Ten-year-old Athira knew that when it rained after a break of some days, pearls would come up like moths from the soil. Soon, she found that there were other compounds near her house where pearls grew when it rained. When the sky cleared suddenly at dusk on a wet, rainy day, Athira and her friends ran to the compound next door. She had been collecting such pearls and stones for a while now from these places. Places that would later become the excavation site.
When she separated the different pearls—into those that came from tears, from sweat and from blood—she did not know that the mildew that covered them was the history of a place. The history, which historians all over the world had been following for centuries, slept in the small metal box with its broken edges, in the house with its bare stone walls.
The place had buried itself in the mud to evade all searches. The land spoke of relationships that had developed across the seas. The story of Muziris was opening up through the pearls in Athira’s metal box. Muchiripatinam was the city of Muziris to which Romans and Greeks and West Asians had come centuries back.
When the land where pears and corals grew woke from a deep sleep, it gave these new pearls to history. The shore that remained not a shore, filled again with pearls and herbs. And stones of memories, spilled from time past into time future.
PART ONE
‘I’m going to your home town…Coming?’ Perumal rang up from Madurai.
Home! Aravindan hesitated. It was years since Perumal had rung up. It was years since he thought of his home.
‘Why are you going?’ That was what he asked.
‘To recall a place, a time, to regain it, to awaken history again,’ Perumal said.
Aravindan felt like laughing. Perumal, who taught history, was saying this?
‘Can history ever sleep, Perumal?’ Aravindan asked.
‘Not exactly sleep, but doze off and open her eyes every now and then. And trouble us by pretending to sleep,’ Perumal laughed.
‘Can history awaken me?’ Aravindan’s thoughts wandered. History had departed long since from the life of someone who spent all his time in Mumbai working at logistics, tracking the movement of cargoes and containers in the high seas. History had been reduced to columns of figures by the channels of the sea.
‘The city of Muziris,’ Perumal was speaking again. ‘When I realised that it was very near your place, I found it interesting. You have walked with history under your feet all these years and never told me about it. When I went that way some time back, I tried to call you. But your number had changed. I finally got your new number today.’
‘Oh yes!’ Aravindan remembered. ‘I read about the excavations at Pattanam in the papers. I heard that they found some things there. My father’s place is near that. My mother’s place is on the other side, at Chendamangalam.
‘I know,’ Perumal said. ‘I’ve come there once to your tharavad, the family home at Chendamangalam. I stayed there one night.’
‘Those old Maharaja’s days.’
‘Yes, the Maharaja’s College days. I’ll never forget that night at your place. It was the first time in my life I saw so much darkness in one place.’
‘Those of us who had grown up seeing the darkness were afraid of the light at one time,’ Aravindan said. ‘Later, one grew used to separating darkness from light and light from darkness. For a long time that old chimney lamp continued to burn inside, even in the hostel room at Maharaja’s.’
Perumal was silent. Perhaps, he was thinking of those times, of that age.
After a while Perumal said, ‘It was you who got me to drink toddy for the first time. I’ve never had another drink that tasted like that before.’
It was fresh toddy, brought down from the palm. Toddy-tapper Kumaran’s offering to the guest who had come from outside. The place had been famous not just for handlooms but for country toddy, those days.
Perumal said that he wanted to stay for a few days in the neighbourhood. It was very hot in his place that year. And he was fed up of seeing the dried-up red mud of Tamil Nadu. He badly wanted to see some green. He had some books he wanted to read too. Perhaps, he could read them in peace and quiet.
‘I’ll try,’ Aravindan said. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’
As he took down the number and put down the telephone, he heard Vasanthi’s voice from behind, ‘Who was it?’
‘Perumal from Madurai. He was my senior in Maharaja’s College. And room-mate for quite some time,’ Aravindan said.
‘Why did he ring up?’
‘He’s going to our place. Wanted to know if I was interested in going too.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘History…’
‘Oh! And, what did you say?’
