A Preface to Man

by Subhash Chandran

  Kunjuamma was next in line. Yanking her by her hair and dragging her along the yard, Naraapilla dumped her on the steps of the New House. ‘Misbegotten bitch.’ Letting the leg raised to kick her remain suspended in air for an instant, he said, ‘If you try to defeat Naraapilla, I will make you eat my gorpse.’ Then, yearning to smash her head between the hardness of the burnt bricks of the steps and his equally hard heel, he landed a violent kick to her head.

  ‘Chechiii … our Amma’s being killed!’ Chinnamma ran screaming into the house. When Naraapilla quit the arena after his rage was spent, the sisters carried their mother into the house.

  With that kick, Naraapilla made his last physical contact with Kunjuamma. Though the news scarcely percolated beyond the boundaries of Ayyaattumpilli, with that kick Kunjuamma had entered her last days. She found pleasure in bloodying herself by hitting her head against the walls, leaving crimson patches on them. After one-and-a-half months of suffering, till she finally collapsed dead by voluntarily ramming her head for one last time into the Ayyaattumpilli wall, Kunjuamma did not step out of the room with its walls filled with murals in blood.

  By the time Govindan and his family arrived, Kunjuamma had already been moved out to the southern boundary for cremation. In the absence of his elder three brothers, the youngest son, Chandran, had lit the pyre. Unable to endure the sight of his mother burning, as Govindan turned to leave, Naraapilla came rushing out of the house. In a voice that made comprehension difficult even to himself, he lashed out at Govindan in front of the assembled mourners. ‘Satisfied? After making that poor woman suffer to her death, aren’t you satisfied now?’

  After a long while, much after his reputation as a soft-natured teacher had been set, once again Govindan’s heart heaved with a burst of murderous intent. Sensing that, Sulochana squeezed his arm and held on to it. Perceiving the amazing phenomenon of the surge of a force potent enough to kill a savage beast with a single blow coursing through a man’s hand, once again, Sulochana left Ayyaattumpilli in the company of her husband.

  Having completed the ritual bath after sixteen days of sequestration following Kunjuamma’s death, Naraapilla returned to the temple pond for his usual early morning bath. When he lowered his fifty-seven-year-old feet into the glass-like surface of the water lying still on the steps, he wondered if he was hallucinating: it seemed that the water in the pond was flowing rapidly! From the women’s kadavu, sounds were heard of someone gargling and spitting out gutturally! Realizing that old age had come to get acquainted with him with a handshake in his fifty-seventh year, he felt faint. He scrambled up and sat panting on the dry, upper steps. After the sixteen days of sequestration, untrammelled by the corporeal form, Kunjuamma had returned to follow her husband till his death.

  The year was 1955. Naraapilla was already a grandfather. But it was only after his third daughter Chinnamma would have her menarche the next year, get married the year after, undergo the sorrow of being childless for ten years and then have three children with a gap of two years between each, that Naraapilla would become the grandfather of her third child, Jithendran.

  For that he would have to wait till 1972. Not on the steps of the pond that seemed to be flowing; but on the much more immense, much more slippery, much more merciless steps of Time.

  Part Two

  Artha

  ‘The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.’

