‘Velumbaaa…’
It was his father, Appa’s voice. Appa’s voice broken with age.
He gave a start. He looked around rather fearfully. The voice spoke again, ‘Velumba…nee thirumbi vandittaya…Velumban, you’ve come back…’
From the centre of the compound, from between the bushes, that voice sounded, asking him if he had returned finally.
He wanted to shout out aloud in reply, ‘Ama Appa, Yes Father, you called me, and I came! How could I not? I am still that little boy who heard your call as you stood on the banks of the river in the drizzle, holding a palm-leaf umbrella. I am still that boy, I don’t grow up. I can’t…’
He felt as though a familiar smell rose from the compound, from the black soil that the bushes covered. It was the smell of Manikkan’s land, the smell of the soil, the smell of Muchiri.
He shut his eyes in the fulfilment of that moment. He had known even otherwise that he would sleep well that night.
Aravindan wrote the last line in the last page and sat up straight. It was as though a lot of stuff had flowed out, leaving him empty. A lot of what he had seen and heard and imagined had mingled, become groups of letters and finally left him for ever. What he felt now, was it relief or a feeling of loss? He was not satisfied. He had not said even one hundredth of what he wanted to say. Sitting beside this great flow and taking water in a vