Palanivel

Smoking was no longer allowed on campus. When Palanivel felt like a cigarette (or simply bored), he clambered onto his rusted bicycle and began the five-minute ride along leafy avenues and tracks. Once at the side gate, he rested his cycle against the inner wall and made his way through the revolving iron grill, emerging in a magical instant from wooded island of learning into sweltering sidestreet of petty commerce. He looked in at Murugan's shop and asked for a couple of filter tips. He then stepped back from the counter, where assorted customers had their arms outstretched, money in hand, trying to catch Murugan's attention. On the wall just outside the shop was mounted a soot-blackened lighter. Palanivel leaned in towards it, cigarette in mouth, and clicked a switch below as the familiar orange-red glow appeared. He stood upright and inhaled, stepping aside for the next man in line with the easy camaraderie that is born of shared weaknesses.

Palanivel set on a ledge. In some ways, the new rule was a blessing. At the very least, it gave him an excuse to get away for a few minutes in the afternoon, when the oppressive, soporific heat made it impossible for him to keep his eyes open and his back straight when he sat in his usual seat on the fifth floor of the library. As a clerk in a reading hall that housed esoteric journals and reports and publications of other institutions, Palanivel seldom had much work to do during the day. In the evening he had a little work returning to their places the handful of books and magazines left lying on the tables. He had joined the library seven years ago, had risen, literally, from noting visitors' names at the entrance on the ground floor to his current position on the top floor, with several steps in between. He saw dreams of students coming to his curved desk and asking him to help them locate a specific journal, to understand the subtleties of the Dewey Decimal System - a system that, after monthly training sessions and years of experience, had become second nature to him. But none came. The few who made the trip up to the fifth floor brought their own books and notes, using the hall purely as a quiet place to study. The occasional scratching of a pencil or creaking of a chair across the floor would divert Palanivel for a while, but he was acutely aware of his own redundance - nobody came up to him and asked for anything. The only exceptions, he thought, smiling at the memory, were external researchers who had come to the library in search of some specific material. On such days Palanivel's withered spirit briefly unfurled itself as he shuttled around the shelves, spoke animatedly on the phone to his colleagues downstairs, and led his visitors across and between various reading rooms. But such days did not come often.

Palanivel stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, and stood up. He tipped the ash off, disposed of his cigarette, and mounted his bicycle.