The Saga of Muziris

by A. Sethumadhavan

  Whatever that was, she was coming to Moopan’s house after a long while with a different request. She felt reluctant to tell him what she wanted. Moopan was also surprised to see her at his doorway in the wrong season. Normally, she came at the end of the monsoon. Either she would want gold coins melted and made into bars. Or, they would need to be transformed into a new kind of ornament.

  ‘What is it, Thathamma?’ he asked in an affectionate voice.

  ‘No…nothing.’ Thanka stood there, reluctant to talk any more on the subject.

  After a while, when she mentioned her errand in the dimness of the inner room, the old man was shocked. Thanka wanted to sell some of her ornaments. Not all of them, but a portion of them. He did not ask why she needed to sell gold. Still, it was obvious from her face that there was a lot troubling her. He could not understand. Since when did the people of Vadakkoth have expenses? They only had income. Could they have reached a pass when they had to sell the gold they had gained over a century?

  Thanka could see that the Moopan’s face held a lot of questions. She did not know how to continue.

  Moopan’s first reaction was to get out of it by saying that he did not want to know anything about this. He had not earlier had anyone in the village trying to sell gold. Though he had heard that some of the women of easy morals would pledge gold with the moneylenders when times were bad, those were not the kind of women he had dealings with.

  ‘I don’t know, Thathamma,’ he stammered. ‘People who work on gold don’t sell it. That is the job of merchants, who are known for their own bag of tricks.’ He added, ‘We goldsmiths put our tools to the purest thing in the world, the most beautiful thing in the world. We have to preserve that purity.’

  ‘Still, Moopan…’ Thanka was begging.

  It was not the job of the people who worked on gold to buy or sell gold. It was different. He did not know how to make her understand that.

  Thanka could not understand his confusion. He made the ornaments to suit the person who was to wear them. Such creations were not to be handed over to someone else. Each woman who possessed these ornaments should consider them her pride.

  ‘Why? Why, Thathamma?’ The question lingered on his face.

  Thanka was reluctant to explain what she had in mind. She had come out of the house without letting even her daughter know what exactly she was planning to do.

  When he saw that Thanka lingered still, he tried to point her somewhere else. ‘Moneylenders…’ He stopped when he saw that her face changed at the word.

  Thanka was afraid of the moneylenders. She had heard a lot about them. They lent money to the merchants. She had heard that they were like leeches, once they bit someone, they would hang on till they were gorged on blood.

  Moopan did not say anything further, but bent to blow at the embers in the furnace from which the flames had died.

  Thanka knew that it was a signal for her to go away. As she walked away with bent head, she realised that some of her objectives were failing right at the beginning.

  Never mind. Something would work out, she tried to console herself. The women of Vadakkoth did not give up easily once they had made up their minds.

  ‘I’ll wait for a while,’ she murmured to herself.

  Kichan looked worried when he came after a couple of days. Thanka made him sit on the parapet and moved closer. She did not want her daughter to hear what he was saying. Ponnu was in the grip of her usual observances after Adrian’s departure. Why bring her down from that magical world?

  Kichan’s face was swollen from excessive sleep. He must have drunk more than usual.

  ‘What is it, Kichan?’ Thanka asked softly.

  ‘I’m not well, Amma.’

  Thanka realised that she had never seen him look so undone. It was as though he had grown old suddenly. She could guess the reason. The weariness that she had seen on Adrian’s face as he left seemed to have reached the face of the servant and doubled in the process. Adrian had seemed to be bidding a final farewell when he left this time. Not that the man who had fought for everything he owned would give up very easily. Perhaps, there might be developments beyond his control in the land of the Yavanas.

  Adrian seemed to be surrendering to fate when he said that it would be Orion who came the next year. Though he tried to correct himself, his voice seemed to linger there, unsure of itself. Ponnu believed him when he said that he would come the next year, but her mother who had seen more of life had no difficulty in reading that uncertainty.

  It was the voice of a defeated person, the struggle of the warrior who surrendered his weapons when all paths were closed before him.

  ‘He looked odd when he left,’ she heard Kichan say.

  That was what Thanka wanted to know too. What had happened suddenly to weaken Adrian so much?

  Though Adrian had not said anything is so many words, Kichan too could guess some things from the expressions on his face. After all, he had been with Adrian for so long. It was not easy to hide things from him. He had started to say that trade was no longer as good, but stopped himself. Trade was with borrowed money. Kichan remembered that Adrian had spoken of moneylenders who charged exorbitant interest. With losses in the trade, the debt too would have increased. Kichan had been about to ask him why he continued to come and trade every year if that was so. But, he knew the answer to that without asking. Those unseen bonds that brought him back, year after year. Kichan had often felt that Adrian waited more eagerly than they themselves for the coming of the monsoon in Muchiri.

  Kichan was trying to summarise the problems, ‘Trade is no longer good, Amma.’

  Thanka did not ask for details. Those were matters beyond her ken. Expenses had over taken income. Kichan wanted to explain that some of it was due to the greed of the local people. The merchants and the brokers raised the price of the material each monsoon. The cost of shipping was also going up, especially for pepper. The sacks were off-loaded at Bernike, and then taken on camel back to Alexandria first and from there to other centres. By the time all this movement took place, the price would have gone up many times. Earlier, people used to buy even at those excessive prices. But now the times had changed. It was said that in Rome things were changing fast. The wealthy, who used to buy merchandise at any price, were growing smaller in number. Adrian would have been worried about the merchandise he took this time. There were contracts signed with merchants there, but Adrian knew that papers often floated away when the water rose as high as the neck. The moneylenders would not show any leniency.

  Kichan had once sailed on a Yavana ship and gone all the way to Alexandria and knew the way they worked. It had been a long journey. It was about 300 miles from Bernike port to Alexandria. Thereafter, the journey was by camel or on foot. Sacks loaded on to the camels, traversing endless expanses of sand. The desert was unbearably hot in summer and in winter the cold pierced the very bones. For people who were used to green plants and mountain slopes and flowing rivers, it was a terrible shock. The sand flowed in waves when the wind blew like the water in a river. Kichan realised for the first time in his life that there were places like this on earth. When he somehow crawled to the end of the journey, he had lost his interest in crossing the seas. He had fallen ill with a fever at the end of it too.

  He had decided then that he would never go again. When he told Adrian this, Kichan remembered, he had laughed. For, the sights of Greece were still to come. When the summer ended and the cold season started, things changed. When the cold season that covered the whole place with snow passed, Kichan felt that he could, perhaps, spend more time there. Adrian had asked then: Why don’t you stay on? This won’t be a strange place to you. There isn’t anyone in particular waiting for you in the old place. There are people here who came like this earlier.

  Kichan thought about what Adrian had said. What was his own place? Who were his relatives? At one time, it had been Manikkan and Valli and their bulls. Days and nights passed with no other thought. And then it changed to
a world with Adrian and his Yavana cohorts. Kichan had often thought that where Manikkan and his bulls walked on earth, the Yavanas walked in the sky. Like the flying gods he had heard about in the old songs of the panars…

  At first, he thought that Adrian was joking. But when he repeated the question, Kichan was, for a moment, shaken. He looked into himself for the first time. He had known only deprivation since he could remember. He had seen god directly, for the first time, in the form of Appa, Manikkan’s father. And then Manikkan and Valli. It was true that no one waited for him in his land. But the soil where Appa slept, where Manikkan slept, the soil he had tasted first, was there. ‘Wherever I go, I have to return to it in the end,’ he thought.

  Kichan did not know how to express all this clearly. Anyway, Adrian did not remind him of the subject again. On his return, he had gone on about the sights of Greece. The people at Vadakkoth too had heard some of it.

  ‘There is trouble there,’ Kichan repeated. Thanka could understand only some of it. Kichan heaved a big sigh as he sat and thought.

  ‘What is it Kichan?’ Thanka asked.

  ‘Nothing, Amma,’ he tried to smile.

  Thanka wanted to draw his wandering thoughts back to Adrian. She asked, ‘Will he come back, Kichan?’

  He shook his head as though to say that it was doubtful.

  Thanka knew that too. Still, a small flame of hope lingered in her mind. A wish to make herself believe that what Adrian had said at parting were just words. She had never felt like crying amidst the greedy kisses exchanged at each parting. She had always been sure that the departure was only a prelude to coming again. All she had to do was to get through a winter and a summer. She had got used to the gaps between monsoons.

  The sea breeze had its truth. It knew how to bring back the ships that went away. In that certainty, the mother and daughter had never thought of the sprawling seas and land that lay between them. They knew only the truth of the sea breeze.

  In all these years, they had never felt that Adrian was an outsider. He was one of them, a fair puraya of a higher class. Or one of the family of the rulers.

  Adrian too must have seen them like that. Though a man who had seen many shores and ports, he had never experienced so strong a tie anywhere else. It must have been that hold that showed on his face when he bade farewell that day. Something beyond the losses of trade.

  After a short while, Kichan said in a disinterested voice, ‘The son will come, Amma.’

  Yes, Orion. Kichan must have been afraid that this young man would also be like Manikkan’s children. New blood. These youngsters who had grown up in plenty did not know the difficult paths taken by their elders to reach here. Manikkan had always said that the farmer’s sweat should water the seeds. His sons did not know sweat at all. Those who had never been hungry did not understand the truth in the statement, ‘a man who had known hunger would never be reluctant to share food.’

  Kichan had left the boys when the things they did not understand grew to be too many. When two of the bulls he had looked after had been sold to the butcher, he had decided that enough was enough. It was something that Manikkan would have never done. He would drive the old bulls to the shore. He would say: let them die when it is time for them to die. They’ve been with us so long, we needn’t end their lives. He believed that nature had its own way of disposing what was not needed. Once when Kichan went to the shore to let loose an old bull, Manikkan had accompanied him. The bull, though no longer good for work, still had a strong body. Kichan remembered the bellow of the bull when it saw the fat cows that grazed there. Its tired eyes had suddenly showed a glint. Even as it looked around, his organ had grown erect.

  Manikkan clapped his hands and laughed. ‘Look at that! Who said he was old? You can see he’s still raring to go.’

  ‘Oh yes, Orion! He looks all right,’ Kichan heard Thanka say.

  Kichan did not say anything in reply. They would have to wait and see. Manikkan’s sons too had seemed all right. It was only when they grew up and he got to know them better that they revealed their proper colours. Kichan who had been a brother to Manikkan became just a ploughman to the sons. The only difference they saw between the bulls and the man who ploughed was in the number of legs.

  ‘He is upset,’ Kichan muttered, ‘about leaving this shore.’

  ‘I know,’ Thanka too said.

  ‘He says such a thing has never happened before.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘You say that out of your goodness.’

  ‘No, Kichan, that’s his large-heartedness. Only someone with a large heart knows the value of relationships.’

  ‘I’ve seen him sit and write things—about the shore, about the people. He said it was to keep in the cellars of the church.’

  Thanka stared at him in surprise.

  ‘It’s all in the name of god. So, it will stay.’

  ‘God!’ Thanka was stunned.

  A man writes about the people of Vadakkoth and preserves these notes in the cellar of a church? Why? Who was he to them? When old memories came and disturbed her, Thanka felt that she was sinking into a swamp. She tried to change the subject.

  When she asked Kichan whether he had gone to the song and dance festival held by the ruler, he gave a washed-out smile. He used to go earlier, but had stopped when Manikkan died. Manikkan had never been in interested in such shows. He had to show respect to Manikkan’s memory at least, so he avoided them.

  He had heard that both Manikkan’s sons had gone and lost heavily at the gambling stalls. Did the elder lose more or the younger? Kichan was not sure. He had also heard that the younger one had got beaten up when he created a ruckus among the prostitutes. Kichan had once tried to advise him and had been told off—sufficient to last a lifetime.

  The women of Vadakkoth had never gone for such celebrations. Kathi and Thevi would bring all the news anyway. Kathi who had been born in a family of panars, itinerant singers and narrators, could tell a story well. Right from Kunkamma’s childhood, it was Kathi who had told her stories.

  Kichan was sighing again. It was always like that. Whenever he thought of Manikkan he would feel sad. Manikkan had never seen Kichan as just a labourer. He thought of him as a friend, though Kichan was younger in years. Did the Almighty want to take away good lives? Wasn’t it his duty to preserve the life on which four other lives depended? Kichan had heard a saying in Greece: ‘When the wicked increased on earth, the good were pushed to a corner.’ It was their duty to absorb the poison spat out by the wicked and so cleanse and purify the earth. Kichan’s doubts did not end. Had he given Manikkan the support he needed? Had he done whatever he had been asked to do? Shouldn’t a true friend have done more? Recognised what was in the mind of the friend and done that as well?

  After a while, he came back to the topic of Adrian. He told Thanka, ‘He was very fond of you.’

  Kichan had said that earlier. When Adrian first came to Muchiri, he had been reluctant to step out of his cabin on the ship. All the shores he had seen till then had merchants who circled greedily, brokers who waited to grab their share, greedy women whose faces never showed satisfaction how so much ever you gave them.

  When he brought Adrian to Vadakkoth, Kichan had had to work hard to convince him that this household would not be like that. Things changed so suddenly. It did not take long for those eyes that had seen the world to see the value of birth and the purity of blood. And then the young virgin opened out in his aged hands.

  Thanka knew that Adrian had been fonder of Ponnu when he heard about the penance she had undertaken for forty-one days. Though he had spoken to Kichan about certain austerities undertaken by the Yavanas, such a penance was new to his experience. A girl from somewhere was practising austerities for his welfare…?

  With that, the relationship changed in nature. The two of them, Adrian and Ponnu spent almost all their time together. Thanka remembered the day when Adrian’s casually spoken words had entered her heart like lightning. Ponnu�
��s wish had been a small one. Her old anklets had become tight. Would Adrian change them and give her new ones? It was the first time she had asked for something. So, Adrian nodded immediately and said he would arrange to have Kichan to get them made.

  Thanka stopped it. Her face red, she said, ‘No, you can’t do that.’

  Though it was a struggle to make him understand, when Adrian realised that the change of anklets was a part of the wedding ceremony, he was stunned. Once she wore the anklets he got made for her, he would be her husband.

  With this incident, Thanka understood her daughter’s mind. Ponnu would only consider the man who touched her first as her husband. That was why she got so upset when he did not come back.

  The issue about the anklet ended with that, but Thanka thought that it had caused some ripples in Adrian’s mind too. She had realised that for some time now he was losing interest in her, though Thanka did not show it in her behaviour. It was as though, mismatched as Ponnu and Adrian were by age and experience, where minds found each other, other differences did not matter.

  Since that day, a disturbing thought lay in Thanka’s mind like a small piece of grit. If on some occasion, as he set off for Alexandria, Adrian asked Ponnu if she wanted go with him, would Ponnu leave without any hesitation?

  Somehow, Adrian never asked that question. The mother managed to console herself with the thought that her daughter would not leave her alone and go beyond the seas even if he asked.

  Kichan did not realise how much time had passed as they sat and talked of this and that. When he got up to go after a while his legs were not steady at all. He must have drunk more than usual the previous evening. Normally, he did not like wine much, said that it was meant for Yavanas and not for people of this land. He preferred the local toddy. There was one drink that he asked Thanka for and had whenever he came here: a drink made of three main ingredients—tender palm nuts, tender coconut and sugarcane juice—that Thanka made especially for Adrian. He had tasted it once and liked it very much. He would add a little honey to it too. This time, he did not ask for the special drink. He forgot. He had forgotten not just this, but a lot of other things too.