No one remembered the Kuppu-Acchan of the past, youthful Kuppu the toddy-tapper; no dragonfly carried the memories of the living. Kuppu-Acchan himself found recollection burdensome ...
A mid-noon fifteen years ago in Kuppu’s toddy-shop. Custom was thin and Kuppu full of misgiving. As he sat gazing far out across the yellowing paddies, he caught sight of the postman, Kelu Menon, walking down the ridge towards Khasak.
He walked into the shop and sat down to a mugful of toddy and a length of roasted goat’s gut.
‘Can’t think of a better refreshment,’ said Kelu Menon cheerily, ‘but how long will you keep this open?’
Kuppu’s wife Kallu peeped in from the living quarters at the back. ‘We will not close this down,’ she said.
Kuppu said nothing.
‘This is the new law,’ said the postman, speaking now as part of the government. ‘We can’t let the law be disobeyed.’
Days after this, Kuppu walked beneath the palms at sunset. He touched the palms and divined the sap flow, up the trunks to the buds on top. He tapped the sap and brewed it into sweet-sour toddy. He sold this toddy in his little shop. A trade, an honest and fearless living; try as he might he could not understand why anyone should make it impossible. He sadly watched the magnificent palms turn to silhouettes in the onrushing dusk.
Kuppu kept his shop open. No one came there to drink anymore. Kuppu roamed the palm groves; he could climb and tap twenty palms a day; he wore the tapper’s mark of power—callouses the colour of gold on his hands and chest.
The villagers dared not reason with him; the only one he would listen to was Madhavan Nair, younger than him by many years. They respected each other as skilled workers, free people. When Madhavan Nair saw Kuppu that evening amidst the palms, he realized he was witnessing a mime of torment, the palm-climber’s passion play.
‘I have done much wrong in my life,’ Kuppu began.
‘Who hasn’t?’ protested Madhavan Nair.
‘I have. But I haven’t taken a life. I nearly did it last evening. Can you guess what Mayandi advised me to do?’
The tailor stood still, listening.
‘Mayandi wants me to brew fake toddy from waste and poison ...’ said Kuppu in a great rage.
Kuppu stood leaning against a palmyra; Madhavan Nair marvelled at the tapper’s musculature and at the honour of the toiling man. The palm winds quietened Kuppu.
They walked in the cool night; the tailor talked and reasoned.
‘What should I do?’ asked the tapper again.
‘Close it,’ said Madhavan Nair gently.
And so ended the epic of the toddy-tapper, an epic from other times, when flying serpents rested on palm tops during their mysterious journeys. The tapper made an offering of sweet toddy to please these visitants. He left flowers at the foot of the palm for the clan’s well-being. In those times the tapper did not have to climb, the palm bent down for him. It was when a tapper’s woman lost her innocence that the palm ceased to bend ...
Kuppu’s wife Kallu was from Yakkara, a village a few miles from Khasak. The daughter of a prosperous tenant-farmer, she was the youngest of seven sisters; the farmer had married off six of them, and when Kallu’s turn came, there was little left of the family’s gold and money.
That was how she came to Khasak as the bride of a tapper, one whose station was lower than that of a tenant-farmer. A bride of fourteen, she had come away from the roomy family farmhouse, the yard around it, the stables where the grey buffalo calves would shake their heads and flare their nostrils in recognition. She found her husband a loner and the house beset with dust and cobwebs, moss and trash. She suppressed a sob, and swore she would move her man to decisive enterprise. Within weeks of the marriage Kallu said, ‘Let us take some land on tenure.’ Kuppu was mindful of every wish of the child-wife, though he hated the feudal humiliation of tenancy. He went into it for her sake, but gave it up at the very first harvest when the landlord spoke rudely to him. Still Kallu would not give up.
‘There is a toddy shop here,’ she told him in bed one night, ‘that closed down long ago. Let us bid for it.’
Kuppu found her irresistible, but equally compelling was the call of the wind-swept palms that resounded in the night.
‘I cannot give them up,’ he said. ‘They love me.’
Kallu pulled back to see him better, this man who turned his enormous power into tenderness. Then she drew him close and giggled, ‘I am jealous!’
Kallu fancied the palms as big black giantesses tossing their locks in the wind.
‘I will tap,’ he said.
‘We will have both,’ she said. ‘I can see to the shop when you are on the palms.’
For her the toddy-shop was a mark of class. Of course it was classier to be a farmer, but she had heard of men who got rich vending toddy. In this ceaseless fantasy she became rich, and dressed the way the rich did; ornaments glittering all over her, she went to Yakkara, to her father’s farm, to the calves which snorted in fond memory ... The shop dragged on for years on inadequate custom, and Kallu never made that jewelled journey.
