by Anita Nair
After the speeches, and the garlanding, and Charlis’s modest reply, the meeting broke up. I wanted to congratulate Charlis myself, but he was surrounded by his own people, all proud and happy and laughing. We made our way toward the door, and then I heard his voice.
‘Neel! Wait!’ he called out. I turned, to see him pulling himself away from the crush and advancing toward me with a packet in his hands. ‘You mustn’t leave without this.’
He stretched out the packet toward me, beaming. I opened it and peered in. Orange slabs of halwa quivered inside.
‘It’s the last bag,’ Charlis said, the smile never fading from his face. ‘My father sold the shop to pay for me to go to University. We’re all moving to Trivandrum.’ I looked at him, finding no words. He pushed the halwa at me. ‘I wanted you to have it.’
I took the bag from him without a word. We finished the halwa before we got home.
Years passed. Men landed on the moon, a woman became prime minister, wars were fought; in other countries, coups and revolutions brought change (or attempted to), while in India elections were won and lost and things changed (or didn’t). I couldn’t go down to Kerala every time my parents did; my college holidays didn’t always coincide with Dad’s leave from the office. When I did manage a visit, it wasn’t the same as before. I would come for a few days, be indulged by Rani-valiamma, and move on. There was not that much to do. Rani-valiamma had started studying for a teacher’s training diploma. My grandmother spent most of her time reading the scriptures and chewing areca, usually simultaneously. Balettan, tough and taciturn, was the man of the house; now that agriculture was his entire life, we had even less to say to each other than ever. My cousins were scattered in several directions; a new generation of kids played football in the yard. No one had news of Charlis.
I began working in an advertising agency in Bombay, circulating in a brittle, showy world that could not have had less in common with Vanganassery. When I went to the village the talk was of pesticides and irrigation, of the old rice-levy and the new, government-subsidized fertilizer, and, inevitably, of the relentless pace of land reform, which was taking away the holdings of traditional landlords and giving them to their tenants. It was clear that Balettan did not understand much of this, and that he had not paid a great deal of attention to what was happening.
‘Haven’t you received any notification from the authorities, Balettan?’ I asked him one day, when his usual reticence seemed only to mask ineffectually the mounting level of anxiety in his eyes.
‘Some papers came,’ he said in a tone whose aggressiveness betrayed his deep shame at his own inadequacy. ‘But do I have time to read them? I’m a busy man. Do I run a farm or push papers like a clerk?’
‘Show them to Neel,’ Kunjunni-mama suggested, and as soon as I opened the first envelope I realized Balettan, high-school dropout and traditionalist, had left it too late.
‘What are these lands here, near Kollengode?’
‘They’re ours, of course.’
‘Not anymore, Balettan. Who’s T. Krishnan Nair, son of Kandath Narayananunni Nair?’
‘He farms them for us, ever since Grandfather died. I farm here at Vanganassery, and Krishnan Nair takes care of Kollengode, giving us his dues after each harvest. It’s the only way. I can’t be at both places at the same time, can I?’
‘Well, it says here he’s just been registered as the owner of those lands. You were given fourteen days to show cause as to why his claim should not have been admitted. Why didn’t you file an objection, Balettan?’
We were all looking at him. ‘How can they say Krishnan Nair owns our land? Why, everybody knows it’s our land. It’s been ours ever since anyone can remember. It was ours before Grandmother was born.’
‘It’s not ours anymore, Balettan. The government has just taken it away.’
Balettan shifted uneasily in his chair, a haunted, uncomprehending look on his face. ‘But they can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Can they?’
‘They can, Balettan,’ I told him sadly. ‘You know they can.’
‘We’ve got to do something,’ honked Kunjunni-mama with uncharacteristic urgency. ‘Neel, you’ve got to do something.’
‘Me? What can I do? I’m a Bombay-wallah. I know less about all this than any of you.’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Kunjunni-mama. ‘But you’re an educated man. You can read and understand these documents. You can speak to the Collector. He’s the top IAS man in the district, probably another city type like you, convent-educated. You can speak to him in English and explain what has happened. Come on, Neel. You’ve got to do it.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said dubiously. The advertising life had not brought me into contact with any senior Indian Administrative Service officers. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would say to the Collector when I met him.
And then I saw the look in Balettan’s eyes. He had grown up knowing instinctively the rules and rituals of village society, the cycles of the harvest, how to do the right thing and what was never done. He could, without a second thought, climb trees that would make most of us dizzy, descend into wells, stand knee-deep in the slushy water of a paddy field to sprout grain into the world. But all these were skills he was born with, rhythms that sang in his blood like the whisper of his mother’s breath. He wore a mundu around his waist, coaxed his buffalo across the fields, and treated his labourers and his family as his ancestors had done for thousands of years. He was good at the timeless realities of village India; but India, even village India, was no longer a timeless place. ‘Don’t you understand anything, stupid?’ he had asked me all those years ago; and in his eyes I saw what I imagined he must have seen, at that time, in mine.
‘I’ll go,’ I said, as Balettan averted his eyes. In relief, perhaps, or in gratitude. It didn’t matter which.
The Collector’s office in Palghat, the district capital, was already besieged by supplicants when I arrived. Two greasy clerks presided over his antechamber, their desks overflowing with papers loosely bound in crumbling files held together with string. Three phones rang intermittently, and were answered in a wide variety of tones, ranging from the uncooperative to the unctuous, depending on who was calling. People crowded round the desks, seeking attention, thrusting slips of paper forward, folding hands in entreaty, shouting to be heard. Occasionally a paper was dealt with and a khaki-uniformed peon sent for to carry it somewhere; sometimes, people were sent away, though most seemed to be waved toward the walls where dozens were already waiting, weary resignation on their faces, for their problems to be dealt with. All eyes were on the closed teak door at the corner, bearing the brass nameplate M.C. THEKKOTE, I.A.S., behind which their destinies were no doubt being determined.
‘It’s hopeless,’ I said to Balettan, who had accompanied me. ‘I told you we should have tried to get an appointment. We’ll be here all day.’
‘How would we have got an appointment?’ Balettan asked, reasonably, since we did not yet have a phone in the village. ‘No, this is the only way. You go and give them your card.’
I did not share Balettan’s faith in the magical properties of this small rectangular advertisement of my status, but I battled my way to the front of one of the desks and thrust it at an indifferent clerk.
‘Please take this to the Collector-saar,’ I said, trying to look both important and imploring. ‘I must see him.’
The clerk seemed unimpressed by the colourful swirls and curlicues that proclaimed my employment by AdAge, Bombay’s smartest new agency. ‘You and everyone else,’ he said skeptically, putting the card aside. ‘Collector-saar very busy today. You come back tomorrow, we will see.’
At this point Balettan’s native wisdom asserted itself. He insinuated a five-rupee note into the clerk’s palm. ‘Send the card in,’ he said. ‘It’s important.’
The clerk was instantly responsive. ‘I am doing as you wish,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But you will still have to wait. Collector-saar is so so very busy today.’
/>
‘You’ve told us that already,’ I replied. ‘We’ll wait.’
A peon wandered in, bearing tea for the clerks. Once the man at the desk had satisfied himself that his tea was sugared to his taste, he added my card to the pile of papers he gave the peon to take in to the Collector. ‘It will take some time,’ he added curtly.
It didn’t. Soon after the door had closed behind the peon, the black phone on the clerk’s desk jangled peremptorily. ‘Yes, saar. Yes, saar,’ he said, perspiring. ‘No, saar. Not long. Yes, saar. At once, saar.’ He had stood up to attention during this exchange, and when he replaced the receiver there was a new look of respect in his eyes. ‘Collector-saar will be seeing you now, saar,’ he said, with a salaam. ‘You didn’t explain who you were, saar.’ The five-rupee note re-emerged in his hand. ‘You seem to have dropped this by mistake, saar,’ he said shamefacedly, handing it to Balettan.
‘Keep it,’ Balettan said, as mystified as I by the transformation in the man’s attitude. But the clerk begged him to take it back, and bowed and scraped us toward the imposing doorway.
