by Preethi Nair
‘I have to go to Collenauta.’
‘But, Maya, it is deep in the South,’ Krishna replied.
‘I know, but you don’t have to come with me.’
‘You can’t go on your own. I’ll arrange the tickets, we’ll fly tomorrow,’ he said.
Back at the hotel, the waiter came to where I was sitting and said, ‘The same as always, Ma’am, omelette and French fries with green salad?’
‘Thank you,’ I replied and as he was turning away, I said, ‘I think I’ll try iddlies with sambar.’
‘Right away,’ he nodded.
It was a typical dish from the South which my grandmother would make for us, smashing up the fermented rice cakes in the liquid sambar. Ever since I can remember, Amma tried to make us eat them. Food was the battleground between her and us, used to establish the balance of power, and Satchin and I stood firm. She was a skilful opponent, packing the iddlies into our lunch boxes or putting tomato ketchup on the side so we would be enticed. We managed to dispose of them quite easily but as Satchin grew older, he started to love them and it became a competition between him and Ravi to see who could eat the most. My little sister liked them too, all mashed up and then she drank the leftovers which my mother put in her pink beaker, but the last time I tasted iddlies and sambar was probably when I was about four, preferring food that had been processed since.
They came steamed and fluffy in a rich brown sauce with long vegetable drumsticks and juicy shallots. I cut softly into them with my knife and fork and rolled my eyes thinking of my Amma’s comments: fingers connected you to food in a way no other instrument could. Satchin and I would argue with her about hygiene, insisting that we had to use cutlery. We had learnt this from the other kids who said that Pakis were unclean and ate with their fingers. ‘No,’ she answered, ‘it is important to touch the food.’
Touching food, eating with fingers. I laughed at the thought. Marcos and I were in a bar with some of his colleagues, eating tapas. I picked up a piece of fried chicken with my fingers and he was appalled. He pulled me over to one side. ‘Maya, what do you think you are doing? What do you think the cocktail sticks are for?’
The iddlies felt like soft grains of sand which had been stuck together by the tide. Formed into a perfect circle, they were swimming in the sambar. Bits that resembled seaweed floated aimlessly to the surface and a heavy drumstick sank to the bottom like an old oil drum. The shallots bobbed up and down and it would have been difficult to fish them out with a fork so I picked them up and bit into them. They tasted salty. I asked for a spoon so I could drink the sambar, not wanting to slurp it from my plate as Ravi did or drink it delicately from my hands like Amma. The hot peppercorns made me cough and though I didn’t want to admit it, it felt soothing, like returning safely home. My grandmother would say that this was the process of self-cleansing, washing out all the impurities that had become stuck throughout the years. Definitely, that is what she would whisper.
My mother posted the letters that we sent Ammamma with our pictures and Amma would read the letters that Ammamma sent back because we couldn’t read Malayalam. Every letter ended by telling us to be good, to do our schoolwork and that she loved us. When we moved into Maggie’s house, the letters became infrequent and then they stopped. Satchin and I didn’t want to upset Amma by asking questions so we presumed Ammamma had gone to join my father. But the reality was probably that she was alive and well and this too had slipped Amma’s mind, another lie. I packed my cases that evening, ready to travel South.
Krishna collected me the next day and we flew down to Kerala. A new driver was waiting for us at the airport, dressed in a checked shirt and loongi which he lifted up and doubled after he met us so it showed his legs, matchsticks, thinner than my own. His smile seemed to electrify his face which was really dark. ‘I am your diver,’ he said proudly, shaking his head from side to side. He said it in Malayalam, except the word ‘diver’, which someone had taught him incorrectly and he showed us to the car. Krishna had booked a hotel near the airport so we stayed there the first night. The driver ate outside in his car and I asked Krishna to call him in so he could eat with us but he refused. After dinner, I went outside and spoke to him in my broken Malayalam, asking him to come inside, that we would pay for a room, but he insisted that he wanted to sleep in his vehicle.
The next morning, we set off after breakfast. Vijay, the driver, said it would take three to four hours. The city roads were good, then he had to drive along dirt tracks, avoiding ditches and animals, using his horn at every conceivable opportunity, competing for space with colourful buses and bicycles. He waved back at people whenever he could and laughed, and because his laugh was infectious, I started doing it too. The roads became quieter but he still used his horn. The noise would startle women carrying huge bronze water urns, who turned to look whilst their children began running after us. Everywhere you turned there were palm trees, banana plantations and lush vegetation, and those who could afford umbrellas walked under huge black ones to shelter themselves from the sun. The heat was not as intense as in Mumbai; it was hot but very different, the air seemed a lot fresher too and not infused with the intensity of pollution. We stopped briefly at the roadside to buy some coconuts.
The seller looked relieved as if we were the only customers he had had that day and began choosing three coconuts. Vijay shook his head and said only two but between the sales pitch from the seller and I, he conceded. Sharpening his rusty axe, the seller took great pleasure in knocking off the coconut heads and handed them to us with the straws he had made out of reeds. I pulled a few rupees from my pocket and his eyes nearly popped out. Vijay said it was too much and there was slight apprehension as the seller stood with his hand held out and I said to Vijay that it didn’t matter. The seller looked thrilled and as we made our way into the car, he began to pack up his goods. He had made enough money for the day and was making his way home.
