Kariyakutty Who Should Have Been a Saint, and Neena Who Became One
‘The great thing is that none of us were driven mad from the fear…’
Susanna, Geevarghese’s oldest child, would say this many years later. All of Geevarghese’s children prayed arduously to Geevarghese Sahada that their father would just up and die. And just in case Geevarghese Sahada found murder distasteful, they added a footnote to their prayers that, at the very least, he would keep their father from coming home in the night.
Onnanam kunninmel oraadi kunninmel
Orayiramkili kooduvechu…
One night, as he arrived home, Geevarghese’s daughter Marykunju, who was in Class 1, sat in front of the kerosene lamp, reading out the poem from the Kerala Padhavali textbook about the one thousand birds that had built their nests on top of the hill, Onnanam Kunnu.
The poem rubbed Geevarghese the wrong way. Not for any particular reason, just that he simply did not like the fact that the birds had built their nests on top of the hill. He dragged the child up and into the barn and commanded her to do a hundred ethams as punishment. It involved holding the right earlobe with the fingers of your left hand, and the left with your right, and bending over and touching the ground with your elbows. When Mariyamma, Kuncheriya and the child’s siblings ran into the barn to rescue her, he drew his pocketknife and threatened them to stay away. After she finished the thirty-seventh etham, Marykunju dropped on to a pile of cow dung and fell asleep. Thankfully, by then, Geevarghese had dozed off, so no further harm was done. After making sure that he was truly out for the night by poking his prone body from afar with a long stick, Mariyamma and her children took Marykunju back to the house and washed the cow dung off her body.
The children were careful to stay out of their father’s way, making sure that they hid themselves as soon as they saw his shadow. But one day, poor Thomachan was grabbed from behind as he was running away. The moment he realized he had been caught, he fainted from fear. When he came to, Thomachan had changed, and from then on, he would always be listless like a chicken with avian flu.
Geevarghese routinely got his children’s names wrong, confusing John with Babu, Babu with Paul, Susanna with Anna, Ramani with Daisy, and so on. The only person he had no confusion about and always called by the right name was Zakariya because, well, it was difficult to be confused about Zakariya.
Zakariya, or Kariyakutty as he was known, was, from a young age, very knowledgeable about all things spiritual. As a child, he did not exhibit a childlike nature and was always engaged in reading the Bible with a sombre expression on his face. In fact, he had been reading the Bible ever since he was able to put letters together to form words. At the age of five, Kuncheriya took him to the school and had him registered, but within two years, the boy dropped out. Listening to the seven-year-old proclaiming, ‘The school does not give me anything that nurtures my soul,’ Mariyamma fainted and Anna valyamma made the sign of the cross. Geevarghese, meanwhile, was scared of this son of his who went around clutching the Bible, feared him more than Satan himself. ‘That boy has a weird look,’ he told Kali once. ‘It pierces right through me, and guaranteed, I’ll be down with a fever for the next week.’ His fear was a little exaggerated, but to be fair, there was something truly strange about the boy. When he was eight years old, Kariyakutty put up a little shed in a corner of the yard – just four posts with a few coconut leaves thrown over it as a roof – and began living in it. Inside the shed, he built a platform with mud and planted a wooden crucifix on it. From that day on until his death, Kariyakutty lived in that shed he called ‘church’. As for food, all he had was some kanjivellam with a handful of rice in it, once in the morning and once in the night.
It was around this time that Kariyakutty began performing miracles. Nothing major, just a few small ones, like healing Anna valyamma’s stomach ache and the excessive bleeding Thankamma, the servant woman who did the outside work, suffered from during her periods. But do not underestimate the importance of these miracles because, remember, Kariyakutty was only eight years old. He had the potential to perform larger, more impressive miracles. Geevarghese declared that the boy was a con artist. But Kariyakutty laid his hand on Anna valyamma’s stomach and prayed for a few minutes, and lo and behold, her pain was gone! He was a bit confused as to where to lay his hand when it came to curing Thankamma’s ailment, but quickly decided that in her case, too, the stomach was the best location. If Anna valyamma was cured within five minutes, it took almost a day for Thankamma to be cured. Anna valyamma, who was Kariyakutty’s most ardent supporter, declared that it took longer with Thankamma because he was not able to lay his hand on the actual afflicted area, and because excessive bleeding, as everyone knows, was a much more serious illness. All that mattered, although it took a bit longer, was that he had healed a months-old illness.
