Chemmeen

by T. S. Translated by Nair, Anita Pillai

  Papikunju was the one responsible about many things now. She talked to Chembankunju about repairing the boats and mending the nets. There was nothing to be done but borrow the money. Chembankunju agreed to take a loan.

  But whom was he to borrow the money from? There was no one on that shore but Ousep. When her mother was alive, Panchami had made some money selling white bait. She brought out the twenty rupees she had put aside and gave it to her father. Chembankunju took it in his hands and burst into tears. Panchami said, ‘If I had been able to pick the fry every day, I would have had more…’ She continued, ‘Or even if Ammachi had been alive…’

  Chembankunju didn’t speak. Strong emotions didn’t stir his heart any more.

  Gangaduttan began insisting that he wanted to be sent away. But Papikunju hadn’t been able to present his case yet to Chembankunju. She was having to put up with so much merely to survive, to be able to look after Gangaduttan. Panchami hadn’t ceased in her run of cruelty. Papikunju even felt that Gangaduttan didn’t have the right to eat in that house. Above all else was Chembankunju’s diminished faculties. She had never ever thought things would turn out to be like this.

  Papikunju hadn’t thought Chembankunju would be so destroyed. She hadn’t meant to devastate him. He was her protector, after all.

  Perhaps she was unhappy that she wasn’t able to make money like Chakki had. If she could have gone east to sell fish or knew how to build a Kambavala, things might have been better. It was only natural that she began thinking on those lines.

  Papikunju had nursed a husband. That she knew how to. She loved Chembankunju too. It was impossible to not love him. But Chembankunju had to make his place in a slot that had once been occupied by another man. Just as she had to find her place in a home that had been filled by another woman. Like Chembankunju thought of Chakki in his moments of crisis, it was Kandankoran Valakkaran she thought of when she needed counsel. Perhaps she was begging for his forgiveness.

  Papikunju knew no peace. Everything was falling apart. And at times she was plagued by a guilt that she had been the cause of it all. Chembankunju had prospered when Chakki was around. And was ruined when Papikunju took her place. Chakki was the wife of a fisherman. And Papikunju that of a netsman.

  The boats were beached on the shore. Papikunju feared the outcome. She decided to send for Ousep. After dinner, when Chembankunju sat lost in thought, Papikunju went to him and asked, ‘How can you sit around like this? Don’t we need to repair the boats?’

  He looked up and into her face. He didn’t speak. She asked again. ‘Yes,’ he replied and retreated into a silence. Ideally a discussion should have followed.

  She asked, ‘Shall I send for Ousep?’

  ‘Call him.’ The answer came quickly. Did he even realize what he was saying? Chembankunju knew more than anyone else on that shore what it meant to borrow money from a shark like Ousep. So didn’t that mean that he had spoken without contemplating it seriously? Would he have said that if he had deliberated about it? He didn’t seem too concerned about his boats lying idle on the shore.

  In that house, such after-dinner scenes had been played out before. Discussions regarding the laying of a firm foundation for a future. In those days the witness to those discussions had been a wick in a broken kerosene lamp. In those days Chembankunju used to be sharp and vigorously bright, and with him was his Chakki who had come to him as a child bride. They would think deep into the future. Within the hut their two children lay asleep lost in pleasant dreams. Now Panchami squirmed in the coils of a nightmare.

  Papikunju asked, ‘What should I do?’

  He didn’t speak. She continued, ‘I am a burden. I am unable to manage things. What do you want me to do? I am used to being fed by what the man brings home!’

  Chembankunju listened to her silently. Papikunju began to weep. ‘How many people have I ruined? The moment I stepped in here, everything was ruined.’

  Chembankunju’s mouth opened. ‘So what about that now?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Do something!’

  Gangaduttan began insisting for five hundred rupees. Papikunju had dragged him into this life. So she had to give him what he demanded. How she did it was none of his business. Chembankunju was obliged to pay up. He had bought Papikunju’s affections. Gangaduttan’s mother had sold herself to another man. In Gangaduttan was Kandankoran Valakkaran. Sometimes Papikunju felt it was Kandankoran standing there and demanding money and more from her.

  Papikunju sent a man to fetch Ousep. She told him about what had to be done. Ousep agreed to lend them the money. But the two boats and nets would have to be pledged. If the principal and interest were not paid back in time, the boats and nets would be his.

  Chembankunju didn’t speak. Ousep asked, ‘Chembankunju, why don’t you say something?’

  Chembankunju said, ‘What am I to say? I need the money anyway.’

  The next day Ousep brought a letter of agreement. Chembankunju didn’t even bother reading it. He signed it. Ousep counted out seven hundred ninety-five rupees. He said there were certain expenses that were paid out from the balance five rupees. Chembankunju locked up the money in a box.

  It seemed that the silence in him had begun to abate. He began talking a bit: About having the boats repaired. And that the money had to be paid back within the stipulated time. Or, it would be big trouble. Ousep was a heartless man. Papikunju promised to do her best.

  Perhaps Gangaduttan sensed the presence of money. Or perhaps not. But he began pestering Papikunju like never before. He had to be sent away. He couldn’t bear to stay there, not even for half an hour. Papikunju pleaded with him. Let the boats be repaired and put out to sea. She would find him the money he needed.

  He was adamant. ‘I can’t wait that long!’

  Papikunju grew angry. ‘If you can’t, that’s up to you. What more do you expect of me?’

  ‘In which case you can forget you have me as a son.’

  Papikunju could find nothing to respond to that. She was his mother; the woman who had given birth to him. She had trampled upon the memories of his father and come to Chembankunju.

  Helplessly she asked, ‘How can I ask that man?’

  ‘Amma, you have to find a way to send me off.’

  He wouldn’t listen, no matter what she said. His implication was that only if she were to send him away would she be Chembankunju’s alone.

  ‘It’s also for your sake, son, that I came here!’

  ‘That may be so. But you have to let me go.’

  Papikunju didn’t have the courage to broach this uneasy subject to Chembankunju. But it was growing to a point where it couldn’t be contained in secrecy any more.

  Papikunju was agitated. Chembankunju behaved as if everything he owned was no longer his. And on the other hand was Gangaduttan’s insistence. She shouldn’t have taken up with another man. But then how was she to live? How could she have known that there would be such troubles … she wished she hadn’t ventured into this at all. Neither would she have had to put up with Gangaduttan’s demands nor with Chembankunju’s unhappiness. She had begun her life on a fault line. If she had been an ordinary fisherwoman, she could have put a basket on her head and gone east to sell fish. She could have eked out a living in that manner. Everything had gone wrong. She had thought that she was attaching herself to a prosperous boat owner. What was the future going to be like?

  In that fierce tussle within her, it was the mother who triumphed. It was only the mother who could be victorious. At the worst, she would have to starve, beg … and Papikunju had the courage to endure that. What was her tie with this house? If she were to think about it, nothing at all. If Chembankunju was ruined, well, she would starve. But if Gangaduttan could be sent off with some money and he flourished, she would too. And if she did, surely Chembankunju would too. And so the mother in her won that battle.

  One day when Chembankunju was not there, Papikunju opened his box. Panchami wasn’t there
either. She took two hundred-rupee notes from the bundle Ousep had given them. She locked the box and secured it once again.

  That night Panchami saw the mother and son huddled to the west of the hut whispering. She tried to hide behind a coconut palm and eavesdropped. Panchami made some sense of what was being said. Papikunju was asking him to be content with two hundred rupees for now. The rest would be found later.

  The son went away with his mother’s blessings. The mother watched her son. Her eyes filled. She wiped her face and came back in.

  Panchami had a new weapon. She decided to make use of it. Stepmother had given her son some money. She didn’t realize that it was from the money that Chembankunju had kept aside. But she had no doubts where that money had come from. It was from their home. She would whisper that secret to her father. While her father had to pledge his boats and nets because he had no money, stepmother had money of her own. And it was that she had given her son.

