by Gracy
After his studies were over, unlike many others, Athmaraman did not have to wait long to land a job. When he was posted as a clerk, his mother wept, as it meant he would have to leave his village and relocate to town. You must keep in mind that on this earth his mother had only Athmaraman and vice versa. Amma broke the seal on the mouth of a large pickle jar and transferred the tender mango pickle into two small bharanis.17 Medicated oil for his hair was sieved and bottled. She packed banana chips for his snack. Dried chutney powder was ground. Athmaraman stepped off the bus in the city, carrying an iron trunk stacked with all this and a rolled-up cotton mattress. Kuruppachan, the office peon, was taken by surprise to see him emerge from an autorickshaw with his bedding and trunk of condiments. Nevertheless, his heart melted when he noticed how coarse Athmaraman’s shirt and mundu were. Dipped in indigo and starch, they had turned patchy. Promising to arrange accommodation for this young Nair boy, Kuruppachan took him to a small house rented by a few bachelor clerks. He even arranged for him to eat at the mess at Ambal Tea Shop, the strictly vegetarian hotel next door. It may please be noted that the proprietors, Neelambal and Muthuswamy, had no children of their own and considered all those young men as their sons.
Every morning, a boy who looked like a stick of chopped firewood would arrive with a kettle of coffee and knock on the door. ‘Ayya,18 open the door please.’ Usually, it was Athmaraman who opened the door. After filling everyone’s cup with black coffee, the boy would leave with his empty kettle. Initially, Athmaraman found it revolting to drink coffee without brushing his teeth and washing his face. Gradually, he began to find some pleasure in that as well. It was during such times, when he would be sitting on the parapet, sipping piping hot black coffee and surveying the road lazily, that he began to discover certain things. Every car, lorry, bus, bike and scooter rushing down the road had a distinct face! He noticed that generally, cars had gentler faces. The lorries always had unyielding, vicious faces. The buses, packed with passengers, raced past Athmaraman, sometimes with bared teeth, sometimes with mouths wide open, looking rather clownish. The scooters flew past, lost in themselves. Bikes roared across arrogantly, always breaching the privacy of others. Watching all this, a lingering smile kept playing on his lips.
His co-lodgers thought that Athmaraman was dreaming of some girl. It had to be admitted that as far as women were concerned, these men were all depraved beings. Their hearts were already labouring under the weight of large families. So they had more or less forgotten about having a life of their own. Complaining to each other that ‘people like us are not lucky enough to eat home food’, every time they got their salary, they went scouring around for any available woman whom they could smuggle into their rooms in the dead of the night, when the rest of the world would have almost slipped into sleep. Listening patiently for the creaking of the old cot to stop, each one waited their turn. Athmaraman alone would, as usual, amble back from Ambal Tea Shop after his fill of kanji and payar thoran.19 Offering a quick prayer to the Goddess, he would take off his mundu, shake it well, spread it over himself and sleep fitfully, paying homage with his hands between his legs.
As the days flew by like yellowed leaves falling in the breeze, Athmaraman realized that not only vehicles, but even files, chairs and tables had distinct faces. Athmaraman was able to talk to them at length, silently. The letters and figures that lay supine in the files woke up, yawned, stretched, and started holding conversations with Athmaraman. Files piled up on Athmaraman’s table. Twice, the Section Officer had to warn him.
It was around this time that he received a letter from his mother. It said that she had found a girl for him and the wedding could be solemnized quickly if he met and approved of her. Athmaraman replied that Amma could go ahead if she liked her.
When the date for the wedding was fixed, his co-lodgers sighed deeply. Their sighs swirled in a vortex, making them feel disoriented. Yet, with smiles that waylaid themselves into tears and trembling fingers, they patted Athmaraman’s shoulder, muttering ‘lucky man’. In that short span of time, all those tremulous fingers wished him the best for his marriage.
