by Rao, Raja
I have hardly formulated this in my slow mind—for as you can see, I am just like that hunter carelessly dropping bilva leaves on some Shiva as yet unknown—when this big creature Govindan Nair leaps across the wall. That he is round and tall makes no difference to his movements. The fact is, to him all the world is just what he does. He does and so the world comes into being. He himself calls it: ‘The kitten is being carried by the cat. We would all be kittens carried by the cat. Some, who are lucky (like your hunter), will one day know it. Others live hearing “meow-meow”. . . . I like being the kitten. And how about you, sir?’ he would say. Then he would spread his fat legs on my bench, open his paws, produce some betel leaf or tobacco (or a cheap cigarette, if that could be found, but this almost never before me, for he knows I hate lighted tobacco), and munching his munch and massaging his limbs, he opens his discourse. ‘I tell you, Ramakrishna Pai, there’s nothing like becoming rich. Our wives adore us if we can produce a car, even a toy car for the baby. Females have one virtue. They adore gilt. My wife is from a grand family. But I am a poor clerk like you. Of course, I did brilliant things when I was young—I was handsome and all that, mothers used to tell me, and I rode a B.S.A. bicycle. I wore grey flannels and went to the College Tennis Club. For I do know of girls. Then some big man thought I was going to be a big man. And thus the wife came into existence. And two children to boot. But the great man became big in fact, and his clerkship remained at forty-five rupees. Fortunately there are wars. And rationing is one of the grandest inventions of man. You stamp paper with figures and you feed stomachs on numbers. I was such, I am such, an original figure. You know there are sadhus, so they say, for I am ignorant of such things, who are supposed to eat three pinches of sand one day, and the mantra3 does the rest. For three months they need no food. I am such a sadhu, dispensing numbers. I give magical cards, and my wife eats pearl rice. My children go to school. My father-in-law lives on his estates and says: “Hey, clerk, what about my daughter?” I laugh. A clerk is a clerk. He could at best rise to the post of superintendent and have two peons at his door. Isn’t that so, dear sir? Ah, the kitten when its neck is held by its mother, does it know anything else but the joy of being held by its mother? You see the elongated thin hairy thing dangling, and you think, poor kid, it must suffer to be so held. But I say the kitten is the safest thing in the world, the kitten held in the mouth of the mother cat. Could one have been born without a mother? Modern inventions do not so much need a father. But a mother—I tell you, without Mother the world is not. So allow her to fondle you and to hold you. I often think how noble it is to see the world, the legs dangling straight, the eyes steady, and the mouth of the mother at the neck. Beautiful.’ Then Govindan Nair would go off on a quiet silence munching his betel leaves. ‘You are an innocent. I tell you God will build you a house of three storeys-note, please, I say three storeys—here, just where you sit. It’s already there. You’ve just to look and see, look deep and see. Let the mother cat hold you by the neck. Suppose I were for a moment to show you the mother cat!’ Govindan Nair never says anything indifferent. For him all gestures, all words have absolute meaning. ‘I meow-meow the dictionary, but my meaning is always one,’ he used to assure me.
‘And so?’
‘And so, sir, let us build a house of three storeys here. I am in the rationing department, and you in the Revenue Board. Figures, magical be figures in wartime. And you build a house, and like in some hospitals where it is writ, Vithaldass Ward, Maruthy Aiyer Ward, I will have a Govindan Nair Ward. My name will thus be writ once in marble. Ah, the mother cat, does one know where she takes us?’
‘Which is to say?’ I venture.
‘Which is to say, your three storeys will go high. Your leaves will have fallen on Shiva. The hunter has to feed his children; the divisional clerk will have to build a house for his august wife. Understood, sir? This is our secret pact,’ said Govindan Nair. He went out to spit, and cried back from the veranda: ‘I say, it’s time for my office’—and jumped across the wall and was gone. What a will-o’-the-wisp of a wall it is, going from nowhere to nowhere; tile-covered, bulging, and obstreperous, it seems like the sound heard and not the word understood. It runs just a little above my window, half an inch higher, and on the other side it dips and rises, running about on its wild, vicarious course. The bilva leaves fall on the wall. And sometimes as if to remind us what a serious tree it is, a bilva fruit drops over the cowshed on the other side, and the thud makes even the cattle rise. The cattle see me, and urinate. The smell of dung and urine of kine is sweet to me. Purity is so near, so concrete. Let us build the house. Lord, let me build the house.