The oldest of the siblings, Susanna, was also devoted to Kariyakutty. She enjoyed being known as the older sister of miracle-performer Kariyakutty, especially since it got rid, at least for a short while, of the label ‘the daughter of Geevarghese the Drunk’. Anna, the sibling immediately below Kariyakutty, had no interest in his miracles, or in much else either. His younger brothers – John who was known as Yonankunju and Paul who was called Paulochan – could not stand the sight of him, and the rest of his siblings were too young to understand his handiwork. Many were the times when Yonankunju and Paulochan expressed their displeasure by tearing down Kariyakutty’s shed-church. And on each of these occasions, Kariyakutty temporarily forgot his deep-seated spirituality and covered them in blood-curdling abuse as he rebuilt his church.
There were also occasions when the younger brothers’ animosity extended beyond damage to property to actual bodily harm. One time, Kariyakutty was sitting peacefully under a cashew tree, immersed in the Holy Bible, when Yonankunju and Paulochan decided that the only place they could play marbles was under that same tree. The boisterous game put an end to Kariyakutty’s concentration. Words were exchanged, which then turned into a brawl with fisticuffs and rolling on the ground, and in the middle of it, Paulochan clamped his teeth around Kariyakutty’s ear. Try as he might, Kariyakutty could not free himself, and by the time Mariyamma and Kuncheriya came running and made Paulochan let go, a piece of the ear was in his mouth. Matters did not end there. When Paulochan spat out the piece of flesh, their two-year-old brother Babu, who was standing by watching the fight, picked it up and put it in his mouth. Mariyamma, leaving the crying and bleeding Kariyakutty temporarily, tried to take it out of the child’s mouth, but he had, by then, swallowed it.
Overcome with pain, sadness and, above all else, shame, Kariyakutty looked at Yonankunju and Paulochan. ‘Spawn of serpents, you all will rot for this!’ he declared.
Occupied as she was with taking Kariyakutty to the doctor, Mariyamma could not punish Yonankunju and Paulochan. All she could do, as she left, was to fix them with a look and say, ‘Just you wait until your appachan gets home…’
The boys ignored her threat, knowing fully well at what time and in what condition their appachan would come home. But, unfortunately for them, even though Geevarghese got home way past midnight, he was not entirely the worse for wear, and the night ended with the boys receiving a feast of thrashing.
Of the thirteen children born to Geevarghese and Mariyamma, Yonankunju and Paulochan were the unruliest, and it was they who received the most thrashing from Geevarghese. Consequently, they had an abiding anger towards their father, an anger with an intensity only children can muster. One time, after being punished for something or the other, they decided to exact revenge. They dug a hole in Geevarghese’s regular path home and disguised its opening with dry leaves and twigs. No one else took that path in the middle of the night, and they hoped that their father would step into it, breaking, at the very least, his ankle. Unfortunately for them, it was a stray piebald dog that fell into the hole. He climbed out of it and walked away with a slight limp, leaving the hole gaping for anyone to see. It is not clear whether the dog had actually broken his leg or whether it was broken only psychosomatically. Or whether he had simply decided to limp as he went on his way because he had fallen into a hole, and falling into a hole usually involved the breaking of a limb.
