‘We should keep up,’ Kichan said.
‘Not just keep up, we must be at least a couple of steps ahead,’ Kunkamma added.
That she should be two steps ahead was almost a vow with Kunkamma now. She had grown so much from the beautiful girl of Vadakkoth who had coloured the dreams of a whole place. Kichan was sure that she had acquired her strength and will to succeed at all costs, later in life. Each word she uttered and each move she made seemed to be a challenge to someone.
He had asked her rather hesitantly once, ‘Who are you challenging, child?’
Kunkamma acted as though she did not understand his question.
Kichan twisted his lips and added, ‘You needn’t try that with me. I have seen you since the day you were born. If I could read even your peramma’s mind to a certain extent, do you think you can deceive me?’
Even as she countered his questions with questions in turn, Kichan could see something burning in her mind. Though she did not speak about it, she was noting down something in her mind, she was hard at work, writing, erasing, rewriting. When the tensions of those calculations became visible on her face, he would put his hand gently on her shoulder, on her head and say, ‘Gently, child. Don’t be in such a hurry. There is a lot of distance to cover.’
As he tried to put out some of the embers, she would try to smile that innocent smile of her childhood. As he caressed her head with his hand, she would lift that hand, dry with time, to her eyes and say, ‘Mama, you are like God to me!’
He could guess at some of her tensions. She was trying to fight the past. It was not easy to keep memories in their place.
Whenever he tried to reassure that it was not necessary to struggle so much to wipe away the stains of the past even while she tried to preserve the grandeur of Vadakkoth, she would evade his words. She always attempted to evade arguments about what her peramma had done. She had kept a distance from him in the beginning because she thought him a faithful adherent of her peramma. He had not tried to explain himself, but had gone his own way. It was she who had to find her way back to him.
Kunkamma had a number of questions to ask her peramma. Questions that had taken shape when things that she could not understand became real doubts, the corrections that the new times brought. However, she could not reach out to her peramma anymore. She was long gone.
When those questions returned as arrows that could not reach their destination, Kunkamma bled from them, even felt hatred for herself.
‘What right have we, who could not preserve the purity of the shore, to speak of the sea rising to swallow the land, of the river changing its course?’ she had asked Kichan once.
Kichan did not reply, but nodded and listened to her.
Kunkamma was thinking of the aeons when the sea had matched the land. But when the soil and the women became polluted…
She had stopped there. But Kichan knew the by-lanes that her mind was traversing.
‘To measure the past with the yardstick of today…’
‘Something eternal in the place of the green sticks, which time breaks.’
‘Is there something like that?’
‘There is, Mama,’ she said firmly. ‘Beliefs that did not yield to time, those were what had been lost.’
Kichan tried to change the subject in a hurry. He said, ‘Giant cranes are coming up in Vallarpadam. This is the time of huge containers. They have installed cranes that can lift containers over a 100 metres. Our arrangements too should be able to capture those heights. We have to organise everything with the future in mind. An extensive container yard, bigger warehouses, machinery…’
She spread out her hands as though to say that she had anticipated all this long back. She had already arranged to buy land for the yard. She was thinking of the best software available that she could use to follow the movement of merchandise and to control it. The customers that were going to come would be of the highest calibre. And she always wanted to be the best in whatever she did. She never even thought of coming second. If she felt that she could not be the first in whatever she took up, she quietly gave up that field.
‘Therefore…’
‘Two steps ahead…’ Kichan said.
‘No, two steps above…’ she corrected.
A couple of the executives had said that some foreign companies had expressed interest in a joint venture. Some big people who were willing not just to collaborate in the technical field, but invest money in the company too. They must have heard about the efficiency of the Vadakkoth group.
Kunkamma just nodded in reply. She later told Kichan, ‘We made all this with our own hands. Why do we need a helping hand from abroad now?’
‘Won’t connections beyond the borders do us good in the future?’ Kichan asked.
‘It’s not as though we don’t have experience of such connections. Even our capital…’ Kunkamma stopped there and peered at Kichan and laughed. Kichan nodded in acknowledgment. She thought for a little while and said, ‘We have seen the good and bad sides of such relationships. So, we will take technical knowhow from them, we won’t let them in as investors.’
‘All right. But how are you going to run this rapidly expanding empire without taking anyone into your confidence? You have entered all sorts of unconnected fields and it won’t be easy to keep an eye on everything on your own. Don’t you need a second row of command that can manage the affairs of each branch?’ Kichan asked in a mild voice.
The answer was very firm, ‘No Mama, I have the strength and ability to keep an eye on everything myself and to manage the different enterprises.’
It is as though her peramma’s stubbornness had entered the grandchild too, Kichan thought to himself. It is not as if she did not know that the people who worked for her counted a lot in her success and in offseting her lack of experience. But she was very reluctant to accept that.
