The peanut seller
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“It is easy”, Surendran said, “she always sleeps in the afternoons sitting under the tree with her legs stretched”. And the old lady could not see well too. Surendran was convincing holding ten paisa in his hand and others agreed to him, but I was a little afraid. Nothing happens. It is simple. He explained his game plan, you three stand here, behind the tree; I will go to the old mondi (the lame one), give her ten paisa and ask her peanut candy for one rupee. She will give four bars, one each of twenty-five paisa. She won’t know in the sleep and she cannot catch us later, how could she know who gave her this ten paisa. We stayed behind the tree; Surendran went down the steps leading to street from the school courtyard. It was easy to spot him from a distance as he wore red shirt and red trouser made of cheap cotton cloth. Only a few kids wore the school uniform, blue trouser and light yellow shirts. Students are only advised to wear school uniform, not a must, as many kids came to the school only for the afternoon lunch, wheat uppuma (boiled wheat tempered with oil, mustard seed and red chilly).

The Kadala moopathy’s ( Old peanut selling lady) house was just two furlongs away from the school on the opposite side of the road. Every morning before the school started she came and sat at the same spot, by the side of the steps leading to the school courtyard from the road. Her seat was made of old cloths folded several time for the cushion effect, in front of her was a polythene sheet to place her commodities. She had everything what a lower primary school kid desired for, peanut, hard candies, peanut candy bars, ripe and salted karaka (a wild fruit) in two small separate heaps. She also carried different types of pencils to write on the slate, like the hard pencil which lasts long, soft chalk like pencils in different colors, stylus like part of some sea creature (called sea pencil) etc.

The old lady had visitors all the time, Children and flies. Kids flock around her during the class intervals and on the lunch break, standing in a half circle around the polythene sheet with their eyes on colorful, sugary candies on the sheet. Most of the children went there to see the unwrapped and partially melted sugar candies, never had money to buy any, and then they meditated over their mental image of candies in the class rooms. Flies were a constant companion of her, swarming around the small heaps of sweets on the polythene sheet. To the greatest advantage of the flies, most of the time the old lady did not cover her items as it might obstruct the view of a potential buyer. Girls outnumbered boys whenever mondi had “chodokku” on her sheet. Chodokku is a wild flower in the shape of a small cup. Girls hold the open end of this cup with their thumb and index finger, blow air into it and gently hit the other side on their forehead by slightly releasing the grip to make a “tipk’ sound; some girls perfected this art with unmatchable dexterity. Occasionally some parents also came to her enquiring about their children, like how they were behaving around the school. To which Mondi said ‘tell them to use only the side walks, in the evening when they go home. You know that is the time the evening bus comes”.

Everybody called her either kadala moopathy or mondi. She did not have any other names. She never needed any other names as these two names distinctively and completely defined here for most people. She was lame, so the name mondi. She never complained to or cursed anybody for calling her by that name. She had accepted her deformity; then what is in a name. She is lame and she sold peanuts, and her two names told everything about her. If I tell you her name is mondi, you know how she walked and if I tell you her name is kadala mooppathy, you know what she did for a living. Which other name have this advantage. If I tell you ‘Valsalan’ was the name of a prominent person in my village, it does not give you any indication that he was a stringent communist and spent jail time during the emergency period, does it?

As he said, Surendran came back with peanut candy for a rupee for which he only paid ten paisa. He illustrated his triumph in detail while we all eat the peanut candy. But the celebrations did not last long, it was interrupted by a loud sneering of mondi. She shouted:- he is a thief. He cheated me. I thought it was a rupee. He cheated me, thief. He will suffer for stealing from me. I know him, the son of the sorcerer. He is the one who did it.

