Gopu Uncle

Vikram Mervyn

I

Gopu Uncle’s hair is white. His stubble is white. His banian is white. His veshti is white. There is no hair on the top of his head. The hair grows along the sides, so the top of his head is nice and smooth and shiny. The color of terracotta slabs with which they sometimes make roofs.

Shanta Aunty forces him to get it cut every three weeks, at the barber shop at the end of the street. Gopu Uncle feels that Shanta Aunty speaks from a place of privilege. She has a lot of hair. He doesn’t. 

“You cut it,” he says, slapping his palm on the armrest of the easy chair. “You have so much hair no! You go and cut it. That fellow, that Sekar is useless! He thinks I am some teenage boy? ‘Ohh saar, put some dye saar, blue color…’ Blue Color! Blue color?? What is wrong with that Sekar? He is making fun of old people! Why he is doing so much short haircut? See, an old man doesn’t not have a lot of things… Hair is also little bit only in my day and age, why do you want me to cut that also, Shanta?”

“I have to cut my hair?” she snaps from inside the kitchen. “If I cut it, I will look like a full boy. Then you have to sleep in the night with this small boy next to you. Will you do that? Go and cut it! Go get decent and only then come back home! I don’t feed uncouth people in this house! Go!” 

Uncle hits himself on the forehead and mutters the Tamil word for corpse. He is uneasy on the easychair. He shifts, his arms clutching the armrest, the rest of his body wiggling, rubbing against the bamboo upholstery, as though he were trying to find the perfect spot for his bum. 

"You know Shanta," he says, moving his mouth just like his body. The bottom half of his face is a gurgling mush, like pudding or clay. "Sometimes you are such a waste! These many years and you are still doing this only." Then he clicks his tongue as though remembering an obvious fact. "You're inside my head only anyway. Doctor was correct. Full correct! Just go away! Leave an old man in peace!"

A few sparrows flutter near the exhaust of the kitchen. A nest there, perhaps. Otherwise, it is silent. Uncle clicks his tongue. He slaps his forehead again. 

"Shanta!" he screams. "Fine! What am I supposed to do now? Where are you now? Shanta!" 

He gets off the chair with great effort, grunting as he stands. The veshti unfolds to his feet. A small breeze blows in the verandah. The sparrows seem louder. 

"Shanta!" Uncle screams again. He walks with stuttering steps towards the bedroom. Inside, there is only the bed and the almara. The curtains sway and rustle against the mosquito net on the window. He stutters along to the kitchen where only the sparrows and the warm breath of the exhaust are humming along some sort of forgotten tune. Uncle sighs. 

“Shanta!” he calls out again. “Don’t make me climb the stairs. Why don’t you understand that I am old now? So old…” 

He limps, alternating the leg upon which his weight rests. First right leg, then left. First right for three limps and then left for three limps. When he reaches the stairs he sighs again. The steps are made of stone. They are cold on his feet. He climbs them slowly, one step at a time, as though walking at the edge of a cliff.

“See, I am having to do so much work to come and find you,” he mumbles as he climbs, as though recounting an old memory. “It’s just that sometimes I get angry and start to say these things. Don’t take me seriously, no? You will take everything I say seriously? See? Even when the doctor told me to stay on medication I didn’t listen no? You have to do some little bit accepting, no, Shanta? Yes, yes. Some accepting and compromise you need to do… Right? Yes, now tell me… Where are you?”

The door creaks open to the terrace. The floor is the same color as the top of Gopu Uncle’s head. From here, you can see pinking clouds and the sprawling city and the small cars far away on the bridge over the river. They look like insects.
There is nothing on the terrace. 

II

That morning, five years ago, everybody was there. The hall and the courtyard found themselves infested with family members. There was Kumar Uncle and Lakshmi Aunty who were relatives on Shanta Aunty’s side. There was Jaya, Gopu Uncle’s niece. There was Poochi Paati, Gopu Uncle’s mother, so old that she had lost count of age. 

She had about nine strands of hair that ran over her head to form a nut-sized bun at the back. Her face was slush. Her nose was the same as her mouth and her forehead was her eyes and her eyes were her ears. You only got an idea of her.

