Kottarathil Veedu, Its Inhabitants and Little Maria
Little Maria and her dog, Chandippatti, were playing in the front yard of Kottarathil Veedu, the house that belonged to Geevarghese. It was with Geevarghese, Maria’s appachan, her mother’s father, that Maria lived during the first few years of her childhood. A heated argument progressed on the veranda between Sheena aunty and Thomachan chachan, her mother’s siblings. Two more of her mother’s siblings lived in Kottarathil Veedu – Neena aunty whom Maria disliked intensely, and Shajan chachan who was studying medicine in Thiruvananthapuram. The rest had spread out to different parts of the world after their marriage or because of work. The argument between Sheena and Thomachan was about the Emergency. Going against the traditional politics of Kottarathil Veedu, Sheena, who believed in communism, aimed bitter criticism against the Emergency, while Thomachan, a staunch Congress man, obviously defended it. His main point was that there was law and order in the country. Sheena countered it by saying that since pretty much everyone was imprisoned, law and order was only natural.
As she played, Little Maria had one ear tuned towards the argument. ‘Thomachan chachan knows many things, but he is not as smart as Sheena aunty,’ Maria thought. ‘Besides, it’s Sheena aunty who brings me snacks every day. So, what she says is right.’
‘Who is that sitting on my chair?’
Little Maria did not have to turn around and look to know what might have happened. In the heat of the argument, Thomachan chachan had inadvertently sat down on Appachan’s easy chair.
‘Get out of my sight, both of you! Or I’ll declare emergency right here.’
Geevarghese loved the word ‘emergency’ and used it willy-nilly even after the Emergency was over.
‘Appacha, why do you scare them so?’ Little Maria asked. ‘They do make too much noise sometimes, but do you have to scold them?’
Two people watched all this: Geevarghese’s father Kuncheriya who sat on the other easy chair in the veranda, and Anna on the swing Geevarghese had hung for Maria from a branch of the kotta mango tree. Maria’s swing was now Anna’s swing. But, despite her annoyance, Maria did not do anything about it because upsetting Anna would apparently worsen her dementia which was already in a serious state. Appachan said that we should treat those with dementia as though they were children. And because of it, eighty-year-old Anna usurped from five-year-old Maria all the attention, consideration, and more importantly, the snacks that should rightfully belong to the youngest in the family. Anna was a distant relative and had come to Kottarathil Veedu at a young age because of the poor financial circumstances of her own family.
In those days, Anna was famous as ‘Kanjaalam valyamma’ all around the neighbourhood. At every opportunity, she sneaked into the neighbouring houses begging for kanjaalam. She would drink it right then and there, and if she could not finish it, she would bring it back home in a bottle or a dish to have with her meals. Once, unable to stand the embarrassment, Mariyamma – Geevarghese’s wife and Maria’s grandmother whom she called Ammachi – locked her up in a room, but she had to let her out after Geevarghese made an almighty ruckus. Not satisfied, Geevarghese, in an inebriated state, made Mariyamma apologize to Anna.
Little Maria pretended not to hear Mariyamma calling her, repeatedly, to get ready for school. She hated the school where Devaki teacher waited for her with the cane. One wrong answer and Maria would be rewarded with the bitter medicine of the cane. Maria did not care about right or wrong answers, or why there were so many questions to be answered, and wondered where Devaki teacher found them. Besides, Devaki teacher did not let Chandippatti sit with Maria in the classroom, so he ran around in the school ground chasing after crows and cats until the school let out. Then, he snapped at a couple of girls and tore their skirts, and Devaki teacher banished him from the school compound. The first girl whose skirt Chandi took a bite of was Geetha, who had refused to share roasted tamarind seeds with Maria. The girl was so frightened, she ran away! That evening, Maria asked Chandippatti, ‘Why did you tear her skirt?’ Chandi somersaulted on the ground and said, ‘That girl is so full of herself!’ The second skirt Chandippatti tore into tatters belonged to Rani Padmini, the girl who always topped Maria’s class, the daughter of Rathnamma teacher who taught Class 4. And with that, Chandi was banished from the school yard. That evening, too, Maria asked him, ‘Why did you take a bite of Rani Padmini’s skirt?’ Chandi rolled over in the dirt and said, ‘Oh, that girl is so full of herself!’ The only thing that was good about the school compared to the house was that Anna valyamma wasn’t there to annoy her.
Maria found school traumatic because she could not understand the psychology behind competitions, exams, being at the top of the class, or why some people were considered smart just because they knew the answers to specific questions asked at specific times. Did knowing the answers to questions make someone smart? But this was a question that only applied to others, as far as Maria was concerned. She had never considered herself to be smart, ever.
Maria had an aluminium box to take her books to school, and a small lunchbox made of steel. Its lid was tight, and Maria could never get it open. Sukesan opened it for her, banging it on the floor at a particular angle. And when opened, there would be rice topped with fried fish, chammanthi and achinga mezhukkupuratti that Ammachi had prepared. Sukesan would look at it, swallow his saliva, and go off to eat the upma, the free meal served up in the school kitchen. Maria, meanwhile, wanted to eat the upma but Mariyamma did not let her, saying that it was only for children from families that could not afford square meals. But Maria found a way around her objections. One day, when Sukesan opened her lunchbox for her and stood salivating over the mutta porichathu – eggs scrambled with onions and green chillies – inside, she told him: ‘From now on, you eat my lunch and give me your upma.’ The arrangement lasted until Maria was sent back to her parents’ home.
