In my opinion, I became mad because of Appachan’s departure. Appachan – Mama’s appachan, actually, and my grandfather – did not die; he went away.
This is how it began.
I had to prepare myself for two eventualities:
1. Appachan’s departure.
2. My isolation.
Up until then, whether we were physically together or not, Appachan’s spirit was always with me. Not performing miraculous deeds or anything, just making sure that I knew I was not alone. Like everyone else, I too had a family – Papa, Mama, siblings – but Appachan was the anchor of my life. So, to be perfectly honest, it was not his death but my imminent orphanhood that scared me the most. I felt guilty about my selfishness but, as I am sure you know, these are not feelings that are within our control. Appachan saw the terror on my face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I will always be with you, even after my death.’
The issue was this: I did not take the existence of the spirits of the dead all that seriously. For me, Appachan’s spirit was something embedded in his material body. I did believe in spirits of the departed, but I saw them more as comical beings riding around on spears. Not that I thought the spear made them necessarily cruel or animalistic – I just took it to be an instrument they used for navigation. Also, I could not imagine that the spirits of Mathiri valyammachi, Kuncheriya valyappachan and Anna valyamma would possess positive qualities like love or empathy. As far as I was concerned, they had always been comical beings. So how could Appachan be any different?
‘Listen, Maria,’ Appachan said, holding my hand, ‘I’m giving you an important responsibility. You must take me safely across to the Other World. You’ll see many of our people along the way but avoid them all. You should hand me over only to Mathiri valyammachi. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Appacha.’
‘Right, then. Hold on tight. Let’s begin our journey.’
I liked the dramatic way in which he behaved at the time of his death.
On the first day, I did not see anyone special. Perhaps I was still outside the gravitational field of the Other World. Or perhaps I was not yet fully prepared mentally to enter that world.
I was not able to eat anything properly because I was holding on to Appachan’s hand the entire time. The only consolation was the snacks Ammachi brought me from time to time. Ammachi was very practical and continued to take care of the affairs of the household, perhaps more efficiently than usual. The house was packed with relatives – Appachan and Ammachi’s children, their children’s children and so on – who had come to attend Appachan’s imminent death. Ammachi knew death was only an ordinary, if rare, event that occurred in every family. All that the rest of us could do was to ensure that the person about to die could do so in peace.
I was munching on a neyyappam held in my free hand when Appachan opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘Maria,’ he said in a serious voice, ‘try and do the job you’re given with a bit more integrity.’
I looked back and forth at Appachan and at the half-eaten neyyappam in my hand, not knowing what to do with it.
‘Well, finish it then. Otherwise, you won’t stop thinking about it.’
Those were Appachan’s last words.
I want to hug Mathiri valyammachi. But, unlike the mischievous person in my imagination, the person I see is a stern-faced old woman. She is not attractive to look at – I didn’t really know whether she had been an attractive person because I have never seen a picture of her. She looks human but she reminds me of the alien creature in the movie, ET, except that the ET alien had a soft face whereas hers looks parched and has an expression like a smoke-cloud.
I begin to tell her about Appachan.
‘I know,’ she says, interrupting me.
‘I’m your great-granddaughter, Geevarghese appachan’s granddaughter.’
‘Leave the thing here and go.’
‘What thing?’
‘The thing you brought.’
‘Aiyo! That’s not a thing, that’s Appachan!’
‘Yes, leave it here and go away.’
‘But Appachan is not a thing, Appachan is Appachan!’
‘When you’re in someone else’s place, learn to respect what they say. I told you to leave it there, so just do so. Understood?’
‘Yes. Here it is.’
I want to say ‘Yes, Valyammachi’, but refrain because I am afraid I might break some other rule.
The place is like a desert, windswept. Everything I see is two-dimensional, and the sights, well, images more like, appear and disappear at great speed only to be replaced by new ones.
‘Why is everything here two-dimensional?’ I ask Mathiri valyammachi, unable to contain my curiosity.
‘Everything you see here is real. Reality is not attractive. But three-dimensional things never have the clarity of the two-dimensional.’
That much is true. Everything has a rare clarity, but the excessive clarity also makes them seem artificial.
‘Mathiri valyammachi, were you like this before?’ My curiosity gets the better of me again.
‘I told you, the only thing that is real is what you see here,’ she says, looking at me with her smoky eyes. ‘What was before doesn’t matter.’
And, like smoke, she disappears. I feel sad thinking about Appachan. My poor Appachan who had believed that the Other World would be something super. I feel an even greater sadness for myself. This has been the greatest disappointment of my life.
All I can do is cry about the loss of a beautiful dream. By then, within me, Appachan has transformed into something like a sackcloth bundle, a ‘thing’ like Mathiri valyammachi said. I sit in that place that was like an overly exposed black-and-white movie and begin to cry. Suddenly, a strong smell reminiscent of death – sandalwood joss sticks and frankincense – assaults my nose. Usually, the smell makes me faint, and even in the middle of crying, I feel anxious and apologetic about fainting in that unfamiliar place.
O Lord, God of my salvation,
when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
I am like those who have no help,
like those forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
in regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call on you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise you?
Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
The first thing I heard was the sing-song voice of Sini – Mathachan valyappan’s granddaughter – reading the Bible. The atmosphere, smoky from the burning joss sticks, frankincense and candles, made me gag. People rushed around in the smoke as the candles burned with a vengeance amidst the huge, ornate metal crucifixes brought over from the church.
And at the centre of it all, Appachan lay under a white sheet with an expression like a smoke-cloud on his face. There were no more battles to be fought on his behalf. His life was over; so was mine.
‘This world is not real,’ I shouted at Ammachi. ‘And that real Other World? That’s a cursed place.’
I ran out to the yard and vomited until my soul was purged, and when it was done, I felt famished. I went into the kitchen and began stuffing my mouth with whatever I could find. Ammachi says it was in that moment that she understood Maria had lost her mind. In truth, though, if she had remembered I had not eaten anything – except for that godforsaken neyyappam – for the last two days, she would have found my gluttony natural. When I returned from the kitchen, Appachan was still there with his smoke-cloud expression. ‘Appacha…’ I called out and ran to him and embraced him like I was mad. But no one thought it strange because a certain level of drama is allowed when death occurs.
I never touched Appachan after that because he had become ‘it’, ‘the thing’ so far away that I could not touch or know any more. I sat down on one of the chairs placed around his body, a little away from everyone else. Ammachi was flanked by two elderly valyammas, women who had made a habit, or a ritual, out of sitting in the front row with members of the close family even when they were not related to the deceased. I saw the shadowy shapes of my mama and Appachan’s other children and grandchildren sitting or walking around. And suddenly, I caught sight of Anna valyamma, standing uncertainly behind Susanna aunty. As soon as she saw me, she came and sat down beside me.
‘Who’s that girl?’ she asked, pointing at Sini.
‘Sini,’ I replied. ‘Mathachan valyappan’s granddaughter.’
Neither of us remembered the fact that Anna valyamma had been dead for many years.
‘So, who are you?’ Anna valyamma asked me the question she used to ask me all the time when she was in the grip of dementia.
‘I’m Maria, Anna’s daughter.’
She seemed satisfied with my response because she did not tell me, like she used to in the time of dementia, ‘But I am Anna, and I don’t have any daughters.’
‘Poor Chettan,’ she said, instead. ‘He should go straight to heaven if you think about his life in this world, but who knows what happens after death!’
I realized that she thought the deceased was Appachan’s appachan, Kuncheriya valyappachan, and not Appachan. She was still in the grip of dementia!
‘Go and get me some kanjaalam from the kitchen,’ Anna valyamma – who was known to everyone as ‘Kanjaalam valyamma’ when she was alive – told me. I told her that as this was a house where a death had occurred, they wouldn’t be cooking rice, and so there wouldn’t be any ‘kanjaalam’ – which is what she called kanjivellam, water in which the rice was boiled – to be had. That upset her, and she said with unnecessary sternness, ‘Don’t you know I can’t live without kanjaalam?’
Ammachi came over and asked me who I was talking to. ‘Anna valyamma,’ I said, and Ammachi, ignoring that as the wife of the deceased she was supposed to sit right next to his body, took me to her room. Everyone seemed to be paying more attention to me than to Appachan who had just died. Ammachi tried her hardest to get me to sleep but I ignored her, and as soon as she left, I got out of the room and walked to the rubber plantation. I climbed to the top of the cashew nut tree where, as a young child, I used to sit looking out for Kuttappayi, my childhood heartthrob. People going by to pay their respects to Appachan looked over their shoulder at me in puzzlement.
All my life, I had never yearned for the touch of another person, but in that moment, I longed for someone to hold me close. I thought of Aravind.
IN ARAVIND’S OPINION, I BECAME MAD BECAUSE…
At the very first glance, I understood that Maria had lost what little grip on reality she had. She fell into my arms saying, ‘Aravind, we need to rescue Appachan from that awful Other World.’ I hugged her tightly, stroked her hair and kissed her. I was aware of the stares of the people around us, and yet I did everything I could to console her. My parents and my sister watched me and the mad woman who had come to me in the middle of the night. In the shock of the event, no one said anything.
Those were decisive moments as far as I was concerned, time when I had to convince myself and her, assuming she could still understand things, of the depth of my love for her. I told her everything I had refrained from saying when she could have understood me. I sat with her the whole night, holding her close, proving, in those moments, that I was worthy of her love.
MATHEW’S OPINION
The six-year-old picking up the piece of laddu I had thrown into the yard, dusting it up and putting it in her mouth, looking around, even in her greed, to see if anyone was watching her. She was proud, almost arrogant, yet at that moment her face was suffused with the pain of the self-inflicted indignity even though no one else saw her shame. She was my little sister. I am aware that you might find these words unnecessarily dramatic and emotional, but I swear to you that is how it looked. A pulsating ache that will last till the end of my life – that is how Maria was etched in my heart.
