A surfeit of admiration sapped Menon Master’s body of its strength. The hand placed on the parapet slipped, and he almost fell.
From the big moovandan mango tree in the yard, a mango fell. Two boys sprinted, fought noisily with each other for the mango, and ran off with it. ‘The house-owner’s children,’ Menon Master said, watching them. ‘Six kids like these with a gap each of just one to one-and-a-half years.’
‘So, there must be land large enough to partition among the six!’ said the visitor, gazing from the portal at the yard and surroundings rendered picturesque by the evening sun.
Padminiyamma offered the water-filled kindi from the porch and went in to fetch a fresh thorth for the visitor.
‘Why did you let go of poesy and confine yourself to your profession and the family?’ asked the guest softly, taking advantage of the short absence of Padminiyamma, who was inside; he gargled and spat out the water far into the yard. The answer to that question alone was what the master’s wife heard when she came out.
‘What do I say about that?’ said Menon Master. ‘To be honest, when I read those poems of the Edappally guys, most of my confidence evaporated. Besides, there was another, more important, reason.’ Looking back at Padminiyamma, and as if seeking permission for something, Master continued, ‘After marriage and kids and domestic worries, if one must write, sir, one must be a genuine poet. Others will meet the same fate as mine. Either they will scorn writing altogether, or stay away out of respect. In my case, it was the second that happened. Isn’t that the reason why I was scared to even call home the old friend who had made a name as a writer? Ha, ha, ha!’
When it became apparent that the guest was getting ready to leave, Menon Master looked in the direction of the gate and said, ‘Hasn’t the boy come in yet? It’s started getting dark.’
‘He came long ago,’ Padminiyamma said. ‘Seeing the new sandals at the portal, he came in through the kitchen door. Despite my telling him, he had his coffee there!’
‘Hah, that’s not bad!’ Menon Master laughed and turning in the direction of the house, called, ‘Hey boy, Achyuthaa…’
Achyuthan came out to the porch, scratching his head with his left hand. With his head bowed, and using the eye brows to hide his eyes partially, he peeked at the guest, who was wearing white and white like his father.
Stroking his sweaty head, the guest said, ‘Achyuthan! Nice name. You are studying well, aren’t you?’
Achyuthan stood there, abashed. Then, accompanying his parents, he too went up to the gate to see off the guest. At that time, Naraapilla was stepping over the stile to enter the compound, carrying a bunch of arecanuts. Sighting a gentleman with Menon Master, he frowned, and held aloft a shield of unfamiliarity to hide behind.
‘Sir, this is my house-owner.’ Menon Master introduced one to the other. ‘Narayana Pilla chettaa, he is a lecturer at the UC College. One can also say he’s my friend.’
‘What’s the name?’ trying to make it sound as if he knew all the teaching faculty at the college, Naraapilla asked, shrinking within himself.
‘Krishnapilla,’ the guest said.
‘You may have heard, he is a renowned author,’ Menon Master added.
‘Oh yeah, I have heard aplenty! Changampazha, right?’ With an interjection of scorn, he continued, ‘So, this is the guy! I’ve heard a ragtag group of kids sitting and singing in Raghavan’s shop—a whole lot of songs and poetry, ha ha… As for me, hearing these things itself gets on my nerves. So, that’s what… This guy is now a tutor in the college and teaching kids, ay? Harrumph!’
Before Menon Master could utter anything, many things happened together. Though it was not his wont to fold up his mundu and tuck it in, impelled by some strange impetus, Naraapilla did exactly that then. As if it was not enough, he expectorated as if exorcising and brought up non-existent phlegm from inside him and spat it out ostentatiously at the crepe jasmine flowers on the edge of the yard. Menon Master and his wife stood helpless, at a loss as to how to handle the situation. By that time, Kunjuamma, carrying the infant girl and accompanied by Govindan, had reached there. Seeing her husband’s stance and his guttural, insulting spitting, Kunjuamma pleaded with the guest, ‘Please don’t take this amiss, please think nothing of this.’
‘But he is not railing at me.’ Smiling, the guest said, ‘I am not the Changampuzha Krishna Pilla that you are thinking of. This is another Krishna Pilla. Another puzha. Another terribly muddied river of which people like you may have never heard of.’