While Maria and Sukesan found this arrangement highly satisfactory, there was someone who was most upset by it – Chandippatti. It was he who polished off her lunch after Maria dejectedly moved it around in the box for a bit. But ever since the school-upma-for-home-cooked-meal barter system was put in place, all he could do was watch, as his mouth watered, Sukesan gobble up the rice with the fried fish or the mutta porichathu. Chandippatti tried to tell Mariyamma about this development, but every time he opened his mouth, Mariyamma shouted, ‘Scram, you dirty son of a bitch,’ at him and pelted him with whatever she could lay her hands on. Mariyamma could not stand the sight of Chandippatti.
Something had happened a couple of years ago. One day, Kottarathil Veedu was burgled. The burglar was a dookly local thief who, in actual fact, was not really in the mood to attempt a burglary on that scorching afternoon. It was just that the quietness surrounding the house as everyone had their siesta and the front door that was left open were too much of a temptation. With the circumstances highly conducive, he went about his work in a relaxed manner.
Soon, as he rummaged through the house, he felt that someone was watching him. He tried to disregard the feeling at first, but when it became intense, he turned, and there was a dog watching his every move carefully! The thief, cowardly by nature, assumed that his luck was up and stood perfectly still as he realized he did not have even a penknife to defend himself with, cursing himself for being tempted to enter the house while on his way to the market to buy some tapioca. But the dog said nothing! He just stood there looking unblinkingly at the burglar. Never in his life had the burglar come across such a weird, silent dog. Anyway, the man continued with his task, and the dog followed him as though to keep tabs on the total loss of property. Finally, the burglar left, and as soon as he stepped outside the front gate, the dog began barking loudly. Spooked by the peculiar dog, the burglar ran away as swiftly as he could.
Later, Maria asked Chandippatti, ‘Why didn’t you bark at the thief?’
‘The rule is that we should bark at strangers,’ Chandippatti responded. ‘He is not a stranger. I see him every day. I know him well.’
After this incident, Geevarghese decided that the house needed a better guard dog, one that was smarter and more capable than Chandippatti. One day, he came home leading a dog that looked as ferocious as Hidumban from the Mahabharatham. Hidumban announced his ferociousness by barking all along the way, but as soon as he was at the front gate of Kottarathil Veedu, Chandippatti confronted him. Geevarghese would describe what transpired after thus:
‘Chandi just stood there staring into Hidumban’s eyes, and Hidumban began to slink back slowly and hid behind me. Next thing you know, the dog broke free of the leash and took off. No one has seen him since! Chandippatti barked and lunged at me for a while. I was so shocked I didn’t say anything!’
‘Why did you bark at Appachan?’ Maria asked Chandippatti.
‘As long as I live, the only dog in this house will be me,’ Chandippatti told her. ‘I was just letting him know that.’
That, in essence, was Chandippatti. He did not bark at the eagles who snatched the chickens or at the strangers who entered the compound. He only barked when he felt like it, and then he barked to his heart’s content.
Finally, fed up with Chandippatti’s arrogant self-regard, Mariyamma decided to banish him. One day, when the jeep taking rubber sheets to the market set out from Kottarathil Veedu, Mariyamma loaded Chandippatti in the back. She was worried that he would bark and alert Maria, but Chandippatti climbed in willingly and silently.
‘Left from the Kottarathil compound, and then right at the junction. Down the road to the Church of Geevarghese Sahada. Right turn. Landmarks on the road: a house with a cement boat on top of it, a poster of the film Santha Oru Devatha, a toddy shop. Well, can’t depend on the toddy shop because they are everywhere. Past the side of the toddy shop, a veterinary hospital and a house with a red jeep parked in the yard. Left turn, and onwards to the signboard ‘Jumbo Circus’. Straight down the road, and there’s the market.’
When they got to the market, the driver quickly let Chandippatti out of the jeep and disappeared.
On seeing a strange new dog in the area, the market dogs came ready to attack, but they were humbled before Chandippatti’s preternatural intelligence. Soon, Chandippatti became the unquestioned leader of all the dogs in the area. They took him offerings of the tastiest meal to be had – meat, rotten to perfection! Desperate to bear his children, local bitches scurried after him, and Chandippatti established a queue system to deal with the crowd. But when those who had their turn began to wait at the back of the queue hoping for a second turn, Chandippatti put an end to the entire enterprise.
Before long, Chandippatti’s gang of mongrels became the stuff of nightmares for all creatures, from moths to humans, in and around the market area. Intrigued by the gang, a white sahib followed them everywhere. Eventually, he secured a scholarship for the study of Indian street dogs and became well known through his participation on TV panel-shows.
One time, when the prime minister made a visit, the notorious gang took over the meeting ground. The meeting had to be abandoned and the prime minister moved to a safe location under strict security measures. Another time, a week-long tourism festival had to be cancelled after the gang defecated all along the royal street where it was to take place and covered it with their appi. People in Kottarathil Veedu and their neighbours read about these incidents in the newspapers, but it never occurred to them that it was their very own Chandippatti who was behind all these shenanigans.
Finally, the city corporation had to do something, and dog catchers began to rush hither and thither in their vehicles. As the atmosphere turned tense, Chandippatti recalled Kottarathil Veedu and the landmarks that would help him find his way back.
When he got to Jumbo Circus, Chandippatti made new friends: a lion who claimed to be the king of the forest even though he had never seen a forest; an intelligent parrot who had no inkling of his own intelligence; a dog of a foreign breed who, although snooty at first, soon accepted Chandippatti’s dominance; a tiger who promised to visit Chandippatti at Kottarathil Veedu soon…
As he retraced his way home, Chandippatti was confused at times. Having been driven elsewhere by its owner, the red jeep was not where it was supposed to be, and when it dawned on him that a jeep, after all, was a thing that was supposed to move around, Chandippatti was embarrassed at his foolishness. The fact that the Santha Oru Devatha film poster had been replaced with one for Shalini Ente Koottukaari only added to his confusion.
Anyway, the Chandippatti who returned to Kottarathil Veedu was someone who could run on his hind legs, walk steadily backwards, kick a football with his fore legs, and dance the twist shaking his bum like the heroines in Hindi films.
Maria, ecstatic that Chandippatti had returned, gave him a plateful of chicken curry but he turned his nose up at it. He told her about the tasty meat he used to feast on at the market. He also told her about the imminent visit of the tiger, and Maria waited eagerly for the day until, as time passed, she forgot all about it. Mariyamma’s hatred for Chandippatti had only increased, but she did not try to banish him again.
With the exception of Maria, everyone in Kottarathil Veedu thought of Geevarghese as a terrible person. For Sheena, Thomachan and Maria’s mama, Anna, the biggest sorrow of their lives was that he was their father. Geevarghese spent most of his time in the toddy shop, making everyone wonder how a man born into such a good family had ended up like that. But outside of his home, Geevarghese was a happy, jolly man. ‘I don’t know, the home atmosphere and I don’t seem to agree with each other,’ he would say, and by ‘home’ he meant not just his own home but homes in general.
So, these were Little Maria’s friends and companions: a grandfather, Geevarghese, who spent most of his time in toddy shops and gallivanting around the village, taking his granddaughter along; a great-grandfather, Kuncheriya valyappachan, who was over ninety years old and at death’s door; a great aunt, Anna valyamma, who was in the grip of dementia; an ancestor, Chirammel Kathanar, who was a priest and had died generations ago; other dead family members, including Mathiri valyammachi, from the stories her grandfather told her; and Chandippatti, a dog who philosophized non-stop. Was it any wonder that Maria turned out the way she did!
This did not mean that there were no normal people in Kottarathil Veedu. It would be impossible to find another person as normal as Mariyamma, her grandmother, in the whole wide world. The only abnormal thing Mariyamma had ever done was to laugh uncontrollably, for almost an hour, when her mother-in-law had once asked her what she was going to cook for the evening meal. That was the one hour when Geevarghese felt the deepest love for her, the one hour that he remembered nostalgically when he thought of their whole life together.
Then there was Sheena. A history teacher and a staunch supporter of communism, her biggest desire was to become a Naxalite. But, realizing that her father would break her legs if she became one, she had nipped that desire in the bud. She was in love with a colleague at the college where she taught. Knowing that ‘love’ was another thing that would prompt her father to break her legs, she had tried her hardest to nip that, too, in the bud. But, as we all know, this was not an easy task. Often, in the night, Sheena hugged Maria and sobbed over the destiny of her love. She was a college teacher, granted, but she had a tender heart. She was of the acceptable age for marriage. In those days, it was hard enough finding a husband for a working woman with a bit of education, so imagine finding one for someone who had an MA degree and taught in a college! And when they did find prospective matches after searching all over the place, Sheena found some random reason to send them packing. Mariyamma was a bundle of worries about this, especially as her drunkard of a husband couldn’t be bothered.
Finally, when a proposal came from a man named Mathayi, try as she might, Sheena could not find an excuse to refuse him. He, too, had an MA degree and worked as a manager in a public sector bank. He was an only son from an enormously wealthy family. When it looked as though the marriage might go ahead, Sheena presented her objection before Mariyamma: she could not even entertain the thought of marrying someone whose name was Mathayi. Mariyamma responded with a resounding slap on her cheek which sent Sheena reeling to the floor, but she held her ground – she would not marry a man named Mathayi.
Mathayi had fallen for Sheena from the moment he set eyes on her, and so was deeply hurt by her rejection. And when the marriage broker told him the reason, he fell into a depression. In the end, he found some solace by formally changing his name from Mathayi to the more fashionable Mathew. But you know how our people are … they just continued calling him Mathayi.
Jomon, Sheena’s lover, was, all things considered, a good match for her. He taught in the same college, and although not from a family as prominent or wealthy as Kottarathil Veedu, he too was a Syrian Christian. And since he had a good job, his family’s financial status was not that important. Above all, he had a name that was fashionable in those days. There was the fact that he was fifteen years older than Sheena, but if she did not find that to be a problem, why should it worry anyone else?
When Sheena found a way to scupper the match with Mathayi, Geevarghese got involved. ‘Enough of your college and teaching,’ he said, and locked her up in a room. One week later, Jomon came to Kottarathil Veedu and asked Geevarghese for Sheena’s hand in marriage. Geevarghese responded by calling him all kinds of names, but Jomon told him, calmly and quietly, that he would go to the police and file a habeas corpus petition. That scared Geevarghese because, like everyone else in the country, he too was afraid of the police ever since the Emergency. And on top of that, the threat of a court case and words like ‘habeas corpus’! Even after they got married, the thought of ‘habeas corpus’ would make Geevarghese anxious whenever he was in Jomon’s presence. But those were things that would happen after Maria left Kottarathil Veedu.
The other inhabitant of Kottarathil Veedu who was entirely normal was the youngest of Geevarghese and Mariyamma’s children, Shajan – Little Maria’s Shajan chachan – who was studying medicine. When he came home on holidays, Maria would take his stethoscope and run to Chandippatti. ‘Take a deep breath,’ she would say to him. This was one of Chandippatti’s favourite games. Shajan chachan, Maria and Chandippatti would get into the Impala car and go for a drive. Shajan chachan would take them to Swamy’s bakery in the city and buy Joy ice cream for Maria and Parle Gluco biscuits for Chandippatti. Chandi tried telling him several times that he would rather have the ice cream, but for some reason Shajan never understood. Like Maria, Chandi too called him Shajan chachan.
By the time Maria grew up, Joy ice cream had almost disappeared. Once, when she was gripped by a desire to eat it, Aravind travelled all over the district looking for a shop that stocked it. And when he finally found a place, poor Aravind ordered all the flavours. Watching Maria’s joy, he felt that if he died right there and then, he would die contented.
‘This doesn’t taste as good as it used to,’ Maria said after eating a couple of spoons. ‘Come, let’s go.’
That was the day Aravind named her the ‘Cat with the Bad Attitude’.
The Cat with the Bad Attitude was a character from a Russian folk tale. A little girl drew a picture of a cat. A single cat, all on its own.
‘I’ll need a house to live in, won’t I?’ the cat asked the girl.
A fair question, the girl felt, so she drew a house.
‘What about a garden for me to play in?’ asked the cat.
The girl drew a garden.
‘And a chair for me to curl up and sleep in?’
The girl drew a chair.
‘A fire to keep me warm?’
The girl drew a hearth and a fire.
‘And birds and butterflies to chase in the garden?’
By now, the girl was beginning to get pissed off, but she drew them anyway. And just as she finished, out came the next demand.
‘What about a window for me to come and go?’
Cursing herself for drawing the cat in the first place, the girl drew a window.
‘I don’t like this house,’ said the cat, and walked out through the window.
That was the story of the Cat with the Bad Attitude.
Even as a student, when Shajan was home for vacation, people came to Kottarathil Veedu with all kinds of ailments. He treated most of them, sending only the ones he could not deal with to the hospital in the city. When he treated his patients, Little Maria stood by as his helper, and Chandippatti as her helper. During one such vacation time, Sumathi brought her son, Kuttappayi, who was burning up with fever, to Shajan. When Shajan went to get the medicine, Little Maria lay down next to the boy and hugged his hot body tightly. Poor Kuttappayi … in an almost unconscious state with the fever, he did not even realize that he was experiencing the first embrace of love in his life.
You know there are some people who experience the pain of those around them intensely? Shajan was one of them. After he finished his studies, Shajan took a job at a charitable hospital in one of the most deprived areas in the district. He married a woman from a poor family, not out of love but with the sole purpose of helping her into a better life. Geevarghese fell out with him because of this decision. Of all his twelve children, Shajan was the only one Geevarghese had a special bond with. Shajan’s empathy towards his fellow human beings who were less fortunate touched him. Shajan, too, was very fond of his father despite his waywardness and his drinking habit. The marriage severed this bond. Geevarghese ordered him to leave the house if he wished to do as he pleased, and Shajan retorted that he would never come back to Kottarathil Veedu. Still, when it was time to divide the house and the property between his offspring, Geevarghese followed custom and set aside Kottarathil Veedu for his youngest son, Shajan.
It was an old Syrian Christian house, built by Mathu, the father of Geevarghese’s father Kuncheriya, and rebuilt later by Kuncheriya. Every room in the house had bedsteads and tables and almirahs with intricate carvings – furniture that is known these days as ‘antique’. The ninety-year-old Kuncheriya continued to live amidst them as though he was another antique piece.
