A Preface to Man

by Subhash Chandran

  Not old enough to be sentient about boundaries, the children of the other house ran away, signalling to Geetha that they would come back later.

  It was Jithendran who provided the children with the opportunity to play on the gate, swinging it like a vehicle for an entire week, without being afraid of Chinnamma. It was the day of Onam when Chinnamma was awaiting labour in the new house, which smelled of fresh lime plaster. Nothing happened on thiruvonam day, contrary to what was expected by Shankaran and feared by Chinnamma. The next day, when the labour started, Chinnamma thought it was due to overeating during the feast the previous day. However, the newbie had marked the beginning of his troubles by getting his oversized head lodged in his mother’s pelvis, unable to come out. For three hours, Chinnamma screamed incessantly. Yet he did not come into the grip of the seventy-year-old midwife, Kalyani.

  ‘It is beyond me.’ Opening out the hands calloused by aiding countless childbirths, Kalyani told Shankaran.

  Madhavan, the grandson of Achuttan Vaidyan of Kaniyankunnu, had joined a new hospital in Aluva, having completed his studies in Western medicine. Shankaran waited on the road that the doctor took to return home for lunch, and signalled down the Premier Padmini car with its red cross sticker on the rear windscreen to a stop, and stated his case. Thus, for the first time, a car arrived at the gate of Geethalayam. Setting aside their long-standing differences, Kalyanikuttyamma and Thankamma rushed to her aid. In her struggle to climb into the car with her distended tummy, Chinnamma stepped on and broke the clay icon of Thrikkakkarappan near the gate. Following Madhavan doctor’s car, in which Shankaran and Chinnamma had left, wearing whatever came to their hand, both Thankamma and Kalyanikuttyamma ran to the new hospital in Aluva. The children of Ayyaattumpilli whooped and started to play ‘car’ on the gate.

  It was the avittam day in the month of Chingam. While his youngest grandchild had his head stuck on his way into this world, Naraapilla was straining to reclaim an old wild path in the body of Chammarath Amminiyamma, which had been blocked by landslides.

  SEVEN

  The Birth

  11 August 1999

  …Thank you for your curiosity about my birthday. With gifts of flowers and pleasant words, can we lessen anyone’s pain for having been born? Those birth pangs that are more sublime than labour pains?

  I can see the frown on your face reading these bitter philosophical ruminations in the letter to the girl one is going to marry. It wouldn’t be amiss to see the wives of philosophers also as widows, would it? Forgive me for saying that; that was a bit too much. My birthday is in the month of Chingam. Wedged exactly between the remembrance days of the two Malayalis who considered all human beings equal. On the hapless star of avittam, wedged and squeezed between thiruvonam and chathayam. The year when Idukki district came into existence.

  Don’t you want to know how it is depicted in my book that has little possibility of being completed? See this. Read without besmirching your heart with any stain:

  … she looked once more. The new arrival, who tormented her existence with the pain of pulling out the roots and gave pleasure even through the torment. Even after his first bath, something that had enveloped him in the womb still seemed to cling to his body like patches of white film. Like all newborns, he too was ugly. His limbs hung lifeless like cloth. From him, she could get the smell of her own insides. The skin on the tiny knees was shrivelled. Whenever he opened his eyes now and then, seeing the pupils not focusing on anything, she worried that the baby would turn out to be cross-eyed. But what scared her most was the size of the infant’s head and penis. That the boy, to be named Jithendran and called Jithen, would have only two choices, was unknown to his mother:

  One: to be an extraordinary artist.

  Two: to be a world-class criminal.

  With a trembling hand, Shankaran signed the consent form to cut open Chinnamma’s stomach and handed it to Madhavan doctor. Afterwards, he stood on the hospital veranda, undecided about his next move. The middle toes of both his feet began to ache. Noticing his stricken face, a lady cleaning the mosaic floor with a pungent-smelling liquid, straightened her back and asked, ‘The one who died this morning, was that your relative?’

