‘Look here!’ said Seerayi fiercely. ‘That’s the kind of talk I don’t want to hear. You have been seeing my struggle for the past eight months. Things are now taking a turn for the better. Please don’t do anything to ruin them. I am too old to raise a baby on my own. We have to go on living somehow. Nothing will happen to Kali. His uncle will speak to him and give him some perspective. Just watch him when he gets back from this pilgrimage. Do you think that deity Manchaami will let him return the way he went there? If he did, what’s the point in his sitting there as a deity? All right. About the cottage . . . That will be a lot of work. How can we women manage all that?’
Ponna stayed silent for a little while. Then she replied, ‘Send my brother a message. He needn’t come himself. He can send one of his men with four cartloads of sand, two loads of stones and all that. We have our own cart here, so we can send that. My brother will arrange for sacks of sand to be sent. As for dried palmyra husks, there is plenty of it right under the bales of kambu stalks. For the central beam, we can use that portia branch that was cut down.’
‘Oh, dear girl,’ said Seerayi happily. ‘I am glad you are talking about your family. I worried that you had completely forgotten about them. The other day you referred to them as slippers. They are the only relatives we really have, and I was anxious we will lose them too. I wonder how poor Muthu is. He got beaten up so badly by Kali, but never complained about it to anyone. Like a mute man with a dream to tell, Muthu kept it all to himself. I just have to send him a message today, he will send the person tomorrow.’
‘We can’t just leave the slippers outside the house forever, can we?’ said Ponna. ‘We have to put them back on when needed.’
Seerayi said, ‘All right! But listen, there is one thing I don’t like about your idea. Let us get rid of that cut-up branch of the portia tree. Let’s not use it for the cottage. There is a dried palm tree by the roadside. We can cut that up for the roof frame. Or, we can use the portia branch as firewood to heat water this winter.’
‘Why waste such a big branch?’ replied Ponna with a flash of resentment. ‘If we use it for the cottage, every time he looks up at it, he will remember that that’s the branch he tried to hang himself on.’
Seerayi said, ‘Don’t talk like that, Ponna. Everyone makes mistakes. If you ask Uncle Nallayyan, he will say there is nothing inherently wrong. When one looks up the ceiling, they must be able to have good thoughts. You might even get back together soon. Then when you look up at this branch, it will hurt your feelings. It will constantly remind you of what you wish to forget. So let us not do that.’
Ponna remained silent. Seerayi was determined not to let them use that wood for the cottage. The very next day Seerayi sent word with Kaaraan and asked Muthu to meet her at the banyan tree on the mud road. She and Vengayi were working in the fields that day, plucking ears of corn, when Kaaraan returned with Muthu’s response. She carried a basket of corn and spread them on the rock in the field. She then walked up the mud road. Walking past four or five fields, she came to the large banyan tree. Muthu was sitting underneath the tree. Plenty of birds were roosting on it, creating a ruckus. Muthu was listening to their cacophony, thinking about how the birds must have set out very early, even when it was still dark, to look for food, and they must have returned before the day grew hot, and were now happily singing and chatting among themselves.
What else but happiness could these birds experience? Well, it is possible that they fell sick sometimes. They might even be sad that they didn’t find food. But none of that was a hurdle to happiness. He was delighted to see them chirping and playing intimately with each other. He started looking closely at the kinds of birds that were on that tree. He could see crows and cuckoos right away. Cuckoos sense immediately that they are being observed, and so they hide. Then he spotted mynahs, sparrows, pigeons, and he also saw some birds he was not familiar with. When he hunted birds in the woods sometimes, he would think that he knew all the various kinds of birds. But now he saw that there were some he did not recognize. There was a certain delight in encountering the unfamiliar. Muthu felt like climbing up the tree and sitting there on a branch with those birds. But would they accept him?
