Embilla elava!
TWO
Maternal Uncle
20 June 1999
…Do not know if this is happy news; for the time being, let’s call it a curious piece of news: after many years of legal battles, my Pankachammaavan has started getting a pension. The same Pankajaakshan who was chucked out of police service a quarter century ago. The one who ran, along with his friend, to the Aluva School grounds, heeding the words of Raambillapolice. The official who brought two new words—Suspend and Dismiss—to Thachanakkara. The hero who gave Vengooran Thankappan goose pimples by averring that if he were to meet the then Home Minister, a geriatric who later became the chief minister, he would spit on his face. I intend to add my first memories of Pankaachammavan in the novel; I have already written a bit. As I am too lazy to transcribe it, I am sending that sheet in its original form with this letter. Barely a paragraph, that’s all. Please don’t forget to send this back to me along with your reply.
An uncle intervenes in Jithen’s confrontations with the sensuality of the visual:
The uncle is drinking buttermilk standing on the veranda. A sloka in Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam describes how a raindrop falling on the eyelids of Parvathi, slides down her lips and bosom and wells up in her navel before spilling over. Here, when the buttermilk, mixed with crushed ginger and bird’s-eye chilli, is poured into uncle’s mouth from the tumbler, a spillover from that mimics the path of that streamlet in the poem. As the buttermilk hasn’t got anything to do with uncle’s eyelashes, it is bypassed. Starting from his mouth, in accordance with the sloka, striking his lips, slipping and losing its foothold somewhat on the hair on his chest and abdomen, the buttermilk reaches his navel. His is a bung navel with a finger like protuberance—a result of the careless snipping of his umbilical cord by the midwife who used a sickle. Uncle tightens the mundu below the navel where his potbelly declines. The complete route of the buttermilk is not visible to Jithen, standing below the veranda. All that is visible is the string of buttermilk bouncing off the bung navel. The Fount of Buttermilk!
Jithen’s mouth remained open in amazement. Here’s a magical man with a hole in his tummy. Half of the buttermilk he was drinking was leaking from that! He ran to inform his mother of this naked truth. Seeing it from another angle of view, as he sat on the hip of his mother rocking with laughter, he saw that truncated version of Kalidasa’s image of the journey of the fount from start to finish. He was utterly disappointed. Nine years later, when Remadevi teacher was teaching the translation of Kumarasambhavam in the Malayalam class, and about the mesmerizing beauty of a similar journey, Jithen would remember this scene with revulsion. He would imagine the midwife who snipped the umbilical cord. He would realize that the navel of a woman is not an erotic sight, but merely the reminder of the connection with the mother.
Do not be shocked. It is no different from a male navel; or like the stem of an apple or a lime.
In 1974, the day after his fortieth birthday, Pankajaakshan received the paper dismissing him from police service. Freed from the burden of a job, he spent his time alternating between his home and Vengooran Thankappan’s teashop, and hence, when the news of the death of his sister-in-law came after two years, he found ample time to lead a troupe of mourners from Ayyaattumpilli to Cherai. Thus, he repaid the debt of not reaching Thachanakkara at the time of his mother’s death, by being in Cherai on the day of his sister-in-law’s death.
For a long time, Pankajaakshan had been under suspension for taking a bribe of seventeen rupees. In the interim, many cases had come up against him with evidence and witnesses. He was not a member of the khaki-clad gang that had battered the junior Nampoothiri of Nedumpilli Mana for the crime of trying to throw the deity’s idol in the pond. That occured during the time he was stationed at Muvattupuzha, where he had been transferred for having disrespected the new Sub-Inspector who had taken charge recently; he had sat with his legs on the table, inebriated. Constable Pankajaakshan had seen Vasudevan Nampoothiri in his original form for the last time in his life the day he was waiting for the bus to Aluva in front of the temple, with the plastic bag into which Kalyanikuttyamma had bundled his clothes. Vasudevan was running in the direction of the Arunodaya Club in the light rain, with the right palm shielding his head and the left hand holding a book under his shirt to keep the water away.
‘It’s raining. Didn’t Venu’s father take an umbrella?’ he asked Pankajaakshan who was standing under the tree. As the rain was getting stronger, Vasudevan went away without waiting for the answer.
