There was a dark door to grandfather’s library.
Made of wood from the jackfruit tree. Varnished the color of burnt leaf.
Breath stops when I think of that door.
A child in a white dress walked in the door, a while later a child walked out. Her eyes were burnt holes for the sun to shine through.
I do not like to say I.
I do not like to say I picked up my skirts and skipped into that doorway. For then I would be forced to say: sometime later I came out. Memory knows but knowing cannot remember.
She not I. Not I, not I.
What happened in grandfather Kuruvilla’s library me makes float.
No before, no after.
No up, down, down, up.
Who will save me?
Who will save Meena mol?
Will fishing nets turn parachutes, sail homeward?
She doesn’t walk on water like Jesus or Gandhi, she’s suspended on it, eyes shut, flesh dressed in a pink costume, a circus girl.
Bones poking up through skin.
How could I speak to Cousin Koshy?
I felt as if I were pressing my bumpy nose against glass, staring in the way Cousin Koshy and I stared at the blowfish, an ugly thing with prickles out in the Kochi aquarium.
Cousin Koshy and I leapt up and down, yelled, put our fingers in our ears and made rude faces till ayah stopped us.
But the fish didn’t hear. It was quite apart in its glass cage, floating in that odd, prickly body.
I walked slowly out of the library. Dress mussed up and wet.
I felt grandfather Kuruvilla’s hand on my thigh. His hand was dark, with flecked hairs at the wrist.
The hairs were pure white like the cabbage butterfly’s wings.
I floated toward the kitchen. Held onto the door and stared in. I could not cross into the kitchen, let go of the door, let my feet touch the dark red tiles of the kitchen.
I wanted to hide inside your sari, amma, let the soft pleats drape about me, make me vanish. Deep inside your sari, no one could touch me.
There you were, hand bound in a white kitchen towel, stirring the pot filled with sliced guavas and figs.
Slowly, slowly you stirred, adding the rosewater and the crushed almonds. Your hand moved in the moist air, a phantom thing, wrist and fingers covered in cotton to stop the bubbling fruit from splattering.
Amma, I cried, but no sounds came out of my mouth.
Amma, noke, noke, nyan a, nyan a.
Look, look, it’s I, it’s I.
“Sh sh, Meena. Sh sh. Can’t you see what I am doing? Do you want the hot fruit to splatter?”
Day after day I crouched by the wellside, forcing myself to stare at the sun. When the sun was bright in the palm tree that stood by the well, the clouds around blew so swift, it hurt to breathe.
I made my eyes huge so the sun could pour through. I knew this could make me blind.
Blind like the old man cast out from the circus, who sat under the banyan tree. All through the day he crouched under the tree, and the parrots leapt and cried above him, made droppings. People put rice in his bowl, threw a few paise his way.
Sometimes parrot droppings landed in his rice bowl. Sometimes the coins fell on his bandaged feet.
Ayah shook her head.
“Is that why his legs are bandaged?”
“Perhaps he has a cut that doesn’t heal,” Ayah said. “Perhaps he has no money to buy chappals.”
I repeated all this to grandfather Kuruvilla as he sat in his rattan chair with the great arms. The arms were as long as his legs would reach. Grandmother Kunju’s father had bought the chair from the British Resident. Sometimes when he was at rest, sipping a cup of buttermilk with mint, grandfather Kuruvilla raised his legs, set them on the arms. His dhoti made a white flag that covered the chair.
“We must get the poor man some chappals,” grandfather said. Bhaskaran the cowherd heard him shout, “Go get chappals, measure them.”
When Bhaskaran brought back chappals with tyre tread under them, heavy leather on top, grandfather made him run back, exchange them for lighter chappals with leather soles.
“Come, mol, we’ll pay a visit to the banyan tree.”
We knelt by the old man. His eyes were filled with sores. His legs lay stiff in white bandages. Grandfather laid the chappals by him.
“For you, to walk with.”
The old man stared ahead. He put out his hand. It had scars on it, the size of coins. As if bubbles of coconut oil had splattered, burnt the skin. Grandfather took the hand, held it.
The old man did not flinch.
That night grandfather drew me onto his knee. He told me about Jesus walking on water.
“The disciples who were in a boat saw Jesus. At first they could not tell his body apart from the mist and the rain. His robes were flowing like dark water. The fish of the sea tumbled and danced, phosphorescent streaks in the sky. The feet of the Lord were not visible.
“Do not tell others,” Jesus commanded. “I have not yet ascended into heaven.”
“Why a secret?”
“Others wouldn’t understand. It was between them only. Some things are like that.”
Grandfather passed his hand gently over my head. Then touched the hem of my dress, ran his thumb lightly over the embroidered hem. I could not help shivering a little.
