Stories / Novel – The Halo Reams      
The Surprise
by TA Ramesh

It was yet another Saturday evening. An old man and a lady in her twenties were slowly walking on the road from the centre of the Park towards the Library building. Only a quarter of a year back the old man had come and settled in the Pudhu Town. She was working in his office as a company secretary to him. She had joined his office only a month back. The old man was well known in that area as the proprietor of THE UNIVERSAL PRINTERS.

He had white hair, wrinkles on his forehead, humble face and wore a white cotton shirt and pyjama. Though he had reached the first half of his seventies, yet he paced on the road with a steady pace. The lady was wearing a green sari in the South Indian style. She had a pleasant face, bright eyes and a lean body sound in health. She was walking on the left hand side of her proprietor.

When she looked at a small fountain at a distance to her left, there was an young man walking to and fro near it in a very thoughtful mood. He suddenly stopped and gazed at the centre of the park with a great expectation. She observed him with a keen eye.

The young man had a naturally combed hair, shining forehead, eminently dreaming eyes and a naturally set nose on the face with lean fleshed cheeks and chin. He had a slightly round face, a shapely body, fat thighs and was just 5.6 feet in height. Slowly she recollected that he was gentle mannered, morally tolerant, casually prophetic in talk like a poet, a philosophic man so to say. She was sure that he was Kannan.

“Kannan,” cried she from the depth of her heart the moment she found out it was him, “Mr. Kannan…., Mr. Kannan.” It seemed her voice had not reached his ears. She turned to her proprietor.

The kind old man knowing her position then said, “I know my child! Please carry on. Take your own time; I know how to make way home myself. Wish you best of luck and God’s blessings to you.” After saying those words he left her with a brisk walk.

“Thank you, thank you very much,” said she. From the road she stepped on the pavement, walked on the grass and reached him as quickly as possible.

Kannan with a great surprise and wonder greeted her.

“Hello, Meena! Good evening! Your sudden appearance in this place has put me in unprecedented surprise!”

“Good evening, Kannan!” said Meena, “You were a wonder when I saw you first in Madras. After nearly a month’s search for you, it is a great surprise for me to have found you at last in this fine place.”

They gazed at each other in happy astonishment for a few minutes unable to express any other thing. But their eyes talked about thousand things that are beyond the scope of description. It was Kannan who recovered first from the strange trance!

“Well, Meena, you may be wondering what I am doing here. Before I want to know in detail, let me tell you about my matters first.”

They both sat on the grass. She relaxed herself comfortably in order to listen to his words attentively as she could. He told her in some detail about what he did after he had come back to that town when THE TREASURE office closed and how he repaid the debts incurred by his late father. He briefly outlined to her about his friends and clearly apprised her of what he had discussed with his friends in the previous eight Halo meets.

Then she said, “Last week end I came here and waited with great expectation at least for the arrival of Gopal. I was only to be disappointed. Next day, that was Sunday morning too I did not find Vaithianathan in the Venus Café. I felt the meets with my friends were once and for all over. I decided to have a final resolution regarding my so called dear friends today. I tried in vain to unit them together here and do something remarkable in company with this sort of friends. I don’t have any grudge on Gopal. But only Balu is mature enough to understand my noble feelings and ambition. He is far away. What can he do and what can I do? That is my state of affairs. What is yours?”

“Well Kannan, during the last few months of The Treasure I saw my only brother of our family quite often very unsteady in life. He suddenly fell in love with a girl. Then one day he ran away with that girl. My mother last her balance of mind, had a paralytic attack and passed away leaving me and my father alone in this world. After the closure of The Treasure, by some fluke chance I joined a leading local newspaper organisation as a typist and worked there till two months back. The proprietor of the Universal Printers was having a printing works in Madras, which he closed a few months ago and shifted to this town. This old man was a friend of my father. He was a great company to my father.

