To this day Chembankunju was a hired hand. Taking a share for the work he does in other people’s boats. First he worked as a rows man. Now he was the helmsman. Owning a boat was his life’s purpose and so he clung to the money he had made. He had accumulated much money over the years. Yet it wouldn’t suffice for a boat and nets.
The girl was of age. An age where slips could happen. Chakki was right. Her anxiety had reason. Should he buy the boat and nets or get his daughter married off? This was his dilemma. Chembankunju too had a word of caution to offer, ‘Girl, you need to look out for yourself!’
So her father too had now counselled her.
Karuthamma didn’t answer. Neither did Chembankunju expect her to.
In the evening, after having disbanded his workers, Pareekutty was perched on the boat. Perhaps he hoped that Karuthamma would come that way, as she had yesterday.
Chembankunju walked towards Pareekutty. Karuthamma watched them converse for a long while. What could they be talking about? she wondered. Perhaps her father was asking for a loan.
That night the husband and wife talked for a long time in stealthy whispers. Karuthamma wished she could find out what they were talking about.
Pareekutty sang that night too. Karuthamma lay within her hovel and listened to it. Once, she had only one thing to tell Pareekutty, ‘My Bossman, you mustn’t stare at my breasts so…’
Now she had one more thing to tell him. He mustn’t sing!
Until two days ago, she had flitted around carefree as a butterfly. In two days so much had changed! Now she had reasons to lose herself in thought. So she began to fathom herself. And with it began an understanding of the gravity of life. She would have to watch out for herself. Each step had to be carefully considered. In which case, would she ever be able to skip and run without a care? As she used to.
A man looked at her bosom. And just like that she became a woman.
The next night she didn’t hear Pareekutty’s song. That night too the moonlight washed the seashore in its silvery light. The mysterious song of the sea beat its way through the coconut fronds and wafted to the east.
Pareekutty’s song. When it didn’t fill her ears, Karuthamma felt a great unease. Wouldn’t he sing again?
After supper, Chembankunju stepped out. Chakki stayed awake. Why wasn’t she sleeping? Karuthamma asked her mother.
Chakki told her to go to sleep.
And so Karuthamma drifted off into a light sleep.
Suddenly she woke up with a start. Someone was demanding, ‘Is Karuthamma awake?’
It was a voice she knew. A voice she recognized only because of the faint tremor it bore. It was Pareekutty.
Chakki said, ‘She’s asleep.’
Karuthamma heard the embarrassment in her mother’s tone. Karuthamma broke out in a sweat. She rose and peered through a slat of the makeshift door. Chembankunju and Pareekutty were heaving in something heavy. Not one or two but seven laden palm-leaf baskets. Dry fish.
Karuthamma felt as if a fist had reached in and grabbed her insides. She saw Pareekutty, Chembankunju and Chakki stand in the front yard deep in a whispered conversation.
The next day Karuthamma questioned Chakki about the baskets. Chakki didn’t meet her eye when she said carelessly, ‘That Little Boss kept it here.’
Karuthamma wouldn’t let it be. ‘Why? Can’t he keep it in his shack?’
‘What’s your problem if it’s here?’
In a little while Chakki demanded furiously, ‘Who is he to you anyway? Watch yourself, girl!’
There was so much Karuthamma wanted to say and ask. He was no one to her. But what they had done was still thievery. Weren’t they becoming beholden to him? Her father had said, ‘Girl, you need to look out for yourself.’ How could she if they put themselves in his debt? But Karuthamma didn’t speak.
The next day the dried fish was sold. And the day after, the sea flung its bounty into the nets. Having brought back the catch to the shore, Chembankunju went out in the boat again. And Chakki went to the east to sell fish. Panchami wasn’t at home either. Karuthamma was all by herself.
Pareekutty came there then.
Karuthamma fled and huddled inside the hovel. He stood in the yard. Silent. Waiting.
There was a certain consternation in him. His mouth was dry. He said aloud, ‘I have given the money for the boat and nets!’
