Venky on the flying Vespa

seed #312

1

“Hey look the coconut man.” Raman who was walking like a sleepy turtle suddenly sprinted towards the gate. This sudden shift in his gait could be ascribed to the appearance of a wooden trolley cart full of multicoloured coconuts. On his way forward Raman took a pause midway, turned around and signalled at Venky, his best friend to match his speed. Venky would have listened to him had he not been thinking about the geometry test to be held on the following day. The ghastly thoughts of his maths teacher Mrs.Pillai setting an abnormally difficult paper were crowding his mind. Thus he refused to respond to Raman’s eager invitation and continued at the same pace, (perhaps a bit slower) towards the main gate. Looking at his walk, one would assume that he was dragging himself like a heavy luggage of some sort. It took him almost an eternity to cover the 15 odd steps he had to inorder to reach the gate. Deeru bhai, the beetle chewing gate keeper whose bushy moustache reminded Venky of a notorious dacoit who lived in the forests of TamilNadu, smiled at him. Deeru bhai’s smile was the most refreshing thing he had ever seen, which was a striking contrast to his bushy moustache and his otherwise serious countenance, something he generously gave to the children he liked and Venky was one of them. Their exchange of smiles was almost ritualistic while exiting the school premise. Venky had barely managed to smile back at Deeru bhai that day, when he could hear Raman screamed his name. “Hey Venky.. quick, this is the coconut water I was talking about.”. Venky had been hearing about this coconut water man after Raman and that 8th grader bully football player Jaggi had it. That was roughly 2 weeks ago. Jaggi had this terrible habit of hitting people with  football and  calling them weird names. He never cared about the coconut water, what bothered him was a serious matter that Raman, his best friend of all would  mix with Jaggi and his gang despite them bullying him and calling Raman Top-Raman because of his curly noodle like hair. That really made Venky mad, which was another important reason for his visible reluctance to have the coconut water. 

Raman and Venky studied in the 6th grade of South Pioneer High school, one of the most noted schools in Chennai. Being a 6th grader in South Pioneer was a matter of great peril. There were suddenly all these new chapters in maths which were not there before. For example these alphabets that had suddenly entered the maths space, Venky never really saw it coming and all these geometry things now had theorems which were an augean chore to be honest. There were class tests every second day. The 8th grader Jaggi and his boys would come and bully the 6th grader boys and students of lower grades didn’t really consider 6th graders to be seniors. The only thing that Venky found interesting was reading about space and looking at the starry sky from his balcony. Perhaps  the inestimable vastness made his class tests look less scary. He wanted to become a space scientist  but he was certain that his maths would be a big problem. Because space scientists were supposed to be good at solving maths problems if not anything else. His uncle who worked at Nasa had been great at maths throughout school.“What are you thinking son?.” The coconut water man brought his attention to the present. “Be here in the moment and sip the water,  tell me how you like it?” Venky looked at the man, he looked like no regular coconut water man who drove coconut carts around the city. He had these really long white hair and wore a green silk robe which had woven mirrors in them. He had deep blue eyes which were remarkably quiet and his face had these strange freckles which made Venky really curious. The coconuts on his cart  were smaller than the regular ones and their colours had variety beyond the regular green one. Venky  looked carefully into the water that it contained. It was a rare shade of yellow. It did not look all that clean. The last thing he wanted was to fall sick before the day of his examination. He shifted his gaze to Raman, he found him sipping with his eyes closed as if lost in a world of deep satisfaction; as if he was having some heavenly nectar. Looking at that, Venky forgot his concern and  was persuaded to take a sip from his own. The moment Venky put his mouth to the pink straw and drew in his first gulp, something happened, he had not felt like this ever before, the feeling was beyond words, as if it drowned all the voices in his head and stopped the flow of time. A joy like no other had coated him. A feeling of deep calmness had downed on him. This feeling stayed with him throughout that evening and he couldn’t really worry about the ugly geometry paper that Mrs Pillai was going to set the next day, and the probable parents call that would follow due to flunking the paper. That evening he kept looking at the stars from his balcony, it was decked with bright twinkling stars. He kept looked at them till the distance between the stars and him seemed to have collapsed. He felt he was them.

