Vishnu Vishakham

When everyone in my school in Delhi wanted to be a doctor or an engineer, I wanted to be Chellappan, the tandaan. The coconut tree climber. For most of my childhood that was the plan, with two detours. The first was KSRTC bus conductor. He tore colourful tickets by hand, counted change, stayed upright in a bus doing whatever speed it was doing, and signalled the driver to stop and start. There was a bell rope that ran all the way to the back, so he could run the whole bus from wherever he was standing. I was sold. The second was diesel loco pilot of the Kerala Express, hauling twenty-five coaches from Delhi to Kerala. I used to press my face to the window just to see the train curve at a bend, a kilometre of coaches like a snake nobody had told about the speed limit. But Chellappan outlasted both. A tandaan was lower caste, and usually not allowed to mingle with the rest of society. I was a kid and didn't see any of that. What I saw was a man who went up a swaying coconut tree, tal...