Gopu Uncle and Shanta Aunty were inside the bedroom. The afternoon was warm and windy. The air seemed possessed; it was flailing about the dust and flinging dry leaves. The bedroom window provided for a safe bunker from which you watched the wind’s dance outside. A lazy enough zeitgeist for the conversation Uncle and Aunty were having: how much snacks to serve the guests. 

“See, Gopu,” Shanta Aunty said. “These are relatives. This is what you live for. If you do not invest your time and hard work into these things then full on old fellow you’ll be and full on lonely and you will not have anyone to come and light your pyre when you die…” 

“Chi!” Uncle spat out of the window. “Why death, death, death, death? Talk something nice no? Anyway, I am not giving these people any of the murukku and the seedai, or the thattai… they can have some sweet or something if they want… There’s that jar of preserves either ways, if they really want to eat something. We’ve already given them coffee, no?” 

Outside, the wind subsided. Only dregs of the chaos pranced and leaped about above the ground in the form of tiny dust clouds and tinier leaves. Gopu Uncle took a deep breath. The bedroom was quiet. 

“Why you’re not saying anything?” Uncle said. “Fine, give them the murukku if you want. I’m not saying anything. They’re also our blood. Yes, give them something or the other.” 

The curtain flapped against the edges of the window pane like a playful dog. Uncle tamed it in his fist and shoved it into the grill so that it stayed still. 

“Shanta?” he says. 

There was nobody in the room.  

This matter of the disappearing wife was taken to the large cloud of discussions that the family spewed out. They looked all around the house—under the bed, inside the almara, outside the window, on the terrace, on the verandah. Shanta Aunty was nowhere. 

Although she spoke in the manner in which liquids bubble, Poochi Paati said that Aunty was dead and that it was God’s way of relieving her son of such a burden in life. 

She said Gopu Uncle was still young, and that any girl would marry him now. 

Kumar Uncle and Lakshmi Aunty swore at Gopu Uncle and left the house in their fifteen-year-old Tata Indica. And whatever Jaya said was eaten up by Poochi Paati’s claim that she already has about twenty-three proposals from girls from very nice families for Gopu Uncle. 

Tired of the whole fiasco, Gopu Uncle pleaded with Poochi Paati to go to sleep and told Jaya to go back home. Jaya left promptly on her maroon scooter and Poochi Paati swore for forty minutes before she gave up and went to sleep. 

Not being able to understand his mother, and tired of the things she was saying, Gopu Uncle went to the terrace, where he realized that he was still holding the snacks from his discussion. He grabbed a handful and threw them on the floor. Doves fluttered to the terrace, skeptical at first of the floor, then of the snacks and the air and Gopu Uncle himself. But they ate well and flew away with big bellies which made him smile a little at the prettiness of the whole thing. He had forgotten his wife for those moments. 

Then, he went down the stairs and sat at the courtyard with his eyes shut. 

“Shanta,” he called, still with closed eyes. “Full headache. Make coffee.” 

Shanta Aunty came out, in about ten minutes, cursing and abusing her fate. 

“Oh,” he said, taking the tumbler in his hand. “You’re here?” 

“No, no, no, I’m not,” Shanta Aunty said. “That’s how you can see me and hear me no? Stupid! I’m here only, where else will I be?” 

Poochi Paati staggered out of her room, slapping her walking stick against the floor. 

“VHoo arth eww,” she said. “Daaalcking too?” 

“What?” Gopu Uncle said.

Who are you talking to, she said, enunciating.

“Can’t you see,” Gopu Uncle said. “Shanta has come back.” 

Poochi Paati would proceed to wail that her son has gone mad and that Shanta (that donkey) was the reason for this whole thing. She staggered into the street. The bajji vendor and the stationary shop fellow and the auto guys all came to her. They laughed at Gopu Uncle and his lost wife. They laughed at Poochi Paati and her stories. They laughed at other things that came up in discussion. 

This went on for many days until Gopu Uncle grew tired of being called a mad person and decided to ask his mother to stay elsewhere, perhaps with Jaya’s parents. 

III

Star Cutting Service starts where the street ends. Its facade is glass. Inside, there is a bench, two chairs, a TV at the top corner, and two mirrors. Sekar is the only barber in the shop. Usually it is songs or the news on the TV. Along with the dust, the music brings about something of the air of an old house within the shop.