The next day he did horribly in the geometry exam. Attempted only one question and he did not have the courage of tallying the answer with his friends. Because doing that may expose that he was going to get 0 and that was not the best feeling. Venky knew that going by experience. That evening he left the school building earlier than usual. He gave Deeru bhai a half hearted smile.. He avoided Raman as he was not in the mood for his banters. He did look for the coconut water man and hoped he appeared while he cycled back home. But that didn’t happen. This man seldom came. Like once or twice every month. He remembered the taste of the coconut water lingering in his mouth and the feeling that he had felt after he had it. He remembered the smile of the man and his beard, there was something very pleasing about him. Right in front of his house there was a big football field where jaggi and his bully friends would often play. And often they would kick the ball in the direction of his balcony. One day it had broken a window pane. Venky wished he could go out and really hit Jaggi and his friends with his slippers. But he never showed the courage. They were stronger and Jaggi was in fact the captain of the school football team. That day as he was cycling back he found Jaggi and his friend playing on the field. He cycled past the field avoiding eye contact pretending to have not seen them play. He also hoped that they had not seen him arrive home. His mother asked him whether his exam was good to which he nodded a feeble yes. An hour or so later while sitting in his room going over and over the question paper tears welled up in his eyes. He was certain he was not good in maths, he was certain that his chances of being a space scientist were now dismal. Why did one need to be good in maths to go to space. Poor Venky was drowning in despair, when something struck him. Literally. Something that came from nowhere hit his head and knocked him off his chair, and the plastic vase keeping paper plants fell with him. “Hey Venky, that’s like you, useless.keep it.” .”What a free kick Anna, you beckham”. He knew about these screaming voices, he knew whom it belonged to. He could feel the derision in their voice, but that was not what really hurt him, what really hurt him was that he knew that the words were true. 

The football that Jaggi had hit Venky with remarkable accuracy from the field had no air in it.  The mud around it would refuse to leave no ,matter how much he tried to dust. “What happened Venku, did something break?” Venky’s mother screamed from the floor beneath.“No mumma, everything is ok here.” He picked up the deflated ball and picked up the flower vase that had fallen.The twilight was collecting outside, he looked at the watch, it was already 4pm. He was supposed to go to his drawing class but he was feeling tired and feeble. He did not know when he had drifted into the world of sleep.
He woke up it was already 6pm. He could hear his mother practicing her music as usual. He felt hungry and was elated to find his mother had left  a dish of his favourite onion uttapam, like his mother would always give him his favourite onion uttapam on the day of an examination, regardless of however it goes. Venky bit into the uttapam with great attention. The coconut chutney tasted better than how it did on most days, it has always felt so, on the day of examination. A bad maths examination made his mother’s amazingly tasty Uttapams taste all the more amazing. He was busy gorging till he found a strange screeching noise coming from the direction of the balcony. He felt really scared. A few days ago a snake had slithered up the water pipe. He hadn’t told his parents because doing so would mean putting grills around his balcony which would restrict the balcony view of the sky. Could it be a slithering snake from the field, these days there were these big grass growing on the field, too many snakes and reptiles. The maintenance committee where his dad was a member took things really easy. Venky was scared of snakes. He placed the Uttapam plate back on his table, maintaining great caution to not make any sound. He tiptoed his way towards the balcony and the screechy sound kept increasing. The moment he reached the balcony and looked outside at the water pipe he froze. Yes there was something that was crawling up. But it was no reptile. It was a human being, struggling his way up. Venky would have fainted right there had he not seen the man’s face as he looked up at him and smiled somewhat embarrassedly. Fear was replaced instantly by a sense of surprise. He felt he was hallucinating, for what he saw couldn’t be real. He rubbed his eyes. The moon light had faintly reached till the water pipe. Nothing changed. It was the same face. “Sorry sir, didn’t want to bother you by pressing the calling bell, I am a bit socially awkward.” At that precise moment Venky heard himself saying the following words loudly to himself“The coconut man.”He said out of absolute disbelief.

