When December Smelled of Oil

I am an old man now – 71, perhaps closer to silence than to noise, closer to prayer than to ambition.
I spent half a century with rockets, Computers, control systems, telemetry, redundancy charts and countdown clocks at the Space Centre in Trivandrum, but it is funny how life behaves in retirement.

The loudest memories in old age are not of engines firing or satellites ascending to the sky, but of small dusty courtyards, coconut shells cracking in the sun, and a thin, scarred boy named Mani.

These days, I sit with a shawl over my knees, sipping warm chukku kaapi, watching crows argue on electric lines, and I realise something simple and painfully clear:
it is not success that stays in the soul…
it is sorrow, kindness, friendship, and the faces that time tried to erase.

Mani was one such face.

Who Mani Was

Mani and I were born in the same year.
We played seven stones and football on the same muddy school ground, shared roasted tapioca from a single paper packet, and occasionally fought like stubborn roosters,
Only to walk home together an hour later, arms around each other, as if fights were just another way of saying we cared.

But Mani’s childhood broke before mine ever bent.

He was the third child in his family.
He had an elder sister, a younger brother, and his loving amma and appan. They were poor, yes, but gentle-hearted people,
the kind who smile even when God gives them only kanji and pickle.

Then came the smallpox epidemic –
that cruel visitor of those times, that thief in the night who stole without leaving footprints.

In three weeks, Mani lost them all. His mother first, then his little brother, then his beloved sister – the one he adored beyond words, the one whose plait he tied every morning before school,
the one who wiped his tears with the end of her pavada.

Finally, his father too surrendered to the fever.

Mani survived…
but scars remained – not just on his skin,
but etched like burns on the inside of his heart.

His face carried the smallpox marks, tiny pits of memory that even time dared not smooth out. Yet, when he smiled, the scars became invisible, as if light chose him despite everything.

With no one left to call home, no mother’s lap, no sister’s laughter, no father’s hand on his shoulder, life pushed him gently but firmly into work.

How He Came To Our Mill

My uncle ran a coconut oil mill near Angamaly, a loud, hot, earthy world of:

• shells cracking like thunder,
• drying coconut pieces spread like white stars on red soil,
• big oil pots breathing steam and heat,
• the smell of burnt coir and wet husk filling the air.

It was there, at the age of eleven, that Mani began working – not because he was careless or wild, but because he had no one left to feed him.

He turned coconuts under the sun with quiet patience, chased away crows who came in crooked hunger, and listened to the oil’s hiss as if it were a lullaby from a mother he once knew.

Sometimes, when the evening breeze cooled the yard, he would sit beside me on the low compound wall, legs swinging, eyes distant, voice soft:

“Ente chechi undayirunnenkil… njan ivide varillayirunnu.”
(“If my sister were alive… I would not be here.”)

And I, a boy who still had parents to run back to, could only look at him and swallow my silence.

For some children, life arrives too early.
For some children, sorrow becomes their first language.

Mani was one of them.

The Christmas Letter

That Christmas Eve still burns in my memory like a lone oil lamp in a dark chapel.

Everyone in the mill left early for midnight mass.
My uncle locked his office room and walked home humming “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells..,”
never knowing a small boy was curled up in the shadow of the copra sacks,
hugging loneliness like a blanket.

Mani stayed behind.

The great yard, once bursting with noise, slept like a village after harvest.
Only the smell of dried coconut flesh and warm husk floated in the air.

It was then Mani took out an old crumbly notebook page
and a pencil bitten at both ends.

He whispered before writing:

“Daivame… oru kaaryam mathram… ente achachan enne thirichu kondupokane…”
(“God… just one thing… let my grandfather take me back…”)

His hands trembled as he wrote:

“Dear Paulose Appooppa ,
Merry Christmas.
Everybody is gone here.
I am alone now. You are the only one I have.
Please come for me.
I will do any work there at home.
I won’t trouble you.
Take me with you…”

The pencil marks broke under tears.
He wiped them with the back of his hand,
leaving a smear of coconut dust and grief across his cheeks.

The letter was simple, but hearts don’t need grammar.

He folded it into four tight corners and pressed it against his forehead as if it were Scripture.

The Night Behind The Copra Sacks

After writing, he curled up behind the towering coconut sacks,
their rough smell filling his tiny world.

There, hidden from moonlight and memory, he cried-
not loudly, not angrily,
but the way children cry when no one is left to listen:

silent, shaking, timeless.

Once, I peeked through the side window of the mill because I saw light flickering.

I saw nothing but shadows, yet I heard a sob that did not sound like a sound at all,
but like a heart asking why life is so early,
so heavy, so cruel.

I walked home with a knot in my throat.

That night, even the stars looked guilty.