  Shankaran shook his head. Suddenly doubtful, he went into Chinnamma’s labour ward to ensure she was fine. By then, Thankamma and Kalyanikuttyamma had arrived too, after checking every room on the way. The women were shocked to hear the word operation. Offering a thulaabharam of poovan bananas for Thachanakkara thevar in the name of the child about to be born, Thankamma assured her sister, ‘Nothing bad’ll happen. I’ve made an offering of thulaabharam. Now you just pray to our mother too!’

  Without paying her any heed, Chinnamma said, ‘When y’were coming, were those children dangling on the gate? Those rascals will only destroy it!’

  Thankamma and Kalyanikuttyamma looked at each other. ‘If the gate breaks, let it,’ said Kalyanikuttyamma irritably. ‘If only these two would come apart as two separate wholes, without much ado!’

  ‘Which two?’ Chinnamma’s mouth was agape, clueless as to what her sister-in-law was referring to. Two nurses and a middle-aged man with a sandal-mark on his forehead moved Chinnamma onto a wheeled iron bed. In agony, Chinnamma was bawling ‘Acho, Acho.’ The lady in the next bed with her own distended belly looked at Chinnamma in alarm.

  ‘See, she still likes our father!’ surmised Thankamma, gratified.

  ‘Did the children eat something, Chechi?’ Chinnamma asked between howls as she was being wheeled away. Walking with her, Thankamma said, ‘There’s banana curry and rice in closed vessels. I’ve entrusted my eldest with everything. Thankamani is no longer a child. She’s almost fourteen! She’ll take care of everything.’

  ‘Will the little ones jump into the river or something, Kalluchechi?’ Chinnamma asked her sister-in-law.

  ‘If they jump, let them! What else can we do?’ said Kalyanikuttyamma.

  The next question was to the nurse pushing the cot, ‘This “operasshum” is to be through which one, daughter?’

  ‘Through that itself!’ the nurse replied.

  When it came to that point, Shankaran retreated. After telling the women that he would be back soon, he walked aimlessly along the road. The sun had started blazing. For a while, he stood looking at a dog dozing on a handcart under the shade of a tree. Then he walked north again. Halting in front of the gate of a house which had the clay icon of Thrikkakkarappan, Shankaran scratched his head. When he heard an aged voice asking from inside ‘Who’s it?’ he convulsed as if scalded, and started to walk again. At Marthaanda Varma Bridge, he saw people jostling, leaning on the railings on both sides and peering down. Climbing on to the bridge, Shankaran too looked down. A black stomach, shining in the sun, could be seen above the water. An eagle, whose talons were plunged into that island of flesh with green algae swirling around it, lifted its head and anxiously surveyed the people on the bridge. Though the current was slow that day, the black thing floated away, swaying in the water. On the bridge, an argument broke out about whether it was an elephant or a pregnant buffalo.

  Shankaran chewed on his tongue. Suddenly he consoled himself saying, ‘Kochu Parashu chettan will give!’

  He crossed the bridge and ran to Thachanakkara.

  Karunakaran Karthaavu, who had established himself in one of Kochu Parashu’s rooms, was a surveyor capable of measuring and apportioning not only Thachanakkara, but the whole state of Kerala: a second Vamanan with a short body and splayed feet.

  On the rare occasions when he did not go out for measuring and allocating, and sat working on the yellowed deed documents of Thachanakkara, Karunakaran Karthaavu resembled one of those writers who keep writing without inspiration. Those days, the members of the Arunodaya Club used to refer to him secretly as Karunasky, echoing the names of some Soviet writers. Whenever he got respite from his writing, after shutting the doors of his writer’s office, Karthaavu would come over to sit in Vengooran’s teashop and untie the bundle
of his amazing knowledge. In his words and looks sparked the still-glowing embers of his experience garnered during his long stint as a lawyer’s clerk somewhere in north India. The unmitigated loneliness of the days of his youth, spent in north India, had turned him into an eternal fan of Hindi film actresses. Even after crossing the age of sixty, Karunakaran Karthaavu had enough swashbuckling still left in him to shut his office and go to Ernakulam to watch Hindi movies the moment he heard about a new release playing in the theatres there. He was adept at regaling Vengooran Thankappan and barber Shivan with these film stories, without them having to spend even five rupees. Karthaavu’s forte was not the kind of gossip indulged in by Paanamparampath Nanu. Karthaavu never pointed fingers at anyone. Nor did he praise anyone. Kochu Parashu understood that it was possible to speak a lot without taking either of these positions only after Karunakaran Karthaavu set up his writer’s office in one of his shops. Barber Shivan was his usual, ardent listener. In the afternoons, when customers would dwindle, Kochu Parashu would also join them to enjoy a change in seating. In the months when he did not go to watch movies, Karunakaran Karthaavu would hold his peer Kochu Parashu spellbound with his rendition of world history and geography, as if they were things he had witnessed firsthand as a child. At times, Karthaavu revealed truths born of the mating between world history and geography: when he divulged the news that all the gold and money that the warrior lords of Thiruvithamkoor had buried in pots and containers, fearing possible looting during Tippu Sultan’s military siege of Kerala, were now resurfacing as treasures at different locations when diggings were being done for foundations and wells, barber Shivan, who was listening intently, turned into stone.