Even at that age, Kuncheriya was in good condition. His breakfast consisted of five or six appams or one and a half lengths of puttu or a couple of plates of pidi with a big plate of meat curry, accompanied by a glass of milk and a steamed ethappazham. He woke up early to do his morning rituals. Kuncheriya did not go to the toilet; he ‘went out’. There were several toilets in the house, but Kuncheriya could accomplish his deed only if he sat out in the open. In any case, most people did that in those days. Kuncheriya hated bathing and did not understand why people had a bath every day; he was convinced he was quite clean without it. Whenever he complained about his son’s unclean soul, Geevarghese would retaliate: ‘That is as may be, but you stink!’
Kuncheriya spent the time between his morning and midday meals sitting on an easy chair, reading the Bible and looking over the next month’s projected income. At 10 a.m., Anna would bring him another steamed ethappazham and a glass of coffee, made only with milk and no water, the one task she did without fail despite the dementia that affected her memory. For his lunch, Kuncheriya would have two plates of rice with roasted buffalo meat, chicken curry, fried fish and fish koottan, rounding off the meal with a few small bananas.
‘The old man won’t die until he attends his grandchildren’s funerals,’ Geevarghese would tell Maria. ‘And he’ll walk all the way to the graveyard!’
Geevarghese’s unchristian ways enraged Kuncheriya. ‘The only consolation I have is that I won’t have to see this bastard after I die,’ he would say. ‘Hell is where he’s headed.’ Despite his advanced age, it was Kuncheriya who controlled the finances of the household, denying Geevarghese free access to money to squander and to spend in the toddy shops. So, at the age of sixty-six, he still stole from his father’s money box every time he had a chance.
‘I am really against stealing,’ Geevarghese told Maria, ‘but I don’t have any other option.’
And to declare her solidarity with her grandfather, Maria too began stealing until Neena caught her red-handed.
‘Get yourself a special coffin made,’ Geevarghese told Kuncheriya, fed up. ‘One with pockets to take all your money with you.’
‘I am not taking it with me, but I won’t give a single paisa to you,’ Kuncheriya retorted. ‘When I get to heaven, I have Karthaveeshomishiha to take care of my every need.’
Maria, having overheard the conversation, dreamt of Karthav Eesho Mishiha taking Kuncheriya a glass of lemonade on a tray and standing around chatting with him as he drank it.
Whenever the argument between father and son got serious, Geevarghese would command Kuncheriya to leave the house. Sometimes, Kuncheriya took it as a challenge and went to his daughter’s house nearby. At other times, he ignored Geevarghese, saying that the house was rightfully his and that it was Geevarghese who must leave. In return, Geevarghese called his father all the obscene words he knew, and Kuncheriya responded in kind, but anyone listening to the exchange would think he was reading from the Bible.
If, as a result of the argument, Kuncheriya went to his daughter’s house, it only riled up Geevarghese further. Within a couple of days, he would set out to bring his father back, and Kuncheriya would follow him home silently. And if his son did not come to fetch him, Kuncheriya would return anyway after a couple of days, and quietly sit on an easy chair on the veranda while Geevarghese sat on the other easy chair as though nothing important had happened.
As time passed, Geevarghese realized that his father was never going to loosen his grip on the family wealth, and he began to think that his father would outlive him. So, with the express purpose of making some money for his everyday expenses, he opened a miscellaneous store at the junction.
‘No one from this family will become a shopkeeper,’ Kuncheriya roared, banging his walking stick on the ground. ‘That too a useless shop like this!’
In truth, the income from the shop was barely enough for Geevarghese’s needs, but he liked his new enterprise. ‘It’s good to be engaged in something,’ he told Maria. The Parry’s sweet in its green wrapper and the Nutrine in its orange wrapper, available only in Geevarghese’s shop, were highly tempting for the local children. But since he entertained only ready-cash transactions, and the children usually had not a single paisa in their pockets, they kept their distance and continued enjoying the chakkaramittayi and teeth-shattering kattimittayi that could be bought in other shops for four cashew nuts or six areca nuts. Maria was the chief consumer of the sweets and snacks in Geevarghese’s shop. She bought the sweets, took out the exact amount from the cash box and gave it to Geevarghese, and he took the money from her and put it back in the cash box.
Too busy with his other concerns, Geevarghese soon appointed a helper at the shop. ‘That bastard Josootty is eating us out of house and home,’ bellowed Kuncheriya.
The primary audience for Kuncheriya’s complaints was Mariyamma. She was fifteen years old when she had come to Kottarathil Veedu as Geevarghese’s bride. In the long years of marriage that followed, she gave birth to fifteen children. Other than the two who had died as infants, and a son who everyone had expected would grow up to be a saint but was called back by the Lord at the age of twelve, the rest of her children led good lives in this world.
Many years later, Maria would ask Mariyamma: ‘Ammachi, how is it possible to give birth to so many children? Could you not have stopped and thought about it for a minute?’
‘This is not something you do after thinking about it,’ Mariyamma would reply, her voice replete with resentment and anger against the whole world. ‘Besides, who has the time to think in the middle of all these childbirths?’
