by Rao, Raja
The National Typewriting Institute has a very good reputation for job work. How clear the document was. It made your heart shine gold, such was the excellence of the typing. I put my signature: Ramakrishna Pai. S. Ramakrishna Pai. Then Govindan Nair signed as witness. Usha drew an Om, and Govindan Nair certified her signature. Murugan Mudali carefully shaped his signature, and somehow wept. He just did not know. Tangamma handed over to Usha betel leaves and coconut, and even tobacco to chew. She ran back as Shridhar was in some sort of delirium. The doctor had promised to come at three. Govindan Nair went home and ran back quickly. I entered my room and brought out his seven thousand rupees. Usha handed the money to Murugan Mudali. Within ten months the rest of the money would be paid, in two instalments. The house became mine—I mean Usha’s. Murugan Mudali (he was about fifty-five) began to smile, and seemed almost happy now. He took Usha on his lap. Then he lifted her up to his arm. ‘What a sweet child,’ he said, and stood up. Govindan Nair said: ‘She is the true owner.’
‘Permit me, sir,’ said Murugan Mudali, ‘permit me to take the child home. I want my wife and daughter to see her. May I keep her till the afternoon?’
‘Of course.’
‘But Shridhar is ill. I want to see him,’ said Usha. The children had build little stone stands from which they spoke to each other across the wall.
‘Shridhar will be well. The doctor is coming,’ Govindan Nair assured her.
The Mudali took the child in his arms and, smiling to himself, closed the garden door. Usha was going to see Grandmother. Was she beautiful? Will she give me glass bangles? Will she take me to the temple? ‘Grandfather,’ she said, ‘will you take me to the temple just once?’
‘Why, we’ll go now. We’ll go home and take Grandmother. We’ll go to the temple,’ he said.
How beautiful the god was you will never never know. The god lay on his seven-headed serpent. His one wife at the feet and another rising from his lotus navel—blue he lay and in deep sleep. Grandfather wept profusely. One weeps in temples. Grandfather and Grandmother went then to Chalai Bazaar and bought Usha two ankle bands of silver. She looked so lovely she wanted to go back to the temple.
There’s only one depth and one extensivity and that’s (in) oneself. It’s like a kitten on a garden wall. It’s like the clock of the Secretariat seen through a mist of clouds—time moves on according to a moon (and the sun) but the offices go on working, people scribbling, smoking, typing, belching, scratching, farting big, fibbing, exuding asafoetida perspiration or the acrid smell of buttermilk—there will be peons to whom a rupee warrants well, but two warrant more, and up the staircase you go, one, two, and three, and each step is worth a rupee, on to the first floor. On the second floor the prices are higher. You pay ten rupees a step. And on the third, it’s like offerings to the Maharaja, you pay according to ceremony. And above it all sits time like a nether world recorder asking no questions. It revolves on itself and when the hour comes it strikes. And off it goes—something. What is it that is gone? What is time? What is death? In fact you could ask what is life. You issue a ration card. Your house number, numbers of the family, are all indicated: you are class A, B, C or D. You buy what you want and when you want, but only what is available. Governments are notoriously mismanaged. A railway car might have gone off to Coimbatore containing rice for Cannanore or Conjeevaram. What matters is that the station begins with a C. Cannanore, Conjeevaram, Coimbatore. It would almost make a nice mantra. Life is only such a mantra—you go on saying life life, or in Sanskrit jeeva jeeva (and in Sanskrit it sounds more real), so you go on living. Jeeva is life. So I live. There is a clock tower. Then there is the ration shop. Ration Office No. 66 is just above it. The Revenue Board is under the clock tower, and that is where I work. Down the road that goes to the hospital is Ration Office No. 66. That is where Govindan Nair works. His face is full now. I have a house. I have laid the foundation for myself—and through time. The Secretariat clock will go on chiming forever, and as long as it chimes, it will go on telling you the time forever; can you imagine a state without a government? You must have permanence. So permanence is the Secretariat with the clock tower. I hear the clock chime at night from my house. Thus I live a bit of eternity. My house has a garden wall. There is, as you know, a bilva tree by the wall. A hunter once broke twigs off the bilva, you will remember, and down the leaves fell on the oval emergence of the alabaster. Shiva was pleased with this unknowing worship. I look towards the garden wall. Lord, I am not even a hunter that in his nervousness lets down bilva leaves. Lord, what hope is there for me?
