Thachanakkara was not just a place, it was an era too. When one looks back into the past, the magic of place and time fusing together happens. When they both get blended and solidify, pictures that become like conservative memories, get painted. They can be renovated repeatedly by adding colour; but they cannot be repainted. Naraapilla cannot be found in them as an old man sitting in front of the TV, holding the remote. Kunjuamma cannot be painted in it as an old angel, floating down the escalator in a shopping mall, along with children and grandchildren, holding plastic shopping bags. None of the moveable or immovable items of the new era, can be seen even as a shadow on the wall where they have been drawn. Can it be said, because of that, their lives were pointless? Jithen asked himself: can it be said that they were undeserving of becoming characters in the great book of human life? Can a child who receives a rubber monkey doll, which plays the drums, be said to be superior to the one who creates his own toy using immature coconuts and spines of the coconut leaf?
Jithendran felt the memories assailing him, much like the peacock being struck by lightning from the dark clouds, seeing which it had been dancing in ecstasy. He, who had many years ago given up writing definitions of the people in his acquaintance circle, wrote now in his diary:
I am a peacock dancing with burning feathers, struck by lightning from dense clouds. But in the forest without an audience, this fire dance is futile.
TEN
Zenith
1 January 2000
…This may perhaps be the last letter I will be sending you. Do not fear. Next week, as soon as our wedding is over, I shall be bringing you to this rented house of ours. Then, till one of us dies, like one of the compounded consonants of Malayalam, our souls are going to be in a knot which cannot be untied. The two separate ‘me, me’ feelings are going to be one. Shall I tell you which is that compounded consonant?
‘Mma’!
To throw light upon two lives coming together, God, who has planted this compounded consonant, whether in amma which is the vernacular for mother, or in umma which is the vernacular for kiss?
Girl, my new year greetings to you! Greetings for the new century! Greetings for the new millennium! Standing on the corpse of the times past; conveying my aadaraanjalikal—respectful condolences.
Oh, let me also write about this interesting thing, lest I forget it later: aadaraanjali literally means joining of hands respectfully in front of someone. The joke is that you can do that to any living person. But for Malayalis, that word connotes death—we always see a corpse beyond the word aadaraanjali. It has come to this that the Malayali will join his hands respectfully only in front of a dead man! Ann Marie, if I am the one to go first, you should tell the world without fail: Do not come with your aadaraanjali now and wound this soul!
My darling, my condolences to you for sincerely loving a man of straw! My aadaraanjali once again for those who died living, lived dying, and are yet to be born and die, in this wondrously strange world!
I am locking up all these scattered papers of mine, so that they do not hamper our honeymoon. I also feel, perhaps I may never open them again. Last night, when the whole world was celebrating, I was penning the last lines in them, hurting both my body and heart. Thinking perhaps they may hurt you, contrary to the usual practice, I am not sending these to you. Later, if you are able to dig it out of my papers, you can read that. No, you need not keep these in your memory. Please delete from your memory all this information about the book, which I will never be able to write.
The day Jithen’s boss came to know that a group of representatives from an American company was coming to take over the toy factory of the drumming monkeys, he declared he was resigning. Three days later, in the farewell party organized by the staff of the office and the workers of the factory, he seemed to be very emotional. He chewed the betel leaves adding more tobacco that day; he applied more lime on the betel leaves. As he sat on the stage listening to phoney encomiums, he stuffed more and more tender betel leaves into his mouth. In his return speech, which sprayed betel juice on to the microphone, he was on the verge of tears. He took all of thirty minutes to describe how he indigenized a foreign toy and the changes he made to it. He informed the audience with a sad smile and stutter, caused by emotion, that he foresaw that the toy would undergo changes, though the American party had assured him that when the factory was taken over, the workers would be retained. He said, ‘Times are changing.’ And then lowering his voice dramatically added, ‘For people like me, this would be unbearable!’
The expensive silk-saree clad, middle-aged lady sitting in the front row of the audience, dabbed her eyes, making sure that her makeup was not smudged. The sparkle of her diamond necklace was reflected on the glasses of her husband speaking on the stage. She looked with pride at her husband, who was relinquishing his post at the age of fifty-six, even when four years of service remained. When the boss declared that a life of ease would be alien to him, and he would start writing a book on the ordeals by fire he faced in his job and his achievements, the entire audience, except Jithen, clapped. When he declared that it was his unshakeable faith in God that brought him to where he was and the primary lesson he learnt from life was that good people would always receive God’s help, his wife looked up at the ceiling of the hall and lifted her two hands holding the tasselled vanity bag as a mark of devotion. In the opinion of the boss, the hardest test he had to face was six months ago, the day the year two thousand started, in the form of the Y2K imbroglio that was feared to affect their computer systems. Fearing that if the computer systems were to shut down, the company’s productivity and quality would go for a toss, he could only take refuge in God. There God came to his rescue and saved him and the company from the Y2K problem, about which the whole world was quaking in fear.
The boss went on with his speech. The heat in the hall was unbearable. The workers sat listening to the speech of the outgoing boss, fanning themselves with the thick notice distributed specially for the farewell meeting, and sighing deeply. To suppress asthma, which was threatening to break out, Jithen took out an Asthalin tablet and swallowed it with the aid of his saliva. That assuaged his lungs and anaesthetized his brain. Though he started to slip off into sleep twice, he hung on for some more time, feeling the eyes of the speaker on him all the while. But the third time, he lost control. He fell asleep, with his mouth open and head resting on his left collarbone. The insincere bombast assailing his ears gradually faded away. In its place arose, a parade of venerated Malayalis, their heads held high and eyes gleaming with self-respect, about whom he had read in the hundreds of books borrowed from the Thachanakkara library. Some of their faces were not familiar to Jithen; and where faces were familiar, he could not recollect their names in the other world of dreams.
The sage, who came holding Shree Narayana Guru with one hand and Dr Palpu with the other, asked, ‘Do you know me? This is my guru and my father.’
Smiling kindly at Jithen, who stood ashamed at not being able to recall his name, he said, ‘Do not worry. Consider it a matter of pride, your inability to recall.’
A tall man came with his body, which had turned blue from poison and asked, ‘Don’t you know me? Don’t you have any recollection of this man from Thiruvananthapuram, who died from Adolf Hitler’s poison?’
‘One Mr Pillai?’ Jithendran hazarded a guess.
As he moved on, the man said laughing, ‘You got only the caste right, didn’t you?’
They were coming, one after the other. Unable to make out the mother, as tall as a tree, who was walking away with Captain Lakshmi and Mrinalini Sarabhai on either hip as if they were babies, Jithen scratched his head raw. After that, a radiant person came, whom he had not seen before and asked, with the intonation of a quiz master, ‘I astonished Karthika Thirunal Maharaja with a sloka I composed when I was fourteen years old. Who am I?’
Seeing that there was no answer forthcoming, he hummed a famous lullaby as if it were a clue and smiled.
‘Irayim
man…?’ Jithendran hit the wall.
‘…Thampi!’ he completed his name, and walking forward, patted Jithendran’s back. ‘Any child can remember lullabies.’
They went past like a procession. When the last man had disappeared, the applause started and continued for a long time.
After sometime the applause stopped. Jithendran woke up from his sleep, alone inside the hall.
Before the first thunder of the monsoon season, as if in preparation, Ann Marie started to arrange the limited items in the rented house, according to category. She had been warned about the sewage water, which would come in from the gutter during heavy rains. From the books lying scattered underneath the cot and in the corners of the room, she selected the better ones and stacked them on the table, close to the wall. The rest of them were bundled into a bed sheet and put on a termite-eaten teapoy, which had been lying from the beginning in a corner of the room. In the only almirah, she kept all their clothes and in the space which remained, she kept two or three glass bowls and music cassettes, which were deemed to have served their purpose. Then she kept an album on top of it, from which people, who had been imprisoned in the stillness of a square, were dissolving themselves into emptiness.
Jithendran had taken away his degree certificates and testimonials of his extra-curricular activities in the morning to show to the people who were taking over the company. He was very disturbed after he had returned from Thachanakkara the previous day, where he had gone alone. After informing her of his mother’s decision to sell Geethalayam and the land adjacent to that, he told her, ‘As per current valuation, I will get at least two million rupees as my share. Damn, what will we do with all that money?’
Jithendran had heard of the possibility of him being appointed as the new boss of the factory. If that would happen, he could leave this foxhole and take Ann Marie to an apartment with full amenities in the city; he would be able to buy all the appliances he needed and drive his own car; he would be able to buy a mobile phone and an internet-enabled computer. If so, he would be able to easily forget the far-away Thachanakkara and the Ayyaattumpilli blood.
‘If so,’ he said in the morning, ‘in the eyes of others we will be able to lead a decent life! To damnation!’ The bitterness that showed up in his face as he said this, was something which would stay with Ann Marie all her life, to be regurgitated from time to time.
After stacking up everything, when she saw some space in the bottom shelf of the almirah, she suddenly remembered her suitcase kept under the cot. She had kept the forty letters in the hide-coloured suitcase which her brother, Joshi, had given her. During the first few days of her life in that rented house, she had moved Jithendran’s incomplete notes on the novel and his diary into the suitcase. But now she had to give them a safer place. She had vowed to herself that if the water from the gutter came in, whatever else may be affected, she would save these letters and notes at any cost. She was ruled more by the guilt of having had to burn, fearing her father, the three hundred and fifty-six letters which she received from him before the forty, than by the loathing Jithen felt towards his creations.
She dragged the suitcase out and took out the letters, the diary with its torn cover, and the bundled-up notes. Even the oldest letter would be less than two years old. Suddenly, from amidst the notes, she saw a sheet of folded paper, written in red ink. She was seeing it for the first time. It was a small note, written with letters as broad as fingertips. Ann Marie was shocked when she realized that the writing, which was turning brown from red, was in dried blood. She read from the paper, which sat trembling in her shaking hands:
I always shuddered at the thought of the moment when God would send me that question. ‘Show me proof,’ he would ask ruthlessly, ‘proof of a light you have lit for the coming generations, in the hundreds of thousands of hours you have spent in the world for the pleasures of your mind and body.’
I will stand with my head bowed. A feeling of inferiority at least sixteen times more than I had when I was alive would start to consume me. Then I would not have the strength to go again through those few moments when my heart also throbbed like a full moon while still on this earth.
I ate, drank, fornicated, lived, died. Like the louse in the hair and the lion in the jungle. Like a thousand creatures in between them. But as a man, what did I do to outlive death? No, I won’t have an answer. My backpack will be empty; my heart too.
‘Nothing, my lord,’ I will say. Then I will add a sentence which apparently has no pertinence to the question: ‘There is nothing heavier on earth or in hell than an empty heart!’
Ann Marie heard the rain coming down in torrents, smashing its head against the roof tiles. She put all the papers in a yellow plastic cover and then into a bigger white plastic bag. After some thought, she swathed it in her wedding saree, which she took out of her suitcase. When she was keeping the bundle in the almirah, she shut her eyes and pursed her lips, as if she were dropping money into the donation box in churches and temples.
The wooden almirah stood in front of her like a wooden ship preparing to ride the flood of sewage water.
He came in the night to give audience to Jithen from the unknown—the large, unused plot of land lying across the alley in front of their house. A fox whose face had become elongated from howling.
During the initial months of their honeymoon, because Ann Marie’s judgment of the quantity of food to be made for the two of them slipped up and they had no refrigerator to store excess food, Jithen had to throw the leftover food into the thickets in the empty plot: leftover rice and curries, which would be spoilt by the next day, as a travel snack for the unknown movers of the night. When Jithen would throw the packet into the thicket of colocasia plants—standing with their wide water-repellent leaves as if seeking alms, in the front of the swampy portion of the plot, which Ann Marie had christened as Colocasia Field—he would hear sounds of biting and snapping, sending the leaves into shivers. Those territorial cries of creatures with animal bodies were a declaration of their presence, which would not reveal if it was a battle to satiate their hunger or the exertions of sharing. During a break at ten o’clock in the night in the first rain of June, when Jithen went with the leftovers, one of them stepped out fearlessly from the colocasia-covered swamp. He mistook it for a dog first, looking at the silhouette, but when it came within the oblong area of light from the open door of the house, it was clear it was a fox—the vocalist who provided the background music of howls during their condom-clad, late-night copulations.
In the first meeting, they stood still on either side of the alleyway. Then Jithen turned back holding the packet of leftovers, and brought Ann Marie there. She was enthusiastic to see a live fox, as foxes had become practically non-existent in Thachanakkara and Angamaly. Abandoning the dishes she was washing, Ann Marie went silently with her husband up to the alleyway. In the square of light, which came through the door of the house, four foxes could be seen waiting for them on the other side, as if under a spotlight on stage. With their tails tucked between their legs, pointed ears held up, heads lowered till the ground and eyes looking up, a family of foxes.
Standing on either side of the alley, the meeting of two different types of families was staged. In the cool breeze, the colocasia field was making waves in the night. A thousand cicadas, unable to be determine whether it was from within or without, were making the night noisy. After standing still for some time looking at the human couple, the male fox started his howl, which the vixen and their children took up faithfully. Hearing that, standing in the darkness, Ann Marie smiled widely like the Dutchman’s Pipe flower.
Reaching up to her husband’s ear, she whispered, ‘Do you know what he was telling his wife and kids, pointing at you? There, behold a strange animal with a moustache. A mighty one who sleeps wearing a cover, to prevent procreation!’
When the fox family cut their concert and walked back into the thickets, Jithendran returned with Ann Marie to the house, after throwing the leftovers
packet in the direction of the retreating foxes.
Jithendran lay without sleeping, his mind caught in something other than the poltergeist-like rain. Fearing the water from the gutter, every now and then, he kept feeling the floor with his hand in the dark. Ann Marie was sleeping with her head resting against his armpit.
A Preface to Man Page 39