The day Uma came into his life with a glass of milk, the first thing that caught Athmaraman’s attention was her plump feet. Joyous, he thought he heard them coo like a pair of white pigeons. Athmaraman even extended his hands to take them in his palms and caress them. But Uma placed the glass of milk in those hands. When the milk in the glass spilled over, smiling, Athmaraman smiled too. The glass smiled, and swayed and slipped from his hand. When Uma shuddered and covered her face with her palms, Athmaraman’s attention shifted to her long, lean fingers. Taking those fingers into his hands and caressing them for a long time, Athmaraman tried to allay their fear. When Uma became exhausted from standing in the same position, she sat next to him wearily. Silently whispering sweet nothings to her fingers, Athmaraman travelled with the lines criss-crossing her palms. When Athmaraman’s journey extended lengthily, Uma fell asleep on the bed. Dampened, Athmaraman shared his sorrow with the milk that had spread on the floor.
In the nights that followed, Uma’s body began to come apart in front of Athmaraman’s eyes and speak to him. When Athmaraman fell into the dark vortices of dreams, tired, Uma struggled like a fish pulled out of water.
After a week’s leave ended, Athmaraman went back. That he came again once or twice is true. However, the moment he heard the wings of darkness fluttering, he would start trembling. Darkness strung Athmaraman on its nail tips and began to tear him apart with its sharp beak. At daybreak, Athmaraman would escape to town with what little life he had left.
Uma’s tremulous eyes, lips twisted with thirst, and bosom boiling over with hot sighs, awakened the compassion of the young man next door. Oiling the door hinges, Uma waited. Every night, the young man opened the door silently and undertook his pilgrimages to Uma’s sorrows.
Nevertheless, one day, when the young man was trying to slip away with his hastily gathered mundu wrapped messily around his waist, he landed straight in front of Athmaraman’s mother and was bewildered by her eyes that were an ocean of kindness. Into the hands of that young man, who stood transfixed on the shore of kindness, Athmaraman’s mother placed Uma’s cold, perspiring hands. Closing the door gently behind them, she sat leaning on the wall until the day broke.
By the time Athmaraman came home, giving in to his friend’s insistence, the pity in his mother’s eyes had dried out completely. Her eyes had become two glowing hearths. When he could no longer stand their heat, he called out to Uma. Gripping Athmaraman’s collar, the mother snarled, ‘Bha!’
When you all look at Athmaraman, thorns emerge. Really, what was Athmaraman’s fault?
(Athmaramane Arum Ariyunnilla)
13
It Is Winter Now on Earth
Today is the day when earth is lit with starlight. It was almost a year ago that she reached this bedchamber, where bones murmured beneath the mud.
An urge to know what is happening now in her home on earth simmers in her. In no time, it boils over. Sliding the latch on the door and leaving it wide open, she flies upwards, her feet off the ground. Her white skirt sways in the midnight breeze. In her long tresses flying parallel to earth, soft snowflakes shine like fireflies.
On that night in the cold month of Dhanu, under the blanket of mist, earth lies rapt in some dream. She yearns to cradle it lovingly in her palms like a plump pearl and treasure it, keeping it close to her heart. Recalling the days she had spent on that beautiful earth, her chest shudders in a searing sigh.
Every day, when crows flew down to the ground, she would rise up from the sourness of insomnia. Clearing the accumulated ash off the stove would herald the repetition of yet another dreary day. Realizing that life had become as dry as the firewood in the stove, she lit the matchstick with a vengeance and set the pot of water to boil. Sipping black coffee, Appan sucked in the fire from a smouldering ember, drawing it into his beedi. Scratching his greying stubble and spitting vehemently on the f
ace of life, Appan went to work on the field or in the yard. When she was sure that Appan had left, Amma stretched out, lying still on her mat. Once she washed her face and gargled, Amma sat on a low stool to start sipping her black coffee, staring at the world with a disgruntled face. That was when the daughter started sweeping the front yard. Saddened that the destiny of no day could be redrawn, every day she combed the yard with an old, short broom. As she drew water to fill all the empty vessels, the tedium of it all brimmed over her day. Watching her younger siblings seated before their open schoolbooks and beginning to squabble, her eyes grew embittered.
Glaring for a while at the books scattered on the rusty iron box, she gingerly picked up the few required for the day. The toddy tapper, rolling his muscles up and down while dashing down the ladder from the palm which scraped the sky on the edge of the front yard, was an ill omen for her. Amma stood under the palm tree with a seductive smile, her face ready to spurt blood if touched, as she waited for the tapper’s ascent to fill her toddy pot. While dodging the scene with distaste, she turned back on an impulse, only to see the toddy tapper turning his head furtively to poke Amma’s cheek with his forefinger. Shocked, she walked away, stamping the ground as if to thrust the scene behind her. In the classroom, the teacher’s words scarcely touched her – they flitted past to some unknown destination. Separated from her classmates, she plunged head first into the hellish depths of orphanhood.
It was she herself who decided to quit school after failing twice in the ninth standard. Unperturbed, Appan laboured until dusk. When night began to creep up on earth, he squatted in the knee-high water of the stream and pulled off his thorth to scrub himself clean. Back in the house, he opened the cash box that was fated never to fill up. In the light of the kerosene lamp, he counted and tallied the cash with greedy fingers. Then, shutting the box and muttering to himself, his owl eyes tore through the darkness to focus, frowning, at some point beyond the horizon.
Amma’s secret stash of cash, saved up by selling coconut and paddy behind Appan’s back, was buried in small cloth bundles inside the caskets in which dried paddy was stored. At dusk, she gulped toddy with Appan, and chewed on smoked mackerel and stinging hot bird-chillies. When the children saw the mother’s face reddening and her mundu coming undone at the waist, they retreated into their dark burrows.
When all of earth remained illumined in remembrance of the night of Nativity, the toddy tapper came with a gift of two bottles of arrack for Appan. Amma too joined them with small porcelain bowls of roasted pork and three glasses.
First, Appan’s head dipped on to his shoulder. Then, with a grunt, his whole body slid to the floor. After straightening Appan’s dishevelled mundu with distaste, the toddy tapper turned with a secret smile to Amma. Amma’s muslin mundu had already come undone. When the toddy tapper held Amma’s swaying head on his muscled shoulder and began to stroke her buttery skin, the girl wriggled away from her hiding place.
As she stood with her eyes closed, unable to look anywhere, her face pressed against the window grille in the bedroom, two heavy hands fell on her shoulders. From the shoulders, they crept up to her neck. The palms moved to reach her cold cheeks. Encountering neither resistance nor even a backward glance, he pushed her down to the floor. With the sharpness of a knife slicing through areca nut flowers, he entered her. In her bewildered eyes fixed on the ceiling, a scalded desert bloomed.
Until daybreak, she sat with her head against her knees, unable to sleep. To force her eyes shut, she took the rope meant for the bull, looped it from the ceiling and tightened it around her neck, but her eyes only bulged even more.
Floating through those memories, she drifts on to the yard in front of her house. She had thought that the house would be lying frozen in fright, still reeling under the shock of the last Nativity. However, she is astounded to see that the doors are wide open, and a small kerosene lamp is burning indoors. Climbing the front steps, she rushes into the house. Abruptly, she is paralysed, as if someone has stopped her in her tracks. The same scene that she had thrown away last year begins to materialize before her again, like in a picture painted with a mixture of light and darkness. Appan’s mundu is askew again. Amma’s drunken head is leaning on another toddy tapper, much younger and stronger than the last. With her face pressed against the window grille of the bedroom, her younger sister is standing frozen, eyes closed, unable to look away.
(Bhoomiyil Ippol Manju Kalam)
14
The Tenth Commandment
When Martha saw Luka peering at their neighbour’s house from behind the half-closed window, she wailed with her hands on her head, ‘My Lord!’
When Luka turned around, stunned, there was a silent reprimand on his forefinger pressed to his lips. As she noticed restlessness struggling in his eyes, Martha’s heart melted. Martha walked slowly towards him and touched his shoulder. Then she brought him over to the bed and made him sit on it. When she was stroking his hands, the secret spilled out from Luka’s mouth: ‘Did you see, Martha? Two Chettys20 have come to his house. Today they will print counterfeit notes. Going once! Going twice! Going three times! Gone!’
Martha’s eyes moistened. With a deep sigh, she muttered, ‘They might be relatives.’
Luka’s voice rose like a warning, ‘Who are these relatives that I do not know of?’
