Karuthamma then asked, ‘How will Achan manage now?’
‘Who knows!’
It was Panchami’s indifference that hurt the most. More than anything else, that stabbed and scored Karuthamma’s heart. How their father would manage seemed of little consequence to Panchami.
Karuthamma forgot herself and said, ‘What a hard creature you are!’
Panchami seized on that. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You didn’t wait to find out how Achan would manage. You just left. It wasn’t as if they sent you away. Whom does Achan have now?’
‘Oh! Let’s not get into that. What about you? What did you do?’
That’s true! Panchami was right in what she said. How could Panchami alone be blamed? But there was a difference. Karuthamma had no option but to forsake her parents. That wasn’t how it was with Panchami.
Panchami said, ‘If you hadn’t left that day, none of this would have happened. Like Ammachi, you could have looked after our home.’
Karuthamma sat lost in thought. If that had been so, would everything have turned out right? That poor child! She didn’t know a thing. So much would have happened! There wouldn’t have been an echechi then to speak of. But she didn’t know any of this. Panchami who had a vicious tongue continued, ‘When a fisherman appeared, you forgot everything else and went after him!’
‘No, that isn’t it!’ sprang to her tongue from an aching heart. However, it was more like a few incoherent syllables that slipped out. Shouldn’t she have said that it was because she believed that as the loving wife of a fisherman she ought to do his bidding and it was her responsibility to follow him where he asked her to? She lived in Palani’s home, ate the food he earned from his tireless toil in the sea. Shouldn’t she have said that?
The poor man! He was out. In truth, she had fled the place. It wasn’t because she loved her parents or because she was a loving responsible wife. And as Panchami claimed neither had she run after her fisherman.
Amidst all the news, Chembankunju’s bout of madness also came up. Panchami described it. Gritting her teeth with barely concealed anger, she said, ‘That fatty said that you were seduced by that Muslim and ruined the shore!’
With some pity she continued, ‘Poor Achan! He went mad…’
Unable to respond, Karuthamma went numb. Her ears buzzed. Her eyes glazed. Panchami kept talking. So all of that was still a matter of gossip on that shore. It was still being discussed. And her proud father too had come to know about it. Would her father ever forgive her?
Again Panchami brought up the topic of Pareekutty. She narrated that young man’s pathetic tale. She said, ‘He has nothing, echechi. He’s a pauper. And he keeps wandering on the shore. You’d think he’s a mad man if you see him. It is really very sad!’
Karuthamma didn’t say anything about whether Panchami ought to go on or stop. She was eager to know all about it. If circumstances had been different, she would have asked about Pareekutty herself.
She too was perhaps seeing in her mind the little boy dressed in a yellow shirt and trousers, wearing a cap, a handkerchief knotted around his neck and clinging to his father’s hand. The shell that she had gifted him … One by one each scene from that romance played itself out in front of her eyes.
A valuable life had been wrecked. It was falling apart. No, it had been destroyed. Unconsciously she asked Panchami, ‘Does Little Boss still sit on the boat and sing?
Panchami responded, ‘Ah … sometimes he sings!’
Does Panchami know what the song was all about? It wasn’t possible.
Karuthamma asked, ‘Do you ever see him?’
‘Sometimes!’
‘Does he then ever ask you about echechi?’ Karuthamma’s voice quivered.
Panchami said, ‘When he sees me, he smiles!’
‘And sometimes he would ask about her!’
A voice that had never been heard before spoke up. Palani stood in front of them.
Panchami and Karuthamma leapt to their feet.
Karuthamma’s secret was out.
Twenty
Karuthamma discovered a courage like she had never known before. A purpose. A hazy but definite plan began to formulate in her.
Life and circumstances had brought her to it. Until then she had been a timid woman. Afraid of everything and everyone, without a will or desires of her own. Perhaps she may have had dreams of her own. But none of it had been spoken about.
