Achhan. 1966.

Short, taciturn man, perhaps 5'4".

"How tall are you," someone once asked him.

"Tall enough," he said, pointing down, "to reach the earth".

For a small man of few words, quite a storm he carried within him.

Anger like red-hot lightning. Ran to beat up a grand-uncle, karnavar and local grandee, when he was 16.

Walked a friend right into the tharavad at 17. A Christian. The first ever. The days of ayitham ended in that old house just like that, no words spoken. No one dared.

Long, awkward silences. Endless cigarette smoke. Bursts of music, history, literature, cinema, politics...slavery, caste, Civil Rights, Gandhi, flower power, the sexual revolution, LSD, the Beats, the Sixties, Marx, Sartre, Beckett...unusual fathering, too much for an adolescent.

Left in a storm last year. The hospi let him go, knew he was sinking. Speechless pain...three heartbreaking days. An aphasic fuzz, beyond us. Only music could reach him. I played rock 'n roll, swing, hard bop, Trane, Rafi, Mukesh, old Yesudas, MDR, Amir Khan...went like that.

If he knew I was doing this, I'd be dead.