  ‘So, these well-diggers must be having a ball!’ Shivan exclaimed with a grin displaying chipped incisors from a fall in his childhood. ‘If one pot pops up during digging, no need to work at all in this lifetime!’

  Kochu Parashu was suddenly assailed by a reckless desire to make Maniyan Pulayan dig up the whole of his eighty-six cents of land within a single night. Vengooran Thankappan sat staring into the daylight of Chingam, lost in a dream, with a mouth he had forgotten to shut after laughing: the dream of him turning into a well-digger after forsaking his teashop.

  Two old Muslim men, who were returning to Elookkara from Aluva, washed their faces in the water kept in front for washing hands, cursed the sun and sighed as they entered the shop. One of them was Anthru Mappila, who had leased a plot to grow nenthran bananas, and had lost the crop to high winds before the bananas could ripen. The other, Adi Mappila, whose skin resembled parched fields, was holding a hen close to his hip. They refused the still-warm banana fritters offered by Vengooran to ease their fatigue, worried that the money in their pockets would not be enough to pay for the sweet temptations. After a two-day holiday at the shop for uthradam and thiruvonam, Vengooran had made fresh banana fritters and vada. Blinking its yellow eyelids at regular intervals, the hen on Adi Mappila’s hip kept staring at the glass cupboard containing the banana fritters, lost in thought.

  With the entry of the sweating Mappilas, a pleasant smell was crawling along in Vengooran’s shop. When Shivan’s nose was trying to discern if the smell was of old age or of the hen, Karunakaran Karthaavu continued with his saga about treasure-hunts, ‘But you won’t find a treasure just by digging anywhere, dear Shiva! At the time it was buried, then and there, Thachanakkara thevar would have decided that after so many years, so-and-so would get it. That’s the game the Lord plays!’

  Shivan, who leaned forward to ask something else, fell silent, aware of the presence of outsiders. At that moment, Karthaavu gave an example of God’s decisions, ‘It’s not just the case of the unearthed treasures. Isn’t it so even in the case of the birth of great men? For instance, take Mahatma Gandhi.’

  ‘What, did Gandhiji also get a treasure?’ Vengooran Thankappan asked with a booming sound echoing from inside the well that he had been digging in his dream.

  ‘The one who got the treasure was not Gandhiji, but his father, Karamchand Gandhi,’ said Karthaavu as he shooed away the Chingam heat with his veshti. ‘How many times do you think our Gandhi’s father married? Not just one or two, but FOUR! Do you understand?’ Detracting one finger from the palm raised as if to bless, Karthaavu showed four fingers. The old men of Elookkara looked yearningly at that and slurped their tea loudly.

  The stunned Kochu Parashu needed further explanation. ‘Really?’ he asked.

  ‘Then what?’ said Karthaavu, pleased with his own knowledge. ‘Karamchand Gandhi, that is the father of the Father of our Nation, married four times, one after the other. One, when one wife passed away; another, when she died; yet another, when that one also died; and so on. Then what happened? The first three delivered only girls. The fourth one … that … ssho, what was her name? Aah, Putthaleebai, she too delivered four. Our Gandhiji was the last among them!’

  ‘But then, you said he got a treasure?’ Vengooran convulsed for the denouement.