Govindan Nair is a terrible man: huge in his sinews but important in his thought, devious though it is—for it will take you, as some tribespeople do that lead you through jungle and briar, beside the bones of hyena and of panther, and ichor smells of the elephant, and up again through narrow pathways, wind against nostrils, that of a sudden show you his Lord the Tiger might have passed by just now, just a moment ago, look at his paw prints there, and you hear the tiger call while sharp sword-grass is grating your feet; and once up the ledge, standing under a tree, the tribesman will whispering say: ‘There, look, that’s the Pandya Waterfall, Mother Bhavani’s secret trysting place with Lord Shiva,’ and you shudder at the beauty and the silence—such are Govindan Nair’s twists of passage and of thought which take you through fearful twists and trysts and imponderables, to some majesty. Meanwhile he says his mantra (even while he talks), and you hold your breath. Look, look, there Shiva comes down three days before full moon and in Marghashira4 to besport himself with his spouse Bhavani. The river therefore carries flowers, and the young tigress cubs. The mother cat, why, haven’t you seen it—it walks on any garden wall . . .
Were you certain of the tribesman’s mantra, there’s still terror in your limbs; you never know where you’ll emerge. But were you to land in a ditch, or be transported to another world and to another life, you know that for a moment you’ve beheld Bhavani as she falls into the sheer silence of the valley, and water foams in frolicsome splendour. Happiness is so simple. You just have to know footpaths. I ask you, does the waterfall ever change?
But sometimes sickness may come, and that’s another matter. For that’s what happened to me.
That year, the year 1941, you remember the summer came in early. It was hardly February when the heat began to rise, and people wondered where it was all going to end. The grasses grew corrugated, people were afraid cattle fodder would go dearer. The rice fields were getting baked up. For four months we had no rains. People said of course it’s the wars; what is there to be done? You cannot commit such crimes and expect the rains to fall as usual. Man must pay for his sins in slow death. There must be some balance in heaven. When opposites are equalled that is peace. If you kill you get killed, that is the law of nature. Hitler and the British brought about the drought.
Many persons in Trivandrum fell ill with this or that disease. Our Revenue Board Third Member, Kunni Kutta Nair, fell with a thud into his courtyard, and blood came out of his nose. It was diagnosed as one thing, and he died of another. People also died of cholera. Some had, like me, strange boils. It started one morning as I began to scratch my feet. The red of my scratch began to swell up. It became round and then yellow. With difficulty I took my bath and limped to the office. From Puttenchantai, as you know, to the Secretariat is just about twelve minutes’ walk. It took me twenty-five but the bubo grew and grew. When my boss suddenly came in around eleven-thirty, asking for some file, I jumped up, and the bubo burst under my feet. The fluid just spilled over the floor. I gave my boss the file and went into the bathroom (on the way I asked Krishna, the peon, to call the sweeper woman and have the floor cleaned). Once in the bathroom, I found another red spot rising on my thigh. This time there was no question. It almost grew big under my eyes. It was like a guava in a few minutes. But because it gave me no pain, I just went back to my table. In a few hours my whol
e body except my face had nothing but boils. They rose, grew red and then yellow, añd burst like country eggs. I went to the chemists’ and they gave me an ointment and bandages. I walked home with four bandages. I could not touch anything except coffee, I had such disgust. What’s the use of having a wife if she cannot take care of one—for when boils come, do they say, Dear Sir, I am coming, may I come, like a mother-in-law? No, they come just like that, and occupy your house. They’re of British make, and like everything British, it works without your knowing. Govindan Nair has a simple definition: ‘Britain has no secret service—Britain is secret service. Hitler has bombs; the British have boils. But of the two, which one works, dear sir, great sir? Of course the boils.’
Yes, the British boils worked. Some even said the infection was carried back by soldiers from Benghazi. (Where there’s no water in the air, the skin swells, avid for any available humidity, is the immediate explanation of Govindan Nair. He has an explanation, as you see, for everything. And every occasion is Serious, intelligible, and final). That night, to come back to my British boils, I was up and hunting my boils as one hunts lice in a girl’s hair. I must tell you frankly: I liked it all—just as the girls like lice being killed, there’s an acute sense of pleasure when the two nails rub against each other, and the chit sound emerges. The louse is well and happily dead. As a child I also liked the sound of lice being killed in my hair. It made you feel life was worth something. So that when the British boils came, I just lay down and counted all of them towards the early morning. There were some forty-four—small and big, red, pink, and white. When they burst I took away the pus, carefully folded it all up in cotton wool, and put it in a corner. When I woke towards morning ants and lizards were both at it. They were having a feast.
