Muruga loves to play ball in the evenings.
Sometimes Muruga stands in the stone verandah
and pretends to be the king who swallowed a thousand quintals
of flaming mud. Muruga eats several idlis a day, but saves
just one idli for the bus ride back from school,
when he crushes it into paste and rubs it on
Sarala's arms. Then he scrapes off the drying
lumps with his nails until her arms and eyes turn
red and she brushes the back of her hand across
her lips. Muruga hums the tunes from Rajini songs
and occasionally spits out a word or two, drawing
his mouth into a close pout and sucking in his tongue
stained green by Kannan's Colour Ice. Muruga enjoys
urinating on walls with posters of the thick-moustached
party leader who, his father thinks,
will introduce full-day water supply. Sometimes,
Muruga hovers near the local liquor shop,
sniffing the bulging side pockets
of men with cloudy eyes and brushing against the plastic bangles
of women who pass by, their calves almost visible
through their sheer sarees and their mouths forever knit
into convulsing circles. Muruga is also a connoisseur of
communal dice, cards and bets and the occasional beedi
stolen from a father's sweat-stained shirt pocket
or wrested from an older brother's oily fingers
in exchange for a shared lie. Muruga is a deft
wicketkeeper, a slow eater, and a fast bowler.
On Sundays, Muruga collects silver fish with green
speckles from the local pond. On festival days,
he wears his blue silk shirt. When he is in a good mood,
he collects tamarind seeds and shines them
on his ankles. Every day, in school, the maths teacher slaps
his palm for not doing the sums rightly.
Some days, Muruga takes his olive green satchel
to school and fills it with broken colored chalk bits.
Some days, Muruga bites into a dusty mango
lying in the school grounds before rinsing it,
as his mother has instructed him. Some other days,
he holds it in his hand, gently squeezing its pale
green skin, imagining his mother screaming
as he thrusts the entire fruit into his mouth,
his lips stained sticky with mud.