Double-Barrelled

Remarkable insistent flashing. Mesmerising to watch. The chap at the cashier’s desk at Muthu turkey head extended, and the eyes above all. As if on stalks. Beaming, bulging, near popping from their sockets. The greatest strain was concentrated in those orbs. Nothing whatever about the cashier to explain it, good, regular guy possessed of a brilliant smile tickled. But this chap was seeking, enquiring, unable to fathom something that was before him. Not surprisingly the other avoided his gaze. What too was remarkable here almost as much as the look itself was the reflection of Yanasagaran. This man was darker, colour and even more features recalling Rawat’s revelation of the African slave trade that was introduced into that unexpected corner of the sub-continent. Old Hollywood films, comedies and serials, where the servant or cow-hand entered, contained precisely this visage, the cameras searching it out for the audience laughs. Yana when he was hearing the unexpected, when challenged or uncertain, would flex his facial muscles and cast into precisely that form and aspect. Striking and most unusual to have it repeated here in Yana’s home town. Was it Africa and Southern India too in confrontation with the gun barrel and its administrators? What was it?

NB. The Slave Trade in Africa - A Historical Perspective, Hasan M. Rawat. Karachi, 1985

Johor Bahru, Malaysia