CHAPTER
ONE:
I, Tom
Kalkalan was born on the 03rd of July 1970. My father Karl had been forty years old then and
my mother Madhu had been twenty seven
when I was born. They had been married for eight years and my elder sister Rachel had been five years by then. We
lived in a large Tea estate in Pussellawa - Sri Lanka, which my father had
inherited and expanded. My father was a born planter, while as a little boy I
thought that my mother was ‘happy to remain a house wife’.
I, as a youngster was quite shy especially around
strangers but witty and talkative among familiar crowds. I went to a ‘boys-only’
boarding school in Kandy and spend only very little time at home during my
schooling years.
I actually can’t remember from when, but from the time
as long as I could remember I’ve felt that the feet of elderly women had a
great impact on me. Being a believer in re-incarnation, I think it must have
come from my previous lives. There is no other explanation to it. Whenever I
gazed a beautiful pair of feet of elderly women, especially the ones with
puffy-pinkish heels, clean and soft looking soles & beautiful toes my heart
gets heavier even now. As a kid, it was as if I couldn’t breathe when I saw
such feet. My heart would jump to a stop for a moment especially if those feet
were in high heeled sandals.
Was this a sexual desire back then? I’ve always
asked myself. I don’t think it could be called so as I was not even sexually
mature at that time. It would have been only a very innocent lust, but a very
powerful one. All I wanted then was to just watch at elderly women’s pretty
feet.
Spending most of my childhood in a boy’s boarding
school did not leave me with many chances in doing so. It is true that most of
our primary school teachers were female but only a few of them had feet for my
liking. My third grade teacher Ms. Catherine Jones was a specialty among them.
Ms. Catharine would have been about thirty five year
old then. She used to wear a pair of wedge-heeled open toe mules with her sari.
She walked through the rows of our desks every now and then inspecting our
books. Whenever she was passing me, I worked very hard to catch a glimpse of
her beautiful feet. She had a dark skin. Her insteps were almost coffee-brown.
But her heels and soles were light pinkish in color. She painted her toe nails
with a similar pinkish polish. Her dark-brown sandals matched her feet
perfectly. I would drop a sheet and paper on to the aisle in-between our desks hoping
she would step on it, and leave an imprint of the sole of her sandal. Several
times she stopped by to tell me. “Tom, you have again dropped one of your drawing
papers. Pick it up” Then one day she became careless and went on stepping on my
sheet of paper leaving a clear dust mark of her shoe sole on it. The shape, the outline and the checkered
pattern of the rubber sole all were very clearly stamped on the paper. It was a
great achievement for me. I cherished that piece of paper for a long time to
come.
On most Fridays my father came to pick me up and
took me home for the weekend. It was like going to haven, not only because I
could get away from that boring boys hostel but also because I knew I could
catch a few glimpses of my mother’s or sister’s feet while at home. If I was
extremely lucky I would see my mother in high heels. That was if we decided to
go visit our aunt during the weekend. Mother often wore a pair of medium high
open-toe mules or a pair of thong type sandals with kitten heels on such
occasions.
Having to go for family wedding during school
vacations was something I loved very much. Often I would get-to-gather with my cousins
who were mostly my own age and run around the reception hall like all kids usually
do. No one was much bothered when we crept and crawled under the tables while
playing. I would often pick and choose the tables where my female relatives sat
to crawl in and hide. All my aunts, elderly cousins and even granny’s were in
there best foot ware; glistering gold sandals with stiletto heels and freshly
painted toe nails on such occasions. I thoroughly enjoyed playing hide and seek
crawling among such feet.
During my childhood, the queen of my fantasy world
was Aunt Goldie. Aunt Goldie was the elder sister of my father. She was about
seven year elder to my father. They were the only children in their family and
inherited their parent’s tea estate. Later my father had bought Aunt Goldie’s
share of it too. Aunt Goldie lived in a house she had bought a few kilometers away
from our estate. Her two sons were studying and working in Colombo as long as I
can remember, and only Aunt Goldie and her husband were at their home. So my
parents visited them often and looked into their needs.
