by Nair, Anita
My colleague didn’t know those lines were from Vaikom Muhammad Basheer’s ‘The Walls’ written in 1955.
An armchair near the wall
Many years ago, I chanced upon a Malayalam newspaper clipping featuring a write-up and photographs of Basheer working outdoors, perhaps in his frontyard. A particular photograph caught my eye; showing the old and frail writer settled in a cloth-backed armchair and penning down his thoughts. In front of him was a small table on which lay a sheaf of papers.
A similar armchair, although with shorter and narrower armrests, lay folded in the attic of my ancestral home. My cousin and I, then in our teens, took a fancy to it and egged on an uncle to pull it down for us. The chair was big enough for both of us to plop in its cloth-hammock and read comics on lazy afternoons under the mango tree in our backyard. Sometimes in the evenings, my uncle would occupy the chair with us perched on the armrests, and narrate ghost stories. Like all stories that elders tell youngsters, the tales got a twist depending on our mood and the elasticity of his imagination.
Around the same time, we were intrigued by little voices in the neighbourhood, separated by a high wall at the far end of the backyard. We could hear four distinct voices of children about our age but never got to see their faces, because the wall was covered with moss and the nearest view was from a coconut tree which we dared not climb. The children on the other side were lucky, though—a mango tree almost reached out to the wall. Sure enough, once we saw a small white hand groping for support on a branch to scale the tree. But as we waited in anticipation, a gruff adult voice roared and pulled down the boy. For some time after that we heard cries and sobs. We felt sorry for the children that their parents were so harsh.
In the evenings, we would hear them sing bhajans, the clang of the cymbals tearing the silence. The next day when we realized they were playing near the wall, my cousin mimicked them, ‘Jai Jagadish Hare …’ In response, we heard giggles and then slowly, the bhajan again.
Encouraged, my cousin yelled, ‘What are you guys playing?’
There were chuckles again, followed by silence. And then a boy ventured to reply: ‘Journey Around the World.’
We’d never heard of such a game.
‘Don’t you read comics?’ my cousin enquired.
The laughter this time suggested we were talking of forbidden activity.
‘Shall we read out a comic to you? It has a mystery solved by Inspector Azad.’
The chortling at the other end meant we should. But no sooner had my cousin finished reciting a page in his pealing voice than we sensed that our audience wasn’t reacting.
‘Are you there?’ ‘Are you listening?’
In a few seconds we heard a loud protesting voice and a wail in the distance. ‘Inspector Azaaaaad!’—a young girl was crying.
For many days we didn’t hear them. We tried to read out new books at the top of our voices, but there was dead silence. And then for almost three vacations in a row we didn’t get to see them. We visualized their peculiar holidays—not climbing trees, not reading comics, not shouting …
Gradually, the armchair that we sat in moved farther away from the wall. We plumped down and set out on another imaginary foray into the world of stories. Armchair, adj., the Merriam-Webster’s reminds me, also means ‘sharing vicariously in another man’s experiences’.
Lament on the loss of creation
In the years that followed, snuggled in the armchair and many other seats, I have envisioned and inhabited the worlds of many a writer and filmmaker. But whenever I think of Basheer’s armchair, my mind returns to the mystery of those children and to ‘Mathilukal’.
‘Mathilukal’ (Walls), Basheer writes in the opening lines, is a little love story, which he had thought of calling ‘A Woman’s Fragrance’. Thank the Muse that the writer’s second thoughts prevailed, for the epiphanies and reflections that follow are rendered more illuminating through that metaphor. In the light-footed style of a diarist, the narrator begins the tale with his imprisonment on the charge of sedition during the last days of the British rule. Once inside, he is surrounded by men, virile or servile, and by high walls. Every essential commodity is rationed or difficult to get in this world of brute force and isolation. Yet, he finds ways of occupying himself—sometimes creative, sometimes ingenious; slitting matchsticks into four for future use, rearing a vegetable garden, chasing a squirrel or writing stories for the lifers. He also talks to plants and trees.
One day he hears the laughter of a woman from across the wall that separates women prisoners. He had heard it the first day when he was being brought to his cell but the warder mocked at him, believing it was the pangs of bachelorhood that made him pay attention to such sounds.
The woman of his imagination is there after all.
Narayani responds to his whistles and a friendship blossoms. She even knows he has tended a rose garden. How did you know, he asks, and she replies, ‘This is prison. Everyone here knows everything. There are no secrets here.’
There are, well, no secrets except for their romantic exchanges from either side of the wall, their arrival signalled by a twig. Until, of course, they decide to meet and as if in an apogean moment, he is released from prison. Just as he is about to accept the most cheerful invitation of his life, he is shown out, only to wonder poignantly whether the free world is a bigger prison. Was it worthwhile then for the writer to endure the brush with romance?
It is here that Basheer hops past the mundane and lands in sublime territory. It is all clear now: the intrinsic value of freedom and the incidence of chance. When he gazes last, there is a twig reaching out from the other side of the wall. The heartbreaking inevitability of the brief relationship lingers all through, but it gets pronounced with the onset of freedom. Was the feeling a lie?
The woman is waiting, isn’t she?
Is Basheer saying that when you dream, the cold vision of reality is as sure to follow as night follows day? Or is he hinting at the disengaging power of fortuitous relationships? Does happenstance necessarily end at the Lover’s leap?
Something akin to the keening sense of lost ties when you end a railway journey. Once you hop off, the spirit of fellowship passes off in vapour. Or think of dull afternoons in strange towns, perhaps when looking vacuously out of windows from hotel rooms, when your imagination colours itself with fleeting sights and furtive glances at people down on the streets or in neighbouring blocks. Where the light catches a woman drumming her fingers on the parapet of her balcony. Or perhaps, beyond high walls where we can’t see our neighbours. Whispers of stories lost across the frontiers of contemplation.
Our creations don’t outlive the institutive process, my friend and namesake, the Kannada award-winning poet and writer Jayant Kaikini, once wrote. Once he writes a poem, the poet gets estranged from the creation. Basheer’s narrator is fated to move on to a different space.
To us readers, of course, Basheer leaves myriad strands to pick up. How wide do we open the doors of perception, then? As much as you can, the writer seems to say. And like an expert raconteur, he leaves the story stranded at a dilemma, the soul journey at crossroads.
The crossing
But Adoor Gopalakrishnan had other ideas. He asked if Narayani existed in flesh and blood. In his film version of Basheer’s story, he sees the love story as an exercise, albeit abidingly tragic, in creativity. Can a writer traversing the outbacks of imagination make a safe, and sane, return to the mainland, he asks.
In an earlier film, Adoor had tackled a protagonist who was ensconced in his own visions of an unchanging world. ‘Elipathayam’ (The Rat-trap) has Unni, the last surviving male descendant of a feudal family, not allowing any external force or system to penetrate his inner life. Regardless of the consequences, he lazes about in his imagined surroundings—the difference here from ‘Walls’ being that it is an atmosphere created for him over the generations. Snug in his armchair, he avoids meeting change face to face and drowns, literally, in his illusions
. Eventually, the rat-trap springs shut and he falls prey …
The imagined space and circumstance in ‘Mathilukal’ is, however, constructed. Adoor concerns himself with the bond between the creator and the creation and thereby, goes beyond the love story. In his typical poetic and insightful manner, he combines the richness of Basheer’s experience with metaphysical inquiry. Yet, on closer study, he isn’t titivating Basheer’s tale. Making no corrections in the narration, he sticks to the diarist’s tone. How else can one get into the heart of the writer’s thought process? If you tidied up a traveller’s room, would you know what kind of a person he was?