‘It is not that I don’t trust them. But a certain distance is a good thing,’ Kunkamma tried to explain. ‘Especially where people who work for you are concerned. That does not mean that you don’t grow close. It is when you don’t keep that distance that doubts about closeness and lack of it crop up. It’s better not to sort out all the doubts but to keep them guessing to a certain extent. Let them accept it as the price they pay for the position they occupy.’
Kichan thought that it was a new principle for a new age. A new twist to the old adage. Don’t trust anyone who works under you. It is up to him to prove that he is trustworthy. Such stubbornness was part of her make up. She would listen to anything anyone has to say, but the final decision was hers. ‘Mine alone, since I have invested the money.’
Invested the money! Kichan felt like laughing. Only he knew exactly how this money had come. Perhaps, the dark byways would stun even the present-day corporate world.
She was holding a lot in her own mind. Kichan could understand the varying expressions on her face as she tried to detach herself from some things, as she tried hard to separate herself from ties that she knew about and those she did not know about. There were many calculations in her mind. And she took excessive precautions in her dealings with anyone. When Kichan asked why she behaved like that, she evaded his questions. Kichan could not understand how she had become so untrusting. It was as though she needed a hundred eyes and ears to survive in this world.
The insecurity of the summit.
Kichan, who had grown up mingling with others, found it difficult to keep a distance. Anything he did was as part of a combined effort. When he worked in Manikkan’s fields, he was annan or elder brother to everyone who worked there. Manikkan would laugh at him when he heard people older than Kichan call him that. But his father would come to his rescue. He would say: ‘He was born without being born, he grew without anyone bringing him up, you can’t calculate his age.’
Born without being born, growing up without being brought up.
Kichan had often thought about the real meaning of those words that day. A plain glass piece that had been dumped on the
shores of Muchiri one day by the river and the sea on a day when the waves had been quiet. Someone had given it shape, colour. Kichan thought of himself like that.
What reassured him in these days of rebirth was that, in spite of time passing, in spite of the land changing, he himself had not had to change much.
There were separate lunch rooms for the executives and workmen in the corporate office. The food was also different. But Kichan always ate in the workers’ canteen. He was satisfied with the chapatti and rice and curries they got. As for the meat that was served twice in a week, he did not touch it. He was also particular about where he sat in the canteen. Even there, grades and separations existed. But he would sit with a different person each day, without paying attention to their status. To begin with, the workers had been suspicious, thinking that he was there as a spy for the owner. Later, they realised that he was not that kind of a person.
He knew that Kunkamma did not approve of his free and easy ways. She would ask him why he could not eat with her at her home. When he countered saying that he did eat his breakfast with her, she would ask him why he could not eat in the officers’ canteen.
It was quite some time since he had stopped paying attention to her irritation about such things. All he had looked for when he worked Manikkan’s fields had been the shade of a tree. He would share whatever Valli had sent specially for him, with the others. Valli knew that he had a big stomach and started increasing the size and number of the vessels. Finally Manikkan put a stop to it, saying that everyone would eat the same food. Or, Kichan would not get enough to eat.
Kichan could not give up the habit of sharing that he had developed when he was young. He would share, at the eating place and the work place.
Kunkamma was not too happy with the arrangement, but she kept quiet about it. Kichan knew that the new generation, which was unaccustomed to the justice of sharing would not understand him. He had no complaints. He knew that their world was one that revolved round themselves. It too might be another face of this commercial world. Someone like Kunkamma who had never been needy would not understand the paths that others traversed.
There was a question he had asked himself a number of times. Would she, at least, be able to trust him completely? She had learnt to hide her displeasure from everyone by now. She had different masks for different occasions.
Perhaps the previous experiences of the Vadakkoth family might have been responsible for her attitudes. He had often felt like asking her whether she felt that she could correct the mistakes of her ancestors in her one life. This generation did not have the generosity of the old timers. There were things he could not understand. That was why he did not take it too seriously when she insisted that he be with her in whatever she did.
He knew that she was capable of directing the harsh words that she threw at others at him too, if the occasion arose. To avoid a situation where he would have to react to her harshness, he decided that he would never enter her office unasked. Perhaps, this was the distance that Manikkan’s progeny had wished to maintain, the distance of which Kunkamma had spoken of.
That was how Kichan started thinking of some land of his own, where he could plant his feet firmly. This was the good fortune he had not had in either of his births. A little soil he could call his own. A small hut in that, one built in the old way with stones and mud, which would let in the air and light.
In his different births and migrations, he had never felt the need for land of his own, perhaps because there was always someone willing to take him on. He had always had the broadness of vision to make him see any place he stayed in as home. It had dimmed only when Manikkan’s children had behaved rather badly. Though they had said nothing overtly, he had realised that it was time for him to leave that place.