After the shop was closed down, Kuppu set out for the palm grove one morning, in tapper’s attire—the shield of buffalo hide for the chest, the broad knife in its scabbard hung at the back from the girdle. The mullah, on his morning walk through the fields, was alarmed by this armed apparition.
‘Where are you going, Kuppu?’ he asked hesitantly.
Kuppu was jolted by this query from the world of reality.
‘Aw,’ he said, ‘to cut fronds ...’
That was not the season for mending thatches, but the mullah questioned him no further. He turned to watch the tapper walk away, and said a prayer to save this man of honour from relapsing into hallucination. In the grove, Kuppu climbed his favoured palm, the queen among his black mistresses; he sat astride the stem of a frond, contemplating nothingness; the wind spun the mountain mists around him, and the earth seemed far away ... In the house below, Kallu dusted the big earthen urns which had once held the brew of their labour and hope, now destroyed by the Temperance Law and the bootlegger. The smell of toddy still lingered in the long-dried urns, perhaps its astral replica; sadness came over her. She went into the backyard and looked over great distances, she fancied she saw the little bridge in Yakkara, the gate of her father’s farm, the fruit trees along the hedges, the stable which housed her mute kin. She stepped back into her own house again, into its stark solitude. Her husband would not climb down from the palm until the insane spell was over. Her teenaged son worked in a tea plantation in the hill country. Soon even the spectral scent would dry in the urns. The little jewellery she had brought with her was either pawned or sold. Now it felt like an unburdening. All that was left were her silver anklets. She tucked them into her tiny betel basket. She looked out on the front yard—the old slippery moss had returned. Kallu had come in through the front door. She went out through the back. With memories left behind like the pawned jewels, Kallu left Khasak.
The Palghat countryside was in the throes of temperance. Soon primitive alchemists took over the inebriation trade. Brewing and distilling began with substances picked up at random, from confectioners’ essences to insects and vermin. Attendance dropped in the rural schools, and often when a teacher asked why a certain pupil had not turned up, the children would answer, ‘He’s gone hunting centipedes, Saar!’
The most popular drink was fermented wash blended with ammonium sulphate, which the government generously distributed as manure. It came closest to natural toddy. However, there was one embarrassing hazard with the sulphate brew—an overdose of the chemical brought on an upset stomach instantly.
Kuppu stood alone in this welter of deceit, he cursed the Temperance Law as the mother of anarchy. Kallu was its victim. His long spells of hallucination ended, he withdrew into his hut. He hung the chest armour and the tapper’s knife on the wall, and never touched them again, and in good time big hairy spiders found a home behind the uncured hide. In the hut that was once their home and toddy shop, Kuppu lay down for days on end in the gathering dust and litter, for days on end he went without food. Then, he wandered through Khasak, at each appearance looking thinner and more desiccated than at the one before; no one took note, no dragonfly carried the memories of the living. Sometimes if the wind swept him on, he went up to Chetali. He came back, and gave himself up to the contemplation of the image that was to be the only image in his mind for years to come. Kallu’s parents were dead, leaving behind a rheumatic grandmother. Kuppu worked himself into an insane despondency in which he could see things the way he wanted to; he saw Kallu bathing in Yakkara’s rivulet, seated on the rocks now, sun-drying herself, bare-breasted, with a scanty towel drawn round her waist, like Narayani. The boys from the nearby tile factory loitered beside the rivulet, they ogled and whistled. They whistled in the nights around the house of the rheumatic grandmother. Kallu in the rivulet haunted Kuppu. The image rotted in his mind and then seeped out to envelop him. Kuppu curled up and slept through fifteen years of decay ...
No one knew for certain when he appeared on the load-rest in front of Aliyar’s shop. It was as if he had always been there. A lock of sick brown hair falling over his forehead, cheeks drawn into the of his face toothless cavern, head tucked in between bent knees, infinitely old, he picked on passers-by or those inside the teashop and began some salacious story.
‘You know,’ he would start off, ‘Pangelan’s wife is with child, the ninth month, and poor Pangelan has so much work in the Tamil country that he has been away for almost two years. Of course, none of my concern ...’
Kuppu-Acchan could almost see the scandal sail downwind, see it flower and multiply. Often Aliyar took out a pot of bitter tea and odd bits of crispies, and clapped his hands. ‘Come and peck, old crow,’ Aliyar would say, affectionately endowing the village gossip with the mystic powers crows possessed and for which reason food was offered to them in ancestral propitiation rites.
A day after Sivaraman Nair accused Ravi of living with his servant, Madhavan Nair walked up to the load-rest with this taunt, ‘So you can’t resist a juicy lie, can you?’
‘Hai, hai, Madhava! Wasn’t I talking to the wind?’
‘Just stay on the load-rest, and keep your fist closed tight.’
‘What else?’ Aliyar spoke from behind the samovar. ‘If he opens his fist his soul would fly away!’
‘Very well,’ Madhavan Nair said, ‘have some tea. Aliyar, that’s on me.’
‘Hai, hai! Why don’t you get me a murukku to go with the tea?’
‘Are you turning into another Appu-Kili?’
Khasak was used to teasing Kuppu-Acchan. An ugly grin spread through the stubble beneath the beaked nose, for one brief moment, like a cinder fanned by a freak wind. Inside the teashop, Madhavan Nair was touched by memories of the palm grove, of the magnificent toddy-tapper who stood like an angry sentinel over the honour of his calling.
The tailor really had not meant to taunt the old man who now sat on the load-rest to receive the crude mockery of the whole village.
The conversation inside the shop turned to migrant fish. The fish entered the brook, swam upstream, and crawled over the mire to breed in the Araby tank.
‘All you have to do,’ Aliyar was telling Madhavan Nair, ‘is to take a gunny sack and gather them. At night if you show a light, they come to you in shoals.’
‘Good,’ said the decrepit voice from the load-rest, ‘I am ready!’
Aliyar peeped out of his shop to look up at the load-rest. He said, ‘Nobody asked you.’
‘Hai, hai, Aliyar ...’
Kuppu-Acchan did go fishing on rare occasions, all by himself. Tired of the slime of gossip, tired of his grotesque perch, he would get down from the load-rest and walk beside the brook, walk a long way upstream in the sun, and stand in knee-deep water like the sarus crane. The fish would swim by, the curious little ones would nibble at his shins. Kuppu-Acchan would stand still, fish-trap still nestling in the crook of his arm, terrified and elated by what he saw. The fish would slip by like all young and cunning things; yet as he watched the sky reflected in the water, he would be the rider of the sky again, and now what slid past his shins would not be fish but shoals of little clouds.
Kuppu-Acchan overheard Aliyar talking to Madhavan Nair about the migrant fish. He got down from the load-rest and walked about in the mild sun. In the evening he came up to the seedling house and said abruptly, ‘Maeshtar, you are eating with me tonight.’
‘My food is cooked already.’
‘Oh, no! Tonight it will be fish curry in my little home. I can carry away your cooked food so it does not go waste.’
‘Kuppu-Acchan, do you insist?’
Kuppu-Acchan had already gone in and packed the food. There was nothing Ravi could do but go.
Night had fallen when he got there. Ravi sat down on a mat spread out on the narrow veranda. Kuppu-Acchan turned towards the room that opened on to the veranda and called out, ‘My little girl, see who has come to supper.’
The woman peeped out, then emerged in informal attire, a short mundu and brassiere.
‘Kesi, my daughter-in-law,’ Kuppu-Acchan introduced her. She brought water in a bronze kindi for the guest to wash his hands and feet.
‘Kutti,’ Kuppu-Acchan said, ‘would you like a drink— jasmine moonshine?’
Confectioner’s flavouring essence; Ravi was hesitant.
‘There is nothing to fear,’ Kuppu-Acchan said.
‘It is a safe drink,’ Kesi added her reassurance.
She brought three china bowls. Ravi waited.
‘I forgot all about it,’ Kuppu-Acchan said, grinning obscenely.
‘Forgot what?’
‘The drink—I forgot to get the drink.’
‘We needn’t drink, Kuppu-Acchan. It is all right with me.’
‘Oh no!’ said Kuppu-Acchan, rising. ‘I can’t dishonour my guest. Give me ten rupees, Maeshtar-kutti.’
Ravi handed him the money, perplexed, and watched his host hobble away into the dark. When the old man was gone, Kesi came over and sat on Ravi’s mat.
‘He talks of you so much,’ she said. ‘He has long wanted to bring you over for a meal.’
Ravi mumbled formal thanks, the conversation meandered. Ravi asked her, ‘When will your husband return?’
‘He is in the Tamil country, up in the mountains, plucking tea leaves. No one knows when he will come back. He wasn’t staying here anyway. Closer to his mother. The old one was alone here, so he brought me over some time ago.’
Kuppu-Acchan returned with a large bottle of pernicious wash.
‘Do you want a sip, girl?’ he asked Kesi as she unhooked and hooked her brassiere to be as properly dressed as possible.
‘Hai, hai! Isn’t Appa making me naughty?’ she giggled.
‘If the bootlegger has used too much varnish,’ Kuppu-Acchan said, ‘we are all dead or stricken blind. So take a neat, quick gulp, Kutti!’
They drank generous mouthfuls. Ravi savoured its infamy and said, ‘It feels great, Kuppu-Acchan! We can see and we aren’t dead.’
Suddenly Kuppu-Acchan stood up again. ‘I’ve forgotten ...’