There was no answer.
So he continued, ‘Now will you sell us your fish?’
‘If you give us a good price, we’ll give you the fish’ should have been the retort. That was what Karuthamma had said once. But no words were spoken now. It was after that conversation conducted in the shadow of the boats that the uncontrollable laughing fit had emerged. Pareekutty must have expected a repetition of that episode. But it didn’t happen. Silence.
Pareekutty asked, ‘Karuthamma, why aren’t you talking to me? Are you angry with me?’
He thought he heard her sob from within.
‘Are you crying, Karuthamma?’
Pareekutty then offered, ‘If you didn’t like my coming here, I’ll leave…’
There was no answer to that either. And so from a dry painful throat, Pareekutty squeezed out the words, ‘Shall I go, Karuthamma?’
It was as if that query flung itself onto her heart. And yet all Karuthamma could say was, ‘My Bossman, you are a Muslim!’
Pareekutty didn’t understand the relevance. ‘So?’
There wasn’t an answer for that. So what if he was a Muslim?
And then Karuthamma too asked herself that.
Suddenly she said furiously, ‘Bossman, go stare at the breasts and bums of the women who work in your shack!’
She was accusing him of a roving eye, Pareekutty realized. She must assume that he seduced all the women who worked for him. How was he to prove his innocence to her? He wished he knew. He hadn’t ever looked at any woman as he had at her.
With all the sincerity he could muster, he pleaded, ‘I swear by Allah, I haven’t ever!’
It was precisely what she wanted to hear. An affirmation of goodness. She wasn’t suspicious. But refraining from merely looking at other women wasn’t what she wanted of him.
She wished she knew how to tell him what she expected of him. For which she would have to tell him of the traditions of the sea that bound her; the dictates that governed her life. She didn’t know how to; nor did she have the courage.
There was a long silence. Neither of them spoke. As if conscious of that silence and that it would only grow, Karuthamma said, ‘My mother will be here soon.’
‘So what?’
She quivered in fright. ‘It’s wrong! It is a sin!’
‘Karuthamma, you are inside the house. And I am outside here. So what is the problem then?’
Should she explain this as well to him? But how? If she were to begin explaining, there was so much to say!
Pareekutty asked, ‘Karuthamma, do you like me?’
She replied abruptly, ‘Yes, I do!’
It was his desire for her that made him demand, ‘Why then, Karuthamma, are you not stepping out?’
‘No, I won’t!’
‘Listen, I won’t make you laugh. All I want is to look at you … and then I will leave.’
Helplessly, she cried, ‘No, no … how can you?’
A little later Pareekutty said, ‘Well, I am going …’
As if in response to that, there was a sound from within the hovel. ‘I will always like you …’
What more could be said to pledge a troth?
Pareekutty left. And only then it occurred to Karuthamma that she hadn’t spoken any of what she had meant to say. All she had done was voice the unspeakable.
That night she saw Chembankunju and Chakki sit in the light of a kerosene lamp and count money. However, it seemed it wasn’t enough. But there was a certain sense of relief in Chembankunju.
He said, ‘Thank god, we manage to accumulate this much without getting involved with Ousep
or one of those cut-throat fellows!’
Chakki too was relieved. Imagine their plight if they had borrowed from one of those moneylenders who walked around with cash only to net gullible fisherfolk.
In which case there would be neither boat nor nets; nor the money sunk in the deal.
Only recently both Ousep and Govindan had offered to lend them money. But Chembankunju had refused it. If he got involved with them, he knew he would be ensnared in their eternal debt. And soon, they would take away his boat and nets and make it theirs. That was how it had always happened on this shore.
But the money he had wasn’t enough. So what was to be done?
Chembankunju said, ‘Let the Little Boss give us the rest too. What?’
For the first time in her life Karuthamma felt hatred for her parents.
She despised her mother more because her mother wasn’t even protesting.
In the next few days, Pareekutty’s shack was busy. Fish were dried and put away in baskets. Karuthamma knew the reason for the frenzy. In a few days Karuthamma had learnt the measure of the world.
With the elation of someone who senses a change for the better in their lives, Chakki told Karuthamma, ‘Magale, we too are going to own a boat and nets!’
Karuthamma didn’t speak. She was unable to share her mother’s excitement. A change had come upon her.
Chakki said to herself, ‘The sea mother has blessed us.’
The pent-up ire in Karuthamma spilled over. ‘Won’t the sea mother be angry if you cheat people?’
Chakki peered into Karuthamma’s face. She didn’t flinch. And she had more to ask of her mother.
‘Ammachi, why cheat that naive man to buy a boat and nets? It is cruel …’
‘What are you saying? Cheating?’
Boldly, Karuthamma stood her place. ‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
Karuthamma answered with a stony silence.
Chakki said, ‘If we borrowed money from Ousep, he’ll soon make the boat and nets his.’
‘That’s not it, Ammachi. If you borrow money from Ousep, you will have to pay it back and the interest you owe.’
‘Don’t we have to pay this back?’
‘This … this, do you mean to really pay this back?’ She flung the question at Chakki’s face.
Chakki tried to defend what they had done. That the dried fish bought from Pareekutty was merely a business deal. All Chembankunju did was ask, Chakki argued. He didn’t insist. He didn’t lie or deceive. They would return the money; that much was certain.
Karuthamma asked, ‘If your intentions were so honest, why bring the dried fish in at midnight? Why not do it during the day?’
‘Look, the sea’s crying,’ she said abruptly.
It was as if she meant that her parent’s deception had made the sea cry. Chakki was furious. ‘What are you saying? That your father stole the money?’
Karuthamma didn’t speak.
With the power vested in a mother, Chakki demanded, ‘Who is that Muslim boy to you? Why do you care so much?’
Her tongue curled to say he was no one to her. But the words were not uttered. Why should she insist that he meant nothing to her? The silence was an act of courage. Was Pareekutty no one to her? He was her everything, Karuthamma realized then.
Chakki repeated her question and then added, ‘Will this girl bring doom upon the seashore and the fisherfolk?’
Karuthamma protested fearlessly, ‘I won’t break any rules.’
‘So why are you so bothered about his welfare?’
‘You will ruin him. He will have to tear down his fishing shack and leave.’
Chakki fell upon Karuthamma in a torrent of abuse. She stood there listening. It didn’t irk her one bit. Chakki was merely blabbering. When the abuse began to veer towards the vulgar, Karuthamma asked her mother quietly, ‘Do you think he gave the money because he trusted my father?’
‘Why else?’
Suddenly Chakki remembered that Karuthamma had asked Pareekutty for money. That perhaps was why Karuthamma had so many questions.
‘Or, do you think it’s because you asked him for it?’ Chakki asked.
Yes. That’s why. That’s only why – But Karuthamma couldn’t say it. Even though she knew that Pareekutty was in love with her.
Karuthamma said, ‘Don’t make me say things, Ammachi!’
‘What?’ Chakki paused and then asked, ‘Why, did I flirt with him to get the cash? What’s there for you to talk about?’
Karuthamma broke down. She cried, ‘Why, Ammachi, did you take money from him? You are the one who advised me on how to behave and now you have placed us in his debt…’ Karuthamma’s throat constricted.
Chakki realized what Karuthamma meant. She was right. For a while Chakki was disturbed. Had they put themselves in peril?
Chakki asked, ‘What happened, child?’
Karuthamma wept.
‘Did he come here, child?’
Karuthamma uttered a big lie, ‘No!’
‘Then what is it, child?’
‘What will I do if he comes here?’
Chakki hastened to prove the innocence of that transaction. She hadn’t weighed its implications. All she had done was ask Pareekutty a favour; and he had complied. They meant to return the borrowed money.
Karuthamma was right to doubt it. One thing was certain. Little Boss was a decent man. However, he was young.
Chakki suddenly felt disturbed. Perhaps they shouldn’t have taken that money, she thought. But Chembankunju wouldn’t understand any of this.
Chakki began nagging Chembankunju once again about Karuthamma’s marriage. ‘You must talk to that Velayudhan. That’s the first thing to be done. After that we can consider buying the boat and nets.’
But Chembankunju wouldn’t agree. He had made up his mind.
How could she reveal everything? Frustrated and furious, Chakki said, ‘All these years I roamed the countryside selling fish from my basket to help you buy your boat and nets. Henceforth don’t expect this of me …’
Chembankunju threw her a challenging look.
‘What senseless talk is this?’ he demanded.
Chakki was petulant. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
‘What?’
‘I need to watch out for my daughter.’
‘And that means?’
‘She’s a grown-up girl – with tits and a bum. I can’t leave her here alone at home and go away all day.’
Chakki had made up her mind. And so she continued, ‘Or, get her married off!’
Chembankunju was silent as though he had understood what Chakki meant. If Chakki didn’t go to the east to sell fish, it would be a great loss. He asked, ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Nothing as of now. But what if something happens?’
They had to be careful. But Chembankunju had faith in his daughter. Karuthamma was a sound girl; not given to reckless impulses. Even if she was left alone, she wouldn’t succumb …
Chakki demanded, ‘Have you heard of momentary lapses?’
Chembankunju didn’t speak.
The next day Chakki didn’t go east to sell fish. And Chembankunju didn’t force her either.
That night they were planning to bring in more baskets of dried fish. But that night Chakki too protested. ‘We don’t need this.’
Chembankunju asked, ‘Why not?’
‘Why are you cheating that boy?’
‘Who said I am cheating him?’
‘What else? Do you really intend to return the money?’
Chembankunju insisted he would.
Karuthamma thought she must inform Pareekutty that he wouldn’t get his money back. She sought a chance to meet him in stealth. But it didn’t happen.
That night Pareekutty came laden with several baskets of dried fish again. And Chembankunju took it from him without any hesitation. He didn’t even mention when he would return the money.
At that point Karuthamma felt that she would even dare confront h
er father. However, it was Chakki she held responsible.
Karuthamma knew this would be a burden that would weigh her down forever.
Three
Chembankunju now had enough money. So he set forth in search of a boat and nets.
The seashore rumbled with this news. It was rumoured that he had found an ingot of gold. One day, they said, he found a chunk of black rock that had washed ashore. When he picked it up, it was a gold ingot.
Others claimed that he had accumulated the cash by virtue of his thrift. However, that didn’t seem all that plausible. All of them were hired help like him. There would be nothing left to save up after meeting everyday expenses. So how could he have found the extra money to put aside?
Achakunju was Chembankunju’s peer. And his house was adjacent to Chembankunju’s. To the north, in fact. They were childhood friends. And so, soon everyone began questioning Achakunju: How much money did Chembankunju take with him? Once he bought the boat, whom would he hire to work for him? Where did he find the money from? Questions teeming with such curiosity.
Achakunju didn’t have a clue. But he pretended as if he knew every single detail. Chembankunju had suddenly become an important man. So shouldn’t his best friend too have a share of that eminence? And so Achakunju answered the questions as best as he could. Thus, Achakunju too became a man of some consequence.
Kochuvelu asked him a question, ‘I heard Achakunju chettan has a share in it …’
A question that threw Achakunju into a tizzy. However, he wasn’t going to give himself away to anyone. ‘Maybe. Or maybe not!’
It was a question meant to deflate Achakunju’s put-on importance. On hearing Achakunju’s retort, everyone burst into laughter. Achakunju blanched.
‘Why are you laughing?’ someone taunted. ‘Can’t Achakunju chettan buy a boat and nets on his own? Why does he need to be only a part owner?’
Embarrassed, Achakunju retorted, ‘If everyone started buying boats and nets, who is going to man them?’
Kochuvelu muffled his laughter and said, ‘Yes, that’s why Achakunju chettan isn’t buying a boat and nets …’
Chemmeen Page 2