As the guest passed through the gate, everyone else except Naraapilla stood immobilized, seared by the feeling of having been partners in a great crime. Naraapilla was in denial and gave no impression of having carried out any misconduct. As the disorientation of the moment passed, Menon Master jumped over the stile and ran to catch up with his friend.
Naraapilla wiped his mouth. He thrust the bunch of arecanuts into the hands of Govindan. Then sniping also at his female tenant standing stunned, he told Kunjuamma, ‘Where men are talking, what’s your business there? Go, go, scram! See what’s to be done for supper!’
Being certain that Kunjuamma was not going to obey him, he went inside the house, without glancing back. Kunjuamma, in a low voice, hesitatingly asked Padminiyamma, who was still standing in the yard with a bowed head, ‘Pappinichechi, who’s that?’
Holding Achyuthan close to her, Padminiyamma, in a voice on the verge of breaking, said, ‘Kuttippuzha Krishnapilla sir!’
That name, unheard of till now, affected no one. However, for a long time, the children carried in their minds the memory of a gentleman insulted in that yard with crepe jasmines standing as mute witnesses.
For Naraapilla, the issue was closed the moment he spat it out.
SIX
Casteism
14 May 1999
…The last guru who was capable of leading the Malayali to enlightenment has bid adieu to this world today. I have never been to Fern Hill. However, during my adolescence in Thachanakkara, I had read most of his books at the Vijnanaposhini library. I had noted him down in my diary as the Eternal Spirit of Knowledge. He departed hearing the sounds of the twenty-first century knocking on his doors. Would you believe it, that even in these last decades of the twentieth century, there is no dearth of petty-minded people in Thachanakkara. There was a time when a relative of mine, who noticed that I was reading the Guru’s books all the time, told me in a voice that was more frigid than death: ‘However much he may write, he’s piffle and can come nowhere near our Chinmayaanandan!’ I know he hasn’t read Chinmayaanandan either!
Our Chinmayaanandan!
And who is this ‘us’ and ‘our’?
Nedumpilli Mana, the manor that housed the pot-bellied and thin-limbed Nampoothiris, was to the north of Parashuraman’s temple.
Penury, fatuousness, and casteist vanity were the only contents of the granary of that illam. No amount of scrubbing would rid them of it. The Thachanakkara denizen in general, much less the inhabitants of the illam in particular, had not even heard of institutions such as the Nampoothiri Welfare Society, Nampoothiri Youth Society, etc. After they had started staying at Ayyaattumpilli as tenants, and once when they had gone en famille to the temple on Achyuthan’s birthday, Menon Master saw the head priest just once. As he was leaving after circumambulating the deity and collecting the oblation, he saw an old Brahmin headed for the kitchen of the temple and smiled at him. Curious to see the new visitor to the temple, who was accompanied by his comely wife, the priest paused for a chat. But it did not last for long. As Menon Master started talking of the anti-caste dramatist V.T. Bhattathirippad, perplexed as to whether the reference was to mahogany or teak—the initials ‘V.T.’ sounding like ‘veetti’ or mahogany in the vernacular—the priest beat a hasty retreat to the sanctum sanctorum. He was Parameswaran Nampoothiri of Nedumpilli Mana. The elderly man was respectfully called Parameswaran Thirumeni to his face and Parashunampoori behind his back by the public. Though, for whatever reas
on, no one had named their sons Parashuraman, those who were named Parameswaran had Parashu as their pet name. Thachanakkara residents continued the humorous practice of abbreviating the lord (eswaran) into an axe (parashu). Among all the Parashus, after Thachanakkara thevar, Parameswaran Thirumeni was the most prominent one. The presence of such an eminent Parashu was the reason why Pooshaappi’s eldest son Parameswaran ended up with the pet name of ‘little’ or Kochu Parashu.
The women of Nedumpilli Mana, under the patriarch Parashunampoori, were hardly seen by the populace of Thachanakkara. Till Naraapilla married his sister, Appu Nair used to go around saying that Naraapilla had had a tryst with an antharjanam, who had come out surreptitiously to take the oblational rice from the temple. It was said that this lady, with a killer smile and ankle-length hair, had a right breast the size of a tender coconut and left breast the size of an arecanut. Because of that, Naraapilla could not guess the age of this lady who supposedly also wore a brass bangle. ‘Could be anywhere between twelve and thirty-six’ was how Naraapilla had indicated her age to Appu Nair. ‘Perhaps one of them may have ballooned abruptly.’ Naraapilla gestured with both his hands. ‘Or maybe one got stunted around her tenth or twelfth year.’