Until Yonankunju was thirteen and Paulochan was twelve, they were inseparable, sharing their food, their bed and their mischiefs. But things changed abruptly. One day, it was discovered that some money had gone missing from the house – just a few paise, to be clear. All thefts in Kottarathil Veedu could usually be traced back to Yonankunju and Paulochan, and so Geevarghese caught hold of Paulochan, pulled out a kaashav plant and began thrashing him with it. This plant, kaashav, has a peculiarity. It has a hard main stem which produces eight or ten side shoots which are almost as hard. So, when one is thrashed with it, which is usually only done in instances of grave crimes, it is equivalent to being thrashed with ten switches at the same time. Two or three plants tied together would make a good broom. The plant is usually used for these two main purposes – discipline and cleanliness.
No matter how severe the punishment, Yonankunju and Paulochan had, until that day, never told on one another. But, for whatever reason, on that day, as soon as the third whack fell, Paulochan wailed, ‘It wasn’t meeeee! It was Yonankunjuuuuu!’ and promptly fell to the ground in a faint. Geevarghese left him there and went after Yonankunju and thrashed the living daylights out of him. All through it, Yonankunju stood firm as a rock, the betrayal of his brother burning up inside him. It was Geevarghese who finally gave up, panting with the exertion of punishing his son. After the thrashing was done, Paulochan went up to his brother.
‘Do not talk to me ever again,’ Yonankunju said before Paulochan could say anything. ‘You and I – we’re done.’
From that day on, whenever they ran into each other, they would pretend to be strangers. They did not even attend each other’s weddings. Forty years would pass before they would speak again, and that too, over the phone. ‘My daughter is getting married on the fourteenth of next month. You must come,’ Yonankunju would tell Paulochan. ‘Of course, I’ll be there,’ Paulochan would reply. And that would end the enmity.
Since Kariyakutty lived apart from everyone else, Mariyamma often forgot about her eldest son. Once when an official from a government department came to do some survey and asked about her children, Mariyamma told him, correctly, that she had thirteen. But no matter how many times she recited their names, counting them out on her fingers and toes, she could only come up with twelve. Overcome with embarrassment and feeling the pressure to give a proper account to the government official, she tried to arrive at the right number by including Susanna’s name twice. But the official saw right through her trick. Finally, it was Marykochu, who was standing by watching her mother, who said, ‘Ammachi, you forgot Kariyakutty kunjanja.’
‘Oh, my Lord, how could I forget the name of my own child,’ cried Mariyamma, and continued weeping for the next two or three hours.
His family and his neighbours were convinced that Kariyakutty would grow up to become a vishuddhan, a saint. But in his twelfth year on this earth, entirely unexpectedly, Kariyakutty returned to the abode of God. An ordinary fever, that was all it was to begin with, which only required Neelandan Vaidyan’s medicine and a couple of days’ rest. In the evening of the second day, he expressed a desire to eat some pidi and meat curry. Mariyamma, aware that it was the first time her son had made such a request, quickly wrung the neck of a hen and made the curry and the little rice dumplings. Kariyakutty ate it, exclaiming in between mouthfuls, ‘Ooh, so tasty!’ He ate until his stomach was about to burst. Then, he belched loudly and began to cry.
‘Oh, my Lord … such tasty things were in this world, and I lived all this while slurping up kanjivellam,’ he wailed. ‘Sod it all, it’s too late now … my time is up!’
And within half an hour, Kariyakutty, who should have been a saint, left his worldly life.
The person who was most affected by Kariyakutty’s death was Anna valyamma. For a long time now, the sole defining purpose of her life was to bear witness to Kariyakutty’s miraculous deeds. She was entering the dusk of her life, and was beginning to feel remorseful about the things she had done in pursuit of bodily pleasure. She had hoped that Kariyakutty, once he attained sainthood, would intervene with Karthav Eesho Mishiha on her behalf at the time of the reckoning of her sins and get Him to release her from the dreadful punishment that awaited her, or at the very least, get it reduced. When she thought about the type of sin her grandson would have to haggle over with the Lord, she was overcome with shame and unease. Still, the important thing – the only important thing, really – was to escape from the unextinguishable fire and the indestructible worms of damnation in hell. With Kariyakutty’s death, Anna valyamma was certain that she was headed straight for hell. This thought and the flames of remorse and fear that burned her alive had almost driven her to madness over the years when, thankfully, she was captured by dementia. Anna valyamma spent the rest of her years as happy and innocent as a child. And just like a child, she fought tooth and nail when she was forced to share the things she loved – snacks, the swing, a toy bus made of wood, a red-and-white ball, a madamma doll dressed in a blue frock, a green plastic parrot – with someone else. This ‘someone else’ usually, of course, was Maria, and she was the rightful owner of all the things mentioned in the list, except for the snacks. And yet, Maria got to play with them only when Anna valyamma was otherwise occupied or out of sight. But these were things yet to happen.
After Kariyakutty’s death, the relationship between Anna valyamma and Kariyakutty transformed into something different. When she misplaced things, Anna valyamma would call on him. ‘Eda, Kariyakutty, where are Valyammachi’s reading glasses, son? Reveal them to me.’
Of Kariyakutty’s surviving siblings, all except Neena and Thomachan grew up without trouble and went on to find good jobs and make good lives. Other than reading the Congress-friendly reports in the newspapers, Thomachan did not let any of the world’s problems affect him or have an impact on his personal life. He gave up his studies early on and sat at home doing nothing, and he continued doing nothing for an entire lifetime.
Neena’s life, meanwhile, took a different direction. Happy in her own company from a very young age, she liked to be alone. Kottarathil Veedu had several rooms and corridors, but it was Neena who actualized the idea of ‘a room of one’s own’ for the first time in its confines. She made sure that she stayed out of sight of the others, and since there were so many members in the family, no one really bothered to find out what she got up to by herself behind closed doors. Neena passed the Class 10 exams with good marks, but decided to discontinue her studies and dedicated herself to sitting in a room with its doors closed for the entire day. When she was of marriageable age and proposals began to arrive, Geevarghese and Kuncheriya picked one that seemed suitable – Elias from Mundakkayam, a planter. They asked Neena for her opinion, but she had no opinion on her own marriage.
The marriage caused an earthquake in Planter Elias’s home and hometown. Right from the day after the wedding, the new bride began sitting in a room with its doors shut. The mother-in-law, Kunjoonjamma, who had been waiting to pass on, with all its intensity, the torture she had suffered from her own mother-in-law, stood confounded faced with this situation. And Elias’s sister, Salomi, who had abandoned her husband and two children to their devices and come home with the singular objective of exercising her right as the sister-in-law to torment the new bride, also did not know what to do. How could they torture a person if that person was nowhere to be seen! When they did run into each other, Kunjoonjamma tried to begin an attack, but Neena pretended not to hear or see anything. Salomi was not ready to accept defeat that easily. In the week after the wedding, she dismissed Mathu and Tharamma, two of the servants whose sole job was to wash the dirty dishes in the kitchen, and commanded Neena to take over. With the labourers working in the plantation and the considerable number of family members to feed, washing dirty dishes was a day-long job that required two sets of hands at least. Neena did the washing quietly and without complaint.
When the last of the dishes was washed, Neena turned to Salomi. ‘Nathooney,’ she said, addressing Salomi properly as sister-in-law, ‘there’s no point in you freeloading over here, abandoning your husband and children. If you or your mother think you can work me like a donkey, think again. I washed that mountain of dishes just now only to prove to you that I know how to do it. But from tomorrow, not one person in this house will eat in a plate Neena has cleaned. So, go, get lost!’ And she went back to her room and shut the door.
The person who suffered the most was Elias. He would never recover from the embarrassing situation he found himself in on his wedding night, witnessed by his family members and relatives and neighbours, of having to knock, for over fifteen minutes, on the door to his bridal suite to get his wife to let him in. In actual fact, Neena had not intended for that to happen; it was just force of habit. But she did not bother explaining this to Elias. Kunjoonjamma hassled her son constantly to put an end to his wife’s disdainful isolation of herself in her room. But every attempt Elias made to question Neena about this, she silenced with a piercing look. In any case, by this time, husbands who kept their wives subjugated under their fists were fast becoming an endangered species.
Despite the closed door that stood between them like the Great Wall of China, Elias produced two children with Neena. After the second confinement, when Elias tried to sidle up to her, Neena declared: ‘Listen to me, don’t expect me to reproduce year in, year out like my ammachi. I’ve made two for you. Now let me be.’
With that, she began sleeping in a separate bedroom. Not to be outdone, and quietly hoping that Neena would come to her senses, Elias began to spend his nights with the servant woman, Molamma. But Neena’s only response was to behave more affectionately towards Molamma. It was Neena who protested when an irate Kunjoonjamma tried to banish Molamma from the house. When, in the ensuing tussle, Molamma was seriously hurt, it was Neena who looked after her. And when Elias caught chickenpox and lay helpless in Molamma’s bed, Neena went into the tiny little room and nursed him back to health.
But the incidents that followed stunned even those who knew Neena well, including Geevarghese. One day, when a woman, very old and barely able to walk, came begging for alms, Neena invited her in and bade her stay with them. She cooked three meals a day – sometimes even four, the old woman had an insatiable appetite – and fed her with her own hands. Kunjoonjamma had gone to visit Salomi, so it was a while before she heard of the development. And when she returned, what welcomed her was the sight of the strange old woman sitting on a chair with one leg crossed over the other, watching Chitrahaar. Rajesh Khanna was chucking a flower at a whimpering Asha Parekh in an effort to placate her, and the old woman was whimpering right alongside while also snacking on a plate of freshly fried pazhampori. She was not pleased when someone walked in, interrupting her. At that precise moment, there was a break in transmission, and the inscription apologizing for it – ‘Rukavat ke liye khed hai’ – along with the image of a wire fence and a Petromax lamp came up on the television screen.
‘Who are you?’ asked the old woman in an angry voice.
Kunjoonjamma faltered at this unexpected questioning in her own home. Luckily for her, Molamma came out and took her inside and explained what had been going on. Shaking with rage, Kunjoonjamma went into the kitchen where Neena was busy chopping meat to make a curry for the old woman.
‘Endhyanichi! You won’t rest until you have bankrupted us, will you? Hussy!’ she screeched, rushing towards Neena.
Neena looked up, her face devoid of expression, and pointed the knife at her. ‘I’ll gut you,’ she said calmly, and turned away, back to her chore.
Quietly exclaiming, ‘Oh, it’s so hot these days,’ Kunjoonjamma left the kitchen and went into her room. She was rarely seen outside the house after that incident. Within a couple of years, and perhaps because she was so distressed, she decided to return to the abode of God.
Over the years, Neena invited home anyone and everything that went down the road – beggars, vagabonds, mad people, dogs, cats, pangolins … Meanwhile, Elias … well, it is probably best not to talk about what went on with him.
By the time these incidents happened, Geevarghese had given up his public life and withdrawn into the confines of Kottarathil Veedu. He did wonder whether it was his fault that Neena had turned out this way, whether there was something wrong in the way he had brought her up. ‘Ah, what could I have done? People turn out the way they are, depending on what is written on their head. Besides, look at Paulochan, Babu, Anna, Susanna and the rest. I brought them up too, didn’t I, and they turned out all right.’ If Geevarghese’s children could have heard his thoughts, they would have died laughing. ‘Brought up? Who brought up whom?’ Whatever ‘bringing up’ there was, it was done by Kuncheriya and by poor, beleaguered Mariyamma.
It was Susanna, the oldest of the children, who inherited Mariyamma’s culinary prowess and her motherly nature, while Anna got her beauty. And it was this Anna who would become Maria’s mother. But nothing can be said about Anna in Maria’s story because Maria and Anna barely knew each other. And as the Geevarghese who Anna knew and the Geevarghese who Maria knew were two entirely different people, it is best if we let him tell his own story.