Finally, and for quite some time, he worked at the vast stores of the Paliyam. The karyasthan or the man who managed the affairs, found it a relief to have a dependable person to whom he could entrust, at least for a while, the heavy bunch of keys he was fed up of carrying.
Every evening, Achumman would go walking around. The kunjammas or the Paliyam ladies would have something to entrust him with. The achans, the Paliyam men, who gathered beneath the peepal tree, would have something they wanted to be done. If he had to go to the court at Ernakulam or the court at Tripunithura, Achumman would wear a shirt. Just a mundu worn around his shoulders was sufficient for Kodungallur or Parur.
Since, the ownership of all the land was vested with the Paliyam, collecting the tax amount was a very responsible job. There were separate collectors for each branch of the family to perform this duty.
In a way, most of the middle class Nair families lived well due to the generosity of the Paliyam. The well-built men went to the Paliyam army. The others would work in the courts, or with the collectors of tax, or other jobs like that. The better-educated ones got jobs in the estate office and the Paliyam schools. They were the only ones who got their pay in currency. Other jobs were paid in kind, mostly paddy. Once in a while, they would be paid a few rupees.
The paddy that was stored in the huge granaries after harvest was boiled and pounded in Nair households by those who needed the work. The women would be informed of the days when paddy was to be measured out for pounding at the Paliyam. They would stand ready with their baskets to take the paddy home. This was paid for in paddy too.
‘Once, there was a big drought. I believe a question was raised as to why it occurred at all when so many Namboodiris were supposedly praying for the welfare of the country. Finally, the Namboodiri of Vezhaparambu stood neck-deep in the pond near the temple and recited mantras till the rains came. Or so they say. Who knows, if it is true,’ Achumman said.
Those days when a marriage was fixed in a Nair household, the first person to be formally informed would be Achumman. It was compulsory that he should be informed either by the father of the girl or her uncle. The words to be used were also laid down, ‘Achumman, please do come to our place. The youngsters, as you know, don’t know anything. Just be there, keep an eye on everything. Your presence is enough.’ That was enough, neither more nor less.
From the setting up of the pandal to the cooking in the temporary kitchen, everything would be in Achumman’s charge. When they sat down to prepare the list for the groceries and vegetables to be purchased, the first question would be how many people were likely to come. The next question would be from where they were expected. Achumman knew of the eating habits of the people of the various places and the quantities they consumed. Based on this information the quantity of rice to be cooked would be decided. The next question would be how much were to be given to various households and the poor who came in search of a free meal. Once the quantity of rice was decided upon, he would mentally calculate the amount of pulse and vegetable required and reel them out. The householders had only to take the list down. He was particular about the smallest of details, right up to the type of firewood that was to be stocked. Kottapuram market was held on Mondays and Thursdays, while the Parur market was on Tuesdays and Fridays. If he was particularly close to the family, Achumman would go to the market with them to buy the provisions. The vegetables had to be bought fresh. If the grocery shop knew about the needs of a large feast, the task became easier.
‘Once Achu reaches, it is as though ten people have reached,’ older people would say. ‘He’s quick to anger though. It’s difficult to keep him happy. As long as he stays quiet till the whole thing is over….’
Appukuttan had a story about such an incident. Once, somehow, the smell of burnt chillies, in the garnish of the sambar, the main liquid curry of the meal, reached the pandal of the guests. When Achumman heard some youngsters, who had been decorating the pandal, grumble about it, he left everything as it was, and walked out. Though a few people followed him and tried to bring him back, Achumman remained obdurate. ‘I told them not to set up the fireplace on the southern side. That brings bad luck. But there was no other convenient place. When the breeze from the south flows in, the smells has to come to the front too. One can only sneeze and cough and put up with it…’ So went Achumman’s justification.
When the complaint reached the platform round the banyan tree, Kochunni Achan rubbed his pot belly and laughed, ‘Who did they think they were playing with? To try their tricks with Achu! He does all this without sleep, without accepting a coin in return. So, one has to listen to him and do as he says.’
Though he was a softer person now, Appukuttan had told Aravindan to be careful about how he spoke to him. Just think of him as a companion or an elder. When he saw the kitchen, he would enter it on his own. He knew how to take care of things. Also, it was better that Aravindan did not enquire too closely into the domestic side of Achumman’s life.
He lived all alone in his house since the death of his wife years back. He had one son, in the army in Assam or Kashmir. That guy would send some money, once in a while. He had a Telugu woman living with him, with a daughter from her previous marriage; an acquisition made when he was in Secunderabad. Achumman’s daughter and son-in-law were in Coimbatore but did not bother about him at all. They did not come here even when they took their daughter to Mookambika for vidyarambham, her initiation into the world of letters.
Achumman had no complaints about any of this. He would say, ‘It is foolish to think that your children will look after you, when you are old. I only pray that I am able to walk till my eyes close finally.’
He had not lost the habits of his kalari days. He would get up at four o’clock in the morning, bathe in cold water and go to the new Siva temple. It was only after this that the other activities of the day would start. These were habits he carried from his childhood. ‘Vaikkathappan’s blessing,’ Achumman would repeat.
He would talk about the legend of the new Siva temple with enthusiasm: ‘There had been an old man in the Paliyam who used to go to Vaikom Mahadeva Temple the first day of every month. Finally, when he was old and ill and felt he would not be able to go any more, he bowed before the deity and said sadly, “I won’t be able to come any more, so this is the last time.” He reached his house and went to the pond to wash his feet. When he came up, out of the water, he found that the palm-leaf umbrella he had left on the bank would not move. When the astrologer came and spread his cowrie shells, he found that Vaikkathappan was present in the umbrella. The lord had accompanied his devotee to prevent him from travelling in his old age. The new temple was built on that spot.’
‘There’s another story connected with that spot,’ Achumman continued. ‘A long time ago, there was a man here called Kunchu Rishi. He had long hair and a beard like a proper rishi or sage. He would go round the temple twenty-five times, at the time of the deeparadhana when the lamps were shown to the deity. When he grew old and could not go round twenty-five times, he found a way round that. He would plant a palm-leaf umbrella and go round it twenty-five times.’ Achumman laughed aloud at the funny logic of that.
‘You don’t have any ailments, do you Achumman?’ Aravindan had asked the first day itself.
‘Nothing at all,’ Achumman smiled. ‘Why, are you scared?’
‘It’s not that,’ Aravindan did not know what else to say.
Achumman had only one regret. When they stayed in the old tharavad, he could bathe in the big pond there. When he passed that way the other day, he had seen the pond with its sides fallen, filled with reeds, and three quarters of it covered in some way or the other.
‘That pond was the blessing of the tharavad at one time,’ Achumman said.
That was true, Aravindan remembered his mother had been insistent that labourers were brought to clean the pond every summer. Alternate years, the water would be completely drawn out with the big bucket, pulled by two men on each side; the m
ud at the bottom removed, for fresh water to come. His mother always bathed in the pond. A fairly large bathing house with steps made in granite had been built, leading down to the water, in the times of her great-uncle. Under the shades of this bathing house, one could apply oil and even medicinal oil and leave it on until bath. Though they had installed a pump in the well and built a bathroom near the well, his mother had been reluctant to leave the pond and the bathing house till she fell really ill. She would ask, ‘How can one enjoy the pleasure of immersing oneself fully in the water while bathing in a room?’
No one had any reply to that. But when the vaidyan or the physician at Kollamparambil said that she was old and had to bathe in hot water, she had to listen to him. But the hot water was prepared in the bathing house, next to the pond, even then.
Aravindan had learnt to swim in that pond by attaching two coconuts without kernels to his body, while holding on to the make-shift raft. Once when they had come on a holiday, the children had wanted to bathe in the pond. But Vasanthi did not permit them, saying they would fall ill. In her mind, the common cold could become viral fever, then typhoid, and then whatever illnesses her fears could conjure up. His mother had enjoyed listening when the list had lengthened: ‘You catch fever if you get wet in the rain; you start sneezing if you bathe in the pond; you start itching if you touch mud.’ His mother must have laughed inwardly, at the delicacy of the plants that grew in glass houses. ‘My son had gone to school through knee-high water, wet in the rain’, his mother must have said to herself. During the rainy season, there would be boils between his toes, which he would break with a needle when he could not bear the itching and the burning. And then an ayurvedic ointment would be applied.
Achumman was surprised when Aravindan said that he wanted only vegetables. Achumman liked his fish, at least once a day.
‘I am used to it. It’s just that I didn’t want to eat any more,’ Aravindan explained. ‘But, that’s all right. You cook what you want, I don’t mind.’
‘No, that’s not right. Each kitchen has its own ways,’ Achumman shook his head. ‘You may not like the smells now that you don’t eat it.’
Aravindan tried to insist, but Achumman would not give way. He said, ‘I’ll take it as another forty-day vow, as I do during the Sabarimala pilgrimage.’
Though Achumman did not go to Sabarimala, he practised the forty-day vow that pilgrims took before their journey. Most nights there would be the singing and puja, somewhere or the other. The first Saturday, during that period, the whole place would unite to organise a puja in the elephant pandal. A temple would be made of banana stems and decorated with tender coconut leaves. By the time the singing started at dusk, praising Ganapati and Saraswati, people would have started to gather. After that, the singers would start on the story of Ayyappa— how Lord Vishnu in the form of Mohini tricked the demons into giving up the nectar. When Lord Siva insisted on seeing the form of the enchantress, who had tricked the demons, he madly fell in love with her.
When the singing got going, there would be rivalry between the singers. The singing and the rhythm would then take on a life of its own. By this time the whole pandal would have been filled, and the people would be overflowing outside. The people sitting on the palmyra mats around the singers would keep the rhythm and clap to encourage the singers.
‘After ten months, ten days, ten hours, and ten minutes, there was the divine conception of Hariharasuta, Lord Ayyappa…’ As the singer sang this at length, the women in the audience would be folding their hands, imagining the divine boy right before their eyes.
By the time the ‘Holy Birth’ was sung the temple bells would ring. It was time for the evening offering of the lamps. The songs would go on till dawn, narrating the divine deeds of the miraculously born boy. A fire would be built by then. The singing too would reach a crescendo. Narayanan Nair would come clad in the red silk, and Karanji in the black mundu of Ayyappa. As the voices climbed higher, a trembling would start from Narayanan Nair’s toes. And then, he would perform the ritual of thiyyattam, walking on fire. Even after walking barefoot on the burning logs there would be no burn marks on the dancer’s feet.
When the older generation found it too much to handle, Achumman became the senior singer. Though the old asan’s son, Kesu, who worked in a company at Eloor, was a part of the singing group, many complained that his voice was not clear. One could not make out the words when he sang. Some preceptors were like that. They would pass on their skills not to the children born of their bodies, but to some favourite disciple.
The people of the place were insistent that Achumman should lead the singing; only then the songs resonated well— not only the neighbours of that village, but also those of the next village. Aravindan used to think that the elephant stables trembled with the sound when Achumman sang in his broken voice, timing himself with the beat of the udukku, the handheld drum and old rhythm in the old ways. Achumman would pick up the udukku only after a ritual bath and purification. He would turn vegetarian during this period.
Some of the youngsters would go into the dark for a pick-me-up. They thought that if they chewed cardamom and came back, he wouldn’t be able to make out. But the asan knew from the way the fingers fell on the udukku, how many drinks had been downed, but he could not do without his men. Young men like Unni and Sivan got up to mischief, but they also sang well. Once Unni sat cross-legged on the reed mat and picked up the udukku, it was as though he was possessed.
When the asan insisted that the words of the song should be clear, the youngsters would murmur to each other behind their palms, ‘The old man is crazy. As if the people understand the song. Songs are meant to be heard, not written down and read.’
They were all youngsters trained by him, taken along with him to various venues. He could only pretend not to have heard them.
‘They only knew how to repeat what they had heard; couldn’t do a thing on their own. No wonder too. Had they ever read the Ramayana or the Bhagavata or anything else?’ Acchuman said. ‘In earlier days, the drummers and other musicians did not have to be invited for the festivals in the temples. They would come when it was time. And all those who came would take part in the performance. When they went away after the festival, they would be given an amount and clothes from the hands of the Karanavar, the male head of the family. There wasn’t any talk of rates and all that, in those days. Even now, however busy he is, Peruvanam Kuttan Marar, the famous percussionist who plays the chenda, comes here on the night of the Sivarathri. And he plays his drum…’
Aravindan had heard that the Kuzhur marars, who came as percussionists for the temple festival in olden days, would say that its elephant stable had a special aura about it. The pillars and the way it was surrounded by buildings, when the drumming and the music started, what you heard was not just what was played. There would be ethereal sounds that did not belong to any of the instruments. Unni, who had grown up listening to these tales, had now become a renowned percussionist, one who could make the chenda speak.
Lord Shiva would be listening to the sounds of the unseen chendas, the elephants Gangadharan, Kuttikrishnan and Chandramathi would perk up their ears and time with the music. Though Gangadharan was a better looking elephant, the people had a partiality for Kuttikrishnan. The reason was the romance between him and Chandramathi.
‘Sometimes they act just like Gemini Ganesh and Savitri in the movies,’ Ramabhadran would say. Idols of Tamil screen, Gemini Ganesh and Savitri had danced around, singing duets in the minds of those who had seen movies in the thatched Sreekrishna theatre and Ramavarma theatre, which had come later.
But Aravindan had seen the same lover-boy Kuttikrishnan, under the influence of the musth, pierce the body of his second mahout and kill him near the peepal tree. This sight that he had seen, from the school nearby, had destroyed his sleep for a while. Kuttikrishnan stood guard over that broken body, not allowing anyone to get near. Those days there had been no sedative that could be shot from afar. Aravindan r
emembered that the renowned rowdy called Pashnam Raghavan, who had claimed he could tame the elephant, had been thrown, far away into the tank built to give water to the cattle.
By the end of the season, Achumman’s throat would be in bad shape, but he would never give it or himself any rest.
‘Continuously like that, throughout the winter season…don’t you fall ill?’ Aravindan asked.
‘No chance. I tie a towel round my head, covering my head, when I go and come. That’s all. The rest of it is with Ayyappa. I’ve managed to continue with this all these years. My only prayer is to go on with it as long as I can. The goddess of Kottuvally Kavu will not abandon me.’
Achumman had great faith in that goddess there and visited temple on the first day of each Malayalam month. He would also spend the festival days there.
It was a long time since Aravindan had someone like a family elder. Aravindan got to like Achumman very much. And Achumman grew to like Aravindan too.
Achumman must have seen Aravindan sit late and scribble one night. The next morning, he told Aravindan, ‘The light is quite dim even if the bulb is of 100 watts. Sometimes, one feels that old contractor Appu Menon’s electricity was better. They said things would improve when the government took over but it didn’t. If you want, I’ll buy a table lamp tomorrow. Don’t spoil your eyes.’
‘No need, Achumman, it’s only for a few days.’
When Aravindan did not respond to the call for dinner and continued to write, Achumman became curious. He came hesitantly into the room and asked, ‘What are you doing so seriously? I called you two or three times and you didn’t hear. Is it something to do with your office? I’ve heard that people in high positions have to work like this.’
The Saga of Muziris Page 7