By the time Pankajaakshan returned to Thachanakkara, Vasudevan Nampoothiri had become a lunatic, walking around with a phone receiver in his hand. After alighting from the bus, as he was walking towards Ayyaattumpilli, Pankajaakshan did not realize that the strange creature coming towards him was Vasudevan Nampoothiri. The moment he saw Pankajaakshan, his eyes rolled up as if he was getting an epileptic attack, and he slid down to the ground, writhing in convulsions.
‘Venu’s father didn’t take an umbrella. But who got wet? Who fell ill? This me!’ he said, looking up at the skies and then at the ground, with a laughter verging on tears.
After standing bemused for some time, he shouted at Vasudevan, who was only old enough to be his son, ‘Daa, Vasudeva, edaa! You rascal … you have started drinking, haven’t you?’
As Paanamparampath Nanu reached there in time, Pankajaakshan had to withdraw the hand he had raised to slap Vasudevan. Touching his head with his finger, Nanu made a circular motion, and winked at Pankajaakshan.
‘He’s got that you-know-what, sir,’ said Nanu, displaying his teeth with gossip’s verdigris on them.
Pankajaakshan swore that if he had been around he could have proven that Arunodaya Club, of which his own eldest son Venu was a member, had no links to the revolutionary movement and he could have saved Vasudevan from his unfortunate fate. He extended his leave for three days and stayed on in Thachanakkara. He took the initiative to get the Nampoothiris of Nedumpilli Mana to file a complaint against the young sub-inspector of Aluva police station. With that, his days in the service were numbered. Charges for sins that he did not commit, and which were blown out of proportion, were foisted on him. It was the blood of Naraapilla that flowed in his veins, which made him misconstrue each of those charges against him as a feather in the cap of his masculinity. When, all that was required was an unconditional apology on the part of Pankajaakshan to exonerate himself from the charges of disrespecting a senior officer, and for sitting with his legs extended on the table in front of the Sub-Inspector who was ten years younger, that he could not bring himself to do it was also due to this lineage to Naraapilla. When there was an enquiry by the senior officers, his defence was that he was afraid of vermin, and had lifted his leg seeing one of them sitting next to his table—which was a clever exercise in double entendre, directed against the young inspector. Avaraan, who had joined the force at the same time as Pankajaakshan and, having won regular promotions, was now his superior, made a last-ditch attempt to solve the problem. Avaraanpolice was an old-fashioned gent who believed that people could be reformed through counselling.
‘Mr Pankajaakshan,’ Circle Inspector Avaraan told him when they were alone together, ‘we entered the service together. If you weren’t a drunkard, you too would have got promoted to the grade of a circle inspector, like me!’
Avaraan’s formal diction was countered in typical Ayyaattumpilli style by Pankajaakshan. ‘Loser! You’ve been serving them, bound hand and foot, afraid to exhale, and still you have become just a circle?’ Taking off his pointed cap, and smacking himself on his pot belly with his palm, Pankajaakshan preened, ‘But when I gulp in two hundred millilitres, at that moment, I am an IG, my Avaraan, an Inspector General of Police!’
Seated in Vengooran Thankappan’s teashop, Pankajaakshan used to elaborate on his outrageous and rash behaviour that had cost him his job, regaling his audience with dramatic gestures. Each time he described the same incident, he sprink
led them with his fantasy and welded on new scenes. Having started to identify himself dangerously with the narration style of Pankajaakshan from the repeated hearings, Paanamparampath Nanu started to weave his own stories on the occasions when Pankajaakshan was not around. Nanu alleged that corruption and disrespect to seniors were not the only reasons behind Pankajaakshan losing his job. Once, at noon, as he entered Thankappan’s teashop, a story arose in Nanu’s mind, as if in a revelation.
Closing his eyes as if he had lost sight from the inspiration, he started on his story. ‘Listen, Shiva, after he has lost his job, Pankajaakshanpolice has been saying so many things. But only we know the cambleet story.’
