A Preface to Man

by Subhash Chandran

  Shankaran stopped when he saw a new thatched hut where the temple grounds ended. He walked towards it and stood in front of it. ‘Even one like this would be good enough,’ he said to himself, thinking of something.

  Since he was coming from the barbershop, stray hairs were pricking the nape of his neck and his back. Deciding to take a bath in the river, he turned to go, repeating the word he had read on the board on the thatched hut.

  ‘Arunodaya,’ he said. ‘Meaningful word.’

  FIVE

  Meanie

  18 March 1999

  A meanie—chetta—will not waste a single occasion to show his lowliness.

  Fear not, this is just a sentence that I wrote down in the diary yesterday transforming the anger I felt towards a colleague. After that, I felt that this sentence stemmed from the worst kind of mental conditioning that Thachanakkara had left in me. When you call a low-thinking, debased person as a chetta, when you deprecate things that lack elegance and finesse as kitsch, you may be unknowingly hurting a few around you. Once upon a time, the word we now use for a meanie, a base person, ‘chetta’, was also a name for the home of the lower caste, dear to the owner.

  No, I was not sentient the day I wrote this sentence in the diary.

  After the Land Reforms Bill had prised large tracts of land from Naraapilla, both as fields and plots, the stature of Ayyaattumpilli had come down somewhat. In the lands partitioned among the five children of Naraapilla—except Govindan who had married the woman from Cherai, and Chandran who had run away—houses encircled by thorny bamboo fences abounded: the one in which Naraapilla was born; the one he constructed; the one built by Pankajaakshan; and the thatched hut made by Chinnamma after quarrelling with Naraapilla. Thus, smoke from four kitchens rose in the air.

  It was Chinnamma’s demand that her father should make out the New House in her name like the old house had been given to her sister Thankamma, which planted the seeds for the rise of the fourth house in the compound. Countering Chinnamma’s obstinacy with twisted lips and a wagging forefinger, Naraapilla was dismissive: ‘Such tricks won’t work with Naraapilla, you damned one! If you want a house, tell your Nair to make one! Listen, I have apportioned the best land. Do what you want! This, I have made for me to sleep in! No upstart need drool, hankering after this!’

  The fight between father and daughter lasted till dusk. Though it all started with Chinnamma rebelling ostensibly against Naraapilla, cursing her newborn for wailing, later it emerged that there was a graver reason for Chinnamma to have suddenly moved the demand for the New House. Till Shankaran reached home in the evening, passers-by could hear the uniformly high-pitched, open-throated bellowing of the father and daughter from Ayyaattumpilli. From the other side of the fence, Thankamma and Kalyanikuttyamma, Pankajaakshan’s wife, leant over and looked now and then, and went back to their work. That evening, when Thankamma was about to start chanting her evening prayers in front of the lit lamp, Chinnamma came carrying the baby in one hand and dragging her husband behind her with the other, and said, ‘Eh chechi, for a few days, we’re staying here. Can’t stay with that … that … that devil anymore!’

  ‘What’re you saying?’ Thankamma asked, gathering the infant into her arms, and taking care not to look at Shankaran standing behind her sister with his head bowed.

  Sitting sprawled on the floor, Chinnamma said, ‘With the blessings of God, I too have a small plot of land. Even if it’s only a pitched tent, we will build something on that land and make do!’ She called out to her husband standing in the darkness on the front steps, ‘You come here, man. Isn’t this my chechi’s house? We’ll stay here in peace for two days!’

  Till Kumaran came home, Shankaran stood there on the steps thinking of this and that. Shankaran was thinking about a small, thatched house he had seen on the western corner of Thachanakkara temple.

  Not two days, but two months did Chinnamma stay with her husband and infant in her sister’s house. Thankamma, Kumaran, and Kalyanikuttyamma tried to patch things up between the father and daughter and failed. Pankajaakshan, the only son of Naraapilla left in Ayyaattumpilli, did not interfere in these affairs and held court at Vengooran Thankappan’s tea stall, boasting loudly about his police days. Informed by his son Kumaran, Appu Nair came from Peechamkurichi on the fourth day to seek a compromise with Chinnamma. Because his vision was glazed over by the cataract, Appu Nair often mistook Chinnamma for Thankamma and vice versa. Appu Nair was shocked to find in the hands of Chinnamma an allegation which was to be a potent weapon to wield against the father.

  ‘Do know, Uncle?’ said Chinnamma, laying her baby in the cradle hung for Thankamma’s youngest child, and rocking it by pushing her body forward and backward, ‘Our New House is kept to be given away as a gift!’

  The direction of Chinnamma’s allegation was missed by both Thankamma and Appu Nair.

  ‘Gift?’ Appu Nair probed. ‘For whom?’

  ‘For who else?’ Chinnamma raised her voice. ‘Isn’t there that fair madam at Chammaram, the crone that is out to seduce moneyed old men? For that same one!’

  Appu Nair understood what was worrying Chinnamma. After Kaalippennu was ousted from the anteroom, Naraapilla had resumed his old relationship with Amminiyamma of Chammaram house, four houses to the north of Ayyaattumpilli. Amminiyamma, wife of Gangadharan Nair, whom Thachanakkara denizens had nicknamed ‘Kamanthan’, remained as beautiful as the core of sandalwood, even after delivering seven children. The seven children that she bore were of eight types. That the two middle ones among them resembled Naraapilla was something that was often alleged in Vengooran’s teashop by Paanamparampath Nanu, who prided himself on having the lowdown on all the illicit children of Thachanakkara. Kamanthan sat on the porch, swatting mosquitoes, unable to enjoy the many skills of Amminiyamma, with which she used to lure many old lechers with fat purses to Chammaram. Before her death, Kunjuamma was once forced to cross that gate at Chammaram, on which chaste women would spit in disgust. That day, when Naraapilla, who was supposed to be having his bath in the evening in front of the granary, was not to be found, as if guided by an inner voice, Kunjuamma crossed the four houses to the north of Ayyaattumpilli to reach Chammaram, and called out into the house for her husband. Her guess was correct. ‘Won’t let me be, would you?’ Naraapilla screamed, sitting on Amminiyamma’s cot, and threw a heavy brass kindi, which missed Kunjuamma standing in the half-light and hit the tulsi plant and broke it. At a loss as to what to do next, Kunjuamma took the tulsi plant and returned home crying in the darkening gloom gaining ground around her, and hid her tears. Neither did she let anyone see them. When the hunchback crone of Naattyol came and stood in front of her like a question mark, Kunjuamma said, ‘I’d gone to pluck a sweet tulsi plant!’

  When Kamanthan Gangadharan, fed up with sitting on the veranda, fell dead there one day, all of Thachanakkara assembled in front of that house. It was Paanamparampath Nanu, the one who made up limericks about the man-eating ways of Amminiyamma and carried tales throughout Thachanakkara, who was in the lead when it came to overseeing the funeral rites. Nanu brought a wooden chair to the yard from inside for Naraapilla to sit. Though there was only the distance of four houses between them, since the flag had been lowered after their earlier celebrations of lusty unions tapered off, Naraapilla was seeing Amminiyamma again after a gap of many years. Naraapilla thought that Amminiyamma’s body, which had crossed half a century, was shining brighter than the lamp near Kamanthan’s corpse. Bereft of spouses, they both had become partners in sorrow, and that they had reached certain unspoken decisions, communicated at regular intervals in the midst of the rituals when their eyes met, was something that was not noticed by anyone—except Chinnamma, who was watching her father’s changing expressions and mien from a distance. Chinnamma was taken aback to see Amminiyamma’s tear-filled eyes often sending looks of coy invitation to her ageing father.

  Before the sixteenth day of Kamanthan’s death, Naraapilla was sharing the bed at Chammaram in t
he evenings. Running her fingers through the greying hirsute forest on Naraapilla’s back, Amminiyamma promised not to let anyone except Naraapilla into Chammaram house henceforth. Chinnamma’s tongue swelled with bitterness when she realized that, after his evening bath, Naraapilla was being tempted by the bed at Chammaram. Chinnamma was not the ilk of Kunjuamma to come back home, feeling crushed by a kindi thrown at her. One Shivaraathri night, as she was having a dip in the river and saw Amminiyamma’s face emerging from the water, she spat out the venom of bitterness she had been carrying for long: ‘Phthoo, you whoring slut!’ Chinnamma threw down the clothes and the soap she was carrying. ‘You found only my father with one leg in the grave to fornicate with and lead astray?’

  In front of Chinnamma, the maturity that was older than her mother, did not quake. ‘Did your father deliver on the road, after I led him astray?’ Amminiyamma got out of the water and stood her ground on the bank.

