ABSTRACT
Portraits of some unusual people fill this section. An ‘Umbrella Repairer,’ a workaholic, would stare at umbrellas and not the persons holding it. Poathan, a cattle-pound worker who leads stray bulls, cows, and goats to the pound once drags his own goat routinely to the pound! (in ‘Pounder Poathan’). Uthup, who digs a well for his villagers who till then had to go to a river to bring home water, gets disillusioned when public water taps are installed in his area and his well is discarded and his pioneer efforts forgotten (in ‘Uthup’s Well’). Nanu-mama, a well-to-do landowner, is nearly pauperized when he sells his plots one by one over a period of time for cash to clear his dues to shop-keepers (in ‘Nanu-mama’). This piece turns out to be an addendum as well to the ‘decline and fall’ of many upper caste Nayar families who were doing well as landowners. The fifth story has a grandma whose acerbic tongue alienates her from her neighbourhood (in ‘Paapi Grandma’).