I could hardly walk now. When I sat up (for this happened constantly with me, whenever I needed him but never asked for him, there would be Govindan Nair), there he was jumping over the wall. His son Modhu had a cough, and this had kept Govindan Nair awake the whole night; so, as he could not go to sleep, he came for a chat. ‘My son will bring my coffee here. Meanwhile let’s bark some nonsense.’ That’s how he always talks.
‘Ah,’ I said, and showed him the British boils. He looked at the lizards and their feed and said, ‘Chee-chee, get away,’ as if they were dogs. For him the whole world was one living organism. Everybody—every thing—understood speech. For him every thing was in masculine gender. He had no verbs in his tongue.
So the British boils came in for close scrutiny. He knew immediately what it was. He knew every thing for he was so concerned with every thing. Once he talked so much on manure that an agricultural expert asked if he was a professor at the local college. Just the same way he talked of the twenty-three types of Enfield guns. Or for that matter of boils. Two cups of coffee were handed down the wall. You just saw hair and hand and Govindan Nair brought in the coffee. The sun was up and the light played on his head. ‘Ah, you big British boil,’ he said, and laughed.
‘Let’s drive the British out,’ he declared, and after a quarter of an hour’s silence—during which he did nothing but play with his toenails—he added: ‘And now for the fight.’ In half an hour he had been to Narayan Pandita Vaidyan. The medicine smelled disgusting, like horse dung. ‘To fight evil you must use evil,’ he assured me. I swallowed the paste and fell on the bed exhausted. The Lord knows how much pus must have eked itself out. Shridhar, Govindan Nair’s second son, came in again and again, to inquire if Uncle wanted anything.
Then I woke up so long afterward . . . Where was I? The definition of Truth is simple—you wake up and you are in front of Truth.
For when I woke up I thought I saw someone. But actually it was nobody. It was as if Govindan Nair was there when he was not there but yet he was truly there: one can be and not be but be, and where one is one cannot be seen, for light cannot see light and much less can light see the sun.
So when I woke up and, frightened, said: ‘Who’s there?’ I wanted to see something on the chair in front of me. But actually I saw Govindan Nair hiding behind the door. He went to the window (for he was munching tobacco) to spit out and said: ‘I am Govindan Nair.’ His son Shridhar stood by him brave and well protected. But what had happened in all truth? What, I ask of you?
The facts are there. Shridhar had not been very well, and Narayan Pandita Vaidyan had ordered complete rest, with an oil bath towards noon. So that when Govindan Nair returned for his midday meal (his office was between the Secretariat and the General Hospital, on the Statue Road—a low-down-looking shed with sacks and a huge red-coloured scale in the middle, and men at the desk examining ration cards—and above was his august office), Shridhar usually woke up, held his father’s coat and hung it on the rack. Then he took a towel and held it forth for his father to wipe his feet. Meanwhile his brother Modhu would return. Modhu preferred to eat in the kitchen and to have the meal quickly finished and over—so he could run back to school and have a bout of football. Today, however, he did not return—he had some schoolwork. (At such times he usually ate something in the coffee shop opposite). Shridhar took the towel back to the bathroom and went and lay down on his bed.
Govindan Nair was at his meal, and suddenly he said: ‘And, son, what about our delightful neighbour ? Is he still emptying his bowels? Has the horse-dung-smelling purge worked?’ The son answered: ‘Father, I have not been to see him since eleven o’clock, that is, since I started on the oil bath.’ ‘And you,’ Govindan Nair said to his wife, ‘and you, my lady, I imagine you are too virtuous to find out whether our friend is living or dead. I fear the medicine was very strong. Ah, our Vaidyans!5 They know how to purge a calf but not a delicate Saraswath Brahmin. Shridhar, go and see.’
