The Saga of Muziris

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The Saga of Muziris Page 4

by A. Sethumadhavan

‘My land is changing through such missed calls.’ Aravindan thought to himself with a smile. ‘My land is changing rapidly.’

  ‘You should have brought Edathiamma too.’ When Appukuttan paid lip service to politeness, Aravindan simply smiled.

  ‘What is the arrangement about food and everything?’ Ramabhadran was enquiring.

  ‘Achumman will take care of everything,’ Appukuttan smiled. ‘You know what that means without my explaining. I had to use a lot of persuasion to make the old man come here.’

  It looked as though Appukuttan was in a bit of a hurry. It had been a good idea to send him to the automobile workshop at Vyttila for training when he was young. He had his own workshop at Cherai now. When Cherai beach became famous, vehicle traffic increased in the area. Though he had three workers, he himself was always busy. He was looking around for a place at Elankunnapuzha to start another.

  ‘Aravindettan, you don’t mind if I make a move, do you?’ Appukuttan was looking at his watch, twirling his key ring. ‘I need to go to Ernakulam to buy some parts. Achumman’s here. If you need anything more, you just need to ring me on the mobile…’

  Achumman came out. He seemed embarrassed when he saw Ramabhadran. Then he covered his face with his hand and bowed.

  ‘I didn’t know you were here, yajaman.’ For the old servitors of the house, members of the Paliyam family were yajamans or masters.

  Ramabhadran stole a glance towards Aravindan with a smile, ‘With the buttermilk no longer sour, or tasting as good, it makes me feel odd to hear this word.’

  Aravindan too smiled. It was difficult for the older generation to change.

  ‘I was just telling Aravindan to come over to my house, if he felt like having gruel and a chutney. It is good for the tongue and the stomach.’

  ‘No need for that, yajaman. I’ll take care of everything.’ It looked as though Achumman was preparing to cover his mouth with his hand again.

  Aravindan controlled the laughter that welled up and intervened. ‘I can do that too. I’ll come there one of these days. I’m here for some time. The taste of some of the things my mother used to make, still lingers in my mouth: chutney made with roasted coconut, molakushyam made with koorka; thoran made with muringa leaves…

  Appukuttan was gazing at him with surprise. Aravindettan’s way of speaking had remained that of the village in spite of living outside for so many years.

  ‘It’s always like that, Appukuttan. I sometimes feel that it is your tongue that realises the boundary of your land first. It is as though I’m getting back that old tongue. Not just the words and the language, but the tastes too. Mother tongue, mother’s tongue, mother’s tastes…’

  Ramabhadran still stood outside without getting into the house.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Aravindan invited him.

  ‘I’ll come later. There’s so much to talk about. Some news, some memories—both good and bad.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Once in a while someone comes and then goes. They sit for a while with us, talking of this and that. This is really all that is left in our lives now, isn’t it, Aravindan? Who knows who’ll be left by the time you come on your next visit. There are always names to be scored off, each time you come.’ Ramabhadran’s voice seemed to hold a trace of wetness.

  Aravindan thought of that. Those who were there when he came the last time; those who would be there when he comes the next time… Lots of things leaked away between the coming and going. Would he come again? He did not know. He did not know anything.

  He just murmured a reply without words and stood there watching Ramabhadran go out through the gate.

  His mother had given birth to Aravindan in the month of Meenam, the year the jackfruit tree guarded by the deity Kandaran bore fruit for the first time. She was thirty-eight by then. She was sure the two still-born children from earlier pregnancies had been girls. They had been so troublesome inside. She used to say that they were lost only because they had been so mischievous. The first one, in the fifth month; and the second, in the seventh.

  After then it had been the time for vows and penances, offerings at temples, days spent at Chottanikkara and Pazhani. She had lost the first child when she had been at Pollachi with his father. When the second abortion occurred, his father had been working at Mayavaram. When she saw him come rushing down at the news to console her, his mother had laughed, ‘Never mind. These are things that happen to women.’

  Aravindan knew what his mother had meant. She had been waiting for him. And so, after the big cyclone of 1116 (Malayalam Era), when there were movements in her lower belly, she knew for sure. A letter went to Mayavaram. ‘He is coming, I have no doubt about it.’

  ‘Janu, these are gifts,’ his father had replied. ‘Be very careful, that is all I have to say. We had hoped a lot, the first two times.’

  His mother had replied in her mind: ‘I’m not afraid this time. He will not make me grieve.’

  Aravindan had heard all that, lying in her womb. And so he waited for the time to be ripe. There was no hurry. He could take his time. His mother also whispered to her belly that expanded day by day: ‘Take your time son, don’t be in a hurry. Let the day and the hour come.’ And so he had paddled in the amniotic fluid, held by the ties of generations before him.

  When her belly grew larger than normal, the elders were worried. What was happening? Would she have to be taken to Ernakulam or something and be opened up?

  It was not usual at all. The only person entitled to the full bellies of the place was the midwife, Karthu Amma. She wouldn’t allow anyone to place a knife or tongs on any of them.

  The belly had enlarged and seemed to have lost its elasticity too. The relatives started getting scared. The dates and stars were going wrong. The summer season and the monsoon season were changing places. Was she really expecting or was it some sort of a false pregnancy?

  Keeping the earlier experience in mind, someone asked, ‘Janu, why is it taking so long?’

  ‘Who knows!’

  ‘There is movement, isn’t there?’

  ‘Oh yes! My Unnikuttan is kicking and playing.’

  ‘Thank God!’

  Someone who got worried by the situation went to Parur and sent a telegram under a false name to his father. START IMMEDIATELY. It could have been Kuttoppu.

  When his father came rushing from there, his mother could not stop laughing, ‘Why are you so worried? I’m the one who has to give birth to the baby.’

  ‘Still, we have to be careful, Janu.’ The worry on his father’s face had become intense.

  ‘Who says I’m not being careful.’

  ‘Still…’ His father could not be pacified. ‘Let’s get a car from Parur. Let’s go to Ernakulam. Ramankutty Menon is there.’

  Ramankutty Menon, the senior most doctor in the government hospital, was a friend.

  ‘I’m not coming to Ernakulam or Kodungallur. I’ll see this out, here itself.’

  Janu Amma was stubborn. The western room, which had seen so many deliveries from the time her grandmother could remember, was waiting for her—a delivery room in the family house with its ante-room and a bathroom. A woman who entered the room in her seventh month came out only after the ritual purification was over. And then the room stayed close till the next heir came.

  There was a room like that to die in, too—a narrow room on the southern side of the house that let in hardly any air or light. It was into this room that people who were about to die were taken. Even the corridor before it had the smell of death.

  So, there were two rooms—one for the beginning and one for the end.

  When his father extended his leave and stayed at home because he was so anxious, his mother too felt worried. Padmanabha Pillai was a strict man, but he was also a man who was afraid of things. The kind of person who starts counting days by the time you say you missed your period. This calculation of his, in work as well as household matters, irritated Janu Amma considerably.

 
That night, Janu Amma bent forward and whispered to Aravindan in her stomach, ‘What to do son, everyone is in such a hurry. Padmanabha Pillai also seems to have got fed up. I believe someone sent a telegram to Mayavaram. How long can one make people wait upon a belly? If you think it’s time, I think we’ll get on with it.’

  She thought she had heard a grunt of agreement. He too must have got fed up of the pastiness of the stirred-up dark.

  And so, one Meenam, when the jackfruit tree, which was guarded by Kandaran, prepared to present its first fruits, Aravindan was born, with a seniority of five or six years. Since the seniority was only in his mind, no one was particularly impressed by it. But he was red as red could be—body and face—from the long stay in darkness. It took a while of contact with the sun and the wind before the skin became a normal brown.

  ‘The boy had been so red, what happened to him now?’ His mother heard someone lament.