Having been born into a God-fearing Christian family, Mariyamma was not able to adjust to married life even after years had passed. She thought initially that Geevarghese was in the grip of Satan, but eventually came to wonder whether he was Satan himself. Geevarghese was who he was even as a young lad, but his mother, Shoshamma, blamed Mariyamma for his bad behaviour, an accusation that led to a pitched battle between the two that lasted until Shoshamma’s death.
Speaking of Shoshamma’s death … that was a funny incident. She and Anna had just returned from the funeral of the priest, Thomman Kathanar.
‘As God is my witness … died just like that, didn’t he, for no reason at all? Anna, you remember, even yesterday he conducted the Qurbana as usual. Who’d have thought he’d go like this!’
‘That’s just how it is, Chedathi. Some people don’t need any reason to leave this world. Karthav decides it is time, and that’s that! Mattathil Thankamma … now, didn’t she go just like that as she was laughing at something? Didn’t even have the time to finish laughing! You remember.’
‘Still. To die so suddenly like that … Fetch me a glass of kanjivellam, Anna. I’m very tired from walking all that way.’
Shoshamma sat down on a chair, and by the time Anna came back with the kanjivellam, she was dead.
Mariyamma’s only solace in her husband’s house was Kuncheriya. He worshipped the daughter-in-law who had entered his house all those years ago with a face that resembled the Virgin Mother and a picture of Geevarghese Sahada, St George the Martyr, who was the patron saint of the land.
Shoshamma’s object of worship was her son, Geevarghese.
‘Granted he is a bit mischievous, but look at that face! Such divinity! Our Karthaveeshomishiha knew exactly what He was doing when He made him mischievous, because otherwise our one and only son would have gone off to become a great saint!’
And when he stole money from Kuncheriya, she said, ‘He is just having a bit of fun!’
‘Children turn out bad because of their mothers,’ Geevarghese would tell Maria many years later. ‘It’s the way of the world.’
Mariyamma’s culinary skills were as famous as her beauty, but Geevarghese ate at home only on rare occasions. ‘I don’t know what it is,’ he would say, ‘but the food at home does not seem to agree with me.’ Here too, by ‘home’ he meant not just his home but the idea of home itself. Be that as it may, the person who got the opportunity to enjoy Mariyamma’s culinary skills and her beauty was Mathachan, the son of Kuncheriya’s dead younger brother, Paulo.
When he sat down at the table and Mariyamma served him pidi and meat curry, Mathachan considered himself to be a lucky man. Much luckier than Geevarghese.
‘Do you know the secret behind tasty food?’ he would ask Mariyamma, making sure that no one else was around. ‘It’s prepared with an added ingredient – love.’
He would steal a glance at her, hoping to see the beautiful smile on her beautiful face. Was there a hidden meaning behind that smile? He would never know. But he found consolation in the fact that the smile was absent when Geevarghese was around. He did not know what to call the feeling he had for Mariyamma. The phrase ‘platonic love’ was not in circulation in those days.
Within the first year of their marriage, Mariyamma gave birth to their first child. Mariyamma’s relatives said that the infant looked like her while Geevarghese’s relatives insisted that she looked like him. Geevarghese was amazed at the fact that he felt no special emotion when he looked at the child, his own flesh and blood. And when everyone exclaimed over the child’s beauty, he scrutinized it from various angles but failed to see what they saw. Mariyamma was shocked to realize that Geevarghese had no tender feeling even towards his own child. When she was pregnant, she had secretly nursed the hope that the child they had created together would help seal some sort of bond between them. Eventually, she resigned herself to accepting the fact that her husband was an animal devoid of humanly emotions.
The disinterest he felt for his firstborn did not dissuade Geevarghese from making more babies with Mariyamma. ‘Whether I like it or not, they keep on coming anyway,’ he said.
‘Forget about him, my dear,’ Kuncheriya told Mariyamma. ‘You must make sure you give them their father’s love too.’
Geevarghese led a busy life, so it was Kuncheriya who took on the responsibility of registering the children, as they came of age, at the school, paid their fees, and placed his signature – a little cross enclosed in a circle – on the necessary documents. It was only after their firstborn, Susanna, finished Class 10 that Geevarghese realized his daughter was not named Susanna Geevarghese as was the custom but Susanna Kuncheriya. A man like Geevarghese should not have been affected by this fact, but he was upset. ‘Bastard got me!’ he said, gazing at his father innocently munching on an appam.
And not just the one time! Susanna Kuncheriya, Zakariya Kuncheriya, Anna Kuncheriya, John Kuncheriya, Paul Kuncheriya, Mary Kuncheriya, Daisy Kuncheriya, Babu Kuncheriya, Ramani Kuncheriya, Sheena Kuncheriya, Thomas Kuncheriya, Neena Kuncheriya – he got him twelve times! As Geevarghese stood there, hurt and with overflowing eyes, he glanced outside and saw his youngest son, two and a half years old, playing in the yard. He grabbed him, carried him off to the school and got him registered. In those days, one did not have to wait till the month of June for registering new students at the school. The child wailed loudly as his father was a stranger to him. Still, because of this reflex action, Geevarghese’s youngest son Shajan – the one who would become a doctor – became Shajan Geevarghese.