  The next morning when Chembankunju went out to the shore, Panchami too went along.

  A little later he rushed in like a mad man. Chembankunju opened the box and peered inside. There was only five hundred rupees there. The next instant there was a bellow. ‘Did you take the money from here?’

  Papikunju confessed; she confessed everything. Unable to contain his anger, he shook. His decree emerged as yet another roar, ‘Get out of my house!’

  Papikunju stepped out silently. Panchami was pleased with it.

  ‘Go to the shore!’

  Papikunju walked to the shore. He shut the door. ‘Don’t dare enter this house again!’

  Papikunju didn’t answer that either.

  On that long, long shore, a hapless destitute woman wandered. Once Kandankoran’s wife, now Chembankunju’s wife.

  Once again from somewhere aggression and vitality shot through Chembankunju. The vim and vigour that had dulled and diminished for sometime now surfaced.

  That Chembankunju had thrown out Papikunju from his home spread like wildfire through the shore. Papikunju was seated under a coconut palm on the seashore. Where could she go? There was no place on this earth. Neither did it seem that Chembankunju’s heart would eventually melt. But the matter couldn’t be left alone to resolve itself, everyone there said. A destitute woman wandering on that shore!

  The elders of the community got together and went to the Shore Master. Right from the beginning the Shore Master had not been happy about her choosing to make a life with Chembankunju. This woman belonged to the Ponnani Shore Master’s family and had been Pallikunnath Kandankoran’s wife. It had seemed a slight to Shore Masters everywhere. Which is why he didn’t want to hear a thing about a woman who had no respect for tradition, he said adamantly. The Shore Master was furious. But the elders wouldn’t budge either. This was a serious issue. A woman with no place to sleep during the night was on the shore. Was that right?

  The Shore Master said, ‘Do what you want! Beat him or her to death and fling them in the sea!’

  Ayankunju asked humbly, ‘How is that possible, sir?’

  ‘What else do you want me to say?’

  ‘You must call for Chembankunju and talk to him.’

  ‘I can’t. What can I tell him?’

  ‘What are we to do then? Who else is to resolve such matters?’

  Faced by that question from the elders of the community, the master and protector of the shore had to bow down. Something had to be done.

  A woman from a Shore Master’s family was wandering like a vagrant on this shore. The Shore Master said, ‘This is the result of forgetting traditions and values. Would something like this have happened to her if she was in a Shore Master’s family?’

  All of them agreed with what he said.

  The stepmother who had usurped her mother’s place was cast out. Everything was clean again. Panchami clung to her father. She had something to accomplish. She was looking for an opportunity to broach the subject.

  The subject was trivial. There was no one at home. Why don’t they fetch her elder sister back? If that happened, the house would be the home it once was.

  That Ammachi was not there would be its only shortcoming. But if Karuthamma was there, Panchami could bear even that. But she couldn’t find the right moment to bring it up.

  Chembankunju wasn’t idle even for a moment. He was serious all the time. With that reawakened vitality and strength, he seemed a different man. He had decided to revert back to being the Chembankunju he once was. He kept finding fault with everyone all the time. Papikunju was an omen of destruction; from the moment her shadow fell on this house, ruin set in. He was cursed the moment he decided to marry her.

  ‘I think my brains must have been addled then! I was smitten by her skin, her hair and her curves!’ That was what he claimed. He spoke about Karuthamma as well. She enticed a Muslim and then when a fisherman appeared, she went after him. She wasn’t his daughter. She had ceased to exist for him.

  Occasionally, he would ask Panchami, ‘What will you turn out to be?’

  He didn’t trust her either.

  He was going to start a new life. So what if in the middle there had been a run of foolishness.

  Nallapennu took Papikunju to her home. Panchami was upset to see that comet of destruction stationed close by rather than sent to some distant part of the universe. She could have borne it if anyone else had done it. When her mother was dying, it was to Nallapennu that Panchami had been entrusted. So why was her foster-mother now turning traitor?

  Chembankunju too was rubbed raw by this. But he found an explanation for that as well. Achakunju had always been envious of him.