My father too passed away last year putting me under the gravest grief in this world. This proprietor was giving me great encouragement after my father passed away. Mainly due to his insistence I have come here to work in his office with a great relief which I have not at all expected in my life. I like this calm and peaceful town very much now. He has a manager, fostered by him and he does all the jobs for this proprietor. This manager has a wife and three children all studying in the higher secondary school in Madras. He is going to bring them here next year and is going to live here forever along with this old man, who is treating me as his own grand daughter. That is how my days are going on here.

The hardships I faced in Madras, I could not forget forever. Your first poem, which was published in The Treasure magazine, suggested me as to how to forget my tension and anxieties by gazing at the midnight Star, about which you wrote so beautifully in it. Believe it or not your Midnight Star has solaced a lot during the night times. That is why I wanted to meet you immediately when I came here last month. Today only it was possible for me to meet you in this wonderful park by God’s grace!”

After pouring out whatever she had in her heart with a light smile she silently looked at his face. Her words touched the heart of Kannan very much. He thought for a while and with a decisive look at her he told her, “Your words are moving the very core of my heart. The poem, That Midnight Star which I wrote for The Treasure magazine was based on my real experience, was not possible for me to express in toto the whole of my feelings in that poem. Anyway, it has a life of its own. I don’t know how you will feel if you read the other poems I wrote after I left The Treasure.”

“I shall be much pleased to read your other poems written by you like That Midnight Star. I enjoyed reading your travelogues published in The Treasure. But the reports on the life and activities of the service society were not to my likings as the whole series were documentary facts only.”

“Who were the other writers of The Treasure you like, Miss Meena?” Kannan asked with some curiosity.

“There were writers like Ganesh, Vijayan, Kumar and Sinha. Their articles were like ordinary newspaper reports. They were not as lively as your travelogues. Even your reports were very clear and easy to understand and remember the peoples you described in detail. Your style of writing is quite modern. There is no difference between your written language and conversational language. Most of the people prefer to read your articles.

Next to you I liked the articles of Kumar and Sinha. They were much better than Ganesh and Vijayan. But your poems and travelogues were quite new to the readers of The Treasure. Your single poem, That Midnight Star has solaced and touched my heart so much that I could not forget it forever. I love to read and enjoy your other poems of this type. I am going to stay and spend the rest of my life in this peaceful town only. So, you will not fail to give me the pleasure of enjoying your beautiful poems, I suppose.”

“I like your very much Meena. Your appreciation is a source of great inspiration to me. I shall give a copy of all the poems to you and shall continue to write poems you enjoy most. If my writings are not to your enjoyment, to whom else they will be written to? But there is another soul who openly loves my poems as you do. He is my dearest of dear friend, Balu working in New Delhi as an UDC. He is preparing himself to write the IAS Exam. Soon he is sure to come here on transfer once he becomes an IAS officer. I am happy that in lieu of him and in an entirely unique way you are giving me comfort and real pleasure to me this evening. Will you kindly give me a companionship as today forever in my life?”

“Kannan, your writings are meant for solacing many lonely persons in this world. Your service is quite noble and endless. If you ask me for my companionship for your whole life, with my full heart I openly declare that I accept your offer with out any hesitation at all! That is my last and only wish in life. I shall live with you to your satisfaction till the end of my life.”

“I love you and accept you with my whole heart!”

“Really?”

“To be very frank with you, Meena, the moment I saw you in The Treasure office, I liked you very much. In the dinner meet of that night, after I heard your personal affair, really I thought of asking you for a life companionship with me. Immediately, I felt within me that perhaps I would be hasty. I thought there would be a lot of opportunities for you to chose a better person for your life partnership. So, I decided that it would be better for me to mind the work for which I had gone there.

I never thought that the Time that made me to meet you there would again give me another opportunity to tell you about my heart in this fine evening. I have to say that God in the form of Time is helping much by offering you as an invaluable asset to me at this most unexpected and critical moment in my life. My many thanks to the great Time!”

