Knock Knock

The doorbell rankled the silence of the dawn and my peaceful slumber in a single piercing clang. Blurry eyed, I struggled to consult my mobile. 7.33 AM said the screen. I cursed and got up to check who it was that had set out to destroy domestic tranquility at such uncivilized hours.

Now the irony is that I cannot see who's at the door either from the front room or from the windows in the hall. I have to walk to the rear bedroom and peer through the window there.

'Who is it?' I rasped. My vision, still bleary from sleep, described a stumpy fellow looking intently at the door. He swung sharply in the direction of my voice and started towards the window.

'What is it?' I demanded almost impatiently, partly thankful that this was somebody I didn't know or expect and hence could shoo away without having to take further trouble of opening the door.

He said something about a vehicle in Tamil. 'What?' I asked again, my groggy mind trying to register the words and process an internal translation.

Something about somebody upstairs asking about moving the car or….I presently noticed a large piece of cloth in his hands. My thoughts raced to my car that had accumulated enough dirt and stain thanks to the absconding regular cleaner. Did this fellow want to clean my car?

'Sorry, what?', I asked once more, unable to comprehend anything he had uttered.

He kept speaking in Tamil, pointing somewhere obliquely in the direction of the sky and saying something about a vehicle and asking to borrow it for a couple of hours or so it sounded.

Good grief! What does he want!, I thought and told him 'Enakku puriyilleppa…oru nimisham, naa vare'.

Wondering if I should brush first and quickly dismissing the idea, I hastily presented myself at the door.

Sooner than I opened it, I saw that the landlord (who stays in the house adjacent and had therefore possibly heard this unusual conversation) was also at the door, already sizing up the fellow.

'Ae, ulla po mudiyadu..yenna venu?', he confronted the man.

The fellow mumbled again about the vehicle and gesticulated towards heaven. I gazed up in the direction and so did the landlord. 'Adha venumaa? Yedathuko….inge paaranga…ella galeej pannirka', he chastised the boy for stomping on the courtyard just washed.

I asked what it was all about. 'He wanted some leaves from the tree', the landlord explained.

I thanked the God of small mercies, shut out the sunlight and hopped back to bed, briefly pushing the drapes aside to see the fellow clambering up the tree for his leaves. Even as I smiled absorbing the strange encounter, I was again fast asleep.

P.S: To my Tamil speaking friends, please excuse the errors in pronunciations and/or grammatical mistakes that may have crept in (in the Tamil sentences!)