Stringing a badly phrased sentence together, I asked Vijay if he had family. A smile beamed from his mirror and he lowered the sun guard to show me a picture of his daughter and wife.
‘I got her married last year,’ he said proudly.
She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. ‘To a man with lots of land,’ he added.
‘Are you married?’ he asked shyly.
I shook my head. The look that he gave me was that of a parent who is disappointed in their child. ‘I will pray for you,’ he said. ‘Pray that a good man comes and takes you.’
Krishna noticed that the seats were beginning to get sweaty and suggested we stop in the nearest large town before Collenauta and find somewhere to wash. There were lots of signs in Chotagam for hotels. At every hotel, Krishna would stop, get out of the car to inspect their rooms, and come back disappointed. ‘It doesn’t matter as long as it is clean,’ I said, trying to widen the choice.
The best thing he could find was called the Laxmi. There were mosquitoes everywhere and the bed had a net surrounding it but it was covered with holes. The bathroom had no bath or shower, only a simple yellow bucket and matching mug with a makeshift drainage system. The toilet was a hole on a step between two concrete slabs; basically you had to hoist yourself up and employ a squatting position to be able to use it effectively. ‘It’s perfect,’ I said to Krishna, who looked at me, unconvinced.
We washed and had lunch, which consisted of sad-looking grains of rice, stuck together as if they really didn’t want to be there in a mangled spinach sauce served on a banana leaf. I played with mine, thinking there was no popadom which I could hide it under so there was no option but to eat it. Dessert was a deflated gulabjambo, which I had to leave because it was full of syrup in which a battalion of red ants had lost their lives. We paid the waiter and continued on the journey. ‘How far now?’ I asked Vijay.
‘One hour.’
The trees swept onto the roads as if to claim it all back, brushing against the car and depositing a confetti of curious-looking insects on the car windows. When th
e foliage cleared, all you could see for miles were green paddy fields soaking up the sun, surrounded by tall reeds and sugar cane plantations, against a background of moody purple mountains. People were dotted around the fields and as they looked up, they waved. An hour and a half and several winding inroads later, we finally arrived at what appeared to be Colleanauta.
The noise the car made brought people who were praying in the temple, drinking in the toddi shop, bathing or washing clothes in the lake and working on the land to congregate where we had stopped. It was in the centre of the village square which had a temple and a rice mill next to it. Vijay beeped at them so they would move out of the way. Some of the children jumped back, startled, thinking that God had sent us, others stood there and watched, laughing. They stood with baited breath. In my fragmented Malayalam, I asked for Ammu Menon. They began to whisper to each other.
‘Nalini.’ Someone shouted and then someone else began to shout, ‘Nalini, it’s me, Luxmiammayi.’ Why was it they thought people never aged? Someone from the crowd stepped forward, squeezed his way towards me and invited me into his home.
The man was very tall with greying hair and a beard, which he had tried to dye dark brown but had turned out a henna orange. He also had a constellation of spots on his right cheek. Something was very familiar about him. Krishna said maybe it was better if I went on my own. I made my way with him through the crowd. Some of them followed and others stayed by the car and a few carried on with their business, speculating and gossiping. The man showed me into his home which was behind the temple. We took our shoes off and entered a type of courtyard which had a broken water fountain. Sitting on the bench was an old woman. An elegantly-dressed lady came out and looked at me suspiciously. ‘I’m Maya, Ammu’s grandchild,’ I said awkwardly, looking over at the old woman just to make doubly sure this wasn’t her.
‘I know,’ he replied.
I looked again at her; was it? She didn’t smile or give me any indication.
‘You look exactly like your mother,’ he said. ‘I am Gobi, Gobi Kathi.’
Stunned, I had to sit down.
I didn’t even think of finding them. The old lady, she was my other grandmother and he, he was my uncle. I didn’t know I had an uncle.
‘Uncle?’ I asked.
‘Uncle,’ I said again, excited.
He nodded dismissively. ‘How is Raul?’
I didn’t know where to begin, what could I say? ‘He’s … he’s well.’ I stammered.
‘We haven’t seen him for nearly thirty years.’
That couldn’t be right, didn’t he come and see them when he came looking for us?
‘I thought he came here some time back.’
His brother laughed coldly. ‘Not since he ran off with your mother.’
Ran off with her? He never ran off with her. They were introduced, his family had arranged it, and they moved to Mumbai.
He told the old lady who I was and she glared at me. No long-lost embrace, smile, receptive welcome or nod, just a glacial expression as if I had no right to sit there in her house.
‘Your mother was a taker, nothing but a taker, she took the gift I bought her and lured him.’
I had no idea what he was talking about. What gift?
‘Both of them, your mother and grandmother, they worked their magic on him and took him, finally got what they had always wanted, his money.’
Gobi told me that Achan was about to marry someone else when suddenly he left with Amma, leaving his fiancée stranded. ‘It was shameless, he told her he loved her,’ he shouted. His father could not cope with the embarrassment and shortly after, suffered a heart attack so Gobi came back to look after things at home and married the fiancée so the family would not lose face and standing. The elegant lady who stood there looking at me disdainfully was to have been my father’s wife.