‘That I’d see.’
Aravindan did not need to turn around and look to know what Vasanthi’s face looked like then. He also knew exactly what she would say—the bypass surgery that he had undergone the previous year; the complications. Though his cholesterol and sugar levels were under control for the time being, they could get out of hand, at any moment. Also, his blood pressure was still wild. Routine, food, exercise…She would go on, with the help of the unreconciled figures in the laboratory report, with all the exactitude of a medical bulletin. He also knew how her speech would end: ‘If you take care, you won’t have to regret it in the end. The doctor has said that you should take special care that nothing should affect your kidney. Kidneys are the organs to be feared the most in the human body.’
But, she did not say any of that, this time. She was probably angry with him for not going to the lab on the correct date. How could she prepare the medical bulletin without the latest figures?
Aravindan’s thoughts were elsewhere though.
It was recently that his mother had revisited him with the memories of their place. It was perhaps at dawn. Or was it when he dozed off after lunch? His mother’s rosy face, her grey wavy hair, the two teeth, slightly out of alignment and the earrings with white stones were all memories of his hometown for him. Amma came to him in his dreams only to remind him of his place. Amma would be the black-bordered white mundu, the cloth wrapped round the waist; the white blouse with its pattern of stars; the mole on the chest.
He did not tell Vasanthi about amma’s sudden appearances. She would have been scared that Aravindan was homesick and might go to the railway station looking for the first train to return home. Vasanthi had gone only a couple of times to his native place, in so many years. That too, with great reluctance. As she would start looking at the calendar from the third day. So much so, he had started to hide the railway guide.
Aravindan was not surprised that Vasanthi, who did not know her own native place, who did not know her mother, turned out like this. Her mother held on for two of her birthdays before she walked into an album as a photograph. When people said that the mother in the album resembled her, Vasanthi took it as a matter of fact. It was the same with Kuntapur, where she had been born and brought up. She reached Mumbai as soon as she finished school and became sure that she should not have been born in Kuntapur.
Her father, a Menon from Ottapalam, used to say with pride that his daughter knew a whole lot of languages but not Malayalam. He had found a Kuntapuri mother for her during his stay at Mangalore. He had moved from the Mangalore port to the Mumbai port when Vasanthi finished her schooling.
Aravindan had met Menon during one of his official visits. He met his daughter, Vasanthi, later at the Onam celebrations of the Malayali Samajam.
Menon introduced her proudly, ‘My daughter sings, dances and paints. Besides English, she knows five languages. The only language she does not know is Malayalam.’
‘Not five, Papa, six,’ the daughter corrected him immediately. She started counting them out on her fingers, ‘Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Marathi, Hindi, and French.’
‘Oh yes! French. I’d forgotten that. That’s right, six languages.’ Menon also counted on his fingers.
‘The only language you don’t know is
Malayalam, right?’ Aravindan asked.
‘What to do, Aravindan? She grew up outside Kerala.’ Menon from Ottapalam expressed his regret.
Aravindan later realised, when she rang up once in a while it was only at the prompting of her father. They spoke to each other in English and Hindi. If once in a while Vasanthi tried to speak in Malayalam, Aravindan would stop her, ‘Don’t,’ he would say. ‘I can’t bear to see my language bleed.’
When without much delay Menon from Ottapalam came with a wedding proposal, Aravindan had been stunned. It was only then that he realised the pitfalls of the Onam celebrations of the Malayali Samajam.
‘Still, Mr Menon, without knowing much about each other, so suddenly…’ Aravindan had stuttered.
‘What’s there to know, Aravindan,’ Menon laughed. ‘I liked you at first sight.’
When Aravindan asked how that had been possible, Menon had a clear-cut answer. People from Ottapalam were like that. They could recognise a person’s value at first sight.
Somehow Aravindan’s mother had not been enamoured of that special gift of the people from Ottapalam. ‘The father is a Menon, the mother a Tulu, they belong to Bombay, speak some mixture, and dress French. Do you want this alliance?’