After giving his sister’s hand in marriage to Naraapilla, Appu Nair had stopped discussing such matters with him. Apart from that, he also stopped the practice of spreading stories, both fictional and not-so-fictional, about Naraapilla’s conquests. He was gradually reduced to being a mere lackey to do the bidding of Naraapilla, whenever Naraapilla summoned him with a long ‘Appoliyyo…’ The liaison Naraapilla continued with Kaalippennu, who used to come for harvesting in the field and threshing at the yard, was conveniently shelved by Appu Nair. She was a luckless, dark beauty who had lost her husband immediately following childbirth. In Naraapilla’s words, ‘The lass whose pulayan* is defunct.’ Appu Nair remembered how she used to leave her infant in the cloth cradle suspended from the branch of the mango tree beside the field during harvesting. That small mango tree is now a tall, heavily-branched one. That kid, three years older than Govindan, Naraapilla’s eldest, used to visit his mother in the anteroom of the rented house in the Ayyaattumpilli compound. Once the threshing season was on, Naraapilla would get the small anteroom, attached to the granary in the house rented by Menon Master, converted into a bedroom for Kaalippennu. Even if she was barred from entering his kitchen, at every opportunity, he would slink into the anteroom that Kaalippennu slept in. He had already recognized that Kaalippennu was highly skilled in some of the arts for which Kunjuamma showed no talent.
‘There’s some truth in what our master says.’ One day, out of nowhere, Naraapilla praised Menon Master to Kunjuamma. ‘If we keep sticking to castes, we’ll only be doomed.’
Kunjuamma was not surprised by her husband showing uncharacteristic humanity. That chaste woman could divine the bull-like rompings that Naraapilla played out in the anteroom of her tenants, with Kaalippennu as the heroine. She cried on her own.
Five years had passed since the Temple Entry Edict was decreed by Chiththirathirunaal of Travancore, abolishing the ban on lower castes entering temples. The day Kochu Parashu went to town for supplies, an extended conclave took place at Pooshaappi’s shop after a long gap, in the thatched annexe added on by Parashu.
It was the rainy season. Sleet and wind created a racket on the newly woven thatches. The sight of the rain falling on the red-hot roof tiles of the temple assuaged Pooshaappi. A grey, stray cat, mewing sceptically at the rain pounding the red soil on the path, had managed to slink close to the edge of the thatch. It sat there listless and uninterested, looking at a yellow-legged crab stepping sideways on to the stairs from its noisy burrow. A soaked, dark child, running in the rain, paused for a moment doubtfully in front of the shop, and then continued to run.
Knowing that Kochu Parashu was absent, Kuttan Pilla had reached the shop early. Naraapilla, who had come to buy his flavoured tobacco, got stuck there, trapped by the rain. Menon Master, on his way out without an umbrella, was caught in the downpour that dimmed his vision as water streamed down his spectacles, and stepped into the shop’s patio. Since Naraapilla had been detained there for a while, as could be expected by anyone, Appu Nair also arrived. His kuduma, worn in the front, had come loose and the wet hair tailed into his face. He threw out the wide leaf of colocasia that he had used as an umbrella, pulled his wet hair back, and shook his body like a wet dog.
‘Haww!’ Kuttan Pilla jumped back as the spray hit his clothes. That set the stage for a discussion on untouchability and the casteist pollution.
‘Well, I have been wanting to ask you this, Master. One needn’t be afraid to ask people like you with education and good sense,’ Kuttan Pilla asked Menon Master in a voice tremulous with age. ‘What is your opinion about this Temple Entry issue?’
As if he was expecting an antithetical reply, he sat with a frown fixed on his face.
‘That…’ Menon Master took off his spectacles, dried them with the edge of the melmundu that covered his upper body, and started with a query: ‘It’s now four or five years since the edict has come. Why has this doubt struck Kuttan Pilla chettan now of all times?’
But this is the first time you have stepped into this shop!’ Kuttan Pilla said, also to curry favour with Pooshaappi. ‘Indeed, I know that you pick up everything you need from Aluva, on your way back from school … Nonetheless, isn’t it desirable that you fraternize a little with the folks of this place? Yes, isn’t it?’
