‘Exactly! The dictator of the State Congress—Akkamma Cherian!’ Menon Master filled in the gap, gladly. ‘The warmonger Hitler is also called the same by the English press. But as I clarified earlier, that is the dictator of war; this one is of peace!’
‘I have heard of her,’ Kuttan Pilla said. ‘The Nazrani woman from Kanjirappally, isn’t it? But how in the world could a woman who has led a procession protesting against the Maharaja be a pacifist, Master?’
At that point, Naraapilla re-entered the debate with a discernibly special interest. ‘Hooom,’ he said suddenly, coming back from some other world, ‘give four slaps on the cheek and any woman’d stop in her tracks!’
‘That is a wrong reading! A time will come when our land will be proud of her, Narayana Pilla chettaa.’ He suppressed the urge to say more, reminding himself that he was after all a tenant of Naraapilla. ‘Honestly speaking, these are all variations of the same misunderstanding. The Nazis to the Jews, the upper caste for the low caste, Narayana Pillai chettan for women … It is amusing to think of it that way!’
‘But all this a law of nature, Master,’ Kuttan Pilla, with the mien of a sage, told Menon Master who was about his son’s age. ‘What’s the use of us talking so much about progressiveness? Look at it, even now, not a single Pulaya gets into the Thachanakkara thevar’s temple to worship. Why? They are scared despite the decree! That’s what we call God’s will, God’s will!’
‘What you said now is utter blasphemy!’ As Menon Master felt a twinge of sadness inside him, his voice rose for the first time when he said, ‘The only people left to learn of Harijans entering temples are the denizens of Thachanakkara. All the downtrodden people in this land of Kerala are elated at having won a right. It did not happen one fine morning; this majestic event is the consummation of days and nights of the intense efforts on the part of many great souls!’
Naraapilla was hearing the word consummation for the first time. He brought on a sarcastic smile on his face and declared, ‘Whatever you may blandish as justification—these are not going to last forever. This Narayana Pillai is positive that His Majesty is going to have a change of mind and will withdraw the decree.’ He cracked the knuckles of his right hand twice.
‘Yesyes,’ Pooshaappi, who was only a spectator till then, energized suddenly by Naraapilla’s statement, said in support, ‘What Naraapilla said is what is, it’s right! I too feel that way!’
Menon Master abruptly turned to look at Pooshaappi. The look Menon Master gave him hurt him in his testicles. ‘My Shashwathampilla chettaa,’ he addressed him, reminding Pooshaappi of his real name after a long, long time, ‘our land is rushing towards a bright future; the whole of India is undergoing a big transformation. If we win independence under the leadership of Gandhiji, a new India will be born. There, now great efforts are on for a united Kerala too. The next meeting for that is to be here in our own Aluva. If Thiruvithamkoor, Kochi, and Malabar unite, monarchy itself will abdicate! Why are you laughing? The educated and worldly-wise youth of ours will restore the glory of our nation. As dreamt by Narayana Guru, we will become ideal human beings with one caste, one religion, and one God!’
Hope made Menon Master’s eyes sparkle. When he heard Narayana Guru’s name, Naraapilla was enraged. He got up from his seat and said, ‘Here, this is what I can’t stand! Even educated and sensible youth among Nairs will start to lionize that Nanuguru. I’m asking you because I fail to understand. Why can’t guys like you treat our other swami…’ As no name came to his tongue, he looked plaintively at Appu Nair.
‘Chattambiswamikal!’ Appu Nair made a timely contribution.
‘Ah, yes, Chattambiswamikal! Why’re you people not talking about him? Isn’t he better than Nanuguru? As you get ahead, have you teachers also started behaving like kids who can’t distinguish between a Chinese potato and a turd?’ Naraapilla bellowed, glaring at Menon Master’s glasses. The cat, which had been nuzzling against the legs of Menon Master, jumped into the rain and ran away.
‘Chattambiswami is also a great soul,’ Menon Master said. ‘There is no debate. But to establish that jaggery is sweet, why should we say that sugar isn’t?’
Kuttan Pilla stared at Naraapilla, open-mouthed.
‘Worshipping Chattambiswami is definitely good,’ Menon Master continued respectfully, ‘but if it is because he is a Nair, then that is not worship, it is an insult. You have not paid heed to what Narayana Guru said about caste. Fine. But, neither have you listened to what the reverend Chattambiswamikal has said! Have you? There is a book he has written castigating our Kalady man, Shankaran. It would be edifying if people like Narayana Pillai chettan could read it. The name of the book is Vedaadhikaaraniroopanam. I shall give it you. It must be in my cupboard. Then, when one talks of Chattambiswamikal, one should also talk of Ayyankaali, shouldn’t one? The same Ayyankaali, whom Gandhiji came to meet at Vengaanoor, is not great in the eyes of Narayana Pilla chettan because he is not a Nair? You may not have heard what he has accomplished, right. Have you at least heard of his demise last month?’
The rain was coming down in torrents. The master did not realize that his voice had risen in tandem with the rain.
‘Oho, has he too conked out?’ Covering up his inability to counter the argument, Naraapilla responded with sarcasm, as he got up and extended his hand out to measure the strength of the rain. His second son, Padmanabhan, was coming towards the shop bearing the umbrella sent by Kunjuamma. Naraapilla jumped down into the canopy of the umbrella and holding close both his son and the flavoured tobacco, he walked fast.
Retrieving his stool, Pooshaappi resumed his usual eight-legged posture. The rest of the people remained in the shop till the rain subsided, not uttering another word.
The rain kept beating its tattoo on the newly-made thatch.
* For Naraapilla, her Pulayan was a generic non-existence, and was not even worthy of having a name.
SEVEN
The Vortex
1 April 1999
…In book-reading, there is a kind of nit-picking. A habit that got stuck in our souls long, long ago, from the time we were monkeys, awakens atavistically when we read a book. Take another look at the open book. You can see a head with hair parted in the centre. The black strands chart the lines to either sides from the middle. Amidst them, are word meanings that are alive and scurrying about, trying to escape and hide from you. A vibrant thought, an attractive plump word, a figure of speech that races on six legs, a blood-sucking black emotion, catch our eyes. And then? No peace until we catch and finish it. Therefore, I am certain—even if the world will be filled with television and computers, books are here to stay. Are there lice in your head? My mouth wells up with saliva when I see a louse. This is no April Fool’s joke. That too is a habit from that ancestral monkey!
There was a bookshelf in Achyuthan’s house. Menon Master’s wealth. Jacketed tomes sat inside, enigmatically, like idols in sarppakaavu, the sacred grove for snake-worship.
The bookshelf could be opened on the days when Menon Master was around. So, Govindan waited impatiently for Sundays, cracking his knuckles. In the same room, there was a lidless crate made out of black cedar, the colour of burnt brick, full of magazines and weeklies. Since it was open and accessible at all times, it didn’t catch Govindan’s fancy.
As he stood in front of the cupboard filled with books, Govindan could feel some mysterious corner of his heart filling up with light. He would forget his father. He would forget his detestable bawl. Instead, a pleasantly cool, comfortable silence, an invaluable tranquillity in which even his own breath resounded, would enfold him. His whole body would tremble in ineluctable admiration of the writer his father had insulted two years ago. When Menon Master would open the bookshelf, Govindan would be assailed by a greater sense of divinity than that was felt when the doors of the sanctum sanctorum of Thachanakkara thevar’s temple opened after the lamp-lit pooja at dusk.
Into the names of some of the books, the impressionable age of Go
vindan lowered its anchor of curiosity. Many a time his tongue twisted when he read titles such as Arthavaadasootrashathakoti and Nivaathakavachakaalakeyavadham. Inclining his head to read the titles on the books arranged in a slant, he would pull one out with his middle finger. One book retrieved thus was called Mangkigeetha, but, Menon Master explained, it had nothing to do with monkeys as he had expected.
‘Listen, Achyutha,’ bidding his son also to come closer, as he explained about the poet who had written the book, ‘remember his name, V.C. Balakrishna Panicker! He died when he was just twenty-three. But what had he achieved in the meantime? Unimaginable! When he was sixteen, that is barely two or three years older than you, he was the editor of a newspaper called Keralachinthaamani. In addition, he was responsible for the Malabari weekly published from Malabar. Eventually, he came to British Kochi and took care of a newspaper called Chakravarthi for a long time. In between, he brought out about fifteen books. One of them is this Mangkigeetha. The mangki is no monkey! The chap is a maharshi in the Puranas who had amassed illicit wealth. Look, this is Panicker’s translation. What is a translation?’
‘From one language to another language…’ When Achyuthan started to answer as if in class, the master laughed and gestured with his palm to stop him. ‘Enough, enough. But this is not his poem,’ Master said, searching for something amidst the books. ‘You should read an elegy of his. It must be here. Then an excellent poem about Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishna Pillai … ngaa … Thiruvithaamkoorilae Mahadheeran or something is its title; that too must be here.’
‘Then what about the Kuttan Pilla chettan who comes to Pooshaappi’s store? Don’t people call him Swadeshabhimani too?’ Govindan asked.
Menon Master replied with a sweet smile, ‘That is the Swadeshabhimani of you Thachanakkara residents. I have also listened to that fellow’s bombast. From his accent, it doesn’t appear if he has even seen southern Thiruvithamkoor!’
From the second row, Govindan pulled out another, far thicker book. The handwritten name on the spine of the paper-covered book caught his fancy, Aangalasaamraajyam.
But when he pulled it out and opened it, though the title said it was about the British Empire, he recognized it as written in Sanskrit. When Master explained that it was an epic poem by A.R. Rajaraja Varma to commemorate the diamond jubilee celebrations of the ascension of Queen Victoria to the throne, which took him two years to write, Achyuthan asked him, ‘Father, has no one written an epic poem about our Gandhiji?’
Menon Master said, ‘Those will have to be written by you all! Right, Govindaa?’
‘Yes!’ said Govindan. ‘Let Bapuji’s diamond jubilee come. I shall pen one!’
All of them laughed.
It was morning. The fresh air that entered the bookshelf as Menon Master opened it, infused a liveliness amongst the closely-packed books.
Padminiyamma and Kunjuamma were seated on the steps of the back veranda of the rented house. Kunjuamma sat on the lower step, her back between Padminiyamma’s legs. Padminiyamma was drawing the sandal-coloured nit-comb through Kunjuamma’s thick tresses and pulling out the nits. Each time she crushed a nit caught between the long teeth of the nit-comb, she let out a long, ‘esshh…!’
Chinnamma, the youngest, with the same complexion and features as Naraapilla, was covered in dust from below the belly-thread, as she squatted below the breadfruit tree and strained to defecate, her eyes bulging and mouth open.
It was a Sunday. Naraapilla had set apart some coconuts and about twenty fronds for Padminiyamma during the routine harvesting. Menon Master had separated the leaflets from the midribs of the fronds. tied them up and stacked them, and was splitting the midribs and flinging them in the sun for drying. Snot-nosed Chandran, who was standing by, heard the green midribs wailing riii riii as the sharpness of the machete split them vertically. He had also joined Aalungal School. Because of his perpetually snotty, runny nose, his brothers had nick-named him ‘Snot-champion’. As he was twirling a play-snake made from the palm leaflets by Menon Master, he amused himself by blowing and bursting yellowish snotty bubbles through his nose. To wean Chandran, Kunjuamma finally had to use the aloe vera paste she had preserved for two years. Though he had been weaned, he always stuck close to his mother.
The nit-comb was purchased from Aluva beach. The two families—except Naraapilla and the youngest child—had gone together for Shivaraathri. They were not fasting. Padminiyamma needed to buy some household things. On a whim, Kunjuamma also got ready to go with her. Even after delivering six children, Naraapilla had never taken her for the Shivaraathri at Aluva beach. This time around, she was determined to go. She left her two-year-old youngest daughter with her sister-in-law at Peechamkurichi and she and her other children roamed the beach along with the family of Menon Master. Naraapilla had ordered that they should be back home before it was dark.
Except for Achyuthan, Govindan, and Padmanabhan, the others were amazed by the novelty of the Marthaanda Varma Bridge, which could be seen from the beach. Govindan’s younger brother Padmanabhan also had left Aalungal School and already joined Aluva school in the first standard. He had also started using the bridge to go across. Padmanabhan’s younger siblings, Pankajaakshan and Chandran, stood looking at the bridge for a long time with their mouths agape. When they heard a whistle behind, they looked towards the other end of the river. At a distance, over a parallel bridge with no wavy arches, a train was moving, belching large clouds of black smoke into the reddening sky.
‘Lo, in the water, another chug-chug,’ the four-year-old Thankamma clapped her mouth shut with both hands, amazed at the reflection of the train chugging along upside down in the water. Everyone laughed looking at her sitting wonderstruck on her mother’s hip.
Menon Master pointed out the Advaithaashramam across the river to Kunjuamma. Turning in that direction, Kunjuamma instinctively joined her hands and bowed in prayer. Chandran, who had started sneezing continuously due to the dust from the beach, followed his mom in bowing to the ashramam, unaware of the significance.
Promising that they would return to the thevar’s portals before dark, Achyuthan, Govindan, and Padmanabhan ran, holding hands, towards the north end of the beach to inspect the stalls and shops there. Padminiyamma held Pankajaakshan’s hand so that he would not be lost in the crowd. Carrying Thankamma on her hip and holding Chandran by his hand, Kunjuamma kept pace with her. Both the women, and the children hanging on to them, were barefoot. When Kunjuamma saw Menon Master walking with his malmal mundu folded up and tucked in to save it from the dust, and the curly hair on his calves gleaming in the evening light, she remembered Naraapilla in panic.
Padminiyamma was remarkably skilled in bargaining with the vendors. She bought at cheap prices two stone vessels, one wooden ladle, and one wooden board used for decanting cooked rice. Kunjuamma was also tempted to buy a few things. But after buying only black bangles and kohl for her daughters, a tiny box of bindi powder for herself, and sugarcane and some puffed rice for Naraapilla, the little money she had managed to prise out of Naraapilla was over. In order to hide her shame, she kept scolding the children who were pointing out and demanding various things. On their return, when they reached the steps leading to the path from the beach, and she saw the lice- and nit-combs in the tray of the chetti-woman selling combs, she tarried as if her legs were aching. Her face filled with longing, like it had when she saw the laterite stones bathed in moonlight at the time when the New House was under construction.
Padminiyamma understood the situation. Offering the coin that was left over in her cloth purse to Kunjuamma, she said, ‘Buy the lice- and nit-combs, Kunjommo! My head’s also teeming, and I too can do with one!’
They went up from the beach before dark. Talking of the magician they had seen in the north end of the beach, Achyuthan, Govindan, and Padmanabhan made the younger children envious. To pacify them, Menon Master bought the children sarsaparilla sherbet. Only Chandran’s sherbet tasted salty; he drank the beverage mixed with the phleg
m and snot that flowed into the glass from his nose.
In the afternoons, with the lice- and nit-combs in hand, Kunjuamma would reach the backyard of the tenants’ house. On the very first day of this joint lice-hunt, she had realized that Padminiyamma’s claim that her head was teeming with lice was a fib. She had seen that each strand of her hair, which smelt of daisy and shoe flower shampoo, was worthy of being pampered individually for their cleanliness. Whereas in Kunjuamma’s hair, lice, nits and dermal excrescence flourished in abundance: like the nets hoisted during a rich piscean harvest, a chaakara, the lice comb would froth and spill over each time it was passed through her hair.
‘Kunjuo!’ Naraapilla’s voice boomed from the north. ‘Where’s that damned woman? Oblation to the manes!’
Kunjuamma didn’t budge; Naraapilla screamed her name once more on a louder note. Before Kunjuamma could straighten up after dusting her behind, he appeared in the backyard.
‘Where’s Govindan, eh?’ Naraapilla addressed the question half to his wife and half to Menon Master who was splitting coconut tree midribs. Before he got an answer, he saw his daughter squatting and straining beneath the breadfruit tree, which caused his nostrils to flare further: ‘Damn! Take her from there. Otherwise the breadfruit will fall on her head and kill her. Oblations to the manes!’
When angry, Naraapilla’s every sentence would spew oblation to the manes. As his rage went up, he would make everyone eat his corpse. ‘Watch out, I will make y’all eat my gorpse,’ is how he would put it.
‘Where is he? WHERE?’ Naraapilla was hopping mad. In reality, he knew where Govindan was; he was aware that he and Achyuthan, bearing books, had gone to Punneli kadavu, tipped off as he was by Padmanabhan who had carried to Naraapilla the grievance of him being excluded from the gang. He told him that the boys would go to the river to swim and frolic on the pretext of going to read books there. In truth, Naraapilla was unmoved by this piece of news. But he remembered Kunjuamma the next instant. His evil mind imagined the scenario of their eldest son falling into the river and drowning, while the mother was listening to Menon Master’s conversation. He prayed for that tragedy to happen, fervently thumping his chest, unseen by anyone.
A Preface to Man Page 7