“In the first meeting itself I understood you were a gentleman. In that night dinner I found that you were really a gentleman. Your kind, sincere and affectionate words and manners have not undergone any change by the passage of time. I have never talked about my personal matters with anyone but you because of your gentleness. Today only I really feel very happy after I hear your wish. I love you much and there cannot be a greater bliss for me than to cooperate with your wishes.”

With great peace of mind and contentment of heart she placed her face with closed eyes on his chest and remained so till their kind feelings came to a mutual settlement after an elapse of five minutes. Then they sat side by side and looked at the beautiful rose flowers near them. Next, their talk was about the address in which each one was living. He told her about his routine. They decided to contact every afternoon over phone.

He promised her that he would take her to his house after he had discussed about their matters with his father-in-law and mother-in-law. She was very happy about it and joyful that he would be meeting her guardian, the proprietor of The Universal Printers the next day morning. Finally, he also told her that he would not be disappointed from that day as he would be surely meeting her in her own apartment every evening after he returned from his office.

It was beyond 8 p.m. She told him that the mess would be closed by that time and that though she had to go home without a supper that night, she felt she had a sumptuous dinner that evening since she had seen Kannan after a long time! But Kannan did not leave her to return to her place without giving her a best treat in the Best Hotel there! She really agreed to his wish and they both moved away from the park to the Best Hotel near the Port Office.

When they reached the Best Hotel, they went to the terrace and took their chairs near the wash basin. Kannan consulted Meena and placed an order to the bearer for the special items they liked to have in their dinner. They took their dinner as slowly as they could.

“It is a surprise,” said Kannan, “that we have to meet like this and decide about our life for good. There is another lonesome soul, Balu in Delhi remembering about me. I have to drop him a letter in response to his of last week. Tomorrow I shall write a letter regarding what our friends did here and about our happy news. But I have not told you about one important thing I have decided to do two months back. Do you guess what it could be, Meena?”

She replied, “I know what your interest is. Perhaps you would be thinking of writing a new poem or an article or something like that.”

“You are almost near the point,” said Kannan. “Yes, I have decided to write a history about the Halo friendship. As I have found that the points I have are not adequate for writing a history I have conceived in my mind, I have decided to write a novel basing my experiences with my friends regarding my writing profession. This I am going to do as a mark of remembrance of the old days I spent in company with Balu and other friends.

Further, this will be depicting in detail about the evolution of my writing career. In short, this novel will become a sort of souvenir to Balu and at the same time it will reveal the stage of my maturity in this profession. Since you have come here to cooperate with me in my life activities, this work of art will be easy for me to venture upon and complete it at the earliest I can. What do you say, Meena?”

“This is a new and nice idea, Kannan,” said Meena. “I shall be very much pleased to cooperate with you in this venture. Why can’t you start writing this novel tomorrow itself? What is the title you have proposed to give to this novel?’

“I have not thought about it yet. That is a good question. Shall I give the name of our group itself or shall I give an imaginary title to it? Or shall I write the complete novel and then decide about what title I could fix for it?”

“What harm will it give to anyone, if you give the title, The Halo for your first novel?”

“Okay, that is very fine. But, what about the names of the characters do you think I can give?”

“You have the full substance with you. You have also fixed the title for the novel. So, giving names to your characters is not at all a problem. Now what is the vital thing is what has made you to follow as model in order to begin, proceed and bring a natural ending to the story. There are so many novels. You have to choose one among them which is more or less suitable to your story and you have to keep that as your model while you are writing yours.”

“That is not at all a problem for me. Okay, who are the novelists you like most Meena?”

“I like Pearl S. Buck, Denise Robins, A.J. Cronin, Agatha Christie, Earl Stanley Gardner and some other novelists like that. But who are your favourites, my dear?”

At that moment the hotel bearer came to them with a tray full of all the items of the dinner ordered by them. He neatly placed everything on the table and left the place with a bow.

“Well, my dear,” said Kannan to her, “let us start tasting the items one after the other in our dinner programme now. I shall be pleased to hear what you like to have after these items.”