Adoor’s touch to the story attains a new dimension ahead of the conspicuous message about the limitations of freedom. And beyond Basheer’s basic understanding of learning to accept the tragic. Basheer painted these ordinary pictures of life exhibiting his profound love for fellow beings. What made his story-telling more original was the vast treasure of experiences. Experience that constituted a three-course soul food. Having spent almost all of his youth wandering across the subcontinent and West Asia, he could tell stories in an intuitive sort of way and present emotional dilemmas with first-hand sincerity. He had been through it all—low life, political aspirations, prison life and ascetism. And when he rode the magic carpet, fundamental questions sprang up spontaneously.
Adoor, on the other hand, has been interested in the discrepancy between actions and imagined roles; of walls between people and places. He reads in ‘Walls’ the tale of an artist who transgresses physical imprisonment by weaving an object of fancy and gets ensnarled in the fantasy. Freedom in this context implies the mental space to create and boundaries are the purview of the artist’s involvement with his creation.
Narayani here takes a life of her own. She is more than Basheer’s cute little ploy. His sleight of hand not only gives her a vocal existence but also a purpose to crave for. And as the chain of anticipation keeps growing longer, the desire to flesh her out is acute.
The tragedy is that as Narayani leaps to freedom, the writer loses his liberty to create. He is humbled by the ‘presence’ of his creation. The moral: when we tremble excitedly over our inventive peregrinations, we must realize that the circling must end. It is one thing to scale imaginary heights and quite another to stay on that barrier, trying to straddle two worlds.
True, the strength of imagination and the strength of creation are equal. It is the freedom to imagine and thus create, that provides succour.
So, I often wonder, were the children behind the wall in my hometown better placed than us in their imaginative journeys?
Kerala Tourism
Karkitakam*
M.T. Vasudevan Nair
This story is taken from The Demon Seed and Other Writings, published by Penguin Books India.
The rain in the months of Mithunam and Karkitakam is like a mother. It bursts out when you least expect it to, when you go close, thinking it is in a good mood. When the season of thunder and lightning sets in, it’s not just going to school and coming back that is difficult, it’s having to contend with hunger as well.
Once I had my kanji in the morning and went to school, I ate only after getting back home in the evening. For the first three or four days after Achan’s moneyorder arrived, I was given two annas every day. After that, I starved at noon. When it struck one, a number of us would go to the back of Marar’s restaurant to drink water. Marar used to fill the big idli vessel with water and place a large bell-metal glass next to it, for the children who had not brought lunch or snacks.
In the rainy season, it was always hunger that tormented me, never thirst.
By the time I walked the four miles to school, I would begin to feel hungry. By the fourth period, hunger would be raging inside me like a fire. And that was the moment when the fragrance of a dish being seasoned with mustard and chillies would waft in from the restaurant on the other side of the wall.
Most of the children jumped over the wall into Marar’s restaurant when the bell rang. Some of them left their rice containers there in the morning. Others bought lunch there. Marar gave schoolchildren a concession. The villagers paid six annas for a meal but the schoolchildren paid only five. Rangan from Kalladathoor, Sivadasan from Kuttippalam, Vilakathra Govindan and I, we were the four who went there only to drink water. They said that O. Mohammed and P. Mohammed had tea in the tea shop near the market.
By the afternoon, my hunger would have died down. I would no longer want to eat. It was not difficult to sit like a corpse until four o’clock. It was while going back that I would begin to feel hungry again. I would walk along wondering what curry there would be at home.
Govindan and I always went home together. During the monsoon, we would be wet by the time we came down the hill. No matter how we held our umbrellas, the water would steal in with the wind.
Rangan sometimes had a beedi with him. He would describe the delights of having a puff when it was cold, and I would feel greedy. But I did not have the guts to do anything wrong. For I was Thekkeppat Ammalu Amma’s son. We were told that the villagers often said to one another, ‘She’s not rich, that woman, but her children have excellent character.’ (It was Amma herself who told us they said this). After Rangan turned off, Govindan would be with me for the next two miles. Govindan was short and fat and wore a shirt and mundu. Only a few boys came to school in trousers. I was one of them.
