A Preface to Man

by Subhash Chandran

  Jithen decided to record, in his diary, some old memories in the order of their unforced appearance, as a method to get over this unbearable emptiness. But that too failed. Many of the memories had got buried irretrievably in the swamp of the past. That was how he embarked on this homework of defining his acquaintances in one sentence. But that also came to an inevitable end. It was not from his Christian male friends, but from his lover, Ann Marie, that he heard the Biblical proscription, which warned against passing judgment on others.

  In the afternoon breeze, her long hair was flying and brushing against his eyelids and nose. ‘You said you own a Bible?’ Ann Marie asked. ‘Then tell me, which is the shortest sentence in the Bible?’

  ‘Are you on a path to convert me to Christianity?’ Jithen asked. ‘You tell me, I am keen to know anything about the Bible. Especially since my girl is a Christian!’

  ‘Then listen.’ Leaning to see if her bus was coming, Ann Marie said, ‘Jesus wept!’

  When he heard that the shortest sentence in the Holy Book was the sob of Christ, after a moment’s silence, Jithen said, ‘It’s also the longest!’

  The vehicle that came off the turn was a truck. On its forehead was written with flourish, ‘Christ the King’. They both stood disbelieving at the amazing coincidence.

  ‘Now do you want to hear another sentence in the Bible which, according to me, is the most lambent?’Ann Marie asked borrowing the look of a padre. Jithen paid attention.

  The sound that was heard this time was that of her bus itself. Folding the umbrella and shoving it into her bag, she said hurriedly, ‘Keep this sentence in mind: Thou shalt not judge!’

  As he heard the unpainted, genuinely feminine lips of Ann Marie say those words that afternoon, Jithen understood that his diary writing was coming to an abrupt end. But it was only the night before that Jithen had described Sofia Begum in his diary. That was his last judgement. Two days later, he wrote this in the next page:

  ‘Yesterday with the Bible as the witness, Ann Marie told me the truth that we have no right to mark others. Therefore, all the notes herein till now have no validity.’

  Ann Marie knew about Sofia Begum, who had become Jithen’s friend at the reading room in Thachanakkara. Sofia Begum was a student of MA Philosophy in Maharaja’s College in Ernakulam. The most intelligent and beautiful girl of Elookkara, she had wide knowledge and empathy beyond her years. With abiding interest, the youth of Thachanakkara watched her climbing down the stairs by the side of Narayanan’s shop every other day, bearing two bound books with the name of the reading room stuck on them. Four or five youths from the new generation, who could not find jobs despite their education, used to meet up on the veranda of Narayanan’s shop in the evenings. Other than desire her by looking at the ankles of the beautiful maiden, none of them polluted her either by words or looks; the reason being, Sofia Begum was the daughter of Hamid Master, the mathematics teacher of Aalungal School. His nails had engraved indelibly the fundamentals of mathematics on the brains of the students from Thachanakkara.

  Those were the days when Jithen, who was enrolled in UC College for his post graduation in history, used to go to the reading room, which smelt of newly-plastered cement, to help the librarian. In the library, taken over from Govindan Master, and made bigger by the management of Thachanakkara Cooperative Bank, the librarian was the one-eyed Sadashivan, appointed by the governing council of the bank. Hanging behind Sadashivan’s seat was a statement of Napoleon that if he were not to be an emperor he would have been a librarian, written in red ink by Jithen on a flattened carton he got when he bought a pair of flip-flops. Turning back repeatedly and reading those words in English with his one eye, Sadashivan became increasingly uneasy. To get rid of his uneasiness, he used to disappear every day without fail into the newly-opened arrack shop near the irrigation bund, installing Jithen in his chair.

  A melancholic young man, who used to come regularly to the reading room those days, was a contemporary of Sofia Begum in Maharaja’s College, where he was enrolled for his post graduation in Malayalam. Looking at him, sitting at one end of the reading room immersed in some magazine and pulling at his moustache, and noting the uncanny resemblance he had to Jithen, Sofia Begum asked Jithen, ‘Is he some relative of yours?’

  Taking the book from Sofia Begum, Jithen answered after looking at him, ‘No.’

  When Sofia Begum told Jithen in a low voice that he was a student of Malayalam in Maharaja’s College and had written a story in the College magazine, Jithen felt a desire to meet him. As he went past him after closing the magazine, Jithen got up and attempted to ask him something, but looking at his unfriendly mien, Jithen sat back in his chair.

  As their friendship grew, Jithen felt that she was carrying a lot of information in her unveiled head, which could be deemed unnecessary. But in everything she said, there was something that blazed: desires of femininity which neither place nor time can contain. She connected Farinelli, an opera singer who was born in Italy in the eighteenth century and had moved to London, and the new singer Michael Jackson, who used female hormones to retain his talent for singing at high pitch: she had read somewhere about Farinelli undergoing castration, in those olden times when female hormones were not available. She also told Jithen about another Italian who had conceptualized a bizarre tower in which the first floor was to be a brothel and the tenth floor an astronomical observatory. When she said that in idol worship there was a subconscious sexual craving for inanimate objects, as if to test whether he would be provoked as a Hindu, instead of debating it, Jithen repeated the word fetishism twice and learnt it by heart. After narrating the story of a Greek weaver called Arachne, who in a competition with Athena, wove a tapestry with male penises depicted from many angles, and, fearing defeat, tried to hang herself, Sofia asked Jithen, ‘Do you know what that weaver who depicted male penises became in her next life? A female spider who gobbles up the male after mating! From this story, can’t you make out that repressed sexuality and art have a connection?’

  Jithen laughed hearing her posh language, unfamiliar to Elookkara. ‘Why do you collect such information which no one else needs?’ he asked her one day in the reading room when no one else was present.

  ‘I want to write a novel!’ she said with determination. ‘Haven’t you read foreign novels? In each, how much information do they cram! I will also write one like that!’

  ‘If filling with information is what makes novels, can there be better novels than encyclopaedias?’ Jithen laughed, pointing at the thick tomes in the shelf closest to him. ‘There is a novel in my dreams too. But if I ever write it one day, there will be only the story of people, of flesh and blood from Ayyaattumpilli!’

  Sofia Begum took out her charming smile, which any critic could have interpreted whichever way they wanted. ‘The twentieth century has got only a few years left,’ she said. ‘In the years to come, if we write tales of families, discerning readers will laugh at us!’

  ‘Then you shall see!’ Jithen spoke with a self-confidence which possessed him for the first time in his life, ‘I will write a story of families, which Malayalis are always going to read!’

  That vow was a little loud. That had used the open throat of Ayyaattumpilli stock. And because of that, it was hollow. Even after living for fifty-four years, he could never bring it to reality. Sofia Begum also did not write her novel. A man of faith became her bridegroom before she completed her MA, and rescued her from Elookkara and writing.

  ‘You have in you what cannot be found in men these days,’ Sofia Begum told Jithen the day she came for the last time to the reading room, ‘masculinity!’

  ‘If that be so,’ Jithen said, ‘very soon we shall have to clash! Because the masculinity I have in my blood is the kind that kicks women. Of the basest kind!’

  ‘I like that,’ Sofia said. ‘I like men who smoke. I like intelligent men who drink, open their hearts, and talk amusingly. If I am certain he is capable of loving, I like the man who kicks women
who should be kicked.’

  ‘That is because you do not know of the Ayyaattumpilli blood,’ Jithen tried to explain. ‘There was once a woman called Kunjuamma who deserved only to be loved. The blood I have in me is that of Naraapilla, who made her eat laterite stones and kicked her to death.’

  ‘There have been no children born with only male blood in them. Won’t the blood of the woman you talked about also be flowing through your heart?’ Sofia asked.

  ‘I am not sure about that,’ Jithen said, ‘more than Kunjuamma’s, the blood that is flowing through me now is Ann Marie’s!’

  ‘Ann Marie?’ Sofia arched her unibrow. ‘Who’s that? Did your mother change her name?’

  ‘Ann Marie is the girl I love. The one I may marry. The Mary who considers me to be Christ! So, how can her blood be not in me?’ Jithen receipted the books returned by Sofia Begum.

  Sofia rose and said, ‘Dey, if you are going to write your novel in such style, it will be very good. When they cannot make out anything, the critics also will praise it.’

  ‘What’s with your novel?’ Jithen asked.

  ‘Oh, I doubt if it will happen,’ Sofia Begum became despondent. ‘What you have said is true. If one has to write, one has to write about one’s life, one’s times, and one’s locale. If a woman like me writes one like that honestly, all the above said together would kick her out!’

  At the time of leaving, Sofia Begum asked him, ‘Have you touched Ann Marie we discussed about earlier? I meant…’

  ‘Only her hands and hair,’ Jithen said, ‘but not in the manner you meant … No!’ Lowering his voice still, he said, ‘I have not done it! That’s what you meant, no?’

  ‘Till now? No one?’ her voice went lower than Jithen’s.

  ‘No!’ Jithen lied.

  From the swamp of his memory, suddenly Laila Majnu bloomed.

  They were three. Two women and a boy.

  They were to be taken to the newly-built house. Since it was past midnight, there was no light in any of the homes. Jithen’s heart was pumping furiously. The key to the house into which people were to move in from the coming week, had been left with Unnikrishnan, the plumber of the house and his friend. There was some piping work left to be done the next day. The opportunities were put together and she was fetched for Jithen by Unnikrishnan. The middle-aged woman accompanying her was not a companion. She was for his friend.

  ‘For a plumber, someone a little aged will be more suitable!’ Unnikrishnan justified his choice. The boy with them was ten years old. Jithen was disquieted by the boy calling the middle-aged woman mother in an insistent manner, often in the darkness.

  The gate was locked. Waiting for the light from a passing autorickshaw to subside, Unnikrishnan helped them jump over the compound wall to the other side. To Jithen, who stood to the side, afraid that the women might shout at him if their buttocks were touched, Unnikrishnan said through grinding teeth, ‘Just don’t stand there staring. Come, push!’

  The boy had to be literally pushed over. When he fell in the darkness on the other side, he whined again calling his mother. As the fourth and the fifth, with scraped and burning thighs, Jithen and Unnikrishnan jumped over to the other side.

  As Jithen was being let in through the backdoor, Unnikrishnan told him, ‘Laila is for you. The other rusted one is for me, but I need to wait till the kid is asleep!’

  Laila! Jithen laughed with a palpitating heart. He is then Majnu. The eternal lover who was buying love with the hundred-rupee note stolen from his mother’s cupboard.

  Someone else’s house. The main switch was off. As a matter of abundant caution by his friend. Striking a match, Jithen went forward. Like the arrow that shot towards the sound of water filling the pot, as in the Purana tale, to the pool of urine falling on the mosaic floor.

  Laila was squatting and piddling on the drawing room floor.

  She told Jithen’s face, which was visible by the light of the match stick, that she chose the drawing room because she could not find the toilet even after searching. He took her to another room. When he struck the match, he saw a showcase full of dolls. Unnikrishnan had instructed that they should not use the bed.

  ‘Lailae!’ he called with a surfeit of love.

  ‘Do it fast and go!’ she said, as if snapping at him.

  The body of the streetwalker on which the anaphrodisiac of torpor had been applied.

  The first act of sex is like getting power. The preparations start very early. It is decided that many things will be brought into practice. Then when the moment is at hand, doing things in hurry and haphazardly, one comes away like a poltroon.

  Jithen waited with fealty for his friend’s turn. The squeak of the rusted pipes. The back of Jithen’s head kept pulsating from the fear that the kid asleep in the other room would wake up suddenly and would hit Jithen on the back of his head with whatever came to hand …

  Sending off the women and the child along with Unnikrishnan before daybreak, Jithen started to wash with water and broom, the floor of the drawing room, which had started smelling of ammonia.

  The last scene of the love story of Laila-Majnu that Jithen had to write.

  SIX

  Odds

  23 August 1999

  …I laughed when I read your request that I should send at least a couple of lines of verse to you. Baby, what did I send you these six months, then?

  Ann Marie, I swear upon my unfortunate lungs, tired from standing on either side of my heart and fanning like the attendants holding the regal, decorative circular fans: the kinds of poem you expect now, I finished writing long ago. Much before I met you!

  Instead, I will write some of the thoughts about death, which I had written down yesterday. Please forgive this good-for-nothing fellow who sends thoughts on death to his lover when asked for poetry.

  The only couple with total compatibility: Life and Death. Every man ends with a death which suits his life. Therefore, unnatural deaths may happen to penguins and kangaroos, not to humans. However macabre a death it is, we can dig up something from the dead man’s life which justifies it. We may be appalled reading about a woman who diced her paramour and put him in twenty polyethylene bags. But if we search his soul, we may find the life of that woman, which had been chopped up into twenty pieces by him much earlier. Isn’t stealing a person’s life worse than taking a person’s life? But to punish that act there are no courts and laws for man.

  Our poor minds can only comprehend a system in which punishment is decided after a crime is committed. However this linearity of time is not applicable to Nature. It can punish and redeem a soul at ten, which was going to commit a crime when fifty.

  Ann Marie, don’t feel nervous thinking this is philosophy. Here is a simple truth: like each life shackled inside its body, every existence is shackled inside its own special circumstances. In both cases, the outcome is death; though in the second case, some may reach heaven.

  When two old men, who were living across each other, died in consecutive months, Thachanakkara flung back a book which it had completed reading. The last pages of the book were Appu Nair of Peechamkurichi, confined by blinding cataract, and Raambillapolice, who was called Granpa Raambilla by the children of Geethalayam.

  At least twelve years had passed after the darkness of cataract had driven out the whole of the outside world from Appu Nair’s vision. Even the house, which his son Gopalakrishnan, the younger brother of Kumaran, who had married Thankamma of Ayyaattumpilli, had built anew after razing most of the old Peechamkurichi House, had become old. The old man Appu Nair had, like a letter which could not be rubbed out, taken refuge on an old cot, in an old anteroom which had not been demolished when the new house was built. He clung on to that cot, which gave the appearance of a disintegrating raft moving through time, pushing out, as ripples, the weak waves of helplessness. The past still burned inside him like firewood, providing fuel for the journey which was close to its destination. Warming himself at that fire, he spent his time talking
to the dead. He often mixed up the living and the dead. The age of the dead varied wildly. He was perplexed seeing that his darling sister’s hair had gone completely white, when Kunjuamma appeared, her head swathed in bloodied bandages, along with Naraapilla, whose face had been scalded.

  ‘Hau!’ he said with bitterness. ‘Why are you still walking hand in hand with this guy, Kunjo? Haven’t you had enough?’

  Appu Nair saw their eight siblings often in front of his eyes. Only because they were dead, they were spared all pain. As they stood before him with the joy of having left this world and smiling without a care, as their elder brother, he joined them in their happiness and laughed out loud.

  ‘Now no one will blame my father Paramu Nair!’ Holding his hands up with palms open and level with his face, he said to himself, ‘See, except me, all the nine are in good positions.’

  Later, repeating that same sentence in another tone, he wept too.

  In between the unbroken rendition of his past, one afternoon, an old lady, whom he had not seen before, came and called out to Appu Nair, ‘Lord Appu, oy!’

  Appu Nair stared uncomprehendingly into the blankness of his cataract. Two shadows blocked the square of light from the window. ‘It’s me,’ one of the shadows said, in a voice from the past, heard and forgotten, ‘Kaali Pulakkalli!’