  —Karl Marx

  ONE

  Transformation

  5 June 1999

  …Yesterday I had a strange dream; really a nightmare. The dream, set at least two centuries earlier, in times of yore, started with me in the role of a sentry at a palace. Though I was not guarding the ramparts of the palace but a more imposing darkness. I believe that some of the words we utter randomly during our waking hours are seized swiftly by our hearts, held, and transferred to our brain in the night. I had told you yesterday about my accompanying my grandfather during his trips into the open for defecating. In order to embellish it, I may have referred to it as my ‘sentry duty’. Just imagine, that word, which extends its roots beyond so many centuries, and its embers, were adopted by my mind the moment I uttered it. Then, once its ashes were blown away, it was handed over to my brain to let it grow potent enough to burn down forests in dreams! The dream went like this: I was standing as a night sentry holding a flaming torch in one hand and a spear in the other under a large tree, which had many desiccated roots bursting out of the ground and hovering like serpents about to strike. I didn’t know whom was I guarding. The heat and the smoke from the flambeau were unbearable. An ache, which could be described as agreeable, was building up in my legs. Through the shadows of the branches of that mammoth tree, a full moon of startling size could be seen. My head had started getting wet from the drops of moonlight falling on it. All of a sudden, dark clouds blanketed the moon. A terrific bolt of lightning struck the torch out of my hand and then struck the earth. For a moment, the world lay luminously before my eyes with a strange and profound beauty. Then, thunder crashed, deafening the ears of the pitch-blackness. As the torch had been extinguished as it fell from my hand, I could not locate it. Then, seeing an extraordinary flame of light high above in the tree, I looked up, tilting my head. Something heavy came down like a meteor, fell beside me and caught fire. It was a vulture with its wings aflame! With a burning heart, and trembling with fear, again I looked up into the tree. Horrified by the vision of a human shape burning from the lightning strike, wearing an iron torture chamber fitted like body armour and swinging slowly to and fro on the tree from which it was hanging, I woke up…

  When Kunjuamma died, Chinnamma cried the loudest. However, those were not tears from a heart evolved enough to feel racked by the pain of bereavement. She bawled only as if to sustain the validity of a saying amongst the Thachanakkara folk: ‘Ayyaattumpilli bawls its throat out’; that was all. Other than stealing glances at the gathered mourners, as she was bawling, and fearing that she would die of hunger during the prolonged and stultifying rituals, she was not capable of recognizing the unbearable emptiness created by the loss of the person who lay dead. More than her immaturity, the problem was the blood of Naraapilla, which flowed raucously through her heart and veins. In this matter, her brother Pankajaakshan, who had joined the police, was her male version—an arrant wild tree that had sprouted and ripened in the soil of Ayyaattumpilli. It was constable Raman Pillai, who was their neighbour on the east side, who had told Pankajaakshan about the physical tests for recruitment to the police that were taking place at the government school grounds at Aluva. Raman Pillai had returned to Thachanakkara after having served in many places at various times in the Thiru-Kochi state. Since ‘Raambillapolice’ was more feared than respected by the denizens of Thachanakkara, Pankajaakshan was nervous at the sight of him coming across as if he wanted to talk to him.

  ‘Aren’t you Naraapilla’s son?’ Raambilla, with bloodshot eyes and a twirled-up moustache, asked Pankajaakshan, surveying him from head to toe.

  Pankajaakshan stood without confirming or denying, scratching the nape of his neck.

  ‘Why? Aren’t you sure?’ Even in mufti, Raambilla retained his police manners.

  ‘Yes,’ Pankajaakshan was vexed with a suddenly dry mouth.

  ‘What yes? That you are not sure, or that you are indeed the seed of Naraapilla?’

  The dryness now reached Pankajaakshan’s throat.

  ‘Then you listen,’ Raambilla said. ‘They are recruiting policemen at Aluva School. Go with the papers of your educational qualifications, if you have any! Looking at your height and girth, it looks like you can wear khaki!’

  Taking along a friend called Shankunni, Pankajaakshan went immediately to Aluva Government School and stood in queue for the physical tests of running and jumping. Unable to bear the heat of the sun and the weight of his own expectations simultaneously, and feeling faint, the friend retreated before the name Shankunni Nair c
ould even be called out. However, in the shade of his enticing daydreams of wearing the khaki police uniform and thrashing all and sundry, Pankajaakshan held on without wilting. As per their instructions he ran, leaped, and won the imprimatur of the police. Thus, after Raambillapolice, Thachanakkara got a second policeman—Pankajaakshanpolice.

  It was immediately after Govindan had moved residence to Cherai along with his girl that Pankajaakshan went to Kochi for his training following his recruitment. When he returned after his six-month training, on reaching the stile, he called out to Kunjuamma, ‘Ammae, there’s someone with me.’

  ‘Who is it, your friend?’ Kunjuamma asked seeing a flash of red through the gap in the fence.

  ‘No, no,’ Pankajaakshanpolice said, ‘it’s a female friend. My wife.’

  The next person to speak was Naraapilla, who came out of the house, ‘Do not enter! Both can go back the same way you came!’

  ‘But then we’re not two, there’re three,’ said Pankajaakshan bravely, climbing over the stile. ‘The third person is here, in her womb.’

  A comely girl wearing a silk saree appeared from behind the fence. That sight softened Naraapilla somewhat. ‘Oh ho, now which genus is this one? Ezhava or Pulaya?’

  ‘Nair from an aristocratic family. Genuine Menons from Kochi!’ Holding her hand, Pankajaakshan entered Ayyaattumpilli.

  When Kunjuamma died, Pankajaakshan and his wife Kalyanikuttyamma were not at Ayyaattumpilli. His father-in-law knew the manager of a tea plantation at Munnar. Enticed by the word honeymoon, which was gaining currency in Kochi lately, taking a week’s leave, Pankajaakshan along with his wife gallivanted about in Munnar, abetted by the manager. In the house with a white door and window frames, and more glass windows than granite, arranged by the manager whose snuff-tinged reddish moustache and sprightliness belied his years, Pankajaakshan lay panting from his exertions of many hours of lovemaking, provoked by his wrong notion that his wife could be impressed by his staying powers—while his youngest brother, Chandran, was setting alight the pyre of Kunjuamma. At the very same moment, when the flames started to eat into his mother’s left flank, unaware of all that and lost in the pleasure of the cool climate of Munnar, Pankajaakshan assured his new bride, ‘When it comes to this feat, I am the real son of Naraapilla of Ayyaattumpilli!’

  After all the efforts of Appu Nair to inform Pankajaakshan and bring him to Thachanakkara had failed, everyone concurred in the decision to cremate the body before it started to decay. Since they had left for Munnar without even bothering to say goodbye to his mother, who had started smashing her head against the walls and muttering deliriously, her death was the cause for a lifelong guilt for Pankajaakshan and his wife. The day he and his wife got back was the day of Sanchayanam, the day for the ritual of gathering the bones from the ashes. With his brow touching the burnt pyre, which looked tinier than his mother, Pankajaakshan cursed his wife silently. Kalyanikuttyamma, who knew how to pander to her husband, gradually survived those curses. Persuaded by the only daughter-in-law to move into Ayyaattumpilli, soon, Pankajaakshan moved to a small house built in the southern corner of the compound and started living there.

  Thankamma, younger than the runaway Chandran, and older than Chinnamma, was married to Appu Nair’s second son, Kumaran. Naraapilla bequeathed to Thankamma the old house that Menon Master and his family used to rent.

  Kumaran had found a job in the FACT company in Eloor. After hearing that the company was hiring, he had gone there to try his luck, and returned proud with the title of the first company employee from Thachanakkara. It was to celebrate the news of his new job that he had come to Ayyaattumpilli along with his father, with toffees bought from Pooshaappi’s shop. While describing his job, he tried to impress Naraapilla with words such as nitrate and ammonium sulphate.

  ‘Which means real good fertilizers!’ Appu Nair added with gravitas.

  ‘But what’s there in it to rejoice so much?’ Naraapilla asked. ‘Does it behove Nairs like us to work for wages for some third party?’

  Appu Nair and his son looked at each other with misgivings.

  ‘Umm, all right,’ Naraapilla told Appu Nair. ‘Go and check at Kaniyankunnu. Let’s not delay his and Thankamma’s wedding!’

  Hearing that, Thankamma, who was watching her cousin through the gap in the window, laughed shyly with her toffee-smeared mouth. Feeling amazed at an unusual sweetness in those toffees, she pinched her younger sister.

  In front of the shop in the name of Poovamparampath Shashvathanpilla alias Pooshaappi, his reformist son Kochu Parashu had put up a new board: ‘Poovamparampath Stores’.

  The board was painted by Artist Krishnan, the son of the local barber Aandi, who plied his trade making the rounds of all the houses in Thachanakkara. Not only did Krishnan not follow his father’s trade, he also wore his hair long and planted a small board in front of his house that said ‘Artist Krishnan’. The artist declared that he was not ready to go around houses cutting hair and cleaning up the armpits of all and sundry.

  The new board painted by Artist Krishnan hid the dome of the sanctum sanctorum of the Thachanakkara temple from Pooshaappi’s view. That gave him an indescribable relief. During afternoons bereft of customers, the sight of the round top pointed skywards, and the dome underneath that seemed to bulge out bigger and bigger every moment in the heat of the sun, used to discomfit him. As he sat on his two stools, he used to feel that the dome of the Thachanakkara thevar was withering his solitudes in the sun.

  Two decades had passed after the Temple Entry Edict had come into force. Even then, the avarnar hesitated to enter the Thachanakkara temple and worship Parashuraman, the deity. Instead, they continued their practice of taking their sorrows to the Muthappan deity of the kavu at Kaniyankunnu to the west of Thachanakkara, where he had confined himself in maintaining a non-polluting distance from Parashuraman, whose axe he kept clear of. In front of the Muthappan kavu was Madhavachon’s grocery store. Muthappan provided for the spiritual needs of the avarnar; Madhavachon looked after their physical needs. They were, like in the case of the Thachanakkara thevar’s temple, afraid to enter Poovamparampath Shashvathanpilla’s store as well. Only washerwoman Thaamara bought things from his store on cash and credit, though she had to stand at the bottom of the steps for that. Used as she was to washing the dirty laundry of the savarnar, Thaamara knew that in the matter of dirt and beauty, people were the same. The next one to come was indeed Artist Krishnan. As a voice inside him had been whispering to him that the status of an artist is one between God and man, he was untouched by fear.

  When he heard that Artist Krishnan was going to Ernakulam to buy brushes, Kochu Parashu also accompanied him to procure high-quality fragrant soaps for the shop. As he was getting out after buying ten cakes each of Wellington and Rose of Kerala Soap Company, and twelve cakes of Chaavi brand soap of Godrej, the brown board on the building across caught Kochu Parashu’s eye. Kochu Parashu felt he should capitalize on the opportunity—a chance to shock the young barber with his ability to read English.

  Kochu Parashu read aloud: ‘The National Furniture Co., Ernakulam, south India. For superior works in timber and metal, supplying electric materials, commission agents, ee tee cee, ee tee cee.’

  ‘Et cetera, et cetera.’ When Krishnan corrected Parashu’s pronunciation of the last two words, Kochu Parashu was shocked. Barber Aandi’s son was correcting his English!

  ‘Shall we also keep one like this in front of your shop?’ Krishnan asked. ‘I will paint it for you; just give me the cost of the paint and the board.’

  Kochu Parashu thought that it was a great idea. In future, that would serve him better, having something Madhavachon’s did not have.

  Writing the name of Pooshaappi’s shop took up a whole Sunday. Till the last letter was written, a big gang of children hovered around Artist Krishnan, whose left thumb sported a nail as long as a magnolia petal. It was in large yellow letters that Krishnan wrote ‘Poovamparampath Stores’. On his own accord,
he had drawn a rooster’s comb in red, right over the letter P, which came first. Kochu Parashu frowned in displeasure, assuming it was a spelling error, but was placated by the smiling Krishnan. ‘That’s the emblem of our shop. Haven’t you seen the silver-trimmed conch on the Marthaanda Varma Bridge? Like that.’

  After writing PRO followed by a colon, underneath the name, he asked, ‘Now the proprietor’s name. Whose name shall I write, yours or Pooshaappi chettan’s?’

  Kochu Parashu stood there, scratching his head. The children around him did not comprehend the dilemma that was going on inside that head. When he looked at his father sitting inside the shop, nodding off, suddenly the lighthouse of his childhood swirled in his head, providing illumination. It was not him alone, there were six other children who were clinging to his father’s hand. His father’s self-acquired wealth, in addition to the house and the shop.

  ‘Let it be father’s name,’ Kochu Parashu said, ‘Poovamparampath Shashwathan Pilla—write it fully.’

  After writing the name split into three sections in white paint, Krishnan changed the initial letters alone into yellow. The children read only those: Poo … Sha … Pi.

  They felt for Artist Krishnan the kind of veneration and feeling of distance that they felt only for the priest in the Thachanakkara thevar’s temple.