“Son of the Sorcerer” was not a curse. Surendran’s father was actually a sorcerer. Mothers called him home when their little ones had a fever, temperature or lingering common cold, as the first choice before they would take their children to the nearby primary health centre. He sits in front of the ailing kid with a handful of bhsamam (white ash) on a banana leaf and water in a kindi (samall spouted vessel to carry water for rituals ) ; uttering mantras holding his right hand stretched touching their forehead and sometimes snapping the fingers; and end it by applying the bhasmama on the forehead of the kid. But that was not the only kind of pooja he ever practiced. Occasionally he went out in the evening bus with strange people to perform his more vicious deeds and came back only in the morning. On those places he demanded rice and red clothes (pattu) for his rituals, both he always brought home after the witchcraft. That is the source of surendran’s red clothes.

No one else in the school wore red and red. Even in her half sleep, mondi was able to notice his red clothes, or was it the remnants of the mantra that his father uttered clinging to the red cloth and cheated him by telling the truth to Mondi.

“I am not going to let him go”, Mondi said.

“I know who his friends are too. I will hold them here until their parents come. I will tell their parents. I don’t let them go. I can’t loose money like this.”

“ I have three stomachs to feed. “

The two other stomachs she had to feed were of her grand children. Mondi’s daughter was once married to man from a distant village. He was an agricultural laborer. Mondi thought it would be a great help, when the couple decided to stay with her in her house. Thus he became the man of the house and often found work in and around the village. He hung his spade, the only asset he ever possed, on the front wall of the mud house every day after work. And when there was no work, the spade hung there all day on the wall revealing the proud presence of the man of the house , while he spend his time playing cards and drinking hooch. After their two children were born, time was really bad and some times he had to find work in the town and came back home only occasionally, until one day, he left for work and never came back. The spade, together with the mondi’s hope( of his return), dangled from the mud wall for some more time. But a few months later mondi’s daughter ran away with another man leaving the two kids under the sol responsibility of mondi. Next day Mondi sold the spade to a passerby for five rupees.

Mondi’s shouting dominated my thoughts for the day. And truly, in the night too.
“I know who his friends are too.
I will tell their parents. “
Mondi’s anger was mostly against the real culprit. But I too got frozen at the thought that mondi would leak this new to my father, may be to get her money fast enough.
Surendran pretended that he was not afraid of mondi’s threats and even said, he would seek the help of Dharman ( people called him ‘Pottan’ as he was deaf) to silence her. Pottan is the only one who can challenge mondi, and he would do anything if I could buy him two cigarettes, he said.

No, I told him. It is not going to work. Give her the money back. That is the only way, get it from the pocket of your father, when he come back from one of his nightly duties and sleep late in the morning. Pottan cannot help. Because I knew what mondi was capable of.

Once in a while there were other people, mostly young ladies from the neighborhood, challenged mondi’s monopoly of selling things in the school compound. They arranged more items and sat on the other side of the school steps. But with some magical powers of mondi, children never went to the new seller in good numbers. In a day or two, or a week to the maximum, they all left wrapping up their business and counting their losses. They all said one reason for their failure, unbearable smell. The pungent smell of urine drove them all away.
“That old witch urinated in our spot,
How can we sit there, in that smell?
We cannot do that to her.
It is public road” They said.

Mondi never replied to their allegations or cursed them back.
“I have to feed three stomachs” , She said quietly.

But it was true that Mondi was ,often seen, urinating on the road side by standing up, like men do, in broad daylight. Nobody ever bothered her when she did that, except for Pottan, who howled at her. Mondi cursed him with filthy words, dipped in her urine to make it acrid enough to penetrate his deaf ears. That also caused his sound to die in his throat before it came out, when he tried to howl in response and made him deaf and dumb, for a brief period.

I knew Pottan was no match for Mondi. And Surendarn knew that too.

He brought a one rupee coin next day, stolen from his father’s pocket. Unlike mondi, his father never knew how much he had in his pocket or how much he paid for hooch previous night. He threw the coin into mondi’s lap as if his is taking a revenge at her. Mondi in return did not say a word and give him four candies for ten paisa, which he paid the previous day. Mondi never told the incident to anybody else, as I afraid.

Why would she? She cared only about the three stomachs that she had to fill every day.