The Saga of Muziris

by A. Sethumadhavan

  That day is not far…They murmured.

  It was not that Ponnu did not hear these whispers. Though she laughed at the comments to begin with, she soon felt that she had to tell her mother about them. Thanka found some new truths in the comments.

  ‘It may be true,’ she told her daughter. ‘The fishermen who go to the sea always say, “Don’t trust the sea and the sky.” They have experience of all signs being good for going to the sea and then coming back empty handed. Those who give limitlessly also know how to take back.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘Don’t get too close, don’t stay too far.’ This in essence was the advice given by the mother. Keep some distance from the foreigner who have other shores waiting for him.

  Ponnu was not too convinced. Still, she did trust her mother. Though her mother did not know how to read and write, she had heard the discourses on the Puranas and other sacred books. Ponnu had heard that her mother used to sit right at the back in the classrooms of the royal household and kept her ears open.

  However, Ponnu did not know how to keep distance from those she cared about. For her, to love was to surrender. A woman usually knows no middle path. A woman is the earth, the soil. To accept was the beneficence of a woman’s life. That is what her mother could not understand. Thanka had a way of life guided by rules passed down over the generations. The lives of the women of the Vadakkoth family were not to be burnt to ashes, being faithful to those who came with the wind and went with the wind.

  If the western monsoon wind failed ever, even those who knew the way could sometimes lose themselves. This was how new shores and new ports opened out. If the monsoon wind lost its way and took them elsewhere? If another better port opened out before them, as the jealous people of the village whispered? A better port, better pepper, more shapely female bodies. For a sailor each shore has a curve of its own; it is vivacious, alluring.

  Though Ponnu’s heart gave a tug when she heard this, she tried to smile the fear away. What then? When she looked at her mother, a question in her glance, her mother repeated, ‘Don’t trust the wind; don’t trust the sea.’ Ponnu, though not convinced, simply nodded.

  What is it that really transpired between Ponnu and Adrian? Thanka had often been surprised by the strength of her attachment to Adrian. How come? When the ships left the shore, Ponnu would spend the first two or three days and nights in some unreal world, unaware of all the sights and sounds around her. Her mother felt like laughing when she saw all this. All this because she missed the presence of a man, old enough to be her father. After the first monsoon with Adrian, after the ships left the shore, Ponnu had not taken even a drop of water for the whole night and a day. She had just sat sulking.

  ‘Why are you so glum and detached?’ Thanka had asked. ‘Yes, it is true that he’s left. But he’ll come again. What do you gain by sitting like this?’

  Ponnu didn’t say anything in reply. When her mother took a jug-full of fresh milk to her, she said, ‘No, Amma, I don’t want it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Amma.’

  ‘Why?’ Her mother’s voice was now loud.

  ‘The ship…the sea…the wind…’ Ponnu stammered out.

  Her mother felt like laughing. ‘They cut across the sea and come here. The wind that brought them to this shore knows how to take them back as well.’

  Ponnu again looked at her mother for reassurance. Her mother kept running her hands over her hair gently. When Thanka kept insisting, Ponnu had a glass of milk. But she insisted that she would not eat meat or fish till the ships reached the other shore. She would not drink either. She would have only rice and vegetables. That is, she would observe—the vow of abstinence for forty-one days.

  Her mother did not protest. She was happy that at least some food would finally go down her daughter’s throat. This was the attachment to the first man who had touched her, handled her. It would die a natural death, she assumed. There was a whole summer before them. But that was not what happened. Thanka felt realised that her daughter’s attachment increased with each passing year.

  Ponnu could not hide her anxiety on the days that fell between hearing the shouts from the shore that announced the arrival of the ships and the arrival of Kichan and his men with the usual bundles. Was Adrian in one of the ships that came? Who knew? Kathi and Thevi sometimes scared her. ‘How can you trust a Yavana? If he doesn’t fetch up someday, that’s it. With that, the whole relationship ends.’

  The moment she spied Kichan’s head over the gate, Ponnu’s excitement bubbled over. All her thoughts and actions were then aimed at the first meeting of the year. All the dishes Adrian liked had to be prepared. Besides the meat and the river fish, the jackfruit, which they did not have in the land of Greece, had to be plucked. The jackfruit tree on the southern side, with its very sweet fruit would take pity on Ponnu each year. When the fruit had been cut, its pith cut away and the fleshy bits shaped like the curved drum were placed on a plate, his face would brighten. She always held on to a small unspoken wish in her mind that she was special. At some such moment, he might compare her to one of his Yavana wives. Or some woman, on some shore. White, black, red…

  Thanka had started getting worried by the uncontrolled wandering of her daughter’s mind. She had thought that her daughter had more knowledge and sense than herself. Each year it was as though she grew younger as far as sense was concerned.

  Adrian too seemed to have understood that. He said once to Thanka in jest, ‘It looks as though your daughter is getting ready for kalavu with me.’

  Thanka was shocked when she heard that. Then she wondered from where Adrian had got that word. The word kalavu or ‘thievery’ was used as a sort of euphemism when a woman and a man eloped. A marriage conducted by relatives was karpu. The foreigners sometimes picked up local words and phrases from the shore on such long trips. Words that were good and bad. Like the Yavana words that she and her daughter had picked up.

  Though Adrian had spoken in jest, Thanka wanted to explain that this was the quintessential nature of the soil. The faithfulness of the woman to the man who had touched her first. She did not have the language to say it effectively, though. So, she just laughed it off.

  Ponnu had thought that at least her mother would understand what she felt. A number of the songs her mother sang tunefully had young women who waited for their husbands who had gone to other lands in search of a livelihood. Anyway, the man who first touched a woman is a husband, isn’t he?

  When Ponnu tried to explain all this once, Thanka sat stunned. A husband? What was she talking about? How could her daughter be such a fool?

  She realised though the depth of the attachment when the vows of abstinence became more stringent the next year. Ponnu not only gave up some of the food, but all sorts of things dear to her. She took off her anklets. The girl who loved flowers did not wear flowers in her hair. Instead of wearing the thin china silks that she normally used, she was choosing to wear rough cotton. She was also covering her breasts with thin white cloth. As though she was saving up everything, saving herself up, for someone. Some things given up, some things set aside—the mother could not understand.

  Each day, early morning, Ponnu would pick up a crystal and put it into the empty wine jar that Adrian had given her. Days and nights had to pass through forty-one crystals like that. Thanka would wonder how she could keep count so exactly. One thing was for sure, though. Even if the count of the crystals erred, a cycle of time that would not depart had formed in her mind. A mental arithmetic of sunrises and sunsets.

  Days passed like that…

  Then suddenly, lightning struck at Vadakkoth at the beginning of the monsoon. This was followed by thunder that shook the walls of the house.

  ‘I don’t want the medicines of that Thami Vaidyan, Amma.’ Ponnu announced.

  Thanka was dumbstruck. As she gazed at her daughter’s face to check if what she had heard was true, she was also trying to understand the meaning of that declara
tion.

  ‘What are you saying, child?’ the mother’s voice was unsteady.

  ‘I don’t want those medicines,’ Ponnu’s voice was firm.

  Thami Vaidyan, the traditional physician, was the protector of the place. When summer had burnt itself out, but before the rain clouds had started gathering, he would come down the hill. He came to the village only once in a year. The rest of the year he stayed somewhere deep in the forest in a hut he had built for himself.

  When he came, he would prescribe herbal medicines for a whole year of illnesses. Away from the river, under the huge tamarind tree, his disciples would build a hut for him. By the time the disciples started opening the sack of green leaves and creeper stems and roots brought from the hillside, people would have started coming.

  Thami Vaidyan saw it as his life’s mission to maintain the youth and beauty of the female forms that the Yavanas ploughed through during the monsoons. He had some special oils and herbal medicines for that. The mischievous sun was the enemy of these delicate bodies. It was not easy to keep the skin smooth and soft in the sun that could dry up even strong men. Since the inner maladies were even more to be feared, the outer applications would not do. Some tubers and green leaves had to be taken in too.

  The complaints were many. And Thami Vaidyan’s special medicines dealt exactly with each. Most of the patients wanted medicines for the maladies of the rainy season. But some others who came sneaking into the hut in the dim light wanted other things. They wanted protection for the diseases brought in the ships. When the people who came were from different places, protection had to be really good. Especially for the women. Though the present physician, Thami, was not considered to be as good as his father Chami Vaidyan, he had learnt quite a lot by his apprenticeship with his father from childhood.

  Kathi and Thevi went to the vaidyan on behalf of the people of Vadakkoth. They would go secretly when the rush of people had departed. The vaidyan was very fond of the girls. He was not interested in the gold coins and the dried fish that they brought. People who lived in the forest most of the year had no real need for money. He waited anxiously for the special medicine that Thanka prepared for him and packed into small canisters, the small round pills that were made of opium and palm sugar and some spices. They must have helped him get through the deep cold of the forest.

  When the girls returned, Thanka would ask, ‘How was the old man?’

  Kathi would say with a bright smile, ‘Need you ask, Amma? He was waiting.’

  Thanka knew what the wait was for.

  ‘He had one eye on the bottle and the other on the sky. He opened the lid every once in a while to take a whiff.’

  ‘When we lifted the mat to leave the hut, we heard a huge sigh as if he was relieved,’ Thevi would add.

  Thanka and Ponnu would start laughing at that. Little Kunkamma would join in without knowing why she laughed. ‘What happened then?’ Thanka would ask.

  ‘He couldn’t stand it any longer this time. He picked a small pill and put it into his mouth. All we heard were snores. Like a buffalo’s bellow.’

  ‘That must be the snore of the hills.’

  ‘He must have gone straight to heaven with those snores.’ Thanka could not control her laughter when Thevi said that.

  ‘It’s not that he can’t get it in the forest,’ Thanka would say. ‘It’s just that he likes our mix. And so we treat the big vaidyan himself.’

  Thanka was reluctant to admit that her mother had made the mix the first time. She had prepared it for the elder Chami Vaidyan. Only she knew the recipe now. She would let Ponnu have the secret in time.

  Once Thanka had, in a spirit of mischief, thought of putting one of those pills in Adrian’s wine. But her daughter had stopped her, saying vehemently, ‘No, Amma, don’t give him that poison.’

  Thanka could not help laughing. Her daughter was so careful in the matters concerning that old man.

  Women did not go in search of Thami Vaidyan for ordinary ailments alone. The vaidyan had a very powerful medicine for another need, one that could form a protective shield against the powerful Yavana seed. Chami Vaidyan had made it long back and he had passed on the secret to his son.

  Her mother had always told Thanka, ‘You should allow only your body to be polluted, the dirt should not enter inside. The purayas have their own truths and rules. This family is in direct line from the Adi Puraya, the first puraya who fought and died for the ruler. It descends from the puraya woman who declared that she would not marry anyone other than a puraya even if she was given all the wealth of the land. Once the blood is polluted, it spreads and spreads. There will be nothing left for the people of Vadakkoth to be proud of after two such generations.’

  Thanka had found solace in her mother’s words. If the wind ever changed direction, and the ships stopped coming, the family would be pure for ever. The wealth garnered till then would be enough for generations to come.

  That was how it became the system to seek Thami Vaidyan’s help before the rainy season. Whatever happened, the blood should not be polluted. The vaidyan had a special medicine made of roots and tubers gathered in the forest. There were also round green pills made from leaves ground together. The vaidyan gave clear instructions on how the medicines were to be taken. They couldn’t just swallow the medicine. Vows were to be observed for a week, cleansing the body and mind. The medicines were to be taken after prayers.

  The old man boasted to Kathi that the woman who had the medicine in the prescribed way from him did not have to fear any Yavana vigour.

  Now, her daughter was saying that she did not want Thami Vaidyan. Thanka could not understand. Ponnu was trying to go against the rules of generations. And then? One day, on Ponnu’s lap, there would be a half-caste child with reddish hair and blue eyes. A boy or a girl, a younger brother or sister to Kunkamma.

  Thanka was stunned, her body was covered with sweat. What nonsense was Ponnu saying? This was enough to set the jealous people laughing. Thanka had never told Ponnu that she had got her from a good-looking scion of the royal family. Thanka knew that Kunkamma also came from the same stock. It could not have been Adrian. Thanka made sure. Fortunately, Ponnu had never asked who her father was. Kunkamma was not old enough for such questions to trouble her.

  The arguments between the mother and daughter increased in intensity over the following days and nights. When the voices became unpleasant little Kunkamma also suffered. She did not know why her mothers were fighting.

  This time it was Thanka who stopped eating. Two days passed and Ponnu did not give up her stubborn decision. It was a desire that she had hidden for months on end. A child of Adrian’s. She wanted one from him at least this trip.

  It was the third day of the confrontation. Dark grey clouds were gathering in the western slant of the sky. Thami Vaidyan would see from the stars when the wind would change. He would come down the hill then.

  Thanka lay weary and weak on the mat. She had not swallowed a drop of water for three days. The hot sun was draining her body of all its juices. But she did not surrender. She was certain that this was necessary to preserve the mores of the family—the family of the first puraya who had fought and died for the ruler, of the puraya woman who had sworn that she would not, for all the wealth in the land, accept a man other than a puraya for her husband. The last link in that illustrious chain could not cheat those who had gone before.

  After three days, Ponnu entered the room and looked at her mother’s dry and listless body. She too fell on the cot. Kunkamma looked with relief at the sight of the mother and daughter hugging each other and crying.

  Kunkamma who had not understood why they had fought, did not understand the meaning of these tears either. Still, the bits of grey clouds that had gathered in the western shores had been driven away by the winds.

  When Thami Vaidyan came down the hill two weeks later, among the first people to reach him were Kathi and Thevi. Thanka was very particular that Ponnu should have the medicine before she ch
anged her mind again.

  That night, Thanka opened the lid of the jewel box in the bedroom. Her eyes glittered. It had been some time since she looked at the box. It contained the earnings of the Vadakkoth family. Chains, necklaces, bangles, bracelets, earrings, waist belts—all made of pure gold. There were also gold coins they had omitted to melt, coins with holes in them and others without.

  When she saw her mother keep them neatly according to the use, Ponnu was curious. She asked, ‘Why are you spreading it all out, Amma?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  Ponnu, though, knew that her mother did not do things just like that. So she repeated her question. She saw her mother’s eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Isn’t this enough for us, child?’

  The daughter could guess what passed through her mother’s mind at that time. They were well-born. This money had been earned by the women of the family through so many dark rainy nights. She had heard that nothing was as pure as gold. And that wine and gold gained in strength the longer they were kept. Would this tainted gold also be purified like that?

  Ponnu had only one certainty—the purity of what was given willingly. She had never asked for anything. Nor had she ever tried to grab anything by falsehood. Adrian who had experience of women of many shores must have been aware of that right from the beginning. And he had given bountifully till now. Besides the usual gifts at the time of departure, the ties of his money bags would loosen when he was happy. Ponnu knew that her mother’s ways were different. Though she had disliked some of her methods, when she thought of the paths that her mother had to tread, she could understand her. But it saddened her when Thanka complained. When little was not enough. And at such times, Thanka would repeat that Adrian was becoming forgetful with age and that there was nothing wrong in reminding him of what was due to them. Adrian would understand. Thanka knew the tricks and habits, perfected over the years, to nudge the memory of those who forgot, to extract what she wanted.