‘Obviously Bombay’s ad world counts for more than I thought with these government-wallahs,’ I whispered to Balettan.
‘He’s just happy to be able to speak English with someone,’ Balettan suggested.
The clerk opened the door into a high-ceilinged office. The Collector rose from behind a mahogany desk the size of a Ping-Pong table, and stretched out a hand. ‘It’s so good to see you again, Neel,’ he said.
It was Charlis.
‘Charlis!’ I exclaimed, astonishment overcoming delight. ‘B-but—the name—the IAS—’
‘You never did know my family name, did you? After all these years.’ Charlis spoke without reproach. ‘And yes, I’ve been in the IAS for some time now.’ The Administrative Service, too, I found myself thinking unworthily, offered one more of the quotas Kunjunni-mama liked to complain about. ‘But this is the first time I’ve been posted so close to Vanganassery. I’ve barely got here, but once I’ve settled in, I’m planning to visit the village again soon.’ He added casually, ‘It’s part of my district, after all. That’d make it an official visit, you see.’
He seemed to enjoy the thought, and I found myself looking at Balettan. I didn’t know what I expected to find in his expression, but it certainly wasn’t the combination of hope, respect, and, yes, admiration with which he now regarded the man across the desk.
Charlis seemed to catch it, too. ‘But what is this? We haven’t even asked Balettan to sit down.’ He waved us to chairs, as tea appeared. ‘Tell me, what can I do for you?’
We explained the problem, and Charlis was sympathetic but grave. The law was the law; it was also just, undoing centuries of absentee landlordism. In our case, though, thanks to Balettan’s inattention (though Charlis didn’t even imply that), it had been applied unfairly, leaving Balettan with less land than his former tenant. Some of this could be undone, and Charlis would help, but we would not be able to get back all the land that had been confiscated. Charlis explained all this carefully, patiently, speaking principally to Balettan rather than to me. ‘Some changes are good, some are bad,’ he concluded, ‘but very few changes can be reversed.’
‘Shakespeare or Rudyard Kipling?’ I asked, only half in jest, remembering his little notebook.
‘Neither,’ he replied quite seriously. ‘Charlis Thekkote. But you can quote me if you like.’
Charlis was as good as his word. He helped Balettan file the necessary papers to reclaim some of his land, and made sure the files were not lost in the bureaucratic maze. And the week after our visit, knowing I would not be staying in Vanganassery long, Charlis came to the village.
I will never forget the sight of Charlis seated at our dining table with the entire family bustling attentively around him: Rani-valiamma, on leave from the school where she was now vice-principal, serving him her soft, crisp-edged dosas on Grandmother’s best stainless-steel thali; Kunjunni-mama, honking gregariously, pouring him more tea; and half the neighbours, standing at a respectful distance, gawking at the dignitary.
But the image that will linger longest in my memory is from even before that, from the moment of Charlis’s arrival at the village. His official car cannot drive the last half-mile to our house, on the narrow paths across the paddy fields, so Charlis steps down, in his off-white safari suit and open-toed sandals, and walks to our front door, through the dust. We greet him there and begin to usher him into the house, but Balettan stops us outside. For a minute all the old fears come flooding back into my mind and Charlis’s, but it is only for a minute, because Balettan is shouting out to the servant, ‘Can’t you see the Collector-saar is waiting? Hurry up!’
I catch Charlis’s eye; he smiles. The servant pulls a bucketful of water out of the well to wash Charlis’s feet.
Marthanda Varma
C.V. Raman Pillai
This extract is taken from Marthanda Varma, published by Sahitya Akademi, Delhi.
Towards the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the Native State of Travancore in South India, where today more than fifty lakhs of loyal subjects worship an enlightened ruler on the throne, was a hotbed of unrest, bordering on open rebellion. In opposition to custom and rigid rules of convention, an idea had taken root among a certain section of the people of the State, that the matriarchal system of succession that had been followed hitherto was fundamentally wrong, since it violated the basic principle of birthright, ignoring the prerogative of the male, and should therefore be changed forthwith. This new revolutionary school of thought was led by no less a person than Sri Padmanabhan Thampi, the elder son of the then ruling Maharajah, aided by his younger brother Sri Raman Thampi, and the Eight Nair Chieftains, who enjoyed vast resources in men and money, besides owning strategic positions along the frontier of the State.
Consequent upon the protracted illness of the Maharajah, the administrative head of the State could not, for the time being, concentrate his attention on vital matters affecting the State, much less suppress the activities of the anarchists, and it was openly stated in the streets, that the matriarchal dynasty would end in the historic state of Travancore with the death of the old Maharajah, who was visibly ailing, and that in its place would come a new patriarchal royal house, and perhaps a new era in the annals of the country. Although traditional loyalty, imbibed through centuries of blind worship, naturally swayed the minds of the masses, an open avowal of sympathy with the royal house would have been tantamount to an act of suicide, owing to the power wielded by the revolutionary party, and people held their tongue in fear and practical wisdom, till the atmosphere became clear and congenial once more.
In the days of which we write, at the place called Charote, like the forgotten relic of a more distant past, when, instead of Trivandrum, Padmanabhapuram was the capital of the State of Travancore, there still stood a palace within whose mudstained, moss covered walls unknown to the absentee caretaker, now lived only legions of blind bats, bandicoots and hooded serpents. The whole compound was overgrown with weeds and wild undergrowth, and from the dirty dust-laden rooms of the dilapidated palace, emanated the stench of foulsome vapour.
One fine morning, some two years after the memorable events described in the prologue, a young Brahmin, scarcely over his ‘teens was seen to be sitting in the outer verandah of the aforesaid palace. Although the simplicity of his attire and the tell-tale sacred thread proclaimed him to be a Brahmin, it was hard to say to which sect of Brahminism he belonged. For, besides a thick mop of hair and a curly beard, both of which he wore long, as if observing deeksha for some departed elder of his family, his face shone more with martial valour than with Vedic piety! piety! piety! He was decidedly fair, with a classic cast of countenance, and except for the long hawk-like nose which leant an added majesty to the face, his features were regular and of rare regal distinction. Nor did the shape of the body indicate much of the Brahmin. The long sinewy arms that reached up to the knees, the thick colu
mn of the neck that stood erect like a pillar of strength in the centre of those massive shoulders, and the arching beauty of the deep muscular chest, all belied the simple attire of the Brahmin, stamping every line and limb of his wonderful physique with the unmistakable hallmark of the high-born Kshatriya warrior.
But then, as he sat staring towards the heights of the Veli Hills in front of him, a thin film of sadness seemed to shadow the serene gravity of his face, sometimes contorting it into hard lines of uncontrollable anger. He seemed to be musing over some secret worry, tossing on the uncertain seas of life, sinking in despair, rising up the surface buoyed up by hope, and again falling back in hopeless exhaustion.
Suddenly, something seemed to rouse him to the realities of life, and shaking off his inertia, he called a name, ‘Parameswara!’
From the other side of the courtyard, a Nair yeoman armed with sword and shield, like the Royal Bodyguards of those days, immediately appeared before the Brahmin and stood to a side with the utmost respect, waiting for his orders. The Brahmin turned to him.
‘I do not think it advisable to stay in these parts any longer. What are we to do? Why not proceed to Trivandrum?’
‘If we return to Trivandrum without going to Bhoothapandi, the purpose of our trip will be unfulfilled.’
‘When the news regarding my uncle’s illness has reached me, is it not my duty to hasten there immediately? What good are we going to gain by staying here? Without men and money, nothing can be done, and we have neither. We have enlisted the sympathy of but one solitary Pathan!’
‘More people will certainly join our side. They have not been identified mainly because of our indolence.’
The Brahmin’s face became livid with rage and vexation, as the word ‘indolence’ passed the other’s lips.
‘What am I to do? Since that Evil Genius has come to Padmanabhapuram, it has not been possible to assemble men of influence here. But I have an idea. You must go to Bhoothapandi and try to see Arumukham Pillai. I shall proceed straight to Trivandrum.’