“What, sir?” Sekar says, smirking. “How is Aunty?” 

“Don’t cut it too short,” Gopu Uncle says. 

“Of course, sir,” Sekar says. “See sir, our eyes are like gold. You cannot get your eyesight back, in Star Cutting Service we believe that our customers are our eyesight, so that means, sir, see if you see it logically, by laws of the philosophy, then our customers are like gold. Now tell me Gopu sir, why am I going to make gold sad? We do not want gold to get unsatisfied, right sir?” 

“Yes, yes,” Gopu Uncle tells Sekar. He pulls out his phone from under the cutting apron. It is a bulky Nokia. There are seven-messages written in bright blue pixels. He has three messages about cricket, two mentioning Sachitanandar, the great horoscope teacher, and two messages about the aliens that have caused dolphins to develop human-like intelligence. He shoves it back in his pocket and looks into the mirror. His face is drooping. It seems as though he is sad. His eyes are covered by the weight of his brow. His nose seems to be  dripping over his lips, and his lips themselves seem dead. Now, he understands how his haircut may give him a happier look. 

Sekar wets his hands and rubs them against Gopu Uncle’s hair. The hair seems like the fur on the back of a dog’s neck; thick but not long. He combs all the hair down, against Uncle’s neck. The scissors snap on his left hand. They click, itching to bite, like the jaws of a crocodile. In a swift motion, Sekar gathers up all the hair on the comb and snips it off. He repeats the process. 

Outside the glass pane, there are trucks erupting dust from the ground. There are lazy dogs looking up at the walls for cats or crows. Street vendors are tired now. They yawn and slap their thighs. Gopu Uncle sighs with every cut of the scissors. 

“So, sir,” Sekar says, laughing. “I was asking sir, how is aunty?” 

“Shut up and do your work,” Uncle says. 

“Why don’t you bring her to the shop,” Sekar prods. He signals to another customer who is reading the newspaper in the corner. “Why sir, she is also a person no?” 

“Sekar,” Uncle says. “If you will do only your job, then I will stay, otherwise I will be taking my leave…” 

“No, no, no, sir, let me just finish,” he says. “Here, ha! There you go! You are looking like a Kamal Haasan now sir! Just look at that look!” 

Uncle takes out a hundred rupee note from his pocket. The note is rotten. He slaps it on Sekar’s hand and leaves the shop. 

IV

The doctor was a bloated man. Gopu Uncle had thought himself bloated until he met this doctor. Now he considers himself toned and muscular. The doctor was sweet however, nice chap, shaved, combed hair, pristine English, sophisticated, higher Tamil. Uncle grew to trust this man over the course of the diagnosis.  

The clinic was about as big as the kitchen in Gopu Uncle’s home. There was a desk, a reclining chair and a stool by the reclining chair. The whole place was air-conditioned and Uncle had begun to think that somehow the air conditioner had a perfume of some kind since the place smelled of fruits and flowers. The floor was carpeted with a maroon felt that offered some bounce when you walked on it. The walls had pictures of the doctor with the best doctors in the world, and certificates from many high ranking universities, half of which Uncle only learned about by looking at the wall.

“Sir,” the doctor said, smiling. “This is a very normal thing. What is abnormal is that this is usually an occurrence in children, rather than people at your age. Hmm?” 

“Yes, doctor,” Uncle said. 

“This is not necessarily a bad thing at all! This only means that at heart you are still a child, and that your blood is still boiling with all the youth! Hmm?” 

“Yes, doctor.” 

“So, please don’t worry at all, sir,” the doctor said, smiling again and something about his recurring smiles made his words more sinister with each grin. “All you need to do is to remember what we spoke about over these last few hours, take your medicine without fail, and please stay full of youth!” 

“Yes, doctor.” 

“Alright then Mr. Gopal, are we feeling alright then?” 

“Yes, doctor. What to do when I am reminded again of my wife?” 

“See, these things do not go away as soon as the medicine has been taken,” the doctor said, thinking deeply. “That is the problem. But there’s absolutely nothing to worry about at all, sir. You’re a smart man. You’ll come out of this before you know it! Alright?” 

“Yes, doctor.” 