Aunt Goldie’s house was on a steep slope. There was
a high retaining wall in front the house and a tall earth embankment at the
rear. A long dark corridor ran parallel to the rear embankment to which the
bedrooms opened. The bathroom was at the end of the corridor. They had a fierce-looking
German shepherd named “Nile”. It was cadged in the rear adjacent to the
bathroom.
Some days when we were at Aunt Goldie’s place Nile
was let loose for a while. We were asked to sit still and make no sharp
movements. Nile would come and sniff each of us, and then go to where Aunt Goldie
was and lie beside her feet. Aunt Goldie then would place her tiny little feet
over the dog and stroke its coat lovingly with her feet. Every time I saw her
do that I felt very jealous. I wished that I could be Nile and get caressed by
Aunt Goldie’s feet.
Though Aunt Goldie was the Queen of my fantasy world
she was by no means a sexy looking voluptuous woman. Instead she was a very
petite lady. In fact she was a very soft spoken simple lady. She never wore
anything other than plain-colored cotton saris. I have never seen her in heeled
sandals. She always wore a pair of shiny black thong type slippers. The straps
of it were decorated with a row of small flowers. She never painted her toe
nails, but her feet were always very clean and soft looking; almost like the
feet of a baby.
In my fantasies, I imagined that Aunt Goldie was a
queen of a secret clan. I imagined her kingdom to be under- ground and its
entrance through the earthen embankment behind her house. The dog ‘Nile’ I
imagined was guarding the secret entrance to her kingdom. I imagined that Aunt
Goldie at night fall entered her secret kingdom to be enthroned as queen. Young
maids such as my sister and elderly cousin sisters would be waiting for her arrival
to dress her up as queen. Queen Goldie‘s costume as I imagined was a simple
white cheese-clothe, knee- length house coat. She would also ware a pair of
open-toe stiletto heeled gold high-heeled sandals and a crown of flowers with
her hair let loose. How I come up with such an imaginative costume I’m not
sure. May be I had seen some pictures of Elisabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in the newspapers.
Her throne was a wooden teacher’s chair; one so familiar
to me like the one Mrs. Catherine use to sit. All the men I knew including me,
my father and Aunt Goldie’s sons would lie on the floor and form a carpet for Queen
Goldie to walk-up to her throne. Aunt Goldie’s husband Uncle Ronald would lie
just under her throne presenting his naked belly to be used as a foot-rest to
her.
Once when I was at Aunt Goldie’s place, I happened
to follow Uncle Ronald into their bed room. There was a white enamel pot with a
lid beside their bed. Curiously, I asked Uncle Ronald what it was, “Oh! That’s
a ‘pee-pot’. Your aunt Goldie is afraid to go to the bathroom alone in the
middle of the night. So she pees into this pot and I empty it to the closet when
I happen to go for a leak” he replied laughingly. In my fantasies I imagine Uncle
Ronald holding a golden pee-pot on his chest so that when Queen Goldie wants to
pee, she could use it. Back then I would have not considered peeing as an act
of domination or authority. I’m sure it was not sexual at all because I had neither
any idea nor interest of how Aunt Goldie’s Virginia would have looked like. My
main focus then was her feet and nothing else.
Most of the mature women I knew including my mother
and Mrs. Catherine would visit queen Goldie’s chamber and sit beside her in glistering
high-heels while getting their men to lie on the floor as their foot rests. We
all boys would kneel before them, kiss their feet and get their blessings. They
were the ones who ruled that underground kingdom in my fantasies. I was not
aware of the mythical tribe called ‘the Amazons’ by that time. Amazons are also
said to be a female worrier tribe who expel all the men and elderly boys out of
the tribe; allowing them in to the tribe only for reproduction needs. My
fantasy world ruled by Queen Goldie was also something similar to that I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment