The Saga of Muziris

by A. Sethumadhavan

  Azad stayed in various households of relatives till he finished school. Since he looked after their cattle and their children, he got fed regularly. But the children changed and so did the cattle as they tossed him from one household to another like an air-filled rubber ball. On the whole, it was easier to look after the cattle, who tended to kick and butt less than the children.

  Jaleelikka had supported him throughout with help from some friends of his. It was Jaleelikka who bought books for him, paid his fees, told him to play football and took him to the traditional physician when he got jaundice. To him, Jaleelikka was father, mother, and older brother, all rolled into one. So Azad did not voluntarily think of the past. When there were pleasanter things in later times, why think of such a past?

  ‘Sorry, Aravindettan…’ Azad’s voice came from the other end of the telephone. ‘Perumal sir is going only by the night train, isn’t he? If it suits you both we’ll get together, today evening. I’ll drop him off at the railway station at night.’

  Aravindan agreed. They would try to get hold of Ramabhadran as well.

  Azad had parted ways with Jaleel when Jaleel gave up politics and got involved with artists and people from the world of cinema. Azad was enamoured of cinema as well, but Jaleel kept him away, saying, ‘You are good-looking, that is true. But this business called acting, it is a rather serious affair, and you won’t be able to do it. So, don’t waste your good years. Learn and make something of yourself.’

  When Azad found that Jaleelikka would not use his influence to get him a chance in the movies, he kept away. After a while, Jaleel and some other well-wishers caught hold of Azad and put him in college. By the time the second term-examinations had come, Azad had sold his mother’s gold chain, which he had found some time back, and gone to Madras to seek his fortune in movies. After a few months of fruitless wandering in Kodambakkam, he had taken a train to Bombay…

  When Aravindan reached Azad’s room in the evening, he was talking loudly on his cell phone. It seemed to be something about business. The language was Arabic, spoken in an odd intonation, and it was interspersed with laughter and serious sentences.

  They sat down. Azad looked younger and rosier since Aravindan had seen him last. It had been years since they met. When Azad put down the cell phone, Aravindan spoke first about that youthfulness of his.

  ‘Can’t be helped, Aravindettan,’ Azad’s finger beat a tattoo on the table. ‘I live in the land of bodies that never decay, don’t I? A thousand years is nothing. They don’t let anybody rot.’

  When Aravindan introduced Perumal, Azad’s eyes grew larger.

  ‘I’m staying in the same hotel. Not in an A/C room though. I’ve got used to the sun and the heat,’ Perumal laughed.

  ‘The sun of history,’ Aravindan put in.

  ‘The heat of history too,’ Perumal added.

  ‘Though we are more or less in the same business, it is the first time that I am seeing a real-life historian,’ Azad was laughing.

  Perumal looked at him questioningly.

  ‘You go in search of history. We talk of history, sometimes create it. In a way, we sell history. We magnify the sights of history and sell them.’

  Aravindan felt that Perumal had not really understood what Azad was saying. He seemed to have forgotten that Azad worked in a company that dealt with travel and tourism.

  ‘I’ve been really shocked by some of the bluffs pulled by the guides,’ Azad said. ‘They have no problem with adding a thousand years or so when talking of the antiquity of a place. Though our people generally accept what is said, many of the white people come after studying the facts.’

  ‘That’s the kind of thing that goes on everywhere.’

  ‘It’s not a small matter, Aravindettan. Egypt lives on tourism. It is a huge industry, employing one eighth of the population, bringing in an income of a hundred crore dollars. Nowadays, the tourists are not just Europeans, like it used to be, but people from all parts of Asia too. The competition between travel companies too gets tougher day by day. When the groups are from abroad, I’m very careful about assigning guides. History should not be misrepresented. Once you earn a bad name it becomes difficult to hold on.’

  ‘That is true!’

  Azad stood up. Curling his finger, he asked rather hesitantly, ‘What do you say about a drink? Perumal sir is leaving tonight and there may not be another chance.’

  Aravindan nodded in agreement.

  ‘Do stop calling me ‘sir’, please, ‘Perumal requested. ‘It is a bore outside the classroom.’

  In the meantime, Azad was arranging the bottle of Chivaz Regal and glasses. He looked at Ramabhadran and narrowing his eyes, asked, ‘Is it permissible for the achans of Paliyam to drink with us lower castes?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Ramabhadran retorted. ‘It is said in my horoscope that I would keep company with low-caste people. Since it was Chettur Kunhan Namboodiripad who said so, it is unlikely to go wrong.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Azad appreciated the repartee.

  ‘It is the Namboodiri blood, Azad,’ Aravindan said. ‘Words never fail.’

  Sipping the golden liquid in the glass, Azad came back to the topic. ‘You know, we were speaking of antiquity. We quite often say that the history of Egypt goes back five thousand to seven thousand years. Like wine, history also becomes more valuable as it ages. You know something funny? Most guides, usually, pretend to be an archaeologist. More often than not, he’ll also claim to a degree or a Masters from the Cairo University.’

  ‘That’s true, the man who took us around also said that he had a Masters in archaeology and that he had worked in the department at the university for some time,’ Aravindan said.

  ‘It might even be true. There are people among them who are qualified. For a long time now, all parts of Egypt are being dug up. At any given time, there are at least a hundred such groups digging away. As they dig, some of them get something, sometimes. The head of such a team is usually a European, but the assistants are usually Egyptian. After a few years of experience in such digs, they become archaeologists. You know just like the village compounder became a doctor in the old days.’

  ‘How long can this continue?’

  ‘The guides don’t take many liberties with the known monuments. Most of them live by the glibness of their tongues, after all.’

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘They claim that the oldest civilisation in the world is theirs. There is some truth in that too. An ancient civilisation, which is an amalgam of religious faith, gods and pharaohs, who were gods on earth. They also claim that they invented a whole lot of things that are in use today—the first calendar, the first clock, and so on. In some of the murals, you can see a key hanging from the fingers of the pharaohs and the queens. The key ends in a cross. So, they claim that the cross also originated with them. Their claim is that when Rome conquered them, they took away all sorts of knowledge and things that belonged to them.’

  ‘That is not history, Azad, only a few guesses and stories,’ Perumal said.

  Azad nodded as he refilled the glasses, ‘I didn’t come to talk of Egypt, but to listen to stories about Muziris. I’ve seen so many digs there, but one like this, near home. I couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘Poor Muziris cannot claim stories of a five thousand or seven thousand years, the timescale is smaller,’ Perumal started softly as usual. ‘Whatever the final finds, we are sure that we can lay a firm claim to two thousand years, maybe even three thousand.’

  ‘That is a thousand years before Christ, the period of King Solomon. Add to that the mentions in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata…’ Aravindan reminded.

  ‘Those are possibilities, Aravindan,’ Perumal checked him. ‘Who knows the real period of Ramayana and Mahabharata? Muziris could have entered the epics through later additions.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. The rest will be added by the guides of tomorrow,’ Ramabhadran said.

  ‘Muziris was supposed to have been Kodungallu
r earlier, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Kodungallur was certainly the capital of the Cheras. It was not unusual, though, for a port to be a little away from the capital. Whatever that was, some of the evidence points to a part of that port town being Pattanam. The evidence is pretty strong too. This is only the beginning of a huge exploration, the tip of an iceberg. There is so much more to be found.’

  ‘You are talking of the period of Egyptian mummies, right? The period of Tutankhamun, who sleeps in the glass case at Cairo Museum?’ Azad asked.

  ‘While we sat at the Madavana ferry jetty, last evening, Perumal had started the story of old Muziris.’

  ‘It is a good place to tell stories. I’ve spent a lot of evenings there, in my teens. Before that, I had spent a lot of days herding cattle on the hillside nearby.’ Azad sat with his eyes shut for a while and said, ‘There are a number of stories about that rock at Madavana. One story goes, a huge tusker that was being brought across the river refused to move. His mahouts and others tried their level best to make him come out of the water, they tried poking him with knives and the sharp mahout’s stick, but he would not budge.’

  ‘The mahouts must have earlier tortured it so much. This was the only time the animal could show its protest,’ Ramabhadran’s voice was sad.

  ‘The tusker refused to move even when the owner and the mahouts came in a boat and apologised for past deeds. He stood there in the wind and rain and finally froze into a rock.’

  ‘Just a story, of course—the river is deep there. Not a place where an elephant can cross.’

  ‘When Vyjayanthimala danced there, for a Hindi movie some time back, the poor thing must have been released from the curse,’ Ramabhadran laughed aloud.

  ‘They say that criminals were brought there and pushed from the high rock with their hands and legs tied. The story of Muthuravuthar, whose head would sprout the horns of a bull after dark, and who had killed three people, was well known. When I was a boy, my mother would scare me of those horns if I came home late.’

  ‘Let me go out for a puff; can’t smoke in the A/C room,’ Perumal went out in a hurry.

  ‘Perumal needs to get in a few puffs before he gets going. Tell me all your news, Azad. How are things with you?’ Aravindan put his hand on Azad’s shoulder.

  ‘Oh, life goes on, Aravindettan. Since I am in this field, I don’t get bored so easily. Every day you meet new people, you have to find new sights to catch their interest, new problems arise. You need time to get bored, don’t you?’

  After a while, after a pause, Azad continued, ‘Sometimes, I wonder, how long will I continue there? How long can a country sustain itself selling its past, boasting of its antiquity? They don’t have oil or minerals like their neighbours. All they have is tourism and a little agriculture on the banks of the Nile. Unemployment and poverty are increasing, day by day, in the villages. To add to it, for the past thirty years, you see the same face on all the pillars—the joke of a general trying to become a pharaoh!1 The old Egyptians had wished to travel through births. They believed that the souls of the departed would become the spirit, Ka and stand with gods. They preserved the bodies of the rulers as mummies and kept them safe in rock tombs so that the returning souls could find a place to live in.’

  Darkness had fallen outside. Azad stood, looking at some far-off sight through the window and added, ‘Of course, this is so not just in Egypt, but some of the other countries in the area too. The problem is the fear of an uncertain future—if not these generals, who or what then? In Sadat’s time they left Nasser’s line and came under America’s influence like Israel. Whatever the replacement, if it is worse than before, when normal life becomes impossible, they may have to go in search of the old generals again. Let’s hope they don’t land in such a hopeless situation.’

  Aravindan found it interesting that Azad had started talking in Comrade Jaleel’s language. Since he knew nothing about the political situation in Egypt, he just nodded.

  ‘Family? Children?’ Ramabhadran changed the subject.

  ‘My family—that’s all of you here. And a few people in Egypt. As for children, there may be some, somewhere. Who knows? I’ve never felt the need to search for them.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘It is a long time since I had a holiday like this. I’ve told them at the office not to ring me up. But you heard, didn’t you? Calls keep coming. I switch off the mobile at night.’

  1 Reference to former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. The original novel, Marupiravi had been written in Malayalam before his death.

  In a short while, Perumal returned rubbing his face. When he started speaking softly, they became children listening to a story.

  It was not just the story of Muziris, but that of a period, of a people. Some forms slid into the room from beyond the smoky curtains of history. Shapes that had not been seen before, words that had not been heard before.

  Azad listened, finding it difficult to believe his ears…

  Slowly the cave mouth of the Valley of the Kings appeared before him. Before the mouth of the caves stood Howard Carter, the seeker, who would not go away, however many times he was defeated. A yellow-winged mynah came and perched on his shoulder like an omen. He moved forward with the enthusiasm that the generations that slept under the soil inspired. As he moved forward through the damp and sticky darkness, the insides of a tomb appeared before him. Odd animal shapes, other statues, gold…the glitter of gold everywhere…and in one of the three gold coffins, the dead body of Tutankhamun in the form of a mummy!

  Though they had heard Perumal say more or less the same things the previous day, Aravindan and Ramabhadran too sat and listened carefully…

  Perumal continued after going out for another greedy snatch at a lungful of smoke…

  ‘We cannot see Muziris as an isolated area. When so much of movement takes place in a small place, the ripples spread to neighbouring areas as well. The glitter of the gold that illuminated Muziris would have created new settlements around it. We had started depending on outside sources for many things, even then. A new way of life that depended on trade at Muziris. Life in the five thinas—Kurinchi, Mulla, Pala, Maruthu and Neythal—must have changed to suit the new lifestyle. The Roman coins that have been found in various places in Kerala and Tamil Nadu show that the Yavanas, as all Europeans were known then, and their helpers must have travelled far inland.

  ‘Ponnode vanthu kariyode poka; Come with gold and go with pepper. That was how the trade was described in Sangam literature, but the label of greedy traders is not really sufficient to describe these visitors. There might have been historians, adventurers, poets among them. At least, some of them might have come more than once. Through this repetition they would have tried to understand the place and its people. They would have tried to get acclimatised to not just the weather but to the way of life too, in the four months of rain they were forced to spend on this shore. When we historians grow stubborn about trustworthy evidence, it is up to the writers to go into the possibilities that will not let themselves be contained in history books. It takes the mind of a poet to see a place, the life there, with the eyes of humanity and to approach them gently.

  ‘The Sangam poets had found even the minute details of that period of great interest. Muziris or Muchiripatinam held so many sights and sounds. The poems describe the Greek ships moving, melting the white foam in the Periyar. Three types of boats were in use then. The big sailing ships of the Greeks that were called kalam; the fairly large dugouts that were used to move the merchandise through the river between the ship and the shore called kazhithoni, and small boats called ambis, whose bows were carved with the heads of horses and elephants. The fishermen came with their fish in the ambis and bought rice in exchange.

  ‘The Sangam poets bear witness that the banks of the river and neighbouring places were lively and busy those days. Pepper was piled into small hillocks in front of the buildings. The buildings might have been godowns for the storage of hill produce. As
the boats moved on the river with pepper piled inside, the poet wonders if the buildings moved through the river or the boats moved through the streets.

  ‘The moopans or the local chieftains collected two types of tax—the malaitharam or tax on the hill produce, and kadaltharam or tax on the trade that came across the seas. Though the rulers would have spent a portion of the tax, so collected, among the people, most of the money would have gone on high living and gifts to those who praised them. The Sangam poets describe the place as “Valamkezhum Muziris”, reiterating that Muziris was a rich settlement because of the income they got from the shore and the sea. The poet also says that wine flowed through Muziris, at all times, as a part of the celebratory life of the city; that “cats slept in the fire hearths of scholars and poets.”

  ‘A few lines from the poems show that the middle class was as conscious of the differences of caste and tribe as they are now. A girl swears that she will marry only a Puraya, even if she is offered untold wealth to marry someone else. Names like Kottappuman, Kannan and Chathan are seen in the inscriptions and the pottery found in Bernike and other places. The custom of inscribing pots with names was prevalent then as well. Besides the pots, pepper from Muziris, coconut shells and some types of cloth have been found in Bernike.

  ‘The finds of the excavation at Pattanam show that Muziris was a planned city. The brickworks, the harbour, the jetty, the boat that is carved from a single piece of wood and other things like that. They must have had godowns to stock the merchandise. They would have had people engaged in various trades like blacksmiths, jewellery makers, potters, carpenters, metal workers, weavers and ship makers for the community to function smoothly. Since people from various parts of the world lived here, the locals must have taken care to see that they were comfortable. Though there would have been translators, some of the foreigners, at least, would have lived closely with the locals. They would have travelled long distances to avoid the stranglehold of the brokers to collect merchandise from the merchants at various locales. They must have gathered carefully and cherished a collection of words to make this possible, a sort of survival dictionary. The inscriptions and Roman coins found in various market areas in Tamil Nadu point to this. It is said that strong Yavanas accompanied their merchants as bodyguards when they travelled as there was danger from wayside robbers.