2

“ My brother and I wanted to place the biggest coconut trolley of the multiverse, say around 4000 miles width right here. We needed 7 good unicorns to ride it. You know we are choosing them.” The man took a sip from his gatorade. “ You know exactly this part. It had to be the biggest coconut water shop in the whole universe. Ummm would you mind moving to the left.”He continued as he was trying to park his vespa. He had made a lot of noise all the way and now it was difficult to put it to stand. Venky still hadn’t grasped anything. His uncle who worked for Nasa told him that the first thing that a space scientist had to master was the ability to not be surprised. There were facts about space which were not as simple as onion uttapam. That reminded him that the Uttapam was still unfinished and if his mother came to his room there would be a situation. The brother had told him that a space scientist had to be really fearless. The man was struggling big time to park his vespa and manage his big sling bag but somehow the stand refused to anchor properly. “Oh, these space vespas I tell you, these luxury space vehicles have massive design issues, and the fuel these use, god knows whatitis, urgghhhh!.” The man was restless, his long hair tied in a bun seemed like white beehive, Venky perhaps saw a few bees flying out of it. Venky was now feeling nervous, it was no more funny.. He was standing on an empty blankness which had no beginning or end. The space shoes the old man had given him were tight, they had some strange magnetic sole which stuck him to space, his friend Raman had seen a lot of Star Trek and all he had shared details about weird space gears. These gigantic balls of hydrogen and rocks with flames that almost kissed passed him and this vast  blackness, he was just not used to this. What is happening? He asked himself. He should not have really given in. Like he never thought this was going to be like this. He would like to rewind the last couple of hours of his life and try and understand what exactly happened.

A couple of hours back

“Please help  me” The coconut water man extended his hand for support. Venky did not know what he was doing when he held him as he put one foot on the railing and jumped and landed on his balcony. This whole act demanded a flexibility of a trained gymnast. The man looked as old as hills but there was something inexplicably youthful about him. “You..you are the coconut water man.” Venky repeated the 5th time in 5 seconds, he was trying his best to keep his voice low. The man was tying the velcro straps of his oversized crocks which emitted tungsten light of some sort. “Urgghhh these shoes sir, not made for land I tell you.” He somehow managed to fix the strap of his hideous looking shoes. ”Ahhh finally, such fuss” he looked with a sigh of relief and smiled at Venky. “ Good Sir, I do deal in the coconut water business, but I think the man you have seen is, he is my twin brother, he samples some of our coconuts across the multiverse, though getting the best coconuts are his area, my expertise  lies in space management.” The man smiled at Venky who was too startled to speak. “By the way let me introduce myself, I am Dr Tchchch. I had my Phd from Backspace University  in ‘’communication among planets and asteroids’ my thesis is out in space on the internet .” Well, sir I must not waste your time, and get directly to the reason of me coming all this way to your house, in this odd manner and at this odd hour. My location tracker says that…ahh there it is.” The man’s face lit up as his eyes fell upon something, he was about to walk into the room. “What am I even thinking,so impolite of me to be walking in like that, sorry  can’t go in sir, please fetch me that one.”Venky followed his finger. It pointed at the deflated football that jaggi had hit him with. “That one yes, yes, finally I found it. It kept changing locations like a foosball.” He broke into a slight Michael Jackson jig. 

Venky was too surprised to be asking any further questions about the football. He fetched the dusty flat football and handed it over to the man.. Despite his strange ways and untimely arrival, his presence made Venky feel safe and pleasantly curious. “Thanks sir, this jupiter here is slightly  big in size, you mind giving me a bag, like a big one, I have a sling bag but it has a lot of things already. I will certainly return it to you.” the man requested humbly with joined hands.. “Jupiter?” Venky asked, he knew the man did not mean what he was thinking. “Oh yes Jupiter, you must have read about it, the biggest planet of the solar system, the massive rotating helium ball. This one.” Venky did not know what to say to that. He smiled thinking it would be really impolite  not laughing at an elderly man’s joke. His mother had taught him this, laughing at elderly people’s joke was a must.

‘He tried to avoid it but the man was insistent.’ A big one.’ he smiled. Venky noticed that the man was wearing a robe made of red silk which had the same kind of mirrors that the coconut water man was wearing the other day. “A big one sir”. Venky found a bigger backpack made of rugged denim  he would  take to school in 5th grade. He had stopped taking it eversince people began making sidey remarks. “Thanks sir for the great help. There is my vespa in the field. you want to come along for some fresh air. It will be a welcome change. And it won’t take me long. I really do not want anyone across the multiverse to notice that Jupiter is missing. After all it is the biggest.”Said the man as he put the decompressed football in his bag. Venky did notice that the ball was perhaps bigger than the usual. “Ok then bye good sir, will return the bag to you.”The man decided to make a move upon finding no response.

He straight away climbed down the water pipe. After landing on the field the man walked toward his vespa, sat on it and kick started it. Venky could hear the hum of the engine culminate. Dr Tchchch was clearly finding it difficult to start his vespa. Venky felt an unknown force take charge of him. He jumped from his first floor balcony, something he did for the first time and somehow managed to not break his leg. It was a half decent landing given that it was the first time he jumped from such heights. Raman had jumped from his balcony easily more than 10 times and he would always feel that this was something he could never do. The faint moonlight guided Venky as he dodged the pebbles and the undulations of the field done by the digging of dogs till he mounted on the vespa . The man stopped his engine and looked back.”Oh sir, hello sir, great you came” he gave him the helmet to wear, a regular biker helmet and crocks. Venky noticed that the crocks were similar to the shoes, the one that the man was wearing, emitting short  tungsten beams.”Sorry for the hassles sir, but the space highway police patrolling is pretty strict there had been a few accidents off late.” Venky laughed loudly as the man was looking straight while kick start his vespa with great intent, he would have just smiled otherwise but he needed to laugh loudly to ensure his respects to his joke. He was ok responding to this old man’s funny remarks, as taught by his mother, till he felt that there might be chances the man was not really being funny. Perhaps the old man knew what he was saying, they were more than just jokes. Funny or not funny, Venky understood that this man was not ordinary the moment he managed to start his progress.After all, vespas of regular people would not fly.

3

“There are 79 moons of Jupiter, you must be knowing” Dr.Tchchch told Venky as he plugged a tube into the football. There were all these splendid constellations around him blinking like diwali lights, only much brighter. Venky was starstruck in the true sense of the term. You can sit and relax. It will not take long. Actually compressing a planet takes a long. Inflating it isn’t that hard a work. The main plugged the other end of the tube to a power bank like casing. The man pressed it with force and was released to see the charging bars appear on the screen of the powerbank. “What’s that?” Venky asked for the first time as he saw a glowing ball that sped through almost knocking him down. That is an asteroid. There are many of these flying rocks here. You see there, that’s Neptune, you must know about him, it is also a big helium ball. Venky looked around him and saw only big gigantic gas balls around him. “Why did you compress…I mean compress..” Venky lisped his way before finishing his words. “I told you sir, I wanted to make space for our coconut trolley, round about this time close to summer solstice. There are a lot of tourists who gather here from different corners of the multiverse, our coconut water is quite the best. We have some of the best coconuts collected from different parts of the multiverse.” He smiled with deep content. You want to see what some of our customers have to say, you yourself had it, tell me sir how did you like it?” Venky who was looking at the constellations with awe was reminded of the amazing coconut water, he smiled back. Though he was too dazed to really articulate what he wanted to say. “Ah damn the charging broke.” The man continued trying to fix the loose connection with the power bank. It was ok. He smiled and continued “What was I saying, so I compressed it too much, our good Jup, you know how these suction tubes are these days and my elder brother, we are actually 3 brothers, my elder brother is like really casual, he did not send the tube for regular maintenance. So it just flew off and fell on earth of all places where you have these strange sports like football, lucky it fell  on the field in front of your house and you found it. This Jupiter here has been kicked around like a football, poor jup.” Dr.Tchchch looked worried and decreased his tone half a notch as if he was sharing something dark. “You know I had to remove the  need the moons and the clouds. I mean without Jup its clouds and the moons will only be visible. I just hope I can fix them right, my planet adhesives are also near expiry. Oh god such stress I tell you good sir. ” Venky was overwhelmed but decided to ask him. “Were you good in maths?” Venky asked Dr Tchchch in a shy tone. “Oh no never I was good in writing poetry but maths never.”

“Then how did you become a space…” he asked curiosity dripping from his voice.” A space manager….I was just curious, and I started supplying coconut water to a group of scientist on a space mission to build space colonies. That’s how, you don’t need to be good with maths to explore space. Never really, my good sir” the man smiled. Venky noticed the man had a broken tooth in front, like there was some air that would pass everytime he would speak. “Do you see this red spot here on Jupiter, its a hurricane storm going on for 350 years non stop can you beat it.350 years not kidding, I am like get some rest yo!” as the planet was regaining its size what had seemed like the stitch of the football was now appearing like a giant red spot. “This is why it is a bit difficult to put up a colony here. Though since you age slower because of higher gravitational pull, time is like slower here, people want to come here and live here. Venky was contemplating the vastness of space and the star showers and he had lost track of time. “Here we are done sir”. The man told. Venky looked at the enormous Jupiter back at its glory. Next he took out another steel casing out of his sling bag and took out tiny cotton rolls from it. He pressed a switch and like spider man’s web, the cotton rolls sped out and found its position as clouds around him forming a beautiful pattern around it. The man conked his head a bit backwards to find a different angle, he was visible, “Oh now we are all set. You know Jup here is incomplete without its beautiful clouds. Aren’t they beautiful.”” He took out  another small remote key like button out. The big ball of helium began rotating. “Jup here is quite fast, only takes 10 earthly hours for a rotation.” He had barely finished his sentence when a man, Venky’s mind, was caught by the thundering sound of wheels. He noticed it was a trolly cart. Venky looked closely; the man wheeling the cart and  DrTchchch looked like a mirror image, only that today the trolley man was wearing a beach shirt and a shiney lungi. “You are late brother.” The trolley had a heap of circular objects. “quickly before any one takes note.” The man gave Venky a smile. He realized it was the coconut water man, he looked closely and found his bone structure was slightly bonier than DrTchchch. The man refused to say a word and raised on the trolley cart and with remarkable speed threw the circular objects around Jupiter. He was done in minutes.” Thankfully the adhesives worked. 79 of them are there?” Said Dr Tchchchch. The man in lungi replied with a nod. “Great just learn to be a bit punctual, what is about time.” Dr Tchchch asked his brother. “You know time is variable in space.” The coconut man told him and smiled at Venky as he shifted his gaze.  Little Venky was so amazed by all this that he had forgotten all about himself. That was the thing with space, it made him forget about himself. He had often realized that himself was the root cause of all problems. He wanted to stay in space. Then the Dr Tchchchn took out a portable speaker from his eye phone and plugged in his phone to play music, some really groovy songs. This is the best band of the multiverse, they are these jazz band of apes. The beats were really jumpy. Dr Tchchch, the coconut man twin brother of his and Venky danced like mad to the beat. They further celebrated the  whole success in silence with some fresh coconut water. It tasted as ethereal in space as it did in front if school. Venky finished it right away, but there was something timeless about it. “Thanks for your time sir.” Dr Tchchch shook hands with Venky and said. “My brother here will take you back to your home.” Venky did not want to leave but Dr Tchchch promised he would visit often and take him along on his flying Vespa rides. He gave him back his denim bag. He got on the coconut trolley.

His journey through astral highways was kind of bumpy. The trolley also flew with outstanding speed and smoothness, probably better than the Vespa. The coconut trolley came and halted by the balcony, he smiled at him as Venky jumped onto the balcony very gently. The man waved a warm goodbye and disappeared into the thin air with his trolley. Venky looked at the clock. It only had been an hour. Time, his uncle from NASA had told him, was relative, in space a lot of time may not be equal to the time spent here. “Whatever just happened? he was still in major awe.” There were very few things that Venky had not understood yet felt good about. This was something that has happened for the first time, something he had not understood anything of but everything felt so awesome.  He smiled to himself. While finishing the remaining Uttapam he found himself doing something he had never thought of. Thanking Jaggi for hitting him with Jupiter!