Aravindan was not particular. Perhaps Vasanthi too had not been particular. But the man from Ottapalam who had recognised his worth at first sight was not willing to give up.
‘We know you’re a good boy. One doesn’t have to go to Ottapalam to find that out,’ his mother said. ‘But, Amma, he…’
‘I was just thinking. Isn’t there any other good boy, in Bombay or Tulunad?’
‘He says, it is difficult.’
‘Hmm.’ His mother had stood for a moment with her eyes shut and then walked to the puja room.
By this time, Menon had collected the time and date of his birth and gone to Mangalore to find if the horoscopes matched. The astrologer was a Poduval from Payyannur, who stayed in a lodge there. Nine out of ten sectors matched. Best of best matches. It couldn’t be better. Aravindan knew, at once, that the sector that did not match would have been language…
It was only later that he realised the reason for Menon’s desperation. His elder daughter Aparna, who was in California, had eloped with a man from the Syrian Orthodox Church. He was from Thiruvalla and had been her colleague. She did not convert, but both the children had been baptised. Besides, the husband was particular that she should accompany him to church every Sunday for Mass. That was why he so badly wanted a Menon for his younger daughter. If not a Menon from Malabar, at least one from Kochi.
‘What are you thinking?’ Vasanthi’s voice came from behind him.
‘Nothing in particular.’
‘What have you decided?’
‘I’ve decided to go.’
He had been afraid that Vasanthi would enter into the medical-bulletin mode immediately, but that was not what happened. She spoke of other things.
‘The children will come from Kuwait for the vacation. Have you forgotten that?’
‘Not just from Kuwait, from Delhi too.’
‘Yes.’
‘I can come back by then.’
‘It’s very hot this year. A train journey will be uncomfortable.’
‘They say that airlines are giving wonderful discounts these days. I’ll ask the office to look that up.’
‘How many days are you planning on?’
‘I haven’t thought of it. Let me hear of Perumal’s plans.’
‘Why do you need to know his plans? You need take care of your plans only.’
‘He’s coming to my native place, I’m not going to his.’ Aravindan was getting angry.
‘I was just saying that you shouldn’t go there, and thereafter extend your stay.’
He just nodded. Aravindan knew that his being away from some days was no problem for Vasanthi. She had a lot of relatives in this city—people who had migrated from Ottapalam, Nenmara, Kollengode and places like that. She often visited them or they came over. Vasanthi would not notice the days passing.
Though he had prayed that he would not see his mother at night, she came early in the morning.
‘Good,’ said his mother.
‘Vasanthi will be upset,’ he said rather hesitantly.
He did not hear his mother’s reply to that. He had slipped into a doze again, by then.
Ramabhadran was waiting at the Cochin airport at Nedumbassery. Ramabhadran was called ‘Kuttan’ (a word generically used for small boys), when they studied together. When he grew up he became Ramabhadran ‘Achan’, using the title his birth in the Paliyam family entitled him to. As he saw Aravindan come pushing the trolley, he called someone up on his mobile.
‘Kuttan, he has reached; come soon.’ Ramabhadran spoke to his son over the phone. His voice was still as rough as ever. ‘The parking fee is terrible. So most of us leave the car outside the airport. And, call the driver on the mobile, when the passenger arrives.’
Ramabhadran had not changed much. But one could see that he was developing a pot belly. The marks left by smallpox on his face had mostly faded.
‘It was the railway station the last time. This time it is the airport. One can say that you are progressing. Right, Aravindan?’ Ramabhadran remarked.
‘The airlines are in a soup. They have to give massive discounts just to get people,’ Aravindan replied.
‘Good. It’s more stylish to wait at the airport.’
Ramabhadran took a good look at Aravindan and commented, ‘Your head looks great.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it is a lot neater than when I last saw it.’
‘It’s so many years since then, Ramabhadran. I came here last when Amma was ill.’ Aravindan was running his hand over his bald pate.
‘That’s right. The bushes that remained have been cleared. It looks good, anyway.’
Aravindan wondered if Ramabhadran was about to laugh. If he did, he knew that could be dangerous. The masters were afraid to crack jokes when Ramabhadran was in the class. He’d start laughing at some odd moment and he would not know how to stop. If he tried hard to control his laughter, his eyes would fill. Everyone would have to wait till he tired himself out and stopped panting.
Sreedharan Master, who taught them science, could not bear it one day. ‘Nothing’s happened here to make anyone laugh. What’s there to laugh in science, anyway?’
Sreedharan Master came to the class swaggering like a small elephant, with a belly that could not be contained in his half-sleeved shirt jutting out; his head like a globe on a non-existent neck. It was said that the umbrella he carried across his back, one end tucked in his under arm, gave him some balance.
He called all his students by the names of their fathers. So, Ramabhadran became Sambhu Namboodiri in class, Aravindan was Pappanava Pillai, Sureshkumar became Sannalam Moopan, and so on. When he called Anthappan from Gothuruthu, Lonappan, it quite upset the lad. ‘It is like giving your father a bad name,’ he complained during the interval, as they played in the schoolyard.
Sreedharan Master had a hair-trigger temper, but he could not beat anyone. Instead, he would give a sharp knock behind the ears with two fingers. Xavier, from Pazhampilli Thuruthu, claimed that he pissed in his pants when that round ring fell, ‘deeng,’ on his earlobe for the first time. With that, Sreedharan Master had a new name—Damman!
Though Ramabhadran was five years older than Aravindan, they went to the same class as he failed many times. On the first day, as he was about to sit next to Aravindan on the first bench, Ambujakshiamma Teacher warned him, ‘Look, Kuttan, that boy studies well. Don’t get him into trouble too.’
‘Sure, Teacher,’ Ramabhadran nodded in agreement.
When Aravindan’s marks turned out to be poor for the quarterly examinations, Ramabhadran was blamed by everyone. Ramabhadran found nothing to worry about the students who could not get through examinations. He told Aravindan, ‘The boy who writes the exam and the master who corrects the paper
need to have a sort of equation between them. You just need to accept that sometimes it does not exist.’
Aravindan had once heard Damman, who only believed in mathematical equations, mutter to himself, ‘This fellow should have been born in some fisherman’s hut. How did he come to be born in the Paliyam family?’
But Aravindan knew that Ramabhadran did not fail in exams because he lacked intelligence, but because he was too intelligent for them. Ramabhadran did not believe in examinations. Examinations had no faith in him either. Ramabhadran’s argument was that there was no point in asking questions on what had already been taught. Wasn’t asking about what had not been taught the proper examination?
Though he was bad at examinations, he was very good with machines. As soon as he saw something new, he had to take it apart. Nothing else would get into his mind till he had managed to fit it together properly. If only he had half the interest in his studies. ‘He is old enough for college,’ Ambujakshiamma Teacher would complain.
Ramabhadran too knew that that was true. He should not have been sitting in that classroom but doing a degree class somewhere else.
‘Let me be frank, Aravindan, these school masters know nothing. If we ask any doubt, they get angry, and then it is the cane and trouble. It’s so easy to get angry with the students.’
Aravindan knew why it was like that. Ramabhadran’s doubts were always about matters that were not in the books. And so school masters, whose knowledge about matters in the text book itself was limited, got angry when they saw Ramabhadran get up to ask doubts.
By this time, Kuttan, Ramabhadran’s son, had brought the car.
‘You’ve brought two suitcases. That means that you plan on staying rather long this time,’ Ramabhadran looked at the trolley and said.
‘It’s not that. It’s just habit.’ Aravindan added, ‘And I thought the suitcase would like some company.’
The Saga of Muziris Page 2