  Panchami felt a compromise would take place one of these days. But before that chechi had to be brought home. And finally after biding her time for a long while she said, ‘Accha, why don’t you ask chechi to come home? She is a simple girl. Everything said about her is all lies!’

  Chembankunju shook in anger. ‘Whom do you want brought here, you brat?’

  Panchami grew frightened.

  ‘That Muslim’s shack may be in pieces, but he still lives on this shore. I am not going to let a slut like her enter my home.’

  Panchami didn’t speak. Chembankunju asked, ‘Do you also want to do the same as she did? In which case, you can get out right now!’

  Chembankunju’s anger grew by the moment. He lost control, forgetting the place and himself, and shouted, ‘Get out! Get out!’ It seemed as if he was going to kick her too out of his home.

  Chembankunju began ranting about Karuthamma. And then about Panchami. She too was going to take after Karuthamma! He left Papikunju alone. He had stopped talking about her. Karuthamma and Panchami now became the objects of his ire.

  Meanwhile, the Shore Master arrived there to examine the situation. The elders of the community, Chembankunju and Papikunju were sent for. It was a momentous event. A great many people gathered there. There was only one person praying fervently that no compromise be arrived at: Panchami.

  ‘My mother of the sea, my departed ammachi, let that not happen!’ That was her silent prayer.

  The Shore Master called Chembankunju and asked, ‘What is all this, Chembankunju? Why are you behaving as if you have no regard for norms and rules?’

  The Shore Master had many serious accusations. He had married again without asking for his permission. What was his explanation for that?

  It was a very serious crime. Chembankunju should have offered betel leaves and tobacco to the Shore Master and sought his blessings before he brought Papikunju home.

  Everyone waited to see how Chembankunju would respond. Along with others, Achakunju too was one among the involved. They too were obliged to respond to that accusation. Some of them began moving away slowly.

  The Shore Master demanded with the authority vested in him, ‘Tell me, Chembankunju, why?’

  Chembankunju stood straight. It seemed he had grown taller and wider. He didn’t give a toss, his face set into a grave expression. No one had ever seen a Chem
bankunju like the one standing there!

  The Shore Master repeated his query. An answer shot out like a bullet. ‘I didn’t marry her.’

  It wasn’t what she expected to hear. All of them were shaken up. The Shore Master sat down gulping. When he recovered, he said, ‘How do you explain the presence of this woman then?’

  ‘I brought a woman to work for me. What’s wrong in that?’

  The Shore Master was defeated. His first accusation had crumbled to dust.

  All the other accusations too fell apart.

  Papikunju was summoned. The Shore Master examined from head to toe the woman who had flung custom and norms to the wind. He asked her, ‘Is that the truth, woman?’

  Everyone expected her to deny what Chembankunju had claimed. Chembankunju didn’t seem too concerned even then. He didn’t seem to care if she replied that all he had said were lies. It seemed as if he had decided to disregard and disrespect everything. He wasn’t going to give in to anything.

  The Shore Master repeated his question to Papikunju. A little word that astounded everyone slipped out. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Chembankunju didn’t marry you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So were you a maid here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The honourable Shore Master was unable to speak for a while. Chembankunju himself hadn’t expected to hear such a response. The Shore Master looked at Papikunju, who had just buried her honour, with the disgust meted out to one who has brought dishonour to her family and said, ‘You deserve all of this! You who once lived with a decent man…’

  He didn’t finish his sentence. But neither was he going to let Chembankunju who stood there completely unconcerned go scot-free. He asked Chembankunju, ‘Even if she is a maid, you can’t throw a woman out.’

  There was an immediate answer to that. ‘She is a thief!’

  Again the Shore Master was dumbstruck.

  Even if it all sounded right, that wasn’t the truth. Everyone knew that. Papikunju had been offered a podava by Chembankunju and brought home.

  The Shore Master thought of a new trick. He decided to frighten Chembankunju. ‘Your arrogance is a little too much. Not just now. But always. Do you know what the outcome of that is?’