Menon Master smiled. ‘Where did you say your native place is, Kuttan Pilla chettaa?’ the master asked, replacing his spectacles on his face and looking unwaveringly into his eyes.
Kuttan Pilla became uneasy for a moment. Then, displaying all of his remaining eight teeth, he laughed out loud and said, ‘Come to think of it, I am also an outsider like you. Ha ha, but I still didn’t get your opinion. So, about the edict, what…?’
In a quick glance, Menon Master took in the conclave of savants adorning Pooshaappi’s shop. There were quite a few things that he had nursed in his mind for unleashing on Naraapilla in person. He realized this was a favourable occasion to include those too in his reply.
‘I do not know if I have the expertise to reply to Kuttan Pilla chettan’s question. Still, I shall speak within my limited knowledge.’ Menon Master’s low voice was hardly audible to Pooshaappi seated inside the shop. He got up, holding his burden that he removed from the stool in front of his chair, placed the stool outside his room, and offered, ‘Here, sit on this and talk, Master.’
Appu Nair took the stool and placed it in front of the master. As a mark of politeness, Master extended that kindness to Naraapilla, ‘Narayana Pillai chettan may please sit. I will leave as soon as the rain lets up.’
It took only a moment for the unabashed Naraapilla to accept the stool and sit beaming on it. ‘Try telling us! Make an attempt. Let’s hear!’ he said.
Suppressing a smile that came up like a belch, Menon Master said, ‘Isn’t the brouhaha that is happening the handiwork of a guy who thinks he is the greatest of all men?’
Naraapilla had a feeling that the master was mocking him. Then, shifting his gaze from Naraapilla, the master continued, ‘I was referring to Hitler. He is leading a battle. What is the use? On his own, he has decided that the race he is born in is the best and the rest are inferior. And then? The runt is out to wipe out the Jewish race in which were born great worthies from Jesus Christ to Einstein. Aren’t we also suffering from its effects in the form of scarcity and black marketeering?’
When he heard the word Christ, Naraapilla twisted his lips in a grimace and said, ‘Isn’t that an old tale?’
‘Narayana Pillai chettaa, it is no old story. Now, it is about here, I am talking about this thing now being referred to as the World War.’ Menon Master let out the laughter, which was bursting out anyway.
Appu Nair, to protect the honour of his brother-in-law, interjected, ‘No, what Naraapilla meant was the connectio
n between the War and the temple entry here…’
Drawing the cat—which was getting wet in the sleet as it was afraid to go into the shop because of the people—closer towards him, with his leg, Menon Master explained, ‘That’s war, this is peace. It is bad to discriminate between people, to see them as two kinds, Appu chettaa, wherever it may happen. In our land, this division is not just into two, but into four and eight … Therefore, our cruelty is four or eight-fold worse than Hitler’s!’
‘Well, perhaps he too has his own rationalizations,’ Appu Nair said. ‘Or else, would other nations join his side in the war? How can it become a world war this way? So let’s drop that claim! What Kuttan Pilla chettan was asking was about the Temple Entry Edi—’
Holding up his hand to halt him from continuing, Menon Master said, ‘Understood. But if justice reaches everywhere simultaneously, how does it become injustice? In 1932, when the paper allowing voting rights to those who were paying a land tax of five rupees was passed, only the land-owning Nairs and Brahmins would have found that just, right? And then in 1936 when Sir C.P. came and made that amount one rupee, it would have appeared just for a few others too! This is also true in the case of the temple entry, which happened the same year.’
‘So you’re saying that it’s cent percent just, aren’t you, Master?’ Kuttan Pilla said.
‘What’s the doubt?’ Menon Master said, ‘Human beings can be divided into men and women. If you divide them as wise men and fools also, it is acceptable. We can have both in the same house. But this arrangement along castes, that’s outrageous! That is where the greatness of the Edict lies. But that is still not enough at all. There, haven’t you read about ladies such as Akkamma Cherian coming to the forefront? Does Narayana Pillai chettan recognize who is it?’ When Menon Master asked that, Naraapilla twisted his head towards the top dome of the Thachanakkara thevar and sat there as if he was pondering over something. Menon Master had expected that. It was the seventy-year-old Kuttan Pilla who came to the rescue at that point, ‘Don’t you know, Naraapilla? She’s State Kangress’s dittaa … or something … what’s it that you call it?’
A Preface to Man Page 6