The Boy Who Never Grew Up | A Ponmanipudi Story About Success, Loss and Memory

The Boy Who Never Grew Up

The first time Deva slept on a railway platform, he was nineteen.

The second time, he was twenty.

By the fifth time, he stopped counting....

The station master knew him. The tea seller knew him of course.

Even the stray dogs loitering in the station knew him. They were his friends...the only true friends.

Every morning Deva woke before sunrise, folded his thin blanket, washed his face at the station tap and sometimes bathed in the toilet.

Then he set off carrying a cloth bag full of product samples....Soap, detergent, toothpaste...sometimes even scents and agarbathis.

Whatever could be sold, he carried with pride.

Anything that would keep his dream alive, he carried into town.

One evening, after fourteen hours of rejection, he returned to the station exhausted....

The tea seller, Ramthirtha, pushed a glass of tea toward him.

"No money today."

"I know."

"Then why tea?"

The old man shrugged...adding wistfully...

"Deva, son, you look worse than yesterday."

Deva laughed...

"Tomorrow will be better."

"You said that yesterday, son."

"Tomorrow will be busy."

Ramthirtha shook his head adding...

"Mad fellow."

"Maybe, maybe not...let's see"

Yet the next morning, Deva got up and did the same routine again....

Years later, when "Deva Enterprises" became famous, people called him visionary.

Nobody called him mad man anymore....

This disappointed Deva slightly because he had become quite attached to the title..."Mad man."

The company grew slowly and then exploded.

Then grew again...

Factories appeared, warehouses increased, distributors increased...money, wealth began to start living with Deva.

Then one evening, sitting in his office overlooking the city, Deva received a visitor....Gowri...his ex-wife.

The receptionist nearly fainted when she walked in.

"Sir."

"What?"

"Someone wants to see you."

"Who?"

"Ex wife, she says"

Deva looked up sharply.

"My ex wife?"

The receptionist swallowed.

"Former wife."

Gowri entered....older now, more calmer...the old anger long gone.

For a moment neither spoke.

Then Deva smiled benevolently..

"You look well, Gowri."

"You look expensive, Deva."

Deva laughed.

Gowri didn't....

The silence stretched like a thread...

Finally Deva said...

"I dreamed it. I built it."

Gowri looked through the glass wall at the city.

"Yes, you did"

"You never believed I would."

That made Gowri smile...a sad smile.

"No."

"What?"

"I always believed you would, one day."

The answer surprised Deva.

Then why had she left? Deva mused inside..

Perhaps Gowri heard the question.

Because she answered it....

"I didn't leave because you were failing."

The old wound stirred.

"Then why, Gowri?"

Gowri looked at him for a long time..

"You stopped seeing me."

The room suddenly felt suddenly smaller and suffocating...

"I was building something."

"I know."

"It was temporary."

Gowri nodded....

"Yes, that's what you said every year."

Neither spoke...

Finally she stood.

Before leaving, Gowri paused.

"Do you know what frightened me?"

"What?"

"You loved the future more than the present."

Then she left.....

For reasons, Deva couldn't explain, that conversation stayed with him....For almost three days.

Then life became busy again...And the feeling disappeared.

A year later, Narayan arrived carrying reports.

Narayan, his strategist and friend....the only man in the company who still argued with Deva, the founder of Empire...

"We have a problem, Deva."

Deva didn't look up.

"Then solve it."

Narayan remained standing.....

"The competitors have launched new products."

"Mmm."

"They're growing."

"Mmm."

"We aren't, Deva."

Deva finally looked up with bullish eyes...

"We own this market."

Narayan sighed....

"That's what everybody says before they stop owning it."

Deva laughed....

"You worry too much."

"No."

"What?"

"You don't worry enough."

Silence.......

Then Deva waved Narayan away.

The conversation ended....for time being.

But Narayan kept returning....again...again...

..again, every few months.

Every visit a little more urgent.

Every warning a little more desperate.

And every time Deva smiled....relax...relax...relax, Narayan...."all fine."

One evening, Narayan finally snapped...

"When did you last visit the factory?"

Deva frowned.

"I own the factory. I don't need to."

Narayan stared.

"That wasn't my question."

The room became very quiet...

For a moment Deva felt strangely irritated.

Then tired and felt strangely nothing.

Deva opened another bottle of expensive whisky sourced for him from France....

And the conversation ended.....

Years passed......

The parties became larger. The houses became larger. The cars became larger. The women became more prettier.....

Everything became larger and larger..

Except Deva.

One afternoon, Deva walked through one of his mansions....twenty rooms, marble floors, swimming pool, private theatre.....

Yet strangely...he felt lonely....dead inside.

A young woman sitting beside the pool looked up.

"What are you thinking?"

Deva smiled....

"Nothing dear."

That frightened him....Because it was true.

That morning everything ended, arrived very quietly....

No warning. No drama....

Just knock...loud knocking.

Deva opened his eyes. The knocking continued.

Someone beside him muttered...

"Ignore it."

But it continued, relentless.

Finally Deva opened the door.

Three men stood outside.....Lawyers, Bank officials, Court representatives.

For several minutes they spoke and showed him some document.

Deva heard almost nothing...

Words floated around him...assets, debt, possession, insolvency....Recovery.

The words sounded familiar to Deva.

Like a language he once knew.

Then one sentence finally broke through.

"The company is gone....over"

Gone.....Such a small word.

Years of life......Gone.

That evening the mansion felt enormous....empty, and silent.

Deva wandered through room after room.

Nobody stopped him.

Nobody called him.

And nobody needed him.

Near midnight Deva opened an old cupboard.

At the back sat a dusty cardboard box....

He frowned as he untied the box strings.

Inside were old photographs....factory photographs, warehouse photographs, distributor meetings....

And loan documents, newspaper clippings and sundry.

And then...one photograph.

A young man standing outside a tiny rented shed....thin, hungry, determined, terrified but alive, surviving....

Nineteen years old....the railway station boy.

The tea seller's mad fellow....ayoo...

Deva sat down, tears rolling from his eyes. For a very long time he simply stared...

Then he noticed writing behind the photograph....Gowri's handwriting...faded now....almost gone.

He read it slowly....as silent tears rolled...

"Don't forget to enjoy the journey."

Nothing more. No philosophy....no wisdom...

No grand message.

Just one sentence.

The photograph trembled slightly in Deva's hands.

Outside, somewhere in the distance, a train horn echoed through the night.

For a moment he could almost smell the railway platform.

The cheap tea...The cold mornings...

The impossible dream.

And suddenly he realised what hurt....

Not the company. Not the money.

Not the house....

The boy......

The boy who had once been willing to sleep on concrete for a dream.

The boy who would have laughed at all this.

The boy who had built everything...

Deva lowered his head.

And for the first time in many years...he cried....

Not because he had lost the Empire.

Because somewhere along the way...the empire had found a way to lose him.🌿

Welcome to Ponmanipudi...where nothing is as it seems.