‘And Ammu?’
He huffed. ‘She had gone to live with your mother and father in the north and years later she came back but nobody spoke to her and she died. Died in her shack just across the lakes.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the temple. ‘Died’ was said with bitterness as if he was glad that she got what she deserved.
All this way and she was dead. Dead and he was happy she was dead.
‘Where was her home?’ I asked.
He repeated the way I said home and laughed, giving me a few directions. He made no offer to take me there, no glass of water or hug goodbye. I went over to my other grandmother to say something, to hold her hand but she turned her face. This is what Amma had done to them. I put on my sandals and walked across the sandy ground to find her home. A few people that were waiting outside the Kathis’ house trailed behind me. I said nothing, and made my way to the house that he had described.
Just behind the lake on a hill stood a solitary shack amongst some trees. Nobody wanted to live there because they said it was cursed. Cursed with her magic. The people that were following me stopped short of the hill and I climbed up alone and above it were a row of mango trees and a broken fence. You couldn’t really see the shack, as it was covered with vegetation, but I spotted something wooden and, sensing that it might be the front door, I kicked it open. As I did so, something screeched and flapped around.
The room was filled with cobwebs and smelt of rot. A basic shack is where she spent the rest of her life. I took a stick from the ground and poked at the webs so I could see a little more clearly. A mat lay on the floor surrounded by some cast iron pots and I spotted some pictures beneath a battered wooden crate by the mat. On the crate was a statue, pale blue, covered with cobwebs. I went in, grabbed the pictures, looked just for a fleeting moment at the statue and considered running out again. Instead, I crouched next to the pots, gently brushing the cobwebs away. Tears ran down my cheeks but I didn’t really know why I felt so sad. The Goddess was looking at me. ‘Tell me what really happened?’ I asked her. I picked her up and went running as fast as I could to the other side of the lake where it was quiet.
A gentle stream ran behind the hill and I sat near some rocks. The pictures were of Satchin and I as babies with Amma, some were of my Ammamma holding us, a smile that stretched from ear to ear with her teeth that she had put in especially for the pictures. Dressed in her cream cotton kasava mundu, she didn’t work magic, she worked love, I thought. It’s wrong what Gobi said about her. I put my head between my knees and cried. Exhausted. Someone put an arm around me and I looked up, feeling defeated.
‘Little Maya, she spoke so much about you.’
Saffron-stained chest, carrying a simple black bag and wearing only a loincloth, an old man smiled at me. He said he was the astrologer.
‘How did she die?’ I cried.
‘It’s not important how she died, what’s important is how she lived and she touched at least a thousand lives using her gifts, something many never get to do in one lifetime. When you do what you love, Little Maya, you experience the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy and this is how it has always been. Sorrow because this is the only way life can teach. It gives you the opportunity to confront your fears. She knew when she came back that she would have to face the wrath of the people because they fear all that they do not understand; they fear what is different. She faced their ignorance with the greatest courage and when none of the villagers ate what she cooked, she fed those who knocked on her door, touching them and guiding them along their paths in ways that you cannot even begin to imagine. Not once did she think of stopping or moving away so life would be easier. She knew you would come, we didn’t even bother to work out when because she was certain. She gave me this for you.’
He pulled out a small note from his bag but I couldn’t read it. I gave it back to him and asked him to read it. He searched again in the bag and pulled out an old pair of spectacles.
Maya Mol,
When you are ready, the truth will come and find you. I know you are brave enough, for invisible things too are passed through the genes. Your journey, you know, begins he
re in the place where you are from. When you find truth in all his various forms, face him, take him by the neck, forgive and let go.
From letting go comes a peace and a love that is impossible to buy or have anyone else give to you. It is an absolute freedom from all that we seek to prove. And when you do this, all that you have within you will be enough.
Do what you love, find the pace: listen for the magical conversation that is always taking place through the food that you savour, the words that are spoken to you, the music that you hear, the people that you meet, and you will never feel alone. This, Maya Mol, is abundance.
Know that I will love you no matter where you are or what you do and that I am always, always with you, even on the days of doubting, when you think that it is all just an illusion.
Ammamma
He folded it up and gave it back to me. Putting the spectacles back in his bag, he pulled out another note. ‘This is for your mother, give it to her,’ he instructed.
‘Read it to me.’
He shook his head. ‘It is for when you are ready to meet her,’ he replied.
‘Did your father leave, like your Ammamma said he would?’ the astrologer enquired.
‘I don’t know, I don’t think so,’ I said, and I thought for a long time in silence.
‘Did she go peacefully?’ I asked.
‘She couldn’t have gone any other way.’
He said a prayer, the same one my mother always said but the one I never allowed her to complete, and then he told me the story of King Mahabali, the story Amma began and the one I never let her finish. He told me about sacrifice, the King’s sacrifice, Ammamma’s sacrifice to let us go. He ended by saying that this was only possible because she truly believed that the spirit always lives on.
I took the letters and went back to find the car.