From: paulchem@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Icarus)
Subject: The Trebuchets of Trivandrum --[ Story ] -- Icarus.
Organization: The Net-Anarchists of SCI, Inc.
              Flaming Homer Division.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 04:23:37 GMT

1] Well folks, Sridhar said he couldnt wait for this saga to appear.
   I do not know how he knew I was working on this.
   Honestly folks I dont know.
   Comments to paulchem@tigger.cs.colorado.edu

2] 

The Trebuchets of Trivandrum.
-----------------------------

"Inde Iswara! enthannu ee kannunnudu ?"
              ----"My God! What am I seeing, can this be true?"

 The lights had gone off and there had been a frantic search for 
 a lamp or a candle at the The Kerala Paradise Hotel, where I was
 staying on a visit some ten years ago. I was in the hotel lobby 
 and waiting for my cousin, when the electricity was cut off. 

 The buzz of mosquitoes became overwhelming and we were being eaten alive.
 I knew there was nothing to be done, but wait patiently.

 So I listened while my neighbours discussed the vicious parasites that
 landed on our faces and extracted their petty insect revenges for hours
 of being sloshed around by the streams of air from the ceiling fans.
 
 Apparently mosquitoes have wings powerful enough to fly against the flow
 of air driven down by the most powerful of fans. What stopped them was the
 scattering of the chemicals that are released from a human body and served
 as a homing beacon. Some people where prone to send out sharper beams.
 Experiments in bio-feedback showed that concentrating the will on shutting
 off the pointless pheremones actually confused the mosquitoes. Maybe a warm
 tomato was just as attractive to a mosquito, indeed only the female mosquito
 sucked human blood. Always knew the female was the deadlier of the species.
 I was deep in these musings when :

 "Athe, Ee trade union kaara ee naadu nashipichidu"
             -----  "I tell you, its these trade unions that has destroyed
                     the land."

 This political conversation, had been going on for some time now.
 They had been discussing Karunakaran vs Anthony vs Communists vs Kerala
 Congress vs Muslim League vs Centre, and onwards in a circle.

"Inde Iswara! enthannu ee kannunnudu ?!!"
 The clerks wife had lit a candle.

 The sight that met our eyes, paralyzed us with horror, or speeded our pulses,
 depending on which side of normal you were on.

 The receptionist was sprawled on the sofa in the corner, her clothes in
 sufficient disarray to allow us a quick fleeting glance of lacy underclothes.
 A man with a thick mustache had his hands around her and was doing 
 things that were unspeakable. When he realized he had an audience he
 adjusted his clothes and looked back at us defiantly.

 Nobody had laughed.
 There was tension in the air.

"Than oru commoonist anno ? Njan werethe onnu chodhichedda ?"
        -- "Are you a communist by any chance ?", an old man of 60 asked.

The mustachoed man smiled back.

"Alla saare, anganne onnum illya."
        -- "No sir, nothing like that."

I looked from one face to another.
There was no trace of sarcasm, they were serious.
I looked at the girl, who had managed to get her clothes into some
resemblance of modesty.
I smiled without malice at her, and she looked back at me with despair
filled eyes. Maybe she didnt see the humour, or maybe she saw too much
of it. So much of it that it made her cry.

Someone tapped me on my shoulder, and I saw my cousin dressed for the
rain that was poring down, in a check-ed lungi , while I was stuck in
my trousers.

We went out into the rain wih our umbrellas.
The roads were overflowing with the rain waters. 
My feet felt cool and nice when the light brown water rushed over them
in my rubber sandals.

I told him about the woman in the hotel.

"Oh! Avvullo ? Athu oru famous party-yya."
      --"Oh her, shes famous over here."

"Hmm."

Of a sudden I saw a man dressed in a white lungi, and a blue shirt with
a badge on his arm, go shooting over our heads, spinning slowly on his
own axis as he went.

"Ayyale eviddekka pogodinnudu ?"

     --"Where is that guy going ?" I asked my cousin.

"Poora parambillekke avvum. Avvude nalla mathrum poozhi mannu inde."

     --"To the festival grounds, I think, theres a lot of soft sand
        out there."

"Athu enthina ? Avvidde enthanu illathe ?"

     --"Why there? whats going on there."

"Avuude karyayitti onnum illya, party sakkavukkal recieve cheyyum,
ayyalude attendance eyuthi kazhinjal, veettilekke."

     --"There the party comrades will be waiting to mark attendance
        for the day. I suppose he will go home after that."

I saw another man, this time in a blue lungi and a blue shirt with the
same kind of badge on his arm go flying above us. This one spun more
rapidly than the other. Probably because of his small size.

We walked along in silence for a while as I tried to make sense out of
this wierd phenomenon.

    "Puthiye employment schem-a, divissuvam muputhu ruba."

        --"Its the latest employment scheme. 30 rupees for every day."

We had walked down the rain splashed roads, past the mills and past the
bars and restaurants, past the shady lodges, till we came to  a
old derelict stone edifice at the top of a hill.
It had been a palace that held the royal family before independance rewrote
our peoples history.

I saw the carved doors and the tiles now broken down, the coconut trees
that lined the path that led upto them, and the smoke that covered the place
in a reddish black envelope.
There was a long line of people with badges waiting in front of tables.

The birds were screaming as they raced to their nests before the 
sun went down.

The Tribuchets of Trivandrum were firing.

3] Stay Cool.
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