Kuncheriya had to resort to these underhand tactics to express his anger towards Geevarghese.
‘Explain this to me, Anna. I don’t understand why he is so angry at my son,’ Shoshamma said. ‘My boy doesn’t come home often because of her, Mariyamma. He never used to drink this much before he was married, don’t you remember?’
‘Of course, I do,’ Anna replied between mouthfuls of puttu and fish curry. ‘I think Geevarghese is the best and most well behaved of all the young men in this area. Well, he does like to roam around, but young men should do that. Not sit in the kitchen all the time like Mathachan. And that too, in someone else’s kitchen!’
‘Oh, Anna! Mathachan and Mariyamma – do they have to spend so much time together? What will people say? I am worried that the servants have already started whispering about it.’
‘Well … I’m not sure it’s the fault of anyone in particular, Chedathi,’ Anna said. ‘Geevarghese who should be at home is always out, and Mathachan who should be out is always in. That’s the problem.’
Anna was from a distant, impoverished branch of the Kottarathil family, and had come to live in Kottarathil Veedu even before Shoshamma married Kuncheriya. It was Kuncheriya’s mother Mathiri – famous all around as Mathiri the Proclaimer – who gave Anna asylum in Kottarathil Veedu. She grew up alongside Kuncheriya and Paulo, happily enjoying her life, until Kuncheriya got married and Shoshamma arrived as his bride. Anna thought of herself as a member of the family, but Shoshamma corrected her every time this happened – ‘Someone who looks after the household, that is all,’ she would remind Anna whenever she had a chance. So, it was among the servants and the workers in the orchards that Anna used her position and power as a member of the family.
‘Don’t you servants concern yourself with what’s happening in the household,’ Anna would declare. ‘We, the family members, are here to take care of that, and if any of you outsiders have anything to say, I will not tolerate it.’
Years later, when Mariyamma watched her mega serials on TV, Geevarghese would remember Anna. All mega serials began with an Anna.
What Anna felt for Shoshamma was jealousy combined with hatred. The big house … the endless wealth … the numerous servants … the husband who gave her all this … Anna hated Shoshamma for it all. It would be so nice to have a good husband, and she sighed over it. She did not sigh over the house, the wealth or the servants, because all of that came with the husband. When she thought of her hatred for Shoshamma, who was also her benefactor, she consoled herself, saying, ‘Shoshamma chedathi is not an easy person to love.’ For her own survival, she pretended to love Shoshamma deeply, and as time passed, she was unsure what she felt towards Shoshamma.
As a young woman, Anna had been stunningly beautiful. Wasted beauty, according to Geevarghese. Anna never knew a man but, right from her youth, she knew her own body. She partook in its pleasures, immersed herself in its possibilities, with a passion that a man could never have satisfied. For Anna, her body was an instrument that would take her to the heights of intoxication. In its depths, she came to know a level of joy that women like Mathiri, Shoshamma, Mariyamma and a million others who had known men would never experience. But, for the world outside, Anna was a stupid woman, a slow and clueless woman, a woman who spent all her time eating something or the other.
Whenever Mathiri ran into Anna, she smiled at her, and Anna began to feel that it was a smile pregnant with meaning, and she tried to avoid Mathiri in order to avoid being smiled at that way. But Mathiri did not mean anything by her smile. She smiled at Anna in the same way she smiled at their cow Velumbi, their parrot Ammini, and her grandsons Geevarghese and Mathachan. One day, as Anna was scraping coconut, Mathiri, who did not usually enter the kitchen, came in. Anna tried to avoid making eye contact, but Mathiri smiled at her, and as usual, the smile disconcerted Anna.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked, taking her courage in her hands.
‘Isn’t it nice to smile?’ Mathiri asked in return.
‘But why are you smiling like this?’
The question made Mathiri laugh loudly and without stopping. It only made Anna more confused, and in her consternation, she slipped off the chirava – the wooden coconut scraper stool – and fell on the floor. This sent Mathiri into another paroxysm of laughter. She laughed until her stomach hurt, and yet she continued laughing.
Somewhere along the way, Kuncheriya wanted to get Anna married off, but Shoshamma persuaded him otherwise, saying that Kottarathil Veedu was the best place for an orphan like Anna until, gradually, he forgot about it. Yet, whenever he saw Anna, he felt there was something about her that he had forgotten and tried to recall what it was. Much later, when he was ninety-five years old, as he sat having his breakfast one day, he would recall, out of the blue, what it was that he had forgotten. By then, Anna would have been dead for many years.
Geevarghese spent his days in the toddy shops and with the servants, especially with Kali. Kali was his weakness, indeed the weakness of the entire area. Kali sent the customs and rules of the land flying in the wind, slept with any man she fancied despite having a husband, lay down by the wayside after drinking toddy with Geevarghese and Kelan and Velayudhan. She, too, felt a deep love for Geevarghese, not a simple love that a woman felt for a man, but the specific love that Kali felt for Geevarghese. And despite this abiding love within her, she slept with other men.
