Valli

                                                                                Valli

“Anbare? (Hello, sir)” Valli spoke with a new discernment. “Now I believe that you mean no harm to our king. The reason I blew on the conch was to put you to the test! Something in me told me that you were not a bad one. And when you made no move to run away when the King’s soldiers came here, and your peacefulness all would seem to indicate that you are not a sleuth from some enemy country. Now I believe you though your dress and hairstyle and the way you speak Tamil would seem to tell me you might be...!”

“From another world, my dear girl?” asked a mysterious Sivanesan. Now he started to understand that the conversation he had been having with Manikkam in Chennai just a while back was not untrue, and he had indeed been transported to a different world! And this girl was talking for every breath about King Karikalan! So...?

“To see you speak that way, sir, now I would like to think you are from a different world” Valli smiled at him in an engaging manner. “You were very nice to know this morning, and who are they, the two gentlemen dressed much in your way?” She gestured towards where the duo, Manikkam and his grandfather were seated a little way ahead. “There is something queer about the way they have been looking at each other for so long as though they were lovers in disguise!” Valli laughed at her own joke, even as she was swinging in that debonair way as though the branch of the tamarind tree were her mother’s knees!

At her gesture, once again Sivanesan looked at the duo, and the way they had been sitting without exchanging any words, and looking into each others eyes, had some connotation Sivanesan was not able to tell. What the hell was the matter with the old fool and the young idiot, Manikkam!

And it had been morning now, the glowing red rays had turned into a golden yellow, and Sivanesan could see around the place more clearly now. It was a vimana (the terrace of a Hindu temple) of a temple! So the time machine had landed them here! He turned to look at the girl, who had been looking at him ardently all this time. For a small girl she was beautifully vocal.

“Anbare,” (hello, sir!) said the girl, “Do you want to taste one of the fruits of this tree?”

With that offer, she looked around and sought out a ripe long tamarind fruit and plucked it and threw it at him. The fruit fell at Sivanesan’s feet. “Now it is time I return back home, they would be thinking I was having a dharshan of the Lord, the Uraiyur Dhevar, the presiding deity of this temple. So long, sir. We will meet again!”

With those words, Valli climb down the sinuous tree as with the facility of a monkey! And soon she disappeared from the scene. Sivanesan picked up the tamarind fruit and threw it at the duo as though he was mad at them and the stance they had assumed!

The moment the tamarind fruit fell between them, it seemed they came awake from a deep trance.

Certainly Sivanesan could see the jinx had been broken, and the two turned towards him and made a gesture!