It was a very hot day in March. No, it was actually April, getting on to May. The sun was indeed very hot. The bilva tree seemed more thorn than leaf, more sun than air. Shridhar, so I learned later, jumped down the garden wall and entered my house from the backyard. He saw me, so he said, lying flat, my face to one side, my latrine bucket gone rolling on itself, and lying handle out in a corner. I was obviously unconscious. Going to the latrine, with the sun so hot, and I so weak, I must have tumbled and fallen against the threshold. I could not reach the bathroom. ‘Uncle is dead, Uncle is dead!’ shouted Shridhar in terror, running back to the garden wall. Govindan Nair, so I was told, jumped like a three-year-old heifer, washed his hands, and stood beside me. He touched me and felt my pulse. He carried me to my bed. Shridhar fanned me. His mother stood at the wall trying to learn what was happening. Govindan Nair jumped back across the wall. He says nothing more. What did he bring?—The chair was empty. Why are they all in the next room? I wondered. Shridhar suddenly came in, took a fan and started giving me breeze. From the window I could see Tangamma handing a tumbler of coffee—so hot, she had a towel around it—to Govindan Nair. ‘Sir, here is your nectar,’ he said. ‘Everybody has his nectar. Mine is tobacco juice, and yours the juice of a blackberry. At the ration department we are told we live on thirty ounces of rice per person. I solemnly declare, we live on nectar. Man does not live on terrestrial viands. He lives on the fruits of heaven.’ And he laughed as he propped me up in bed and, holding me with one hand, gave me coffee with the other. Shridhar was still fanning. Tangamma was standing by the wall playing with a trefoil of bilva. Where was I? Where was my wife? Does bilva make nectar, I wondered. I must ask Narayan Pandita Vaidyan. Suddenly I had to go to the latrine again. ‘The bowels are a tremendous responsibility of man, three hundred miles of guts hold a few handfuls of chemical compost. And this little chemical mixture makes or unmakes the stability of man. Funny, isn’t it?’ Govindan Nair said this, and stood by the door to the courtyard. ‘Call me, brother, when you want water. Water is our best protector against sin. To smell is sin. To do is no sin. To gulp is sin. To purge is bounty. To die is fanciful. Reality is when you die really. Shridhar’s death is my joke. When you fall unconscious they say you are dead. In fact where were you, brother, when Shr
idhar thought you were dead? Were you dead to yourself, my friend? You purge to live. You sleep to die. When sleep is life, where is death? Ha, ha, ha,’ he laughed, keeping me company from outside, while my bowels were pouring down hot liquid. I thought my guts would come out. There’s such innocence in a purged body. Disease is unnatural. Death is natural. To die rightly is to wake and find one has ever been being.
Shridhar knew his father as he knew his textbook. (He always stood second or third in class. He was in the fourth form.) A cigarette was bought from the neighbouring shop, and a matchbox. Sitting by the window, Govindan Nair lit his cigarette, while Shridhar returned to give back the matchbox to the shopkeeper—then, coming back, he started fanning me again. I said, ‘I must build a house of three storeys anyway. My wife can hire out the first two floors if need be. It will be so much capital invested. A house of three storeys these days is a safe investment. How much would it cost? One can live on the third floor.’
‘Thirty thousand rupees, if there’s no inflation after the war,’ Govindan Nair declared. ‘Let’s begin buying this house, for the moment. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Govindan Nair in Trivandrum is worth two wives in Kartikura House. Isn’t that so, brother?’ he said, but looking towards the wall, he saw Tangamma hide her mouth with the palm of her hand, and laugh.
I have developed a bad habit. I like women. Not that I like all sorts of women. I like woman, in fact. What is woman, you may ask. Well, woman is Shantha. Shantha is a school teacher in the Nair Society High School. She is fairly tall, and has delicate hands. I am not particularly tall or fair or good or bad. I am just a man. And Shantha is not just a woman, she is woman. I think often of the child she will bear forth (that is, when he will appear), and I cry with delight even before the time is come. Shantha lives with her mother and two brothers round near the Poolimood. The brothers go to school. The mother cooks. Shantha earns (they have some property too, in north Travancore). Shantha also loves. Her house is not far. Only in monsoon are the roads very difficult. Even so we somehow manage to be with each other. I can cough just a little, then Shantha will put her pillow against my neck. That is why she is so exquisite in her love play. She is shy like a peahen. Her giving is complete. But the truth is, who is there to take? Can you? There’s a story said of Sinbad the sailor. He was told by the jinn: Take, take all the royal treasury. He opened his hands to take. The hands had changed into gold. (I read this in my old school text). That’s taking. Saroja of Kartikura House is a true Brahmin. She knows how to take. But Shantha is a Nair. Nairs worship their mothers and recognize their fathers. I liked my father and had affection for my mother. The world has to be worshipped. Shantha worships me and has herself. I worship nothing (no, not even money, although it will make the three storeys possible), and I don’t think I care for anything. Caring for nothing is to use everything for oneself. Caring for oneself is to give things their self. Shantha loves me, and so she will have a beautiful boy. She’s not worried about marriage. I am a Brahmin. Shantha is not ashamed to be woman. I am afraid to be a man.