One day, Kali, Geevarghese and Velayudhan sat drinking toddy in a corner of Kuncheriya’s compound. Kali had a handful of cashew nuts – roasted and to be roasted – tucked in the waist-fold of her mundu. In her inebriated state, she took out an unroasted cashew nut and buried it in the soil.
‘Eda, Geevarghese nanaarey, here you go,’ she said. ‘A cashew tree for you from me.’
It would be on the branches of the cashew tree that sprouted from the seed Kali planted on that day that, years later, Little Maria would play ‘bus driving’ and sit waiting for Kuttappayi, where a grown-up Maria would see Kuttappayi after a gap of many years. But these were events yet to happen.
When Kali was Kali, she called Geevarghese ‘nanaarey’ – boss man – and when she was Drunken Kali, she prefixed it with the disrespectful ‘eda’. Geevarghese was happy either way. Velayudhan looked lustfully at Kali as she sat hunched over the seed she was planting. He had always lusted after her, but Kali refused to sleep with him. Velayudhan was – how to put it – a njanugapununga. Gormless.
Thimman, a hawker, came across them as they sat there. He was from a seaside village but wandered around inland selling odds and ends. He was lost in his thoughts – ‘How long have I been wandering around like this! How long has it been since I’ve had a chance to talk to someone other than to ask them “do you want this” or “what about that”. What sort of life is this!’ He longed to have a heart to heart with someone, and that was when he came across Geevarghese and his friends.
No one asked him anything, but Thimman began to tell them about the sea, about his hut by the seashore, about his friends who went deep-sea fishing. He told them that he had become a hawker and not a fisherman because he suffered from seasickness. He did not tell them anything about his life because there was nothing worth telling, and continued talking about the sea instead.
His people did not know what lay beyond the sea. The sea was their God, he said, so they assumed that heaven was what lay on the other side of it. A man, the most courageous and knowledgeable among his people, had set out to find what lay beyond, but he had not returned yet. Thimman’s folk assumed that he was still searching.
A desire to see the sea surged up within Geevarghese. He had heard about the sea – Karthav Eesho Mishiha had disciples who had gone fishing in the sea, and Karthav Himself had walked on the sea. ‘Shall we go see the sea?’ Geevarghese asked Kali and Velayudhan. Kali scrambled up immediately because she, too, wanted to see the sea, and because it was Geevarghese who was asking. But Velayudhan declined, suddenly finding an unbearable pain in his knees. He did not care about the sea; he cared only about getting drunk.
When Kali and Geevarghese reached the seashore after two whole days of walking, the sun was all set to dive into the sea. As he stood there with his arm around Kali’s waist, watching the endless expanse of the blue water and the red sun about to drown in it, Geevarghese had an epiphany. It was not about the universe or about the sea, but about the fact that he should have married Kali and not Mariyamma. Still, the Geevarghese who had seen the sea was a different man from the Geevarghese who had not seen the sea. The depth, the expanse, and most importantly, the profound sense of mystery of the sea changed him. He would not see the sea ever again in his life, not because he did not have the opportunity but because, if he were to see the sea again, the experience of ‘seeing the sea’ that he had just had would become meaningless.
On the Sunday after he returned from the sea, Geevarghese went to church for the Qurbana. The priest’s sermon on the day was on the topic ‘Non-Christians Are Bound for Hell’. Geevarghese listened for a few minutes, and then stood up.
‘If that were the case, the first person to go to hell would have been Karthaveeshomishiha, right? He was a Jew after all, wasn’t he?’ he said. ‘Don’t let me hear you talk nonsense like this again or I’ll break your knees. Don’t worry yourself about matters that don’t concern you, just do the Qurbana and piss off.’
When they got together to drink toddy, Geevarghese told Kelan, Velayudhan and Kali not to call him ‘nanaarey’ any more. Kelan embraced him happily while Velayudhan stared at him as though he had gone mad. ‘Get lost, nanaarey!’ Kali said, laughing, and they all continued calling him ‘nanaarey’. It was difficult to change age-old habits.
People do not become enlightened because of a single incident. It requires several important factors such as birth, life up until the time of enlightenment, the acquiring of knowledge, and so on. So, even though Geevarghese experienced enlightenment, it was his unenlightened side that was predominant, and because of that he continued his childish habits such as eating sugar and eavesdropping whenever someone told the children stories.
A few days after they had returned from the sea, Kali eloped with Thimman. The sea had made such a strong impression on her. And with Kali gone, Geevarghese discarded the little enlightenment he had acquired and became a full-time drunk.
Well, what was a man to do when there was so much toddy all around? ‘We can’t let it go to waste, can we?’ he asked. ‘My appan used to drink too, did you know? Then, one day, Geevarghese Sahada came to him in a dream and asked him to stop. That’s when he gave up drinking.’
Much later, Maria would ask Mariyamma about the truth of this story.
‘Do not speak nonsense about that saintly soul,’ Mariyamma said with a serious expression that verged on the comical.
Maria assumed that by ‘saintly soul’ she meant Geevarghese Sahada, but Mariyamma was referring to Kuncheriya. After all, given that Geevarghese Sahada was an actual saint, there was no need to refer to him specifically as a saintly soul.