“It was Partition time. India and Pakistan were splitting apart. Imagine that, child, one country torn into two. Like taking a knife and cutting a body in half. Thank God you were born after all that.
“When the trains came from Pakistan they were piled high with corpses. Sometimes a child cried out under the pile of clothing. Those who were searching for living souls scurried under the arms and legs and soiled blankets, trying to prise them out.
“Once there was a baby killed by a knife wound, its mouth still fixed to the amma’s breast. A rosy mouth and head. The amma had covered her own head with rags. She didn’t want the light to touch her own eyes. She didn’t want to see.”
I buried my face in my arms. I don’t think grandfather noticed.
“Did grandmother Kunju see Gandhi?”
He nodded and turned away. I saw his fists clench on the table.
“Gandhi wanted to walk from one end of India to the other, a padayatra. One must walk on foot over the earth’s surface, to know it is sacred; touch the ground with one’s feet. Gandhi walked into refugee camps. The mothers who had seen so much killing had eyes like bits of slate. They crouched over empty cooking pots. There were small children drinking water from the gutters. Piles of waste and scraps of food side by side.”
As grandfather went on talking I heard another voice in my ears. It sounded like the stone-eating girl.
She had spat out the stones in her stomach and her voice was free. Like shot silk her voice flowed through his words.
“The parrots were wild. They flew down from the banyan trees and pecked the children in the refugee camp. The parents were tired, several had already fainted. They could not stop the birds.
“When the birds heard Gandhi’s footsteps—by this time he was a old man, worn out with his suffering—they swirled back up into the skies, swore never to hurt children again. Swore only to eat mango and chikoo.
“That’s why parrots infest our chikoo trees. They chatter at dawn in the mango and chikoo trees telling of days in the refugee camps when they saw Gandhi.
“Gandhi’s feet were bleeding with the dryness and the heat. A woman bent and washed his feet. A woman like Marya Magdalene. A fallen woman.”
As grandfather spoke I saw the well, a girl with her spiky hair floating in the indigo waters. A wellfrog nipping at her cheek.
Grandfather did not look at me. He went on.
“Gandhi swore he wouldn’t eat till the great violence of the British was eased. Till they left us to govern ourselves.
“We must govern ourselves. Self-governance. That’s why I fast on some days, do not take food.”
Then he made me lean forward, touch the edge of his khadi dhoti.
“Feel it, Meena. This cloth is like sea salt. It is common, made by ordinary hands, available to all. To this day I will not wear mill cloth.”
He raised me up in his arms so I could touch the spinning wheel he had used in the days he was a follower of Gandhi and lived in Sabermati ashram.
“To see Gandhi walk over the dusty roads, his white clothes flying, that was a vision. People came out of their house and brought rice and dal and water for us. It was the start of the Salt March.”
Three seas wrap us round on the southern shore. The Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal. That night in my bed I dreamt of Jesus and Gandhi. They were walking on the three seas at such great speed, they floated over the skin of water.
Gandhi was in light clothing, Jesus in dark. Arms linked, they strolled through the waves. Sometimes they laughed and talked. Sometimes they wept. Sometimes they were surrounded by silence. Silence shone around them.
All about them boats were capsizing. Tiny fishing boats that set out at dawn from the Cape, nets empty, caked with salt.
On the shore ammas and babies waited. The babies were hungry. They sucked their fists and wailed. In my dream a baby was held by an old woman. Her white hair blew. Wind conspired with the mist to cover over the baby’s throat and face, turning it into a headless thing.
They stood on the shore watching the empty fishing boats return.
There was a headless baby Jesus. To see him I had to make a special trip with ayah to the St. Anthanasius Church on the other side of the main road. I loved to touch the smooth wood in the Virgin’s sari, feel the black almond of her eyes, then move to the creased bubbly wood next to her neck and the stump where someone cut off the baby’s head.
How sad the Virgin’s eyes were. And the baby? Who could tell? He had lost his head. The wood was worn smooth around his neck. Just a puddle of flesh there, like a real baby.
“They didn’t cut it off, silly. Can you imagine Christians like us cutting off the baby Jesus’ head?”
“Then what?”
“Then what. Foolish Meena mol, it fell off.”
I didn’t believe ayah. I found a better argument. Why get the baby’s head and not the Virgin’s?
“Because the wood was damp. You know how babies get wet all the time. Well, it’s the same with baby Jesus. Look.”
Ayah took my fingers, made me feel the tiny wormholes in the wood of the neck.
Sometimes amma had to go to St. Athanasius’ for a funeral or baptism. Some of our own cousins had married into the Jacobite Church, so there were chances for us to visit.
Once I asked amma why the Virgin’s baby was so old he lost his head.
“Don’t worry about things like that, Meena,” amma replied. There was a clarity in her voice that made me believe her.
“Jesus being God can’t really be made into a statue or picture. And his having a head or not is beside the point.”
Then amma’s face took on a stern look as if she were repeating something she had learnt by heart.
“In our Mar Thoma Church we have no images of God. You’re old enough to understand all this. It was your great-great-great-great-grandfather who was the radical reformer.”
She shut her eyes and breathed heavily, unsure about how many “great”s she should stumble over. Her BA in Indian history from Madras University offered little help.
“Abraham Malpan, our ancestor from your grandfather Kuruvilla’s side, bolted the doors of the church to the Patriarch visiting from Antioch. So that our people would not worship graven images, he took all the icons he could find, Virgins, childs.”
She paused at the last word, worried in case I was overly affected by the headless baby and would not take what she was saying in the right spirit. She sighed a little, determined to go.
“He took Virgins, childs, horsemen, etcetera and threw them into the Pamba River.”
Then amma drew her sari tight about her, made a pouty face as she did when faced with something she didn’t care for. Her hands trembled a little as they held onto the sari’s edge and this surprised me.
Was amma frightened by all this?
I closed my eyes and imagined the tiny head broken off baby Jesus floating in the black water. Now all that was left was a neck on squat shoulders, attached to a plump torso riddled with worm-holes; he sat draped in his morose Virgin amma’s sari. I made up lines, writing myself into the scene. Scribbled the whole thing in my notebook.
A squat, little quatrain.
Meena mol, who saw a Headless Baby
in Mar Athanasius’ Church.
What is your name?
How do you do? Who are you?
I knew they were not lines of real poetry. Like the poems of Kumaran Asan. Like the English poem that grandmother Kunju knew by heart concerning a girl called Lucy Gray, who strolled to the middle of a bridge and vanished. Pouf, that was it! A few footprints on the bridge, then nothing.
A thought kept crawling through my head. Like a water snake in a well curled over itself, tail stuck in its jaw. I wrote it down to save myself from thinking it over and over again: Meena mol, what is your name? Who are you?
I was the girl who fell through a dark door.
Crawled on hands and knees through the orchid patch. Tore her silk dress of delicate shadow work on sharp stones, sticks, buried her head in the scarred roots of the orchids, dug deeper, found a big rat hole and stuck in her head till she could scarcely breathe.
I turned myself into a headless thing.
There were droplets of blood on my arms and thighs, from thorns and torn stalks, tiny jewels of disaster.
I let the droplets of fresh blood hang there on all the brown skin.
The orchids were rosy with butterflies.
I would have given anything to turn into a butterfly: copulate and die, become nothing but the rushing of wing, freed of my wet, dirt-covered body.
But thoughts I had of vanishing fled into moist air.
Closer and closer he edged, my cousin Koshy, net cobbled together with bits of mosquito netting, its bamboo rod held at an impossible angle.
Cousin Koshy and I had by-hearted butterfly names from a book Uncle Itty had brought home. I kept the butterfly names in my head when after years of home tutors, I was put into school for three months and made to learn the perfections of penmanship, the details of dictation.
Shobha is a good girl.
Sunil is a good boy.
Sunil weighs ninety pounds.
What do you think Shobha eats?
When such inanities came my way, I stared out of the school window and mused on the slow scrawl of butterflies in the afternoon sky, fleeing sweet-scented bushes as Cousin Koshy, resolute as a scribe, moved; his net cobbled together with bits of mesh the cook had provided, his hand etching syllables of a script no one would ever decipher as butterflies with the loveliest of names, Blue Morpho, Sleepy Orange, Cloudless Sulphur, moved high, higher, perpetually out of reach.
Koshy and I had grown up together. Together we would stoop and blow into the tiny holes in the earth, a huff and a puff and out it came, the dark and squiggling kuriaana.
I had learnt the phrase “A huff and a puff” from the Three Pigs’ story that amma read to me over and over at my request, when we were far from ayah and she had to put me to bed. The phrase stayed with me. I shivered when I heard the Wolf’s threat: “A huff and a puff and I’ll blow your house in!”
“Meena, where O where, Meena? I know you are hidden somewhere,” Koshy cried out in a soft voice, as if he knew I was scared. “Come help me catch butterflies.”
Face streaked with dirt, I poked my head out of the earth. I liked it that Cousin Koshy needed my help for the impossible task of butterfly-catching.
Three months and two inches taller than me, stout in the beam and sturdy of soul, my cousin did not know how much I relied on him.
Unlike me, he knew exactly who he was and where he came from. And when he wasn’t in boarding school in Bangalore, or home with me for the long summers, he lived with his parents in a white house by the sea.
It turns into dream. Each afternoon the house by the sea shone as if water had risen in great waves through it. Sunlight and sand swept onto the veranda and flowed into the inner rooms, the walls painted a cool alabaster color.
There was a small pool of water in the courtyard fringed by ferns and orchids, and a mulberry tree as in grandfather Kuruvilla’s house, with tiny sleeping silkworms. Inside, the new house Uncle Itty and Aunt Amu had built at great cost had ceiling fans the color of dried palmyra leaves, and they moved with a slow creak-creak sound; there were water faucets the molten color of iron, instead of the brass vessels with spouts we used in our grandparents’ house; gleaming power points for all the electrical fixtures, and shades of Venetian glass on the lamps that Uncle Itty had imported from Europe.
There was no telephone. No one had telephones. Instead there was the man on horseback who rode across the sands with messages for Uncle Itty. When he wasn’t riding across sand on the black horse Sundar, the horseman was in the stables, reaching up for buckets, warm water to scrub the horses with.
I loved to visit the house by the sea. All afternoon Koshy and I would braid the tall reeds that grew at the edge of the sands on the southern shore. It hurt our hands but we persevered. We drew the reeds together, matted them tight as we had watched the gardener do in the lower garden by the pepper vines on Kozencheri veliappechan’s property. When we finished braiding the reeds with all their speckles of bloodthirsty brown, we wiped our sore hands and peered in and out of the make-believe house, flapping our arms like wild geese.
“You can’t catch me, boo hoo hoo!” I yelled.
“A huff and a puff!” he cried, my Cousin Koshy.
The sea wind blew our hair in our faces. We came out, faces smeared with wet sand and hair, laughing. Two wild creatures at the sea’s edge.
“Come Meena, come Koshy,” Aunt Amu called out from a great distance. Her voice was sifted by the wind, the syllables fading as seaweed in sunlight.
“It’s teatime. I have sweet rolls and figs for you.”
She waited patiently as we raced past the man on horseback galloping into the distance where the buildings of the town rose. We stamped the sand off our feet, washed out hands and face with Pears Soap that sat in the tiny ivory-colored bowl, fluted in a shell shape. After tea, I wanted to be alone, I wanted to be quiet. I wondered if the horseman would race back with a letter for us from appa.
Appa had travelled to Bombay, then caught a ship to cross the waters and reach Africa. I squinted across the waters. I knew that centuries ago sailors had come to our land from as far away as Europe and Arabia and Africa. They carried gold, silver, coral, malabathrum in the hollow ribs of their ships. They carried peacocks and birds of rare plumage, monkeys, pythons, alligators. What was malabathrum? I decided to ask Cousin Koshy. He would have learnt about it in boarding school, he would know.
I closed my eyes and imagined appa in his neatly tailored pinstripe shirt on the decks of a white ship. The ship was sailing across the Indian Ocean. There were waves of bright indigo rising on the prow of the ship. Appa’s figure grew tiny, he was holding his hand above his head to screen his face from the sun’s heat. He was trying at the same time to wave to us, amma and me. He knew we were visiting the white house by the sea.
Those far from us, being in no place at all, see us ever present on the curved surface of the globe, in the mind’s eye. Still, for my part, I could not bear appa so far away and all alone, so I moved to the other side of the porch. From this side I could see the rock with the red and white stripes of the lighthouse and, a little beyond it, a tiny mound in the pale gray of the ocean, an island filled with mist.
The island of the broken palace I had heard of since I was very little. Kalu Island filled with wild goats and vines and old women, it was said, who wander about half naked.
“Not that any one cares,” Aunt Amu had assured me, “they are so very old and so it doesn’t matter. They wander around collecting twigs and dry grasses for fires. Some of them sleep in the holes in the walls and on the floors of the emptied out rooms of the ruined palace.”
“Meena mol, I’ll take you and this young man for a picnic,” Uncle Itty promised. “When you’ve had enough of your adventures,” and he laughed, a great laugh that was almost like a cough, the smoke from his perpetual cheroot scenting the air. I shifted around on the porch uneasily. My feet felt like two bits of heavy lead, my arms more weighty than granite. I wanted to live in one place forever. I did not want to go anywhere and have adventures.
Then I heard a high-pitched voice. “Meena, Meena!” It was Cousin Koshy. He was calling me to the little house on the sands, the waves would soon tear down. The wind in my hair, I raced out to him.
Already I had many houses in my life, but I loved best our house of reeds, an offering to the sea, white sands flattened around it, herons in the polished sands, elegant as dancers, picking up their pointed claws, running water so delicate a breath could have clouded it.