The big game.

During one particularly long, rainy, drive in Wayanad, Kerala, my uncle narrated a story that happened once. A childhood incident.

Uncle, a city dweller for most of his life, lived in Madurai. During his summer holidays, he used to visit his ancestral home in a village somewhere in the Tanjore District of Tamil Nadu. To escape the drowsy monotony of the long afternoons, he attended a local village school, ostensibly to brush up on his arithmetic.

The teacher in the village school does not receive a regular salary like teachers in the big city schools do. For his efforts, he's paid in kind - Some pay him with rice, some with paruppu (pulses), some barter vegetables, some milk. And the parents who could afford to send their kids to school, were usually the rich landlords of the village.

Probably out of a sense of injustice of things around him, or an inferiority complex arising out of his poor station, (we don't know the exact reason, I only speculate), the teacher at my uncle's village was a very strict man, some may even say, a man, who was downright abusive to his pupils. And being the grandson of the richest family in the village, my uncle was the prime candidate for punishment at the teacher's hands.

Once, after a particularly severe beating (Either for not solving a tricky maths problem, or for solving it before the teacher could. I cannot remember which.), uncle came home crying. When his grandparents found out the actual reason, the angered family stopped the payment of rice that year.

Every summer evening, the village children played in the dried riverbank. A particular favorite was wrestling on the sandy bed. My uncle's arch enemy in these riverside games was Mahesh, the teacher's son. Whether as a result of a hereditary dislike for my uncle, or a village-dweller's (completely natural) hostile response to an outsider, Mahesh hated the sight of my uncle. I'm told the feeling was mutual. My uncle, a mute victim at the hands of the father, naturally tried to vent his frustrations on the son. Constantly at loggerheads, they vied for superiority in the gang.

But Mahesh had one major advantage over uncle in their battle for village supremacy. The deadly, the insurmountable. Kidikki-Pidi.

A wrestling move made with such breathtaking speed that it hits you when you least expect it. The pain involved is terrible. No not just terrible, the kind of pain where you wonder why you were ever born. The kind of pain where your life flashes before your eyes and you wonder whether you should have been kinder to your little sister more often. And there is no human way for you to escape the grip. The only way out of Kidikki-Pidi was if you begged your way out. Beg for forgiveness for your miserable existence and offer undying slavery to Mahesh. If you did not, you might end up dead. Enough said.

"Please daai Mahesh, leave me!!"

The grip got tighter, " 'Daai'? Did you say 'Daai' ?", said the cruel tyrant,

"Mahesh..anna...please. You are the greatest! Stop it!! I am sorry, I beg you!"

If he was in a particularly good mood, Mahesh would let you go after five minutes of such remonstrations. Armed with the Kidikki Pidi, he ruled supreme. Many was a time when uncle was reduced to a teary state of humiliation and pain.

As he looked out of the window in the bus taking him back to to Madurai, uncle prayed for deadly revenge. Through his angry tears, he resolved, "I will beat this Mahesh at his own game. I will learn how to escape from the Kidikki Pidi. I will practise new moves and teach this rascal a proper lesson. We'll see who is who's slave then".

And he lived up to his resolution. Evenings after school were spent wrestling with his friends. Though initially, none of them matched Mahesh for the ferocity of their fights, they quickly learned that if they did not scrap harder, they would get pummelled by uncle. And so the sessions increased in intensity and with each coming day he grew stronger. And ready for the day when he would meet Mahesh face to face. There was a way out of Kidikki Pidi, out of humiliation. Mahesh would be taught a lesson that he would not forget too quickly.

Summer holidays. One April afternoon, my uncle landed in the village. The day of the big game finally arrived. Puffing angrily, he stood in the quiet street outside the teacher's house.

"Mahesh!!", he shouted, "come out. I want to talk to you!!".

But no one answered. "Of course, it was afternoon. They must all be at the riverbed."

As he neared the river, he could hear the distant sounds of play. He could still hear someone yowl with pain "Im sorry Im sorry..you are the greatest..forgive me..".

Just a few more minutes now. There they were, at it, as usual.

Smiling at the prospect of the long awaited match, he approached the brawling group.

But wait a minute.

"Where's Mahesh?", he ask the exhausted youth, who were lying down after their labours, gasping for breath in the river sands.

No one replied for a moment. And then someone said, "Oh, he died last year, after you left. Didn't your grandmother tell you?"

The rhythmic sounds of the windscreen-wiper in our Ambassador car broke our reverie.