V

The house is majestic, the verandah opens up below the maroon roof which cowers over, shading the front. You can see inside. Uncle is old fashioned, trusting, he leaves the door open even when he goes out. Inside, the gray floor extends up until the courtyard, which is yellow and basking in the sunlight of the young evening. Beyond the courtyard, the door to the backyard where there are banana trees,mango trees and some weeds. This door is shut. It is blue in color.

Uncle comes into the house with slow steps. His chappals slap against the heel of his foot as he climbs the two stairs to the door. He removes them and leaves his umbrella behind the door. He tip-toes inside the house, gazing either side for any presence apart from his own. He drops his overcoat in the bedroom. It’s prickly because of the old wool. It was black a few years ago, but has grayed with age. You might even call it some shade of white.

Uncle reaches into the coat pocket and fetches a plastic bag. The bag has pori. It crunches as he clutches it in his hand. He creeps out of the house to the stairs near the gate that lead to the terrace. He climbs the steps just as he had earlier; limping one step at a time. The clouds are still pinking, although it has been many minutes since sunset, making things seem vividly outlined by a purple shadow. 

I’ll feed the doves and then ask for coffee, Uncle thinks. She’ll probably be there when I ask for coffee, perhaps she’ll make bajjis. Perhaps she’s making them anyway. Yes, yes, let’s see. The doves will give lots of comfortable feelings anyway, yes! The birds are nice and all! Really, that only I have for company. This Shanta is becoming very unreliable nowadays. I need to become full independent and all. Yes, yes. 

The white walls of the terrace are an azure now. The bouganvillea’s flowers are black. The tufts of the top of the banana tree seem like the black scales of some large creature. In the air you can smell the pakodas, and tea, and the smoke from the street. There is the hum of all this business in the street. It sleeps somewhere in the air above the terrace. The hum is broken by the clicking flutters of the doves’ wings. 

Gopu Uncle pouts his lips. The crimson insides near his teeth are now outside, hanging, wiggling a little. Then he sucks in air and presses his tongue against the back of his teeth so that a sound resembling the chirps of a gecko is made.

“Psch, psch, psch,” Uncle says. “Come, come, come. Eat this.”

He opens the plastic bag and brings out a handful of puffed rice. He scatters them on the floor. Each morsel looks like an oblong pearl in the pink light of the sunset. The clicking flutters get louder and then more silent. The flutters come in waves as the pigeons and doves perch on the floor. They peck at the pori, bobbing their heads. Then, a warm breeze blows and like the pigeons the puffed rice flutters on the floor. 

Uncle looks up at the sky. The clouds expose a blood red sun. The whole thing seems like a healing wound in the sky. He turns around. Where is the moon, he thinks. Ah, what does it matter?

He feels something warm grow behind his sternum, like when you drink whiskey or rum. His legs seem to be weightless. Then a smile blooms on his face. The first three teeth aren’t there, and when the smile is fat enough, a small hair from the haircut pricks both his nostrils and lips. He sneezes. 

The plastic bag is empty. Uncle smiles at the doves. When he goes down, he climbs slowly, but this time it’s not that he doesn’t have the strength. There is something pretty about going down slowly. He reaches the last step, from where you can reach out to the street. Uncle throws the plastic bag on the street and it floats down to the bottom of a tree stump. He walks from the stairs to the verandah. He takes of his shirt and hangs it at the back of the easychair. He takes his seat. 

“Shanta!” He calls out. “The weather is going nicely! Make some nice-nice, hot-hot coffee! Can you hear me?” 

“Yes, yes,” Shanta Aunty shouts from somewhere inside. “Did you have some stupid snacks on the way back? I have made some bajji, you better eat that!” 

Uncle smiles. The edges of his grin shut his eyes. He put his hands at the back of his head. They make a good pillow. Uncle sighs. She will come out now, he thinks to himself. After the haircut, she will think I am a handsome chap now! 

***

About the Author

Vikram Mervyn writes prose. His stories have been published in The Hakara Magazine, Gulmohur Quarterly, Twist and Twain, The Sunflower Collective and the anthology, "The Cat People" edited by Devapriya Roy. He has also been shortlisted for the Deodar Prize 2024. He is interested in alienation, existentialism, and problems of language. He attempts to explore these themes through his fiction.