“They didn’t have the choice of going to school like we do.” “You sound just like Father Luke, our teacher,” complained Naveena. “Stop talking about school. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then no more school talk. If you like it so much, why don’t you go instead?”
A few months later, after having taken his sister’s place in Bayyaram, Venu found himself wondering whether he mightn’t prefer tending buff aloes after all. As Naveena had said, the people at school were friendly, but he was homesick for his stick-and-mud hut and for his family. After lunch one day, he swallowed his pride and joined a small group of boys leaving for the village. The following day, he was back tending buff aloes.
The familiarity of the task was comforting at first, but he quickly found himself more restless than ever. When his teacher Father Luke arrived a few days later on his motorbike, with dust in his salt-and-pepper hair and words of encouragement on his lips for the homesick children who had run away, Venu began wondering if he’d made the right
choice.
“We are always happy to have you if you wish to return,” Father Luke had said gently to them all. “You are always welcome.”
Those words seemed to fill the air around Venu now, as he sat once again on the grass with the buff aloes, willing the shadows to lengthen and yet anticipating a strange kind of emptiness in the evening ahead.
If I do not return to school, he thought,
this will always be my world. Venu tried to imagine himself as a teenager, then a young father, then an old man in this place, grazing buff aloes and watching a succession of seasons pass before his eyes. The thought sent a shiver of disquiet through his body. If he stayed at home, he would never learn more about art — a talent he had discovered at school — or have the chance to transform his love of sports and knack for helping other children into the first career he had ever thought of exploring — teaching physical education. That night, he decided, he would tell his parents he was returning to Bayyaram.
“Venu, that is the third time you have nearly dropped that bowl,” sighed Venu’s father as
the family was washing dishes one Saturday morning.
“I’m sorry, Father,” Venu mumbled.
“I can only hope Father Luke arrives before all our dishes end up broken on the floor,” his mother teased, dipping her plate into the bucket of water from the nearby stream.
Venu was now 14, and his first few years of hard study had brought him to an important turning point. He had just finished taking the exam that would determine whether or not he would attend high school — and be able to pursue his desired career. Venu had found the exam difficult; since his return home he had hardly been able to think of anything but whether he had passed. His parents, though understanding, were beginning to grow a little weary of Venu’s habit of jumping whenever he thought he heard Father Luke’s motorbike. Twice already his mother had had to rescue a cup or plate from his trembling grip.
When the sound of wheels on dirt finally announced the priest’s arrival, Venu nearly stumbled in his haste to dart outside and greet his teacher. Father Luke, not wishing to prolong his anxiety, smiled and handed him a piece of paper from the pocket of his trousers. It was a list of names. Venu’s eyes raced down the paper until he found his own.
“I passed!” he said wondrously.
“So,” Father Luke said, “what new challenges have you set aside for yourself this summer?”
Venu thought for a moment, then grinned. “I think it’s time my sisters came to school, don’t you?”
CD
Julie L. Rattey is managing editor of Catholic Digest.