The change was sudden. Perhaps Panchami’s arrival had something to do with it. She had a companion. When all her secrets had been flushed out, what was left to hide? What was left to fear? That life had to be kept safe had ceased to matter. But despite all the precariousness of her life, she wasn’t alone. She had someone – Panchami.
She reiterated her promises to her husband. She opened her heart out to him. ‘Apart from being your playmate, what was he to you?’ Palani asked. The answer to that was she hadn’t ever allowed herself to be anyone else’s.
Palani didn’t want to hear that. He asked, ‘Were you in love with him?’
She saw in front of her eyes the Pareekutty that Panchami had described with pity – A Pareekutty who had lost everything in life and now wandered through the shore like a mad man singing his song. ‘I will always sing this song; I will sing this song so it is heard at Trikunnapuzha’ – the words pounded within her ears.
‘When you have your boat and nets, will you sell us your fish?’
When Karuthamma took a long moment to answer, Palani repeated his question. Someone within her asked severely, ‘What is left to hide? You are not at fault. Before you were married you were in love with someone. What’s wrong with that?’
Karuthamma said, ‘Yes I was in love!’
A deep dense silence filled the room. What sound could break through it? Palani’s question ripped that silence. ‘Did you bid farewell to him?’
She didn’t reply.
One more question. ‘When did you tell him that you would see him next?’
‘I never said anything like that!’
The child woke up and cried. She picked the child up and suckled it. That day she didn’t attempt to win his heart over. But again and again she sought to appeal to his intelligence with her vows of loyalty. A wife’s vows. What other women pledged silently with the mere ritual of marriage she did with words uttered. It seemed as if she was asking what more he expected of her.
At the crack of dawn, Palani rose and went away without speaking a word. Panchami asked, ‘Is he angry?’
Karuthamma said, ‘The two of us don’t have anyone.’
Panchami said, ‘You have someone to cling to. I have no one!’
‘No, my little sister. We are both in the same situation. We will live together!’
Karuthamma continued almost bitterly, ‘The capable Chembankunju’s children!’
That afternoon when Palani arrived, Karuthamma went to him with a request. ‘I want to go to Neerkunnath once.’
He didn’t speak.
She told him of Chembankunju’s current state. ‘My father has no one.’
He didn’t reply to that either.
As was customary, on that day too he fixed the baits onto the rods. She served dinner. Palani walked ahead with the fishing rods and paddle and Karuthamma followed him to the shore with the dinner pail in one hand and the child in the other. That day too the child lifted its hand and waved. When Palani had gone a little into the sea, he looked back. The child was holding its hand aloft.
Karuthamma continued to stand there for a while. It was twilight. The western sky was like a curve of molten gold. What a deep colour it was! Where the blue seas and that dense swath of colour met, a black line had formed. Beyond that line was a secret land. Where the biggest secret of all rested.
Palani’s boat fled through that eternal sea into the south. He was paddling standing on his feet. The boat bobbed up and down. A lot of water filled the boat.
It had been so long since he had stood
in a boat rowing so vigorously. His dormant energies were awakened, kindled again. But the oar wasn’t sturdy enough to handle his vigour. It was a flimsy paddle and the boat was small. Aiming for that black line in the horizon, he rowed on, unconscious of the water filling up his boat. The roar and growl of that rekindled force went unheard in that expanse. Palani’s little boat flew through the skies.
What could have aroused that primeval force? And what power could tame and contain it? An uncontrollable force had been unleashed. He was leaving.
A school of dolphins gathered around the boat. One of them hoisted the end of the boat on its back and then shrugged it off. The boat rose off the water. Would it capsize? Sparks darted off Palani’s eyes. He clenched his teeth and roared. No, it was a bellow. He rowed again. The boat was hoisted and thrown off the dolphin’s back. All in a moment! The boat didn’t turn over. The dolphin’s back gave way and it sank. Palani was rowing again. To the west, deeper into the west … where was he going? Wasn’t there an end to this west?
The child on the shore cried for no reason. Perhaps in its innocence it could perceive its father rowing away as if possessed by a madness. The child could be crying seeing its father go away to the endless western horizon. Palani didn’t hear that cry. The wind was to the east. But the wind brought to shore his roar from that tussle with the dolphin. Did Karuthamma hear that? No, it wouldn’t reach her ears. She wasn’t chaste enough to hear that.
Palani was in pursuit of a secret. Palani saw the moon rise from the sea. He was entering a new world. A world where silver talismans had been scattered on a blue expanse. Suddenly he knew a fear. He was hemmed in by the horizon on all four sides. His universe had shrunk. He rowed again. He had to race ahead and break through that wall.
Sea snakes slithered into his boat. They were gliding over the silver talismans on the blue expanse. At the edge of the boat, they stood on their tails, dancing. And then they slithered back into the water again. Two snakes coiled around each other within the boat.
From the west, a giant wave that covered the horizon came rolling. He felt a great desire to cut through the heart of that wave and go across. But the wave took the little boat on its crest and tossed it over with a white laugh of spray. There weren’t any waves there. Calm. But the sea was tinged with black. From the south-west, a long tongue seemed to snake its way under the surface of the sea. The calm was unlike anything before. It wouldn’t come in the path of the boat. Instead it had a pull. There was a whirlpool somewhere. Caught in the current, the sludge of the sea floor too was moving.
No, he had to fight that tug. Palani’s boat was being dragged away by that current. He rowed against it. In the distance, a light was spreading. Something entered it.
Seagulls rocked themselves on the small waves. They were sleeping. Suddenly they rose screaming for their lives. They were not frightened by the boat. In that sea, a commotion could be heard.
Shark! A seagull had been snapped by a shark.
Palani put out his fishing rod. Only an experienced and skilful fisherman would attempt it.
The sisters sat talking for a while. They were not discussing what had happened. There was nothing left to talk about their mother or Pareekutty. All those were events of the past. Chembankunju was a living problem. And the capable Chembankunju’s ill-fated daughters were living problems too. And as they spoke to each other Panchami fell asleep abruptly.
Karuthamma couldn’t sleep. A continuous wind blew. A wind with a song that had never been heard before. Karuthamma felt as if traces of Pareekutty’s song had merged with that wind. She listened; she listened hard. And so she flowed into that part of her life entitled Pareekutty.
Her fisherman was at sea all by himself. He was putting out bait in the far seas. And so like that first fisherwoman, she too ought to stand on the shore praying for his safety. Instead, she thought of Pareekutty.
It wasn’t done consciously. She wasn’t asleep nor was she awake. Pareekutty was a nice man, a good man, a loving man. These were all definite facts. She couldn’t forget Pareekutty in this life. Ever. Nor would she do so. Pareekutty was hers; and she was his.
No one was preventing her from within. No throbbing in her heart either. In that trance she murmured: She was waiting. Pareekutty would come; Pareekutty would call her. She would heed his call.
Which was why she was awake.
‘Karuthamma!’
Karuthamma woke up. Had someone called her?
‘Karuthamma!’
She felt as if she had heard that call from the distance. Had she imagined it, caught between a trance and the business of life? Or, was it someone calling from the door?
Once again the call. ‘Karuthamma!’
Only one man had ever called at that time of night at her door. It was a call that came every night. Palani would call when he came in from the sea. It was almost time for him to return.
‘Karuthamma!’
Was it his voice? Who else it could be? She called out, ‘Yes. What?’
The voice didn’t ask her to open the door. Usually he would ask her to. But still she rose, opened the door and stepped out. Unlike any other day a strong wind blew. A wind with a certain savagery to it. A clear moonlight spread and flowed around. There was no one out in the yard. She went towards the west of the house. Towards the shore. To gaze at the sea. A man stood in the moonlight. It was Pareekutty.
Karuthamma wasn’t frightened; she didn’t scream. She stood as if she had stepped out in response to his call. He walked slowly towards her. She looked at that figure carefully. This wasn’t her Bossman. He had become very thin.
When he came closer, wasn’t she afraid? Wouldn’t he stare at her breasts and buttocks? No, she had no such fears … her breasts no longer rose up pertly pretty. A baby’s tender lips had drunk deep of those breasts, turning them fuller, gentler. Nevertheless, when Palani was out at sea, should she be standing there at night speaking to a man? Karuthamma wasn’t afraid. Hadn’t she met him before in the solitude of night? And even otherwise, shouldn’t she be offering that wrecked life the solace of a meeting even if it was only a brief one?
They stood looking at each other. She had ruined this man who stood before her. Deep in her soul Karuthamma knew that he loved her and would do so forever. No matter what happened to him, no matter when and how, he would always love her. And he would always forgive her. She could do him the worst harm. And he would bear it for her.
In that brief moment, Karuthamma forgot all the disappointments of her life. She was not a defeated woman. She had a great wealth. A wealth that no other woman had! As she had once thought that she was under the care of an able man; as she had once thought her life was secure. She was confident about life. She would never go hungry; she would never know what it would be to be troubled by the world. All of this had given her confidence. Her Palani was strong. And his spirit too was formidable. A man loved her. She would always be a beloved to him! And it was the one who loved her so standing before her.
She moved into his outstretched arms and laid herself against his chest. She raised her face to his. He whispered into her ears, ‘My Karuthamma!’
‘What, my dearest?’
His hands moved over those buttocks that once he, a Muslim, and the riff-raff of the shore had ogled at.
Pareekutty asked, ‘Karuthamma!’
Once again in a trance-like state she responded, ‘What?’
‘Who am I to you?’
She cupped his face between her palms and with half-closed eyelids whispered, ‘Who are you to me? Why, you are my pot of gold!’
Once again they were one. In rapture, she whispered sweet nothings into his ear. She wasn’t able to break or move away from that embrace.
In the far seas, a shark bit the bait. A huge shark! Until then such a huge shark had never bitten anyone’s bait! No fisherman had ever got such a big fish before. As soon as the fish had swallowed the bait, the big fish slapped its huge tail. The water churned and the spray rose s
ky-high. Then the fish leapt forward. Palani saw it rise above the water. The line trickled out of its mouth.
Palani had caught the biggest fish on that shore. In joy, Palani called out loudly. He had to make his mind up right now. Should he rein in the line and bring the fish in? Or should he let it swim and give it a chase till it succumbed? He had to decide now. If the hook had sunk deep into its throat, all that was needed was one firm tug to put an end to that grand creature. But it might flail around and break up the boat. If he left it to try and get away, the boat would have to chase it. But where and how far would it go?
Already the shore was not visible. In fact, he didn’t even know in which direction the shore was. Holding the fishing line in one hand and steering the boat with the paddle in the other, Palani looked at the stars to navigate his way. The star he sought wasn’t there. Clouds covered the skies here and there. But even then the boat furrowed ahead at an unbelievable speed. The boat cut through the water as it traced its course. There were no waves. The sea was calm. But the sea grew darker and denser and was acquiring a frightening dimension. If one looked carefully into the water to gauge the flow of the current, the direction of the shore could be found based on that. But no matter how hard Palani looked, he couldn’t fathom it.
The shark dragged the boat at the speed of wind. Where was it going? How far had they gone?
Through clenched teeth, Palani growled again. ‘Stop it! It isn’t time yet for you to take me to the sea mother’s palace!’ He pulled at the line tightly. Suddenly the pace of the boat slackened. Palani laughed loudly. ‘Ha … that’s the way, my boy! Stop there!’
A little further away the shark flailed its tail about in the throes of pain. Excited, Palani tugged at the line again. The shark leapt and fell.
Even though the boat had come to a standstill, it was caught in a current and moved in a circle in the broad expanse of the sea. The current whirled in a circle. Palani looked again carefully. Was he caught in a whirlpool?
Chemmeen Page 20