The fact is that the land where Maria was born was itself complicated. Complicated because it had no complex problems – no major natural disasters, or wars, or even epidemics. Having lived in such an atmosphere for generations, Maria’s compatriots had a light-hearted attitude towards life. Politics and illicit sexual relationships were their favourite topics of discussion.
They thought of themselves as a people with keen political awareness. For example, those who involved themselves in the illegal business of dredging sand from riverbeds went to their jobs every day after reading all about its detrimental consequences in the morning’s newspapers. And those in the granite quarrying business knew very well that levelling hills and blasting stones out of the earth destroyed not only the hills but the earth itself. The most important national festival of the land was the elections.
They discussed, astutely taking different sides of the argument, the military coup that happened in some faraway country they had not even heard of before. And as democracy progressed without major hitches in their own land, they craved the refreshing feel of autocracy.
They knew exactly who among their leaders were corrupt or implicated in sexual scandals, and yet these leaders held on to high positions in society with clear popular support. People debated these issues in toddy shops, chai shops and TV panel-shows.
For Maria’s compatriots, politics was limited to those subjects in which politicians got involved. The TV channels in the land reported even the minor altercations – there were no major altercations to report – between the police and the students as ‘Breaking News’. All occasions, including chance vehicle accidents, were celebrated onscreen.
They were great patriots. They stood at attention whenever they heard the national anthem. On Independence Day and on Republic Day, they decorated their vehicles with the national flag and watched the film Gandhi as though it was an age-old ritual.
Their children spoke English as though it was their mother tongue, and their parents listened, their skin covered in joyous goosebumps. They swallowed English medicines by the handful even when they had the common cold, and boasted that their quality of life was equal to that in America.
There was something else beyond all this that made them unique. In the elections that followed the Emergency, when the entire nation voted against the political party and its leader who had dragged the country through unspeakable horrors, this land was the only one that gave them a roaring victory.
In the map of the world, this land is known as Kerala.
It is where Maria was born.