  ‘Mahatma Gandhi is the name of that treasure!’ said Karthaavu, taking a vada from Vengooran’s glass cabinet, breaking it into two, and offering one half to Kochu Parashu. ‘What was I saying? Yes, that Gandhiji had to be born was the decision of someone sitting above. That’s it! We buy a piece of land. We dig a well in it, build a house, and live there for a time. Then we sell it and buy another one. Then, after moving on like that three or four times, in the well dug in the fourth piece of land, lo and behold, we chance upon the treasure! So, what’s the meaning of it? Isn’t it that there is some power that leads us towards that treasure? This is what happened in our Gandhi’s case too. If the first wife hadn’t died, or if the second hadn’t, or the third hadn’t, or if the fourth had stopped after her third delivery, imagine, what would have happened to our country?’

  ‘Then,’ said Vengooran Thankappan, ‘then, you Kongress fellows would have had it!’

  As if looking at Fate’s magical chessboard in front of him, barber Shivan’s mouth remained open. Floundering for a while as he was not able to come up with a fitting adjective for God, he said, ‘Oh, one must hand it to this devil whom we call God!’ That acclamation also included his anger for Karthaavu, who did not offer him even a single tidbit of the vada.

  When the old men of Elookkara were leaving the shop, after paying for the tea, Kochu Parashu chatted with them, ‘Where are you off to with this hen, eh, Adi Mappila? Bought or going to sell?’

  Adi Mappila turned and smiled, his pitiful state reflected in his toothless gums, and said, ‘Neither, my son! When I went to borrow some cash from a relative, he appeared to be in a state worse than mine! Finally, they gave me this egg-laying hen. I brought it with me, thinking that if a hen, then at least that!’

  Anthru Mappila had already started walking. Following him briskly to catch up with him, Adi Mappila wondered aloud, ‘Now, from where’ll I find the feed for this?’

  The Mappilas stopped when they spotted Shankaran hurrying towards them, drenched in sweat. Shankaran’s daily commute to the aluminium company was through Elookkara, after which it was Kayintikkara by foot and then crossing over to Eloor by ferry. So, the eyes of Elookkara recognized Shankaran from afar.

  ‘What happened, Nair? This haste doesn’t bode well!’ Anthru Mappila questioned Shankaran with a frown.

  Without replying, Shankaran climbed the steps to the shop, beckoned Kochu Parashu closer, and whispered something into his ears. After standing with his head bowed, stroking his chin and chest, Kochu Parashu asked something in return. Satisfied with the reply he got, Kochu Parashu went into the shop and counted quite a few notes from the cash box and handed them over to Shankaran. Directing an affectionate smile at the Mappilas, Shankaran said: ‘An elephant’s carcass is floating in the Aluva river. The bridge is full of people. After some time, it will reach the bend at our Punneli kadavu. If you wanna see, just wait there!’

  Shankaran did not forget to say this also to the bewildered old men: ‘A small operation for the wife. I’m
not familiar with these things, you know?’ He held his pocket with his left palm and ran.

  After Anthru Mappila and Adi Mappila were farther away, barber Shivan asked Karthaavu the question that he had been keeping in check for quite some time: ‘Chettaa, imagine we sold our land to a Mappila. Imagine he got a treasure while digging a well. If so, would the god who kept the treasure in the well be our god or theirs?’

  After looking at him pointedly, Karunakaran Karthaavu walked up to Kochu Parashu. ‘There isn’t any problem with that girl from Ayyaattumpilli?’ he asked.

  ‘Hey,’ Kochu Parashu denied, ‘the problem’s with poor Shankaran. He doesn’t have a single paisa in his hand. If someone from Ayyaattumpilli asks for money, how can one say no?’

  While he was talking, Kochu Parashu switched on the radio. As the long marker on its glass forehead began to move left and right, varied music and human voices were heard, intermittently. Disappointed at not finding what he wanted, Kochu Parashu switched off the radio, and called out, ‘Shivo! The corpse of an elephant is floating in Aluva river! You can catch it if you go to Punneli kadavu quickly. If you get at least one tusk, your fortune is made!’