Once Govindan turned off to his place, I would be alone. The thought of the bowl of kanji in the uri, the coir basket hanging in the kitchen, was enough for me to quicken my pace. What curry would there be? Jackfruit or plantain? If the jackfruit was from the tree behind the outhouse, it would be as soft as butter, and really delicious.
That day, the rain which started in the morning did not abate even when school gave over. I had to wring out the water from the hem of my trousers before I went into class. By noon, my shirt and trousers had more or less dried. My stomach ached.
It was easier to walk in the rain in the evening. We made our way home happily, splashing through the water.
I was completely drenched by the time I reached home. I placed my umbrella in the veranda, threw the packet of books held together by a black rubber band on the wooden ledge and went in, calling out as I usually did, ‘Amme—‘
Meenakshi Edathi’s voice answered, ‘Amma’s gone next door.’
It was Amma who usually served my food. I did not like Meenakshi Edathi to serve me. She was a distant relative. She stayed with us and helped Amma with the housework. Cheriamma disapproved of her. Amma would say, ‘She’s come to us because she doesn’t have enough to live on, don’t you see?’
‘And we have enough paddy and money here, of course!’ Cheriamma would say mockingly. ‘That creature eats as much as four people eat,’ she would add, taking care that Meenakshi Edathi did not hear her. Meenakshi Edathi’s looks bore out Cheriamma’s statement. She was a tall, stout woman with protruding teeth. She always left her breasts uncovered. When she went out, she would throw a small towel over her shoulders.
There was a little room in the house where the shakteya pooja was performed. Its doors were almost always kept closed. Meenakshi Edathi’s body had the same odour which came out when the doors of this little room were opened.
Meenakshi Edathi would talk of this and that while she set out the plate for my kanji. I was always afraid that spittle would fall on me while she spoke. I would eat uneasily, reluctantly, when she served me.
I spread my shirt out on the bamboo pole hung up in the tekkini and heard Cheriamma reciting her prayers. This meant that she was back from her bath. Even during the monsoons, she bathed three times a day. And yet she would complain that her body smarted all the time. Cheriachan’s nephew had laid a curse on her, that’s why her body smarted.
Cheriamma took some vibhuti from the container hanging near the eastern window and made an obeisance to the household deity. As she went in to change into dry clothes I asked, ‘Where’s Amma, Cheriamma?’
‘Who knows?’
Meenakshi Edathi was in the room next to the kitchen, chopping a plantain bulb. Had they had plantain bulb for lunch as well? It tasted best roasted, with powdered rice sprinkled over it before it was seasoned.
I pulled up a low stool, sat down and said, with a touch of annoyance, ‘Serve the kanji, Meenakshi Edathi.’
Meenakshi Edathi continued to chop the plantain bulb and said, without looking up, ‘The cat overturned the kanji today, child.’
I did not feel sad. I felt angry enough to kill her. How casually she had said that the cat had overturned the kanji.
Meenakshi Edathi said without looking at my face, ‘Go and play, child. I’ll give you some kanji before I drain the rice.’
This was something they usually did only during the harvest season, serving out a little kanji before the rice was drained for the evening meal. Amma considered it a despicable practice. Cheriamma had started it for Chandran and Kamalam. I would always refuse if I was asked whether I wanted some. How could I, a child with an exemplary character, do something so despicable?
And after all, Amma should be given an opportunity, should she not, to say, ‘I’ve brought up two children as well. Let her learn from me.’
‘Where’s Amma?’ I raised my voice. ‘What a time to go wandering around.’
I could not scold Meenakshi Edathi. If Amma came, I could at least vent my temper on her.
‘Amma will be back soon. Why don’t you listen to me?’
As I waited with my hand on the half-wall of the kitchen, I caught sight of Muthassi. She was busy making a powder of little lumps of earth picked out of the fireplace, mixed with vibhuti and medicinal nuts. Whenever she had a cold, Muthassi would get one of us to rub this powder into her scalp.
The fire was not burning in any of the three hearths. Meenakshi Edathi must have realized this, for she said to me, ‘Meenakshi Edathi will get everything ready for you in the wink of an eye.’