“This is more than sufficient for me, Kannan. It will give me great pleasure if you share with me some more quantity of dishes arranged on my side. Generally, I am a poor eater. Please don’t tax me more.”

“Your pleasure is my pleasure. I don’t press hard, my dear. You have agreed that I am a gentleman. I shall try to maintain myself so!”

“Thank you, my dear. Let us please go ahead with our discussion on your novel as we taste this delicious dinner.”

“Yes, as a writer I have great esteem for many novelists from the 18th century to the present one. I like Richardson, Henry Fielding, Austen, George Meredith, Dickens, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Maugham, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Alistair MacLean, A.J. Cronin, Ian Fleming and Frederick Forsyth. I like their writings. Now my most favourite authors are Leon Uris and Forsyth. But for my first novel I may have to follow the models of Flaubert, Maugham and Dickens because the story, incidences, atmosphere and my own experiences are akin to those novelists’ expressions. However, my experience is not the same and so my expression will also won’t be the replica of theirs.”

Then their attention was over the dishes placed on the table. Kannan finished his dishes first. They ordered for hot milk. After taking milk along with her, Kannan paid the amount for the Bill in cash with 50 paisa as tips to the bearer. They got up from their chairs, moved from there and sat on a Sofa placed at the far end of the terrace. From there they could see clearly the sea. The sea breeze was fine in that calm hour. As a gesture of conclusion, she talked about the novel with him.

“Now you have the model to be followed for the novel you are going to write. Okay, do you have any idea of dividing it into so many parts or chapters, Kannan?”

“Yes, my dear, I have thought about that earlier. I am going to write it in a few parts. Part I will be a sort of prologue. Part II is about the birth of The Halo. Part III will be allotted for the activities of The Halo i.e. its achievements and drawbacks. In Part IV I shall deal with the solution to compensate the drawbacks of the Halo. Finally, in Part V, I shall give a wonderful conclusion. Each part will have chapters according to the development of ideas that occur best to me. That’s all.”

“So, the plan for the novel is over. What is my share in your grand work of art?”

“With your assistance, my dear, I am thinking of completing this work, say with in a period of six months. Then I like to redraft the chapters, do the editing work and make it a well finished product. Shall I have the writing business whenever I meet you in your apartment?”

“Sure, you can carry on with this business in my room. I shall take down the matters in short hand as you dictate and type it out then and there. I have all the equipments in my room.”

“That’s fine, Meena! I would like to discuss about the scenes and the chapters with you. Mainly basing your suggestions I am going to dictate this complete novel to you. I think you won’t mind, know?”

“I shall be very glad to do that for you. So, are you completely thorough, my dear?”

“I am perfectly clear to start the job tomorrow. Now I think we may leave the Hotel for your apartment.”

“Yes, my dear, it is getting time. We may go on an auto rickshaw standing at the corner of the road.”

They stopped down to the ground floor and left the hotel. They got into an auto and left the place. When they reached the building Meena residing, they saw some people going in and coming out. They both got down from the auto.

Meena took him to her apartment. It was a neat one. He sat on a chair for a few minutes. After a few minutes’ chat he started moving from there.

“Well, my dear,” said Kannan, “auto will be waiting for me in the street. Good night and see you tomorrow at about 10 a.m.”

“Yes, dear! Good night! I shall be readily waiting for you tomorrow.”

“Sweet dreams!” said he and left the place.

The sound of the auto rickshaw too disappeared. Meena closed her apartment door, prepared for the bed and switched off the light.

– Continued

February 24, 2008

The Halo Dreams : A Novel 
Writing a Novel | The Park | Philosophy | The Confusion | The Conversation
The Appointment | The Journey | The First Publication | The Change
The Secret | The Painted Veil | The Halo Magazine | The Debts | The Break
A Letter | A Surprise Letter | The Literary Muse | The Souvenir | The Questionnaire
The Reconciliation | The Lake | The Final Meets | The Surprise | The Settlements
The Result 

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