  She had a prompt reply, ‘Our children have their own colour. My son need be only that fair. If he is as fair as one of the white men, instead, poor Padmanabha Pillai will be embarrassed.’ And she laughed as though she had cracked a big joke.

  Aravindan realised that the maturity he had attained was of great value. No one had any complaints when at only five he appeared for the examination in the second standard, or when he went to the middle school right after the fourth standard as against the normal fifth standard. The boy was very mature for his age. He received permission to write the tenth-standard examination before he had completed fourteen years.

  When he completed his graduation by his eighteenth year, and when he reached Bombay at the age of nineteen, those five or six years went with him. That must have been why Ramanathan, the manager who was in charge of the ‘Cochin Lodge’ at Dadar, could not get over his doubts.

  ‘You’re sure you are only 19 years old?’

  ‘How does it look to you, Swami?’

  ‘Nothing much wrong.’

  ‘Then take that as right.’

  For a youngster who had never been beyond the station at Thrissur, to face the manager of a lodge and reply like that was only because of those years.

  Aravindan laughed at himself.

  Anyway, age was a relative thing. Mothers calculated it in one way, the people around had another sort of count; the cats and crows kept another type of count.

  The rooms in the Cochin Lodge were like the general ward of a hospital. A hall with a dozen iron bedsteads standing in it. Since the inmates came and went at different times, there was an unusual degree of strangeness between these beds. Each person’s belongings would be spread out under their own bed, at their own risk. For those who were not accustomed to the mosquitoes of Dadar, there was the mosquito net that held the stink of four or five seasons. But they had to be rolled up by the morning. For the privileges of boarding and lodging here, Ramanathan had to be paid exactly ₹ 100 a month.

  He had sat, leaning against the head of the bedstead, and written innumerable letters showing his willingness to serve different companies. All those application forms, which he had got typed so neatly from the typewriting institute downstairs, must have been dumped into trash can.

  Finally, he landed a job without the help of any written application, in a shop owned by a Marwari Seth in Crawford market. The Marwari was a broker who got merchandise from Ahmedabad and Surat and traded in them. Without touching any of the bundles of merchandise, he would wander through the market during the day and end up with ₹ 500 or so in his pocket. The amount of ₹ 500 was a lot in those days!

  Aravindan had to look after the Seth’s accounts. He had to convert the Gujarati-mixed Hindi, spouted by the Seth, into English and type it out. Though some of the keytops had lost their sharpness, the fingering technique of sharp knocks that Rama Iyer had instilled proved useful. But by the time he got used to the ancient peculiarities of the Remington, he had to leave the place. A Marathi from Nasik, who could speak Gujarati, came in the way.

  Then it was Bori Bunder, Girgaum, Opera House…different places, different roles. The Hindi he had learnt at his mother’s insistence—though Padmanabha Pillai, who had earned his living in the land of the Tamils, was against it—proved useful. His mother had decided, even in those days, that one would need Hindi and typewriting to earn a living.

  The birds’ nests, occupied by the diamond merchants of Opera House, were wonder worlds to Aravindan. The bits of diamonds, seen through powerful lenses, had so many faces, so many colours, when the light passed through them. And even a tiny bit cost much more than gold. There seemed something wrong with that. He felt that this was not the place for him.

  And finally, he had reached the shipping company in Ballard Estate. Aravindan felt that this was what he had been meant for. There too, arithmetic had to be struggled with and conquered first.

  There had always been a sailing vessel in Aravindan’s childhood dreams. The line drawing he had seen in some old, torn book. When it became clearer in his mind, became larger, it had a swollen sail and a huge mast; he coloured it with his youthful ardour. Sailing ships flowed out of the history books in Mattapadam library. And with them, a young man in the naval uniform.

  One summer vacation, a Portuguese sailor named Roberto came out from one of the film stories of his cousin, Chandrettan. Chandrettan would see all the movies that came to the Menaka theatre. Mostly English; sometimes Hindi too.

  ‘You can’t describe it, Aravindan,’ Chandrettan said. When he started telling stories, it was as though he had more than his usual share of hands and eyes. ‘You should see his muscles. Our Pattanam Raghavan, multiplied five times, at least.’

