Known Strangers

During my childhood, there was an old lady who used to sell roasted chickpea (kadala) and peanuts (kappalandi).  She was very old, short, and thin with a stoop.  Even at an advanced age she had to work to make both ends meet.  She always wore plain maroon or blue colour saree with black border.  Of course, the color of her saree was always dim.  She carried chickpea and peanuts in a big cloth bag on her shoulder.  She had a small cylinder-shaped measuring vessel made of aluminum.  She used to sell one heaped vessel of nuts for 10 paise.  She carried the bags on her shoulder and walked from street-to-street shouting “Kadala, Kadala, Kappalandi”.  Her voice was feeble and the pronunciation not clear.  Still, most of the people, including us, bought nuts from her.  More than taste of the nuts, lending a helping hand to her was the reason behind many people buying from her.  She was a quiet lady, who never spoke anything.  She would just come, give nuts, collect money, and keep moving.  I didn’t know anything about her; name, place of stay, her family, nothing was known.  I suppose the same was true with most of my neighbours too!

Another character that comes to my mind is a beggar, whose name was Hussain.  He was dumb.  Though his name was Hussain, people called him ‘Pottan’.  Pottan in Malayalam means idiot, but in colloquial language, it also means one who is dumb.  He used to come to our house almost twice or thrice a week.  He would stand near the gate and keep knocking till some of us saw him.  We used to give him something (mostly 10 or 20 paise coins).  He used to collect it and move to the next house.  My grandmother believed that no alms should be given on Tuesdays and Fridays and my parents continued this tradition.  So, when Hussain came on Tuesdays or Fridays, we used to ask him to come the next day.  He would still wait for some more time before leaving.  During festivals and other special occasions, we used to offer him food.  Beyond his name, we didn’t know anything about him. 

As I grew up, the frequency of visits by these two came down and eventually they stopped coming.  I am sure we all have such characters in our lives, whom we would have met a hundred times or more, and still, we didn’t know anything about them.  It could be anyone, the candy seller in front of the school, the rikshaw/cab driver, peon who rang the college bell, boy who served tea in the canteen, fruit vendor on the pavement, and so on and so forth!  Have we not met them so many times? Yes.  Do we know them? Yes.  But do we know them enough? No.  Still, their faces, voices, mannerisms, everything is permanently etched in our memory.  Yes, they are known to us, yet they are strangers.  W B Yeats says, ‘there are no strangers here, but friends you haven’t yet met’.  But the people mentioned by me are ‘strangers whom we met many times’…. So, they are ‘Known Strangers’!