Govindan Nair always appears at such a moment. These are the sort of thoughts that run through me in the morning. I usually wash my face and feet. Then I go to the Home Friends for my coffee and upma. By the time I return the Malayalarajyam is on my veranda. I read it from beginning to end, about Hitler and the wars, Churchill and the speeches, and then I begin to scratch the curve of my feet. I have a house now, my own. Usha is lying inside. She will wake soon and say, ‘Father.’ What a mysterious word it is. ‘Father,’ she says. As if I were able to be the cause of anything. For father simply means cause of her. And the cause of cause, what is it? Is it not she? Could there be a father without a daughter? What would Usha be without me? What would this house be if I did not own it? It is not possible not to own it and yet it would somehow be mine? Air I own not, yet I breathe. I breathe myself. Do I own I?
Such are the terrible thoughts that oppress me. Govindan Nair is my guide. He lives across the wall, and the bilva spreads like a holy umbrella above him. It gives him spiritual status.
So Govindan Nair comes and says: ‘Mister, I am in grave trouble.’
‘What?’ I ask.
‘My son is seriously ill.’
‘What illness? For days he’s had no fever.’
‘Shantha is there. She will tell you.’
‘But what is it?’
‘It’s called fever. But it might any day be called pneumonia.’
‘How did it come?’
‘Just as its name came. From somewhere. He was convalescent. He played in the rain planting roses. He got wet. Then he came here and stood talking to Usha across the wall. So you could say Usha gave it to him.’
‘What?’
‘Since you want a cause, anything is the cause. The more innocent a thing, the more mysterious its cause. You wear a Gandhi cap—a two-anna piece of one-foot cloth that any man can put on his pate, and not even what his irreverent bladder empties could be held in the cap’s depth, such its size—yet you could get arrested for anti-British activity. Innocence is the most dangerous thing in the world. So Usha is the cause of Shridhar’s illness.’
‘Don’t make fun of me. Tell me seriously.’
‘I speak seriously, sir. All I say is serious. If not, would I blow my precious foul breath to the world?’ He looked almost angry. ‘Do you think I joke when I say Usha is the cause of my son’s illness? She is six years old. He is seven years old. They stood under the bilva tree and said many serious things. Did you know what they said to one another? She touched his cheek and said: ‘You are like my brother.’ And he said: ‘Father says you are my wife.’ And she became so shy, she ran away. So off he ran, Shridhar, to Shantha, and said: ‘Mother Shantha, make Usha my wife.’ He stood silent and, with closed eyes and folded hands, prayed. She said: ‘Why not when you grow up? When the koel is big it makes a nest. When the koel is big and another koel comes, they make a bed to which eggs are born. When you can build a nest, you will marry Usha.’ ‘But Usha has a house now,’ he said. ‘Can I not be married now that she has a house? And we will grow eggs.’ Usha got fever that night. She thought she was growing eggs. Next morning she went to the latrine. She was so afraid she threw off her eggs. She is all right now. Shridhar got the new disease. He does not know how to throw it off. I must buy him a house too, perhaps,’ said Govindan Nair, and was silent for a while. ‘It’s a good idea if I tell Shridhar: Shridhar, I will buy you a house also, and thi
s might get him to feel better. When you have a house in prospect, your heart pumps good blood. Yes, that’s the trick. Thank you for the thought,’ he said, and, jumping across the wall, he was gone. Was I responsible for his thought? Was I responsible for Usha’s birth? Was I? Was Usha responsible for Shridhar’s illness? So I am the sole responsible person. Lord, where shall I go now? For I am cause.
Usha woke up in a delirium. She has been saying she wants to go to the sea. She sees big ships sail. She sees faces of men that frighten her. ‘I don’t want to go, Mother, I don’t want to go with the Dutch!’ she shrieks. Her mother always said to the children: ‘If you cry, I’ll give you away to the Dutch,’ and that’s why the child cried so. It must be strange to go in Dutch ships across the seas.
‘The fever ran high,’ said Shantha to me in the evening. Because of Shridhar’s fever, Shantha started sleeping in this house. You see, Usha bought this house (though the two instalments have yet to be paid—but the Mudali has given his heart away to Usha), so the house is Usha’s and Shantha will come, for Usha is a grown-up child, and she loves her mother, who is Shantha, for Shantha is kind, and will not talk of the Dutch. She who does not talk of the Dutch is Mother, so Mother is Shantha. And Shantha is round and will give Usha a brother. Will he be like Shridhar? Shantha says Shridhar raves all night. Ice bottles are placed on his head. Dr N.O. Pillai is an able doctor, he never does anything wrong. People live who live. Those that are taken away go away. Look at it in the hospital. Can you prevent what has to go? Tangamma has a difficult time. When her husband is unhappy he is angry. When he weeps he is happy. That, sir, is the law of kitten, he says in philosophic explanation. He has an explanation, as I told you, for everything. Usha is the cause of Shridhar’s fever, is as simple for him as the buffalo is the mother of the grey-white calf, suckling at her udder. How mysterious life is. Does one know anything?
The doctor knows. The temperature is measured with a glass instrument that speaks. Modhu, the elder son of Govindan Nair, who is always on the football field or at some decisive mischief (for he wants to be a soldier like Major General Auchinleck), cleans the thermometer and the temperature has gone up to 105 degrees. Hope is a bubble that is born in the heart. It bursts when it will. That depends on the outer air, I think. Or it is like a bad scale? It always shows you a measure according to the ration card. The rice you eat at home belongs to another measure. Hence there is famine. Hence people die.
Famine is the cause of death. Wars are the cause of murder. Imperialism is the cause of slavery. Sri Krishna is the cause of Mahatma Gandhi. Lord, how can man be free from birth and death? Why should death come to our door?
But Shantha is all apprehensive. What if death came not to the next door but to mine—to Usha, I mean? She prayed therefore there should be no death.
But I ask of you, Will death come and say: May I come, sir, dear sir? What is death to a kitten that walks on the wall? Have you ever seen a kitten fall? You could fall. I could fall. But the kittens walk on the wall. They are so deft. They are so young. They are so white. The mother cat watches them. And when they are about to fall, there she is, her head in the air, and she picks you up by the scruff of your neck. You never know where she is. (Who has ever seen her? Nobody has.) To know where she is, you have to be the mother’s mother. And how could that ever be? Mother, I worship you.
The bamboos were already in the courtyard. Death had come. It spoiled the nice courtyard, with flowerbeds of roses.
I never went across the wall. How could I? I could hear Tangamma weep, then Govindan Nair said something. Dr N.O. Pillai is such an able man. He walked out of the house efficiently. It was a bad case, he said. His Gladstone bag was so knowledgeable. It contained mysterious instruments that spoke. Death is such speech? Tangamma did everything as if she were sleeping. She did not weep any more. Modhu wept and wept. He had lost his only brother.
Where is Shridhar gone? Where is my friend gone? Usha walked with me, erect and tearless, holding my hand, to the cremation ground. It was decided to burn him though he was only seven. Usha thought it a grand thing to be burned. It made you see your heart. ‘Father, where has Shridhar gone?’ ‘Daughter, he has gone to build a house.’ ‘Father, where shall we go?’ ‘Daughter, where there is a house.’ ‘Father, what is death?’ ‘Daughter, it’s like the clock tower of the Secretariat. It chimes time.’ ‘Father, what is life?’ ‘Daughter, it is where no flame can burn.’ ‘Father, where is that?’ ‘Daughter, I do not know. Ask Govindan Nair.’ ‘Father, what is marriage?’ ‘Daughter, it is when I give you to God.’ ‘Father, when will you give me to God?’ ‘Daughter, tomorrow.’
Somehow after Shridhar died Usha stayed on with me. There must always be a kitten on the wall.