Sitting down on the bench, opening his eyes and peering to make sure Pankajaakshan was not in the company, he continued, ‘Once, some rowdies tried to finish off one of this man’s superior police officers on the road. That sir escaped death since Pankajaakshan reached there in time. He was in a hurry to go somewhere. So, our man could not treat Pankajaakshan in a befitting manner. But, he had a steel bangle, much the same as the kind used by policemen to hit offenders. He took it off and presented it to Pankajaakshan, along with a note on a sheet of paper. And what was written in the note?’
‘What?’ barber Shivan questioned him in return.
Paanamparampath extended the open left palm towards his right side. Then, writing on it with an imaginary pen he said, ‘I am indebted to this man for my whole life. Therefore, you are also indebted. Wherefore, for this day you shall treat him like how you treat me and give him all considerations, thus! It is Pankajaakshanpolice, no? The seed of Naraapilla chettan! Carrying the letter, he reached the officer’s house directly. The wife of that sir was a fair, buxom stunner, reportedly! The rest can be imagined?’
Nanu paused the story there, rubbed his thigh, and laughed leeringly. ‘If he had accomplished things with tact, all these problems wouldn’t have cropped up for sure! But our Pankajaakshanpolice had to show some vigour. Things changed then, what?’
When Paanamparampath Nanu finished the story, Vengooran Thankappan asked him, ‘Who told you all this?’
‘Does one have to be told all this?’ looking at a stranger who had entered just then, Nanu said, ‘With some common sense all these can be found out.’
Seeing the young man in a white mundu and faded blue shirt, who had let down his folded mundu as a mark of respect, heading towards Kochu Parashu on the other side, Nanu jumped up from his place. Frowning, he left the teashop and made for Kochu Parashu’s shop. Looking alternately at Kochu Parashu and Nanu, the newcomer asked, ‘Chettaa, which is this house called Ayyaattupallee here?’
‘It is not Ayyaattupallee, but Ayyaattumpilli,’ Kochu Parashu said, immersed in his debtor’s ledger. The rest was said by Nanu: ‘It’s close by. Who do you want to see?’
With the relief of one who has found what he was looking for, the man wiped his face hard with the edge of his mundu and said, ‘Can be anyone. It’s to inform them about a death!’
Kochu Parashu raised his face with a start and looked at him. He closed the ledger marking the place with the pen and stood up. ‘Where are you from?’
‘From Cherai. Which is this Ayyaattumpilli?’ The newcomer was getting impatient.
‘Come, I’ll show you,’ Paanamparampath Nanu went down the steps. Vengooran Thankappan and barber Shivan stood with their senses sharpened. Closing the door of his shop, Karunakaran Karthaavu also joined them. Kochu Parashu beckoned from behind the man from Cherai, who was following Nanu. ‘There, stop a moment. Who died? Govindan…’ the sentence got truncated by the anxiety.
‘The wife of Govindan Master,’ the young man said hurriedly, ‘Sulochana teacher.’
Unsure of which of the four houses of Ayyaattumpilli he should enter first, Paanamparampath Nanu stopped. The young man with him asked, ‘Which of these is Ayyaattumpilli?’
‘All of them are,’ said Nanu. ‘You may tell any one of them. You may not tell any one of them too.’
Not understanding the riddle in that sentence, the young man headed to the closest house. That was Thankamma’s house. Radha, who was on the porch playing discs with her younger brothers, limped back into the house, seeing the stranger. Thankamani came out, tying up her hair.
‘Who’s it?’ she asked.
He gave the news. Then he drank buttermilk, sitting on the portico. The news of the death spread to the four houses. Since Shankaran and Kumaran were at their workplaces, Ayyaattumpilli got ready to leave without them for Cherai, under the leadership of Pankajaakshan. Venu, Pankajaakshan’s eldest, rushed to Aluva by cycle and summoned a taxi. Chinnamma got in first, carrying Jithen. Then Thankamma and Kalyanikuttyamma followed. Thankamani was given the responsibility of supervising the three houses in their absence. As he was getting in to sit beside the young man in the front seat, Pankajaakshan had an inner prompt and jumped out and went towards the New House.
‘Father, are you coming in the car?’ Pankajaakshan called in.
There was no response from inside.
‘Father, I am asking if you are coming to Cherai,’ Pankajaakshan asked again.
The door, which had been ajar, was shut completely.
‘But, it isn’t him who’s dead! Isn’t it her?’ he heard his father’s voice from inside.