He was brought back from his thoughts by Seerayi’s voice calling out, ‘Muthayya!’ He had gone very thin. He was more upset about Kali’s treatment of him than about Ponna breaking off her ties with them. Muthu constantly thought about what he could say to Kali that would wash away his anger, make him understand. Would Kali accept Ponna and the child? Muthu got drunk every day. He did not listen to anyone’s advice. Seerayi was shocked to see Muthu in that state. Was this the same Muthu who used to take delight in talking to people? She stared at him, distressed.
‘Muthayya, what has happened to you?’ she said. ‘Our family problems have shaken you to the core. So many people have had to suffer on account of us. You gave your sister in marriage to him. You wanted them to be happy. All those good wishes have not gone to waste, I assure you. All is going to be well. Ponna herself said to me, “Speak to my brother.” Kali too will come around. You are the only friend he has. One of these days, he will fall at your feet and ask for your forgiveness, I know. Please don’t lose heart. The well-being of both families depends on your well-being. Once the child is born, we will have you, the maternal uncle, hold the child on your lap when they pierce its earlobes. You need to be there on that day, the proud maternal uncle to the child. How can you let yourself go like this? Kali, that dog! He has also been drinking a lot. But we make sure he eats on time. Here in the barnyard, neither he nor the dog has much work to do. So he will eat promptly. I hear you get drunk and lie about here and there. Please don’t do that, dear boy. Please take care of your health. Your sister says to me, “Just talk to my brother about it. He will get it done.” And very soon Kali too will seek you out. We should never lose heart. If I had given up on things and lost hope, would I have survived?’
She then explained what she wanted to see him about. Listening to her, happiness spread over Muthu’s face. Right then, some sparrow shit fell on his head. He touched his head and took it to be a good omen.
TWENTY-FIVE
It usually took pilgrims ten days to get to Mangoor. Then they spent one full day there in addition to the day of their arrival. And then it was another ten full days to return. But it might take even longer if the itinerary included other temples nearby.
Kali had no difficulty walking the distance, but Nallayyan Uncle did. So Kali slowed himself down for his uncle. There were lots of pilgrims along the way, walking in groups—men, women and children, all in various kinds of groups. But there was such happiness on all their faces. They halted in the shade of tamarind trees, brought out their pots and pans and did their cooking. There were wells by the roadside, and people gathered around them to have a wash. And the farmers who owned these wells did not complain or turn people away and instead just went about their business of drawing water and irrigating their fields. Each village en route had shelters on the roadside offering free drinking water to travellers, and these shelters were constructed with thatched palm fronds that still retained their fresh, green fragrance. And water collected in large pots, with people standing by, offering cups of water to the pilgrims. These shelters also had bamboo pipes on one side, and some travellers drank water from these pipes by receiving it in the cupped palms of their hands. In some villages, people had got together and were offering free food to the pilgrims. In addition to all this, there were also separate spots where the big landowners were offering food to the travellers. Sweet panagam and diluted buttermilk were also available in various places. Kali walked along the path, amazed at all these sights and the sounds of people’s constant chatter that felt like the cawing of crows.
Until then, Kali had only heard that some people undertook this walk holding aloft a kavadi, a decorated arch stretched over a pole that devotees carried on their shoulders. He had not known that it was such an important promise and offering. I
n each group, there was at least one person carrying a kavadi. Wherever there were temples on the way, the crowds stopped for a while, and some ritual dancing ensued. Some villages in the area had their own Manchaami shrines. And there were groups from these places, with pilgrims carrying kavadis, that travelled with their own drummers. At regular intervals, these groups launched into dances, accompanied by the drums. Kali and Nallayyan Uncle had joined the group from Semmoor. There were thirty-two people in it. Since they walked at different speeds, they had arranged to gather together every few days in one or another of the rest houses along the way. They’d spend the night in these places. Some preferred to sleep outside under the trees.
While some carried large sacks, some, like Kali, carried small bags. All he had in his bag were two blankets. Nallayyan Uncle had told him that that was all they would need. Nallayyan was used to travelling light. ‘The whole point of travelling is not to carry burdens. If we insist on carrying everything, we might as well stay put. Our people have the desire to travel, but they don’t know how. Come with me. I will show you all sorts of people.’
Pointing to a man who walked with a large bundle on his head and two other bundles on his shoulders, he said, ‘He is like a load-bearing rock. We can place as much weight as we want on him. It will stay rock solid, but it will be very difficult to move it.’ Then he pointed to a man who carried a large bundle on his back, and said, ‘He is a donkey. He can carry things, but he knows nothing else. A donkey is happy as long as it finds a place where it can be by itself.’ Then he directed Kali’s attention to a man who carried a lot of pots and pans and was walking with his family. About him, Nallayyan said, ‘Look at him carefully. He is basically carrying his entire household on his head. No matter where he goes, he can never set that burden down. I cannot show you worse idiocy than this.’ Kali laughed at all these remarks.
Nallayyan Uncle sometimes chatted up fellow travellers. He approached a man who was clad in a dhoti that covered his entire legs, a shawl that draped his torso and a large kerchief tied over his head, and asked him, ‘Where are you headed? To the fancy hospital of the white man?’ And the man replied, laughing, ‘Well, I do want to go there, but my body does not cooperate.’ Nallayyan Uncle said, ‘True. You might desire it, but you can’t. You are getting old, aren’t you?’ Everyone laughed at this exchange.
Since Kali and Nallayyan were new to this pilgrimage, they found it easy to talk and chat with everyone. But Nallayyan happened to know a lot of people there. Even people from other villages approached him and chatted him up. One elder teased him with great liberty, ‘What a surprise! The dog who’d sleep and eat and hang about anywhere has now set out on a pilgrimage to see Manchaami!’
Nallayyan did not mind. He said, ‘Thatha, you old man, the sheep can roam around anywhere they want during the day, but they have to return to the fold at nightfall, don’t they? And the dog too must return home at that time if it wants to eat, mustn’t it? Otherwise, it’d have to go hungry the entire day. So now it is time to feed the dog and tie it up in the sheep enclosure. That’s the reason.’
Nallayyan walked very slowly. It took immense patience on Kali’s part to slow himself down on his uncle’s account. But there were times when they speeded up a little. In another place, they saw a man walking with his little daughter. He carried her on his shoulders for a while. She was around six or seven years old. How far could he carry her on his shoulders? So he’d set her down to walk with him every now and then, distracting her with stories. But the moment the story was finished, she demanded to be lifted up and carried on his shoulders again. Kali felt bad looking at them, but he was also moved at how lovingly the father spoke to his child, using many endearments. ‘Muthaayi! My little piece of gold. Chellayi! Muruvaayi!’
Kali asked him, ‘What have you named her?’
The man smiled as he replied, ‘Manjaatha.’ Kali said, ‘But you never called her that even once!’ And the man explained, ‘She was born to us after appealing to Manchaami. Seven years ago, her mother conceived her when she went to the midday rituals at the temple. It is the deity himself who is born to us in the form of this child. We can call that god by various names. How lovely it is that we can do that! There might be one god, but the names are many. As for us, this little one is our goddess. That’s why I call her by all these names of deities.’
Kali did not know how to respond to that. His uncle came closer to him and explained, ‘See, she was born after praying to the deity.’ Kali lifted the little girl and carried her on his shoulders. Her father now walked beside Kali, saying, ‘Her mother too always walked this route with us every year. But now she is unwell. She was wounded by a thorn in her feet and now has her feet bandaged. She said to me, “This year, Manchaami does not want to see me. You take the girl and show her to him.” So here I am. We need to show Manchaami that we are taking good care of the child he gave us, don’t we?’
Nallayyan was walking a little ahead of them. So Kali now asked the man directly, ‘Don’t you feel bad that this is a child born through those prayers?’
The man said, ‘Who are we to discriminate between god’s creatures? Who does not have a lack in their lives? Everyone does. For some it is something physical—some physical suffering you can directly witness. But there are some others that you can’t. I mean, if someone has a limp, you can see it. If someone is deaf, you find that out by talking to them. But if someone has ulcers, how would you know? If someone has a problem in their arse, how would you even know? You’d know if you lived with them. Likewise, point out to me one person who is without worries. Everyone has their own form of suffering. But what the gods offer are ways to remove these sufferings. They tell us, “Do this and be rid of your suffering.” If the gods themselves have given us these ways, why should we humans have a problem with that? I have no worries and concerns now. The deity has given me the joy of carrying and playing with this child. My only concern is that I need to take good care of what god has given me.’
Kali walked quite a distance carrying that little girl on his shoulders. The father said, ‘Please set her down. She can walk a little way.’
And the child said, ‘I will walk only if you tell me a story.’
Her father said, ‘All right, I will,’ and started a story. It was the one about the new bridegroom who ate sesame flour.
Kali walked alongside, listening to the story. Once the story ended, he walked a little faster and joined his uncle. When he told him that he had been listening to that story, his uncle said, ‘Do you know that there is more to that story?’ and started telling him the rest of the story. The others who were walking close by listened to this story too.
Thus went the story the father told his little girl:
There was this man in this village. He got married and went to his mother-in-law’s house. He was a little shy, because, after all, he was a new mapillai, a new son-in-law. In the course of her cooking, his mother-in-law pounded some sesame seeds. He found the smell very appetizing and he wanted to eat some of that flour, but he was too shy to ask. When she finished pounding, the mother-in-law asked him, ‘Mapillai, would you like to eat some sesame flour?’ But he was still quite shy, so he said, ‘No, no, thank you.’ They offered it to him repeatedly. His father-in-law asked him if he would like to eat some sesame flour. He declined. His two brothers-in-law offered it to him. He declined again. His sister-in-law asked him. He still said no. Then his wife too invited him to partake of some sesame flour. He said no to her too. He said no to all of them. But late that night, he still kept thinking about that sesame flour. The smell still wafting from the stone grinder did not help matters. He didn’t know what to do. He waited for everyone to go to bed. His cot was on the porch. Once everyone had gone to bed, he walked over to the grinding stone, put his head into the stone’s pit and licked it. The fragrance and the sweetness enchanted him and he kept licking. He put his head in further and continued licking away. And then his head got caught in the pit of the grinding st
one! No matter how hard he tried, he could not extricate himself. Thankfully, his mother-in-law stepped out of the house to relieve herself in the backyard. She saw him in his ordeal, called for help and pulled his head out safely. Then she brought him a ball of sesame flour to eat, and he ate it with much gusto.
And this is what Uncle Nallayyan added to the tale:
One version goes thus. After they had managed to safely extricate his head from the pit of the grinding stone, the mother-in-law brought him a ball of sesame flour, and said, ‘I offered it to you so many times earlier, and you said no. You could have eaten a little then, couldn’t you?’ But the son-in-law declined even then. He protested, ‘I don’t really like sesame flour, Atthai. I just did not want all that flour in the grinding stone to go to waste. That’s why I wanted to lick it clean.’
But there is another version too. The son-in-law had his head caught in the grinding stone, and was struggling to pull himself out. A little calf happened to be nearby, tied to a pole. The man was not wearing a loincloth inside this veshti. So when he wriggled himself to set his head free, his penis swayed in full view. When the calf saw that, it mistook the penis for a cow’s udder and started sucking on it. The penis grew hard and big. It was at that precise moment that the man’s mother-in-law happened to step outside. She too became excited at the sight of the penis. She moved the calf away and tied it up at a distance. Then she started sucking her son-in-law’s penis and did not let go until she milked it dry.
TWENTY-SIX
Everybody laughed when Uncle finished telling the story. But one man said, ‘We shouldn’t be telling such stories when we are on our way to a temple, should we?’ The others too now looked as if they agreed with the man. Kali felt the same way too.
Trial by Silence Page 15