella-knocks. His only concern now is whether UM will leave him and thus deprive him of the knocks. 

I would like to end this reminiscence with the following jab from a friend's timeline on Facebook. 




Comments

  1. Sonia DograFebruary 16, 2021 at 11:48 AM

    This had me in splits. You have a way with words and the not so subtle symbolism in your piece is unmissable. You are certainly one of the wittiest critics of the present government.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 16, 2021 at 12:28 PM

      Glad you have not lost the ability to laugh. Regarding criticizing the present govt, I'm sure there are a lot of people with much better sense of humour than I waiting to do it the moment they feel bold enough. See how comics are ending up in jail these days.

      Delete
    2. Sonia DograFebruary 17, 2021 at 10:43 AM

      Well almost everyone is ending up in jail. They don't have budgets for education and health but they might have to lay off some money for prisons soon!

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2021 at 11:34 AM

      Sadly, yes.

      Delete
  2. dee NambiarFebruary 17, 2021 at 7:44 AM

    That a great way to look at it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JaiFebruary 17, 2021 at 4:01 PM

    You are a great critic of the current regime Tom. I enjoyed this post thoroughly. But be careful. People are being charged with sedition for the most trivial things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2021 at 5:30 PM

      Thanks, Jai. I'm just completing my novel, Black Hole, which ends with the imprisonment of the protagonist for questioning his management. His fellow prisoner is a standup comic arrested for a joke he didn't crack... Hope they will let me complete it 😱

      Delete
  4. johnApril 29, 2022 at 10:08 AM

    At Dream Thanks for this amazing content.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more