Shantha, more and more, came to live with me. The child would soon come. It will be a son. It will be a brother. Usha was going to have a brother. She told her school—now she went to the convent school—that she was going to have a brother. They said: Where is your mother, then? She said: Here. Where do you come from, then? Did you not say you came from Alwaye? She said: Yes. That was my mother’s house. This is my house. My brother will be born in my house. And the schoolgirls thought: What a wonder! Can one have a little brother so easily? Usha’s brother will be very beautiful.
The Belgian sisters did not speak of brother’s mother. So she wondered why God made some people with speech and others who, talking, had no speech. Only some have brother, and that is the truth, she said to herself, as she entered her arithmetic class.
About three or four weeks later, at the end of September it was—no, in fact at the end of August, for the rains have not ended yet, and the Dussera12 not yet there—one morning Govindan Nair was arrested at his house. He was arrested on a charge of bribery—a yellowed and much greased document was produced to prove that from some old lady in Vulzehavannoor, three miles from Kurtarakara, he had taken a sum of rupees one hundred and nine. She had a son who ran a ration shop. It could not be more explicit, according to Police Inspector Rama Iyer. He had suddenly grown rich, the son of this old lady. How did this happen? A den of corruption (according to police reports) was discovered. The yellowed document was made out in the name of Meenakshiamma, of Pattadkovil, Vulzehavanoor. She was an elderly lady of fifty-seven. She admitted having given one hundred and nine rupees to Govindan Nair. But that was for the sale of a calf, a heifer, she said. Govindan Nair’s family home lay some four miles away, in Valauthoor. She knew Govindan Nair’s servant. He was taking a calf to the river. The old lady was going to have a granddaughter. It was going to come in two or three days. ‘We must have a heifer when the child is a few months old. The present cow will dry up before long.’ So the heifer was bought.
People hereabouts have a superstition. Govindan Nair’s family is called the Valauthoor family (they fought in some wars and had some vague privileges), and they are supposed to have one virtue: they never touch anything that does not turn gold. Yet they die all of them in miserable circumstances. Some in distant parts and of vague fevers, others of murder or of debauchery, but one and all end badly. Only after the seventh generation will the lineage be pure again. It is a curse of one of the elders who had been allowed to die in starvation, while the others were gay with women. This generation will be the last, says the tradition. The rotten chapter will be wiped off the pages of history. Man will turn innocent again.
So the arrest did not come as a surprise. The death of Shridhar was in fact like a precursor of this event. You know you will suffer, so suffering comes and tells you. Whether you sold a calf (or was it pneumonia?), you must play fair. If you trick destiny, destiny tricks you. If you say: I am all right; I am almighty; I am Govindan Nair; I can weigh children in scales, make wayward women fall at my feet—Destiny chooses the exact fact for your redemption. Rama Iyer comes and takes you away to police custody. He is the mildest of police inspectors. But if he has a warrant of arrest, will he stop because he hears Shridhar has died some four weeks ago? Was the calf sol
d before or after? The question with the law is a question of dates. If you did not murder the moment you murdered, you might never have murdered. How strange it all is. One moment before, you did not commit murder. One while after, you have. What happened between the two? The knife came into the picture. Yes, the knife.
For everybody in Ration Shop No. 66 knew this was all fake. First of all, a man who plays with children so—Kunni Krishna Menon’s family will bear you witness to this—could not have sold false permits. How could he starve children? If you starved mothers, you starved children. If you starved fathers, you starved mothers from having children. So you could not starve anybody. Starvation comes only through a man that could, like the British Government, say, I am me, may I alone live. Can you live alone? I am an island. I am king, etc., etc.
The real story of the arrest is this: One morning—it was a month or two after this house had been bought—Govindan Nair went to his office. He was a little late, being held by some friends for a smoke. Then he went in, up and in, and he saw everybody so busy, their papers under their noses, he felt ashamed to be late. Fortunately there were very few people in the ration shop below, and this gave him comfort. Though there was no real connection between the ration office and the ration shop, yet somehow they worked together, like a husband and wife whose stars are different, but from marriage and progeny they go through to the final bamboo processionals and the funeral anniversaries. Thus the two were tied together.