‘Forgotten what?’ asked Ravi.
‘The fish,’ Kuppu-Acchan said. He took the bamboo fish-trap off the hook and was gone again ... When he reached the teashop it was deserted. Aliyar was inside tallying the day’s accounts. The samovar had died down.
‘O Muslim,’ Kuppu-Acchan asked, ‘where is my little Nair?’
‘The tailor said he didn’t want to fish. I too am in no mood.’
‘You were the ones who got me into this ...’
‘Of course not.’
Kuppu-Acchan collapsed into his familiar knots, and sat on the doorway to nag Aliyar. The final tally was done and Aliyar turned on his tormentor. Then, unable to stand the low drumming monotony of the torment, Aliyar gave in.
The two set out for the Araby tank.
‘Old one,’ Aliyar said, ‘do you know where we are going? To the Araby tank. The place is choking with ghosts.’
‘Hai, hai, O kin of Sayed Mian Sheikh, don’t scare me this night.’
They were now near the burial ground of the Muslims.
‘O shaven-headed Muslim...’ Kuppu-Acchan nagged.
‘What’s it? And stop talking about my scalp. It touches my religion and I might decide to kill you.’
‘I shall not talk of it, round-head. But the night is getting cold.’
‘What else can the night do?’
‘Hai, hai! It is drilling into my bones.’
‘Who invited you?’
‘Wait here, round-head! Let me rush home and get my blanket!’
‘This is crazy!’
The mist was descending and Kuppu-Acchan began to shiver and rattle. Hands crossed over the chest and clutching his shoulders, he walked on behind Aliyar. He sustained himself on fantasies of Kesi and Ravi, like he had done for so long with Kallu in the rivulet, its malice and obscenity compounded with the lashing cold and darkness. Kuppu-Acchan tottered along and cursed.
‘Round-head, shaven-scalp, good Muslim ...’
It was then that an unearthly voice spoke from the burial marshes:
‘Stop!’
This was followed by a deep-throated chant.
‘Who is that?’ Aliyar asked.
‘It is me ...’
‘Oh, the Khazi?’
‘Yes.’
In the faint light of an oil lamp they saw the Khazi’s looming form. The Khazi held up his hand in caution, and said, ‘Hush! There is a djinn here.’
Kuppu-Acchan froze.
‘Be not afraid,’ the Khazi reassured, ‘just stand where you are, and do not swallow your saliva.’
Kuppu-Acchan did just that, he swallowed. All life drained away. After a little while the Khazi said, ‘The Revered One has departed.’
Aliyar and the Khazi exchanged pleasantries. Kuppu-Acchan replied with funereal nods and grunts. When they had gone a little way, Kuppu-Acchan started to whine again.
‘Ya Allah!’ Aliyar swore. ‘What is it this time?’
‘Let me go home, beef-eating round-head, and pick up my blanket.’
‘By then the fish will be asleep. We will have to wake them up.’
‘I’ll be back in a moment ...’
‘Go, go, and cadge a drink from some sleeping bootlegger.’
Kuppu-Achan walked back home ... Kesi’s door stood shut, but there were wide cracks in the wood. A small wick lamp dimly lit the room. Kuppu-Acchan peeped in, a long and bitter look. Ravi’s torch and footwear were in the veranda. Kuppu-Acchan turned away and came to the bottle in which there still was much wash left. He drank in deep draughts, then picked up his old blanket, wrapped it round, and set out to the Araby tank, aflame with intoxication and terror ... Aliyar was not at the spot where he had left him. He reasoned that Aliyar must have gone to the Araby tank all by himself.
When Kuppu-Acchan reached the tank, he realized that Aliyar had deserted him, abandoning him to the poothams and djinns. This was betrayal. Kuppu-Acchan called out into the night, ‘O Aliyar! Where are you?’ The night was climbing on to the evil hours; the kabandhas would soon be here to frolic in the tank.
‘Ooooh Aliyaaaar!’
As if in reply, a wind blew in from the graves.
‘Betrayer! Sinner!’ Kuppu-Acchan began to cry; he wanted to get away, but the demons would be after him soon. Then he heard the bubbling noises of the fish at play. He faintly remembered something about fish curry.
Kuppu Acchan edged towards the tank and stood gazing at the phosphorescent water. Silently he called out to the fish, and the fish heard him—a big-headed old denizen rose to the surface and swam towards him. Kuppu-Acchan leaned forward with the fish-trap. The bank he stood on was sodden. It gave way.
Kuppu-Acchan thought the skies had fallen all round him. The blanket sponged in the water and grew heavy like lead. He struggled long for breath and balance, and finally clambered to safety. Covered with the wet blanket and moss, Kuppu-Acchan sat on a rock like a kabandha and raised a great lament:
‘Help me, somebody! I am dying!’