He felt better when he found a small piece of land a little away from the bustle of the city. There was a good well, which had water even in summer and a small pond now covered with weeds but would be enough to bathe in, once it was cleaned. It was a long time since he had bathed in a pond, fully immersing himself in the water. He disliked the chlorine rain under which he bathed in the bathroom. The soil too was good, fertile and moist. He could grow something there. It was a long time since he had flexed his hands. He wondered if he had lost that sure touch that Manikkan used to be envious of. The dryness of long life had entered not only his body, but his mind too. This was the legacy of living in the city for long.
He did not tell anyone when he built a small house there. Even Kunkamma found out about it only later. This was perhaps the only thing he had hidden from her in all these years. He had somehow felt right from the beginning that it had to be like that.
When she found out about it, the work on the house was complete. She was very upset and asked anxiously, ‘Why Mama, why did you do that? What is it that you lack here?’
There was the big house provided by the company, a car at his disposal, plenty of people to do the work. What was missing? She did not understand.
‘It is not lack, child, it is the excess,’ he told her. ‘I’ve grown old and I’m finding it difficult to live in this noise and hurry. So, I found a place a little away from this crowd, where there is good water and good air. Some peace, a little exercise for the body.’
‘If you had just mentioned it to me, I’d have found you a better place and built a better house for you.’
‘That’s why I didn’t tell you,’ Kichan tried to smile. ‘Even a one-room house is actually too much for a person to stay. A room to sleep in, a front room, a kitchen, isn’t that enough for one person to stay?’
She did not say anything for a while.
Kichan was thinking of something else then. As he lay sleepless on the bed in the room where the temperature was guarded so carefully by the servants, he would remember the old coir cot on the veranda of Manikkan’s house. He had never had difficulty in sleeping when he lay on that creaking cot watching the sky and feeling the fresh breeze.
‘Still, without a word to me…’ Kunkamma was very upset.
He shrugged as though to say it wasn’t a great thing.
She had thought that it was to be a weekend place for him to go to when he felt the need. When he tried to hint of going to stay there permanently, she was devastated, ‘Mama, why do you…like this…did I do anything wrong?’ Her voice cracked.
When he tried to reassure her that this was not because of anything she had done and had been the fulfilment of an old dream of his, she started crying.
It was the first time he had seen Kunkamma so upset. He did not know how to console her.
‘Mama, you are like God to me…’ She was repeating those old words mindlessly.
He felt like asking her whether a little distance wasn’t a good thing, but didn’t say it. Her face was showing the difficulty of swallowing her own words.
She was begging him now.
‘But I’m not going anywhere, child. I’ll be here all the time,’ he was trying to reassure her, but it looked as though she did not believe him. However strong they seemed, women were women at such times, he thought to himself.
When he was about to pick up his suitcase, she caught him by the hand, ‘Don’t do it, Mama.’ She begged him in a broken voice.
He was frozen for a moment. Finally, he detached her hand gently from his arm and said, ‘I’ll stay four days here and three days there. So this place gets the priority.’
She did not say anything further but went out with her head bent. It was the first time since she could remember that her eyes were burning like this. It was also the first time that she had begged someone for something. She had always been the victor. Now, her mama, who had been her support, who had been the sole link with the past life, had put boundaries on their relationship. Four and three. Though he did not say anything, he had been hurt at some point. Otherwise, he would not take such harsh decisions.
Where had she gone wrong? Perhaps it was just the difference in the viewpoints of generations…
Kichan felt as though he was entering a familiar world when he jumped over the bamboo stick placed as a gate. He had instructed them when they were building the house that he did not want a gate, but a picket gate made of bamboo sticks. He wished to see if he could jump over it even at this age.
He had thought of building it the old way, with a cow-dung floor and a thatched roof. But the workmen had told him that it was not a good idea.
‘Do you want to do it that way, sir? The frond thatch that you get these days is not good and will leak in the rains. Even the cow dung is not of good quality.’
Their faces showed the disgust they felt at the thought of touching cow dung. They would not understand if he spoke of a childhood spent among heaps of cow dung.
It was past noon, but the yard was still full of sunlight. He stood there in the sun for a while with his eyes shut. Though sweat poured over him, inside he felt cool moonlight.
He was covered with sweat when he stepped on to the veranda. It had been a long time since he had sweated like this. Corporate mores did not allow those at the top of the ladder to sweat at all. Whether they were in the office or at home, there were strict limits to the heat they were allowed to be exposed to. Though he had wanted to oppose this compulsory cooling, he had realised that a lone voice raised against it would only earn him contempt and laughter.
He placed his right foot and entered the house, and it was as though a familiarity of many births awaited him—the damp in the hot air, the smell of sweat, of dust.
As he started to put away his sparse belongings, he heard some sound from somewhere. A voice that was familiar once and had been forgotten.
Kichan looked carefully. Was it from the kitchen or the bedroom?
He opened the backdoor and stepped on to the back veranda. The same voice came again. He could hear clearly this time.
The Saga of Muziris Page 40