With that sight, all the hatred I had accumulated towards Maria turned into a moist feeling. I don’t know whether a handful of moments could change someone, especially a seven-year-old boy, so deeply, but that is what happened to me.
Maria was always an outsider in my home even though she was a member of our family just like the rest of us. Until she was around six, she grew up with Appachan in our grandparents’ house while Anne, Lisa and I remained at home with Papa and Mama. Her life with Appachan was without structure or discipline, the life of a vagabond. I couldn’t tell you for sure if her life turned out the way it did because she grew up with Appachan. Knowing Maria, she might have turned out this way even if she had lived with us instead.
After that incident, I began leaving snacks around the house for Maria. I would nibble at them a little and leave them where she would find them. Even today, she doesn’t take anything herself to eat from our house because, as far as she is concerned, Appachan’s house, not ours, is her house. I have never asked her about it.
Even after we grew up, the enmity between Lisa and Maria continued. She was not close to Anne either. I was away meanwhile, studying medicine. Still, I don’t think Maria ran away because she felt isolated at home; she would have done it anyway. But at that time, I was not interested in her affairs. I was consumed with the thrill of studying medicine. My obsession with medicine had started the day, when on a visit to Appachan’s house, I had borrowed Shajan chachan’s stethoscope and listened to the heartbeat of Maria’s dog, Chandippatti. I had even planned to kill Chandippatti to teach Maria a lesson. I took him a plate of rice and meat curry laced with Furadan – everyone used to call it ‘kurudaan’ in those days. But he kicked it over and gave me a stern look that almost made me pee in my pants. From then on, every time he saw me, Chandippatti looked at me sideways as though warning me to behave. Everyone was sceptical about Maria’s claim that Chandippatti was a special dog, but I think she might have been right. I am a doctor, I know, who should believe only in science. Still…
When I heard about Maria’s marriage, I was entrapped in love myself, and other than feeling mildly surprised, I had no time for anything else. I did feel, also, slighted by the fact that Maria chose not to tell me about it. Knowing her, I should have forgiven her…
IN MY DOCTOR’S OPINION, I BECAME MAD BECAUSE…
The doctor gave his opinion to Aravind. On a rainless yet damp evening, Aravind came to the doctor, steeped in so much sorrow that he looked like a patient himself.
Aravind did not visit Maria. He could not bring himself to see Maria when she was in a state where she did not recognize him. After Maria was hospitalized, he went far away from the place, but no matter how far he went, his heart throbbed, ached. Hari was dead, Vinayakan had lost his mind, and Maria had lost hers. And Aravind with this love that he couldn’t make sense of … Aravind who had become isolated … He felt that even the doctor of minds who sat in front of him could not understand him.
The doctor, despite having lived abroad for several years amassing degrees, spoke in a proper Thodupuzha dialect, making Aravind wonder whether he was even a real doctor. ‘Then again, he is a mad people’s doctor,’ he said to himself.
‘They brought her here because she had given up speaking,’ the doctor told Aravind. ‘No matter how much we tried, she didn’t speak for years. Then, one day, Chinnamma goes to give her food. “Listen,” she says to Chinnamma, “I didn’t speak because I didn’t want to, not because I couldn’t.” And after a pause, she said, “Like Ammini.”’
The doctor asked Aravind who Ammini was. Aravind thought of her, and how she had stopped speaking one day and started speaking again another day much later. And yet, he said, ‘I have no idea.’
‘Then she began to write,’ the doctor continued. ‘Like she was possessed by some kind of madness! Strange thing to say, right? How else would mad people write! Anyway, I went to see her on my rounds one day, and she held on to my hand and cried for almost an hour. Then suddenly she stopped, just like that, like it had been switched off. And with no sign of sadness, in a neutral voice, she spoke: “Yesterday an elephant died under my foot. It was mashed up, and pus oozed from it. The sad thing is that it was the elephant I had brought up with such good care…”
‘I’ll be honest. I almost believed her at first, you know. Like it had died trampled underfoot like a snail or a beetle. I even felt like getting her another elephant. After Maria became normal, I told her this elephant story. She listened to it, and in the same neutral voice, she said: “It wasn’t like a snail or a beetle. The mashed-up elephant was more like a mussel that oozed pus.”
‘What I think is that Maria will always be like she is, must have always been like she is.’
For Aravind, Maria was a picture he wanted to draw but never could.
‘Doctor, what you said about her writing … where is it now?’ he asked instead.
‘Ah, yes. I went to her room one day and the dustbin was overflowing with papers. I asked her what they were, and she said they were all wastepaper. A psychiatrist’s curiosity perhaps, I picked them up and brought them here.’
As he spoke, the doctor got up and opened an almirah, took out a large, untidy pile of paper, and handed it to Aravind.