  The blasting and basting between two generations lasted for hours. The final challenge that the old-school representative threw at the novice of the newer generation, after she picked up the rinsed clothes and got ready to leave, shocked the younger challenger into silence.

  ‘Does the darling daughter want to see?’ said Amminiyamma. ‘If I am challenged, I will make your father will the land you now live on as a gift to me. Want to see?’

  The same shudder that ran through her at the riverbank when she first heard the threat, flashed again in her mind as she stood rocking the cradle. ‘Do you now realize why father kept picking fights with me for the baby crying, shitting, and all that, Uncle?’ Chinnamma stopped rocking the cradle, making sure the child was asleep. Thankamma was sitting with her mouth wide open. ‘Is there a law that will allow such a gift deed, Uncle?’ Thankamma, who was not convinced about the far-sighted vision of her younger sister, asked Appu Nair in a voice that could be barely heard. At that moment, with the shadow of helplessness clouding it, Thankamma’s face resembled Kunjuamma’s face more than ever. ‘As a gift deed…’ Appu Nair said without much conviction. ‘Don’t you worry! Will anyone give away gifts to such women, just like that?’

  With a sagacious mien, Thankamma added, ‘If so, I would say it was a mistake on your part to have left the house. We should cling on to such people!’

  ‘Tthhu…’ Chinnamma shook her head and snapped ferociously. ‘My chechi, I say this as a vow, from now on only my dog will go to that house!’

  Thus, Gopalan Panickan came to Ayyaattumpilli to drive the stake for a new house. In the land set aside for Chinnamma, a hut began to come up. Chinnamma said that they could start living there after laying the foundation with laterite and using coconut thatch for walls. Shankaran agreed. On loan and against cash, came bricks, thatch, and doors. Loaded on a bullock cart, first-rate thatch and ropes were brought from Aluva by Maniyan pulayan. Within four days, the foundation was raised. On the fifth day, by the time Shankaran came back from work in the evening, Maniyan pulayan had levelled the floor of the foundation using the handheld iron compounder to a smoothness that rivalled the base on which the clay icon of Thrikkakkarappan is installed along with carpets of flower during Onam. The mature flame-of-the-forest trees in the yard were cut down to make pillars for the house. Chopped arecanut palms were split to make the central beam and spliced further to make supporting beams, after their soft innards were removed. Within six weeks, Maniyan’s brother Kochayyappan and Kochayyappan’s eldest son, Ayyankaali, worked together to finish the work on the hut.

  Maniyan pulayan had constructed Chinnamma’s house modelled on his own. After making the floor smooth with a paste of powdered charcoal and cow dung, Maniyan pulayan grinned with his yellow teeth at Chinnamma who had come to see the house and told her, ‘To tell you the truth, thatched houses are better. We can even take the coconut leaf spine to pick our teeth from the wall!’

  On a Wednesday in that month of Midhunam, Chinnamma boiled the milk for the housewarming ceremony. The VIP guests at the housewarming function included Pankajaakshan’s three sons, Thankamma’s two girls and two boys, and Appu Nair’s four grandchildren. When the army of children began to poke holes in the thatched walls and started to compete amongst each other to untie the complicated knots which Maniyan pulayan had used to secure the thatch together, Chinnamma’s limbs trembled and she shouted, ‘Ho! Finish eating and go back to your houses, children!’

  On a stove made with bricks and plastered with mud, the sisters lit a fire with coconut spathes, and let the milk boil over. As per custom, she put sugar in the milk, passed on the cup for everyone to have a mouthful, and throwing the leftover mouthful of milk in the direction of the New House, Chinnamma said, ‘This is for all the patriarchs! Though he is evil, we’ve to do what we’ve to do, right?’

  Without fail, Thankamma sent morning gruel and dinner, covered with a banana leaf, for the sixty-eight-year-old Naraapilla, who was living alone in the New House. His lunch and evening coffee along with some snack, was delivered by Kalyanikuttyamma. Thankamma arranged for old Kotha pulayi to sweep the yard, clean the house, and wash Naraapilla’s clothes. Kotha pulayi, who kept smoking beedis to counter her toothache, kept the fire in Naraapilla’s kitchen burning. Rather than to heat up the water for Naraapilla’s evening bath, the stove in the New House proved more useful for lighting, at her pleasure, the beedi butts that she had collected from various places and kept rolled up safely in the end of her mundu. In the kitchen that had once been maintained like a shrine by Kunjuamma, now Kotha pulayi squatted smoking her beedi butts. The reason she gave for not lighting the stove in front of the granary to heat the water for Naraapilla’s evening bath, convinced Naraapilla: ‘It is good that the children will bring food and water for the master,’ Kotha pulayi had said through the blackened stumps of her incisors. ‘Yet, if no fire burns in one’s own kitchen, that’s inauspicious, Master!’

  Chinnamma gradually realized that her fear of Amminiyamma of Chammaram moving into Ayyaattumpilli to light the fire in the kitchen of the New House was scarcely shared by others, and it was an anxiety that bugged her alone. When she saw her sister and sister-in-law gathering fallen coconuts and midribs from the New House as if it was their right, Chinnamma’s demeanour changed. With her second child in her womb, Chinnamma rushed to the fence. ‘I know how you all are!’ Chinnamma thus inaugurated a volley of accusations which escalated into a full-blown verbal battle across the bamboo fence. ‘Irrespective of day or night, you sisters-in-law are feeding and mollycoddling the darling father, isn’t it? If you will be happy to get that house too, take that too! For that, you needn’t have played such a drama to keep me away!’

  Kalyanikuttyamma and Thankamma stood rooted on the spot, stupefied, wondering who had staged a play. Taking their silence to be an admission of guilt, Chinnamma began to shake the fence to advance forward, and Kalyanikuttyamma was forced to counter, ‘Who was the lazy one who got out on a ruse, to escape looking after father? And now the blame is on others, eh?’

  To that question, Chinnamma replied with a freshly-baked snap, ‘Phtthu! When our mother lay dying, after banging her head on the walls, wasn’t this daughter-in-law enjoying herself with her Nair in Munnar? Don’t make me say more!’

  Meetings and interactions between the children of Ayyaattumpilli became lesser and lesser. But slinking through the fences, the grandchildren of Naraapilla became bound by friendship. Chinnamma’s second child—the first child of Ayyaattumpilli to be born in a thatched house—was also a girl. With the cash they got from selling the field of Nedumaali, which had come to them in the partition, to a Christian from Angamaly, Shankaran knocked down the thatched house and built in its place a house with brick walls and roof tiles that very year. A nazrani from Angamaly called Devassy had rented from Naraapilla a plot called Thekkepallam on the riverbank and had put up a brick kiln. Shankaran raised the walls of his house by buying bricks that were not properly baked, which Devassy sold at discounted rates. From Govindan’s land, untended and overgrown with shrubs, a
nd which had become a sanctuary for the foxes, Chinnamma cut jackfruit and ainee trees without telling or asking anyone, and gave them to carpenter Gopalan to make rafters and beams. When Thankamma came to enquire, hearing the sound of trees being felled from the plot belonging to the eldest brother, Chinnamma puffed up her chest in defiance and said loud enough to let Thankamma hear, ‘Who’s got a complaint? My brother’s plot, my brother’s trees. If I cut one or two of them, it’s no skin off anyone’s nose!’

  Chinnamma joined the workers to build the house. It was in her third pregnancy. Carrying the three-month-old baby in her womb and a few bricks on a plank on her head, Chinnamma ran around till the walls of the house were built. Many a time, Chinnamma carried bricks and lime all by herself, letting the shrivelled-looking Malli cherumi, who was to do the fetching and carrying, stand as a mute witness. Thus her third pregnancy was aborted, and ended up as a three-month-old lump of flesh ejected prematurely.

  In her new house, it was with unusual care that Chinnamma waited for her next pregnancy. She had made an offering to Thachanakkara thevar to give her a boy to keep company for the elder girls. One night, faint from post-coital exhaustion, Chinnamma got up to drink water, and opened the front door, mistaking it for the kitchen door, and took the kindi from the parapet. It was a full moon night. In the eastern side of the yard, where the thatch from the old house was stacked, a champaka flower, with intense fragrance, was in bloom. With the moonlight and fragrance of champaka suffusing the night air, Chinnamma had the delusion that the kindi was filled with some heavenly drink. After drinking her fill from it, she took the rest to the bedroom to give to her husband. Raising the wick of the lantern to look into the pitcher, he smiled and said, ‘Silly! The half kindi that you filled yourself with was only moonlight!’

  To come back to reality and laugh out loud, Chinnamma took nearly ten seconds. But those ten seconds were completely made use of by a new soul. After being formed in Chinnamma’s womb that night, the first nutrient that it got was this: