A Preface to Man

by Subhash Chandran

  Kunjuamma and Padminiyamma laughed heartily.

  ‘Kunjuo.’ The next moment, Naraapilla’s summons came.

  ‘Nivaathakavachan has come!’ saying so, as Kunjuamma stood up, Menon Master and Padminiyamma continued their laughter.

  That was the only occasion when Kunjuamma had laughed with abandon. When she heard, in 1947, that the white men had left India, though she didn’t laugh open-mouthed, she had felt very happy in her heart. In 1948, when she heard of Gandhiji being shot and killed, she was in the midst of her household chores and felt so weak in the legs that she had to sit down. Staring at the cracked floor of the kitchen, she cried thinking of her nephew Kesavan.

  In 1955, when her daughter, who resembled Naraapilla in form and features, turned sixteen, Kunjuamma fell prey to an undiagnosed condition that troubled her badly. Showing signs of prolonged insanity, she kept circling her room and hitting her head against the walls, leaving bloodstains there.

  ‘Where is that? There was a door here!’ Every time she hit her head against the wall, she said, with her eyes rolling. ‘Menon Master … Pappinichechi … Keshavaa … my Pappanaavaa…’ she wailed, invoking names that would never return, having departed many years ago.

  It was the Thiruvaathira day in the month of Dhanu. As was usual, when Appu Nair came in the morning to see his sister and check on her condition, Ayyaattumpilli appeared unusually gloomy. Rubbing his cataract-dimmed eyes, he called Chinnamma, raising his voice. His youngest niece appeared before him yawning after scrambling up from her mat, rheum in her eyes and dried drool at the corners of her lips. Appu Nair peered once more, rubbing his eyes. He started feeling as if a bank of dark clouds had descended into the atmosphere, as would in the monsoon month of Karkkadakam. When he felt his ancient heart beating with uncharacteristic loudness, he ran into her room, shouting his youngest sibling’s name.

  Kunjuamma was lying prone on the bare floor, close to the wall. Most part of her body was covered with her still dark and luxurious hair. When he knelt by her side and touched her oily hair, his fingers touched the oilier-than-oil fresh blood. Wiping his hand above the blood marks on the wall left by her untied hair strands, he started sobbing like a child.

  Seeing that and sensing danger, the sixteen-year-old Chinnamma started wailing loud enough to be heard over Thachanakkara and to bring people running.

  When Kunjuamma of Ayyaattumpilli fell for the last time, smashing her head against the wall, as a representative of a thousand unremembered and unsung mothers and grandmothers, respectfully joining her hands towards to the brilliant radiance that came from within, neither the five surviving children of the six she gave birth to, nor Naraapilla was by her side. Because of that, none of them could hear the last word she had spoken.

  Looking at the receding form of Naraapilla, headed to the temple pond for his morning bath in the grey light, and slamming her head into the wall with all her might, her last word was:

  ‘Killer.’

  TEN

  The Circle

  2 October 1999

  It is Gandhiji’s birthday today. The hapless Mohandas who can’t be found anywhere else in India other than on the five-hundred-rupee currency note. Nevertheless, I feel this year is more important than this day. Because this year is the fifty-first death anniversary of Gandhiji. Our nation has already completed half a century of living, racked by guilt over the patricide. As we wait for the results of the Lok Sabha elections, such a day of funereal remembrance has more relevance. And along with that, for this question as well: who will win? Even children will know the answer: on whose head the crown of the prime minister will sit, when all around us resound the invisible celebrations of the jubilee of Godse’s triumph.

  When Time completes drawing a circle in fifty years, on the pages of history, a filthy zero appears.

  Though no one expected it, on hearing of the death of Kunjuamma, Govindan reached Ayyaattumpilli with his wife and child by afternoon. Appu Nair had despatched his eldest son to Cherai in the morning to inform Govindan of the death. When he arrived there, Govindan Master and Sulochana Teacher were at the school, giving lessons. So, their fingers were still coated with chalk powder when they reached Ayyaattumpilli.

  In that funereal milieu, Govindan’s wife, Sulochana, was distraught as she realized that her person was drawing more attention than the corpse. She could guess what everyone was murmuring about her from the time they passed the stile.

  Kunjuamma had discovered about his love from Govindan’s single-line notebook. He had a secret passion for writing poetry. When she found time from her chores, she would read the spring-scented words in his notebooks without his knowledge. Those handwritten books helped her imagine some similarities between her son and Menon Master. She recognized that in him—unlike in the nature of her other sons, Pankajaakshan, Chandran and the deceased Padmanabhan—every breath was kindling an ember.

  From the day at the riverside, when he had beaten his father with the same branch of the golden shower tree with which his father had beaten him mercilessly, he had stopped all communication with Naraapilla forever. With the death of his immediate younger brother, Padmanabhan, he became more withdrawn. Each time he heard Naraapilla refer emotionlessly to ‘the year our Pappanaavan died’, in unrelated contexts, he felt like killing his father and then stabbing himself to death. But as in the case of his mother’s life, Menon Master and his family lightened the burden of his life at Ayyaattumpilli. He completed reading the last book in Menon Master’s bookshelf. The bright- and wide-eyed Achyuthan was not a mere friend, but the warrior hero who drove out the stifling air from Ayyaattumpilli. When he considered himself a supporting actor in a play in which Achyuthan was the protagonist, Govindan felt more joy than any feeling of inferiority. Many a time, during the eighty years of his life, Govindan used to muse about the evening, blessed by a cool breeze and slanted golden rays, when he and Achyuthan, happy and laughing, had raced along the pedestrian path against the rice-laden lorry on the freshly-painted Marthaanda Varma Bridge. Every time, the heart-rending anguish of not being able to find that friendship ever again would assail him, as when he remembered when he had to beat his own father by the riverside.

  In an exquisite hand, Govindan had jotted down all these as poems in the empty pages of his notebooks. With a passion imbibed from Padminiyamma, Kunjuamma used to pore over the pain expressed in poetry and try to understand it, without Govindan’s knowledge. In a notebook with rain-smudged words, right below a poem by Govindan, she saw a handwriting different from his, which had written this and signed off:

  I cannot condone tears shed in remembrance of lost springs

  that turn one blind to the beautiful flower in front of him.

  Yours, Sulochana.

  Though she floundered over the meaning of a cryptic word used in that couplet, with the key of feminine observation, Kunjuamma managed to open the secret vault of her son’s romance before the rainy season was over.

  It was during their intermediate course that Sulochana won the love of Govindan, two years elder to her. They had both won prizes in a poetry contest held to discover young poets, organized by Kavyachandrika, a magazine published from Thripunithura that ceased publication without notice after the third edition. The names and addresses of the prize winners came out in the third edition. With that, the magazine discontinued. Though it was announced that the prizes would be sent to them, neither of them ever got any. Instead, a letter reached Ayyaattumpilli for the first time. The letter with small flowers in faint blue ink drawn around the address was from her—Sulochana, the first prize winner. The reply he sent and the response he received from her had more poetry in them than the poems that won them prizes in the contest. Their fate lines were being redrawn by love as their correspondence progressed, and the smart girl, who possessed both beauty and knowledge, moved to her aunt’s house near Kaniyankunnu, to continue her studies at UC College. Wearing a yellow long skirt and blouse with big green leaves and a light-yellow half-saree
, one Monday, on the pretext of worshipping at the Thachanakkara thevar’s temple, she came to meet Kunjuamma along with her aunt. With her heart aflutter as she waited near the sacrificial chamber for the first sight of her future daughter-in-law, Kunjuamma sent her gaze unconsciously towards the temple pond. She tried to recollect that eighteen-year-old who had been instructed to bathe in the temple pond for forty-one days, as per the prescription of the senior astrologer. If she had to believe that girl was her, she should have had the dreadful habit of believing nightmares were reality.

  At that moment, looking like a yellow-clothed reincarnation of her own past, a girl, accompanied by a middle-aged woman wearing thick glasses, came out. A glance was enough for her to recognize her son’s love interest. Standing outside the temple, and through the bars of the sacrificial chamber, Govindan saw his mother holding in her hand his beloved’s right hand, sanctified by holy water. While she was applying the sandal paste from the leaf in her hand above the holy ash smear on the girl’s forehead, Govindan could lip-read his mother mouthing, ‘My daughter!’

  Impetuously, Kunjuamma gave her word that she would bring Sulochana to Ayyaattumpilli by the time the clouds of the monsoon rains would have moved on. The truth was that in those moments of indulgent love and affection, she had completely forgotten Naraapilla. Going by the traditions of the land, though her son had not reached marriageable age, she recognized that his girl, being only two years younger than him, was already ripe for marriage and would be soon seen as too shop-soiled. In the face of the aunt who seemed to be capable only of smiling, Kunjuamma saw the reflection of her future daughter-in-law. Though she was not educated or sagacious, an inner enlightenment gave her right hand the strength to bless a Nair-Ezhava alliance, which was going to shake all of Thachanakkara. It manifested itself on Sulochana’s forehead in the form of the sandal-paste mark.

  The monsoon was not over yet.

  On an evening when the younger children were reciting their prayers, Appu Nair, who had come as usual to collect paddy at the end of the month, became the first person to hear about this alliance from Kunjuamma. Busy moving the paddy in the granary with the bushel, Appu Nair laughed out loud when he heard of the proposal. Kunjuamma only hid the fact that the girl selected by her son was an Ezhava. After gathering enough paddy in the round basket and covering its mouth with a plantain leaf, Appu Nair stepped into the yard in the light rain, and laughed again at the mischief of his sister proposing to get her twenty-three-year-old son married. In the interval between a flash of lightning and thunder that followed, Kunjuamma asked, ‘Will you please make enquiries?’

  The clap of thunder followed. The dried fruits of the achiote plant, which stood on the way to the gate, caught fire and started to burn.

  ‘Look at the omen,’ Appu Nair said, looking at the burning bush, ‘looks like we should not proceed with this proposal, Kunjo.’

  Since the time he had visited the senior astrologer, Appu Nair had been giving shape to his version of a science of omen-reading. He did not spare anything that remotely resembled a presage or portent. But even when the achiote plant had caught fire, Kunjuamma did not relent. Finally, he gave his word that he would go to Cherai and enquire after the girl’s family. He was on his way out when he saw Naraapilla come out of the anteroom of the old house and pee in the open.

  ‘Hasn’t that slut left yet?’ Muttering to himself, Appu Nair went away in search of another route to Peechamkurichi.

  Three days later, when Naraapilla was away in the afternoon, Appu Nair came to his sister after having made his enquiries in Cherai, and for the first time in his life, berated his sister: ‘What’s wrong with you, Kunjo? The girl that your darling son has identified for marriage is excellent! A first-rate Ezhava! Is he raving mad to marry Ezhava and Pulaya women? If Naraapilla comes to know of this, would he spare you or your son?’ Swabbing his sweat, he looked up and said, ‘I don’t know what, my Thachanakkara thevare!’

  He gave her the rest of the information he had gathered during his visit to Cherai: except in the matter of caste, the family was above Ayyaattumpilli in every sense. She was the eldest of the three daughters of Anandan Master, well respected in that area, for his opposition to toddy tapping… After narrating what he had learnt faithfully, he despaired, ‘But, what is the point? Isn’t everything useless because they are Ezhava?’

  ‘What do you mean useless?’ Kunjuamma challenged him for the first time in a voice full of determination. ‘Say that my son has found a girl who has everything, Appu chettaa.’

  Appu Nair froze. Without uttering another word, he drank a glass of diluted buttermilk in one gulp and returned to Peechamkurichi.

  In the yard, Naraapilla was drying himself after his hot water bath of the evening. This was the time when he was seen at his most peaceable. The time when he enjoyed being clean, after the hot water had washed away all the sweat and grime of the day. Kunjuamma was gathering spathe and midribs fallen beneath the coconut trees and waiting for his bath to get over. Going to him as gently as she could, she started to talk diplomatically about their son’s wedding. Glossing over his lack of income and that he was yet to turn twenty-three, she started to stutter over the matter of the girl’s caste, and Naraapilla flung away his thorth and shouted, ‘If he dares to marry some Ezhava girl he chances upon…’ He bounded to where Kunjuamma was standing and bellowed, ‘No way will I Iet them enter these premises.’

  At that moment, with a smile which could render any man numb, Kunjuamma asked her husband, ‘So, what about the Pulaya woman in the anteroom? What shall I do with her?’

  Stumped for an answer, he grimaced. Picking up the thorth from the ground and dusting it, he flung it on his shoulder and went inside.

  The wedding of the eldest son of Ayyaattumpilli happened without even Pooshaappi getting wind of it. There was no wedding tent or feast. No musical band or ululation was called for. Naraapilla raised his hand to strike Govindan who had brought Sulochana from her house. Holding down Naraapilla, who was hopping mad, his brothers, barely out of their adolescence, beseeched Govindan: ‘Chettaa, please go wherever you can. If you stay back, one of you will die. That’s for sure.’

  Anticipating such a scene, Sulochana’s father and two relatives were waiting with two hired cycle-rickshaws beyond the stile of Ayyaattumpilli. Kunjuamma wept seeing her son leave with his bride. Her daughters wept. When he was able to free his right hand from the grip of his sons, Naraapilla screamed, ‘You, you, you, you…’ After searching for the appropriate phrase to bless the marriage of his first-born and stuttering, he finally exploded, ‘You’ll be damned forever. You’ll be so destitute that you will dig up and sell the cornerstone of your abode. You’ll go begging with a spathe. This is Naraapilla’s oath … nghaaa!’

  Govindan did not meet damnation. Nor did he dig up his abode’s foundation stone. He joined a school in Cherai as a teacher, stayed in his wife’s house, which had a framed photograph of Narayana Guru, and became the Govindan Master that the local people respected. After Sulochana too got a job as a teacher in the same school, they shifted to a small house built in that same compound.

  Govindan Master and Sulochana Teacher hung the photos of Narayana Guru and Chattambiswamikal side by side in their portico. The house was blessed by the two great souls.

  Those were the final few months of Kunjuamma’s life. In the month of Medam, when the hoisted flag announced the start of the festival of the Thachanakkara thevar’s temple, Govindan and Sulochana, bearing their infant, came to the temple to meet the mother and daughters. Through Appu Nair’s youngest son, whom he met at the temple grounds, Govindan sent word to his mother that he and his family were waiting for her in the temple premises. Kunjuamma and the youngest daughter, Chinnamma, came running. The mother and son stood looking at each other for a long time without uttering a word. Their hearts beat louder than the drums in the temple nearing their crescendo.

  Sulochana had brought a set of a high-quality mundu and neryathu woven on C
hendamangalam looms for Kunjuamma, and silk skirts for the sisters. Gathering Govindan’s one-and-half-year-old daughter in her arms and pinching her cheek, Chinnamma asked Govindan, ‘Looks exactly like our mother, no, Vallyettaa?’

  ‘She resembles her, but hasn’t got our mother’s hair and beauty,’ Govindan Master replied.

  The mother and the daughter-in-law had a lot of news to exchange. Govindan’s brother Pankajaakshan joining the police; the younger one Chandran fighting with his father over Govindan and leaving the house; an alliance in the offing for Thankamma, elder to Chinnamma; Thankamma’s disappointment at not being able to come to the temple and meet her brother as she was menstruating—Kunjuamma narrated all this in one breath. Seeing the manner in which her fifteen-year-old sister-in-law was talking to the street vendor selling spin tops, Sulochana whispered the question in her mother-in-law’s ear, ‘Has menarche set in for her?’

  Kunjuamma contorted her face and shrugged her shoulders to indicate that it had not. ‘If it goes on like this,’ she whispered back to her daughter-in-law, ‘I am afraid that she won’t start menstruating even after I am dead.’

  Kunjuamma invited her son and daughter-in-law for lunch at Ayyaattumpilli.

  ‘Some other time,’ Govindan said.

  ‘When?’ Kunjuamma asked, ‘For the oblation rite on the sixteenth day of my death?’

  The last two things Kunjuamma said to Govindan turned out to be prophetic: she did not live to see Chinnamma menstruating. The next time Govindan and family came to Ayyaattumpilli was on hearing of her death.

  Kunjuamma, who was carrying the new mundu and neryathu, given to her by her son as Vishukaineettam, close to her chest, as fondly as she would carry an infant, was waylaid at the stile by Naraapilla. Someone had reported to Naraapilla about seeing his son, daughter-in-law, and the grandchild in the company of Kunjuamma. Naraapilla snatched the new set of clothes gifted to her out of her hands and flung it away into the compound. As his youngest daughter started to make a dash for the packet, suddenly recalling that the dot-patterned material for her skirt was also in the packet, Naraapilla slapped her on her back, and hollered, ‘Phaa, daughter of a mongrel! Did you also go to receive the gift of that Ezhava woman? Sister of the father-beater!’