One Brow Maniam

“Muthu! Muthu! Hey Muthu! How many times must I call you? Where are you
boy? Quickly come here! Appa needs your help”.

Maniam’s forehead was sweaty. His eyebrows were thick. They were actually
unusually thick. Sometimes, when he became irritated, his eyebrows arched and
inched closer, so much so that it would appear that he had one single eyebrow.

One single eyebrow! Can you imagine how that would look?

That gave him a rather sinister look. In fact, it often scared the living daylights out
of the neighbourhood kids. The kids would, upon seeing Maniam riding along on
his trusty old bicycle, would infuriate him by shouting out at the top of their lungs:

“Watch out, watch, watch out! One brow giant is coming to get us! Watch out,
watch, watch out!”.

However, this would make Maniam even more agitated causing his brows to get
rather infused. He would pedal furiously and try to get into the gateway of his
house before he could lose his temper. His temper was something that Muthu
should be worried about now.

Where was that boy? Didn’t he hear him call? Why was he such trouble?

Why, oh, why, couldn’t he just be like his big brother Vijay.

Maniam’s face lit up as he thought about Vijay.

Now, that boy was tall, handsome and hard working. He was also an obedient
and filial son. He was proud of Vijay. Maniam beamed. Lines streaked across his
already scraggly face. If only Vijay wasn’t away most of the time.

Maniam gave a heavy sigh. Sweat was pouring down from his forehead, trickling
down to his weather beaten face and dripping down to the cement floor below.
The sweat was starting to form a pool on the floor and interesting patterns were
beginning to form.

One even looked like men fighting off a tiger!

He put down the old rusty hammer he was holding. Trying to fix things around the
house used to be quite easy for him. These days, he easily felt tired and lacked
the strength to do even menial tasks. Ah, the perils of age. He was getting old.


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