Martha worried that he would now unroll the scroll of his old stories about how they were both born a day apart. Luka was born under the star of Chathayam, and Sheemon under Purooruttathi. They grew up together, playing and thrashing each other. In the tenth standard, Sheemon crossed the border of first class. Luka panted on the wrong side. It was then that bitter envy and rivalry sprouted in Luka. Both of them took degrees and joined the same company on the same day. Sheemon accompanied Luka when he went to see his bride, as Luka did for Sheemon. It was six months after Sheemon entered Mariyam that Luka entered Martha. Eventually, they bought adjacent pieces of land in the city. Nine cents each. It was Luka who built his house first. The small house that Martha had always dreamt of. Two bedrooms. A small hall. A kitchen big enough only for Martha to move around. A small veranda next to the kitchen. That was all. On the other side, slowly, bit by bit, Sheemon’s house rose proudly. When it grew into the second storey, Luka stood flabbergasted. ‘From where did he get so much money?’
Martha found the answer: ‘Must be Mariyam’s dowry.’
Luka’s scorn twisted his lower lip. ‘It was only a paltry ten thousand paper notes and ten sovereigns of gold. I was there from start to finish when his marriage was fixed.’
‘Maybe one of Mariyam’s brothers went abroad.’
Luka’s smile turned sour. ‘One fellow is a grocer at the junction near his house. The other’s a farmer.’
‘Maybe he won a lottery.’
Luka’s face crinkled with doubt. ‘Without my knowledge?’
That is when Luka made a grand discovery. ‘Ah! Sheemon’s woman has a fine glow. She’s younger than you too. She’s surely from the Magdalene clan.’
Martha chided the lewd grin that rose and fell in Luka’s eyes, ‘Don’t talk rubbish. She is such a poor soul!’
‘When night falls, some poor souls can turn spicy hot.’
Martha shut her ears, assailed by the fear of God.
When the construction of Sheemon’s house was complete and the house warmed with the ceremonial boiling of milk, there was a big feast. It stayed undigested for a long while in Luka’s stomach.
When he learnt that Sheemon had bought a fridge, TV and VCR simultaneously, Luka’s heart began to churn.
‘He must surely be involved in some illegal bullion trading.’
Martha stroked his chest.
‘Perhaps they just got lucky and won the lot in some chit fund.’
‘As if I don’t know that he doesn’t have any chits and lease!’
‘Then…’
Words refused to come to aid Martha.
Through that loophole, Luka escaped to a world unkn
own to Martha. He stopped going to work. Hovering behind the bedroom window, he sharpened his eyes and ears.
That is how Luka made his second discovery. In the dead of night, bursting with excitement, Luka woke Martha up.
‘Look, Martha. Isn’t there that tiny room on his top floor? Do you see the light in there? Do you hear a machine rumbling?’
Still drowsy, Martha peered at Luka. With her eyes still open, she fell back on the bed and into sleep again. Luka slapped her face hard. Shocked, Martha jumped up and sat stroking her face, innocent of what was happening.
Luka walked back and forth agitatedly through the night. Martha fell at his feet and begged, ‘Good Christians like us shouldn’t forget the tenth commandment. If we go on like this, our life will go to the dogs. How happily and lovingly we’ve lived so far? At least think of our daughter—’
Luka snarled, ‘That’s right, woman. What we have is a daughter. And he, a son. Ours is the one that has to be sent away with a dowry. And his is a boy who will bring him money.’
Martha turned into a clay statue.
When a shiny car appeared in Sheemon’s porch, Luka pulled his hair. Tearing his clothes, he wailed, ‘My God! My God! What have you done to me?’
Luka became a mystery to Martha.
That night, as Martha lay with her eyes open wide in the dark, Luka prodded her, ‘Eh, Martha, are you deaf? He is quarrelling with those Chettys! Guess they are parting ways!’
Martha lay immobile for a minute more. Then, in an icy voice that could slice through bone, she said, ‘They are running the cassette in the VCR.’
Luka did not even hear that. He was in a state of crazed elation.
‘Now he will be forced to call off the show!’
Pressing his face against the window grille, he peered up the second storey, intent with hope.
At daybreak, Martha found Luka asleep, still gripping the bars. Martha sneaked into the kitchen, taking care not to disturb him.