Paanamparampath Nanu, who was witness to all this, standing by the fence, sighed, and ran towards Pooshappi Stores.
That was a Sunday. The nine grandchildren of Naraapilla, except Jithen who was inside, crowded around the car. After Pankajaakshan also managed to sqeeze in, possessed by a sorrow from some unknown source, Chinnamma let out a loud wail: ‘My Suluchedathiyammae! Ayyo!’ making Jithen jump out of his skin.
The car bearing the siblings of Govindan Master started towards the first daughter-in-law of Ayyaattumpilli.
THREE
Mixed Breed
8 September 1999
Every ideal wife prays that her husband should die before she does.
From your enraged response to the sentence that I wrote in the last letter, I understood that it had vexed you quite deeply. So, listen: I had written that about spouses who would have started smouldering with old age; not about newly-weds, like how you have surmised. If she were to die first, who will look after her husband is something that every ageing Malayali woman worries about (On this count, I am not generalizing. To say also that all Malayali women are like that would be foolish. There may also be women who, for a different reason, desire the death of their husbands).
My grandfather became a widower before his sixtieth birthday. With my grandfather’s eldest son, the same dreadful fate befell him before he was fifty. I never saw my grandmother. The first time I saw Uncle Govindan’s wife, she was dead. I have not heard anyone mention that grandfather mourned grandmother’s death. But I saw Uncle Govindan cry the day my aunt died. I still remember that day. I too was seeing him for the first time. Yes, that great man entered my life, crying. Now I know that it was the entry of a real man. My girl, I think that the generation of real men started and ended there. Perhaps, this may be purely my feeling.
There were people to tell me about the relationship between Granma and Grampa. But between Uncle Govindan and his wife? No one knows. Neither could anyone imagine it.
But one thing I know. A woman’s tears have always been used by men as a lubricant for intercourse. Everywhere; always.
In the times to come, Sulochana would agitate the heart of Govindan Master, like a poem read in one’s dreams: though sure that the content was excellent, one was unable to recollect details or to reclaim, in memory, the enticing turns of phrase and figures of speech.
Sulochana, who was the eldest of the three children of Anandan Master of Cherai, and the wife of Govindan of Ayyaattumpilli, was not old enough to think about death, least of all to die. When Sulochana died, her parents were still alive. The marriage of her elder daughter Chandrika, cuddled by Kunjuamma and Chinnamma eighteen years ago on the day of the festival of Thachanak
kara thevar, had already been fixed. Her son, the eighteen-year-old Narayanan, who bore an incredible resemblance to Naraapilla of Ayyaattumpilli, in both looks and nature, had stopped going to college and had started idling at home and loitering around in the village. Narayanan, who was called Kannan by his family and the public, abandoned his education midway, due to adolescent alopecia and epileptic fits set off by the slightest emotional incident, causing him to fall down with convulsions.
The cohabitation of many years had entwined the souls of Govindan Master and Sulochana teacher so inseparably that it was not possible to discern whose influence went deeper. Time had given Govindan the strength to remember the scenes of his life dispassionately, as if it were somebody else’s life story—how after bringing them together from two distant places through a poetry contest, the magazine called Kavyachandrika, published from Thripunithura, after which they named their firstborn Chandrika, had closed down after three issues; how a letter had come to Ayyaattumpilli as its first ever postal article, with the address written in light-blue ink with tiny flowers adorning it; how she came to stay at her aunt’s place to study at Aluva UC College only for winning over the second-prize winner of the poetry contest; how she had gone to meet his mother near the oblation stone at Thachanakkara thevar’s temple, wearing a yellow full skirt with green leaves and a light-yellow half saree; how after a half-consented wedding, the curses of Naraapilla had descended on their heads bowed for receiving blessings; and how the son and wife had left Thachanakkara for good, insulted by the father, in the presence of Kunjuamma burning in the pyre.
In a marriage that lasted only for twenty years, Sulochana had quarrelled with Govindan Master just once. It started as a discussion and ended without raised voices: it was about the naming of their son, while Sulochana was having her post-partum recuperation. It was when Govindan Master insisted on naming the baby Narayanan.
A Preface to Man Page 22