When someone commits harakiri, he tears his stomach open with a dagger. A trusted man should stand by, to swiftly cut off the head in a single stroke. This is done as soon as he has made the initial incision. Mishima’s military coup failed miserably, and he proceeded to rip open his stomach.
I’ve often heard my friends speak about their fathers as if they were their die-hard enemies. Some even call their fathers bastards. Many of my friends are teetotallers. When asked why, the most common reply is- ‘My father often got drunk and abused my mother.’
Prakash bought the blade and said, “Do it carefully da. If you cut a vital nerve, you’ll have to live as a khosa for the rest of your life.” So, I took the soap and the blade, stole Naina’s shaving brush and went to the cremation ground.
My mother and Naina treated me like an emperor; there was no scolding or reprimand. My mother often remarked that I should have been born in a mansion, but instead, I ended up being born in that slum. Education was nowhere to be seen in her family – only one brother among my mother’s eleven siblings received an education.
Because I have Telugu, Burmese, and Tamil ancestry, my East Asian friends often inquire whether I am from Thailand or Burma. Perhaps in my face they see the images of all these dead.
So the death of my father is now fodder for a story. This is the story of the writer in me walking all over my Naina’s life, and maybe his corpse too, and putting the journey into words. ‘Ordinary’ ethical frameworks can’t apply to a writer who walks on the ‘corpses’ of others.
Charu Niveditha is a prolific writer. Bold, unapologetic and defiantly truthful wordsmith. His work has stirred up stagnant social settings, melted down the clouds of norms and mores, and boiled the wrath of the conventional schools of thought. With all of that, millions of readers have gathered around him from all over the world.
The Asian Review 