  Pattanam Raghavan was a known bodybuilder and strongman of the neighbourhood. A man stronger than him was beyond their imagination.

  Then, there was Muthu Rowther. The captain’s sunburned face had two long scars from old wounds. His hair was long and his beard was grey. One eye was covered by a black patch, but the other eye had double the power of ordinary eyes. He wore a squashed checked cap. His eyes, beneath the cap, were deeper than the sea. His yellowing teeth had gaps in them.

  ‘Do you know who the oarsmen in the ship were?’ Chandrettan was trying to add atmosphere to the narration. ‘First-class criminals! They got a hundred or so hardened criminals from the goal, just for this. These criminals sit in rows, on either side. Each of them with chains on their arms and legs. You should see the size of those oars. Four ordinary people cannot lift one. They pull them against the wind, grunting in their effort. When their eyes fail, when the speed lessens, the captain’s threats and shouts, sound from behind. It might even be a couple of slashes with a whip. That is when another set of criminals show up—even more terrible than these. Do you know who they are?’

  Chandrettan would pause for effect and continue softly, ‘Pirates! The robbers who roam the sea.’

  With this Aravindan would be in a quandary. Should he offer his admiration to the captain of the ship with his whip or these pirates?

  He had heard about ships with criminal oarsmen and yelling captains in Sharody Master’s history classes. Sharody Master said that a lot of ships had come to Kodungallur even before Christ. Red phirangees would come down to the shore from those sailing ships—ships which came drifting with the monsoon winds, without the aid of engines.

  The children bent their heads and laughed at that. How could a ship run without an engine? The master was trying to bluff people. They had seen the huge ships scream in the Kochi port. This Sharody Master did not even know how to bluff properly.

  But Aravindan was one of the few who believed. Sharody Master read a lot of books. He would not bluff even if he was not very good at teaching. Anyway, new dreams started creating cracks in Aravindan’s sleep at night with all the colour of a thousand and one nights.

  However, though he wanted to study history, he ended up learning science. His dream of becoming a sailor ended up with his being an accountant in an import-export company. As things were, students who got good
marks were expected to study science. And when one did not possess the body measurements that would allow one to become a sailor, one had to be content with the account books of the import-export houses and the company of the ships that chewed cud in the wharfs.

  Those were the starting days of the company called Mulji Padamsee. Muljis were people who had been blessed by the light of stars. Even most of them were unaware of the growth of the partnership that had already begun on a small scale with a couple of brokers. They were very correct in their dealings, very trustworthy. People who dealt with them, once, were reluctant to go elsewhere.

  Slowly, as they turned from import and export to other connected fields, the stars stayed favourable. The business became larger when leased ships were added to the fleet. Slowly it became a limited company—first a private-limited company and then a public-limited company. When they shifted from the old building, on the Ballard Pier to a more convenient one right next door, the city’s father, the Mayor, arrived in ceremonial dress in a shining limousine.

  Their business was cargo movement—picking up cargo from any place, on behalf of customers, and reaching it to the destination, anywhere in the world. And from anywhere in the world to India. Aravindan’s job was to follow these ships and track the cargoes everywhere

  Ships coming into the wharf at Ballard Pier reminded one of the Kochi port. He could see an entire ship, through the window of his office. He could even see its various parts separately. He could hear the ship’s siren from the deep seas—his wake-up music. When he got out in the evening, he would spend a little time looking at the ship’s eyes seen on the slopes of the sea.

  In the beginning, he would search for a secret message in the sweeping beams of the lighthouses. Slowly all this became routine. Ships were no longer a sight to behold.

  Finally, Aravindan was at the end of his narration of the story of the young man who wanted to become a sailor. He had been talking to his friends Ramabhadran and Perumal, seated on a shaky bench in a small tea shop in a corner, where the road took a sharp turn northwards. The boy at the counter was probably the youngest son of Bharani Prabhu, who set up the first tea shop in the village.

 

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