Part 9 of my life in Wadi

Kanniappan joined our class while we were in the 5th standard. Again we didn’t understand what his name meant. Frankly we in Wadi, were more acclimatised to names like Saibanna (our barber – the one who ran the Modern Hair Cutting Saloon), Appanna (the priest or poojari in the ACC colony Ram Temple), Yenkavva (our maid servant) Devappa (the local quarry owning landlord and the one who dominated Milk supply to the ACC colony – a local Verghese Kurien), Ghanate (tailor to the rich people of ACC colony) etc. or Muslim names. Other names were odd sounding to us. In other words, even our own names sounded alien. For example, frankly I couldn’t see much sense in the name Santhanam, which was the name of one of my closest friends. Even the names of Hindi film actors or cricketers made little sense to us. For long, till I was in 7th standard or thereabouts, the Indian Cricket team was so filled with Marathi’s that we thought that “Kar”, like “Sir”, was a honorary term attached to the name of an individual who happened to get selected to play for India. Hence Gavas”Kar”, Sol”Kar”, Wade”Kar”, Vengsar”Kar” and the other bunch of Kars. Also names like Amitabh Bachhan and Shatrughan Sinha made no sense to us, except that we liked watching them bash up the bad guys in the open air movies that K P Menon screened.

The above mentioned Santhanam and his whole family of 2 sisters, five brothers and parents were musically talented and sang with a nasal twang. Ability to sing Hindi film songs made Santhanam, a sort of an authority on Hindi films. He explained to us that people like Shatru Bhaiyya (Shatrughan Sinha) belonged to far away North India and had superhuman powers. They could really fight off 10-15 villains single handed. Rajesh Khanna was a guy who had the power to ensnare girls by his songs, (though why one should ensnare girls, we didn’t really know at that time) but not fight as valiantly as Shatru, we learnt. A new fellow by the name of Amitabh Bachhan could really fight off bad guys. Girls fell for him on their own. He didn’t have to ensnare them with songs, like Rajesh Khanna, but frankly he didn’t care for girls. That was real manly, we thought. This was the essence of the briefings we received from time to time from the likes of Santhanam.

Back to Kanniappan. His parents it seems were in Madras. He was staying with relatives at Wadi, we didn’t know why. It was also rumoured that he was an orphan and had no parents. It was also rumoured that his parents were too rich, they didn’t much care for him. He was a dark small fellow who told us wicked things like sexual activities involving our classmates. He was an interesting, but mysterious character. He used to create a lot of mirth when he said that he had a paternal uncle (chacha or chitappa) who was younger to him, and whom used to carry around. He suddenly left after 6th standard as mysteriously as he had come.
The other one who left us was Bhaskar, the son of a railway engine driver called Kalyanaraman. Belonging to our community of Iyers, his family became friends of our family though they stayed in the railway colony. They visited us sometimes. Bhaskar had a brother called Balu, who was much junior to us and a sister, whose name I don’t now remember. Anyone who can remind me wins a prize. Bhaskar was not very good in studies. He dropped out soon. I hear his father passed away in an accident after we lost touch with them, but I really don’t know for sure.