The Magical Flower of Ranganathapuram

Chapter 1

It was a quite day in the village of Ranganathapuram, located in the small municipality of Kallakkurichi , in the farmers heartland of Tamil Nadu. The rows of freshly grown sugarcane basked in the afternoon sun, in fields that ran on both sides of the sole tar road in the village. A bunch of local farmers in weather-beaten clothes – clothes which were shredded gradually each day as they moved about the sharp crop in the sugarcane fields – were busy harvesting the fully grown sections of the fields. Little children, with glowing faces but unkempt and shabby in appearance, ran about amongst the tall crops, lost in their game of hide-and-seek.

Four year old Ramakrishna was quick to hear the sounds of the old, rusty and only cycle in the village coming towards the fields along the tar road.

“Look, look there ---- !!” , the little guy cried out in Tamil to his friends , “Looks like someone from the cities is coming to meet Aiyaah!!!” .

Everyone in the small population of 200 in the village knew which house the tar road lead to, and whose cycle it was.

Venkata “Aiyaah”, they referred to him with utmost respect.

Venkataswamy Rangarajan was the man whom the whole village belonged to , in one way or the other. Coming from a family whose ancestors laid the first crop of sugarcane in the village and owned most of the lands on which the farmers depended for their living, Venkata Aiyaah, at the ripe old age of 56, was the only remaining scion of the Rangarajan family tree. Having lived all his life in the village and having had to do nothing to earn a living, he had become haughty and pompous over the years. It had taken him hundreds of lakhs of rupees , a 100 labourers and 4 long years to build the only cement structure in the village - a 3 storey, marble-laced, eyeball grabbing villa which was meant to send out a clear message across all the neighbouring villages – ‘look-who-has-all-the-money’!

As the sun glistened on the tar toad - a man in his late thirties, in a Levi Strauss stone-wash blue denim jeans , a white Polo T-shirt and a beige Armani cuodroy blazer , a Nikon SLR camera strung around his neck and feet firmly in his Nike special edition shoes, was atop the rusty, dust –laden cycle.

“This crazy bike must be as old as me” , Ravi thought to himself , struggling to keep his energy levels up as the effort required to push the ungreased pedals in the blazing sun sapped up all that was left in him after the 42 hour long train journey from Kolkata.

He had alighted from the Kolkata-Kanyakumari Express exactly 20 minutes ago, onto the 10-feet long by 5-feet wide stony ‘platform’ of the Ranganathapuram railway station.

Upon inquiring for local transport to get to Venkataswamy’s house, a passerby had gladly offered to him the use of Aiyaah’s cycle , a privilege generally reserved for landlords visiting from nearby villages. All other locals had only means of transport within the village – the use of their sturdy legs.

Now ,as he made his way inch-by-inch down the village road, Ravi’s mind was lost back to the conversation that made him visit this place.

It was a cold winter day. Back home after another one of his hectic days as Sales Director of a multinational company , he was surprised to find his 72 year old mother awake at that hour of the night .

Quick to grasp the worried and nostalgic look on her wrinkled face, he ran an assuring hand through his mother’s thin hair.

“What is it , Ma? “

“Nothing dear. I was woken up by a strange dream I had”

Ravi looked up at his mother. This is the first time she had said something like this to him in so many years.

“I think you should share it with me, Ma”.

His mother smiled.

“Do you know that one of your maternal grandfather’s distant cousins was a big landlord in the small village of Ranganathapuram in Tamil Nadu. As a child, my father used to take me to the village once a year. I’’d spend a couple of weeks in the village, enjoying the hearty meals the women in the house used to cook, playing around the sugarcane fields in the hot afternoons and listening to my grandmother’s stories in the chilly nights.

She would gather all the children around the old oak tree in the village and regale us with her folklore.

It was during one of these story-telling sessions that she spoke of ‘The Magical Flower of Ranganathapuram’.

It was said to bloom once in 110 years, in the middle of the muddy patch beside the well in the village. A wondrous mixture of blue , pink and white , this lone flower would bloom only after midnight and be gone with the first rays of the sun.

This is how the folklore went --- that any person unfortunate enough to step on the flower during the one night that it bloomed, would be absolved of his memory and lose all sense of people, direction and purpose.

If none of the locals found him that night and administered the specially prepared herbal potion before sunrise, which snapped him back to reality, he might wander into the neighbouring villages and be lost forever, roaming fields, barren lands and forests for eternity.

It was said that after that night passed, none of his known people would recognize him even if they saw him and vice versa “

Ravi was listening with complete curiosity now. This was not what he had expected.

“Tonight, I dreamed that I stepped on the magical flower while walking through the village at night” , his mother continued, “And no one found me until sunrise”.

“I roamed the nearby lands till the end of my life and just as I was about to die, I saw the face of my grandmother, a knowing smile on her face, asking me , “Why did you stop coming to my village, child?” “ .

Ravi’s face transitioned into a series of random feelings. Perhaps , he thought later on, he’d expected what his mother would say next.

“I want you to go to Ranganathapuram, Ravi” , his mother said with a concerned look. “I am too old to travel now. But I am sure this dream meant a lot. My paternal grandmother was very close to me and didn’t take too well to the family feuds that lead my father to never visit that village again. I think she wants us to connect again”.

Ravi was perplexed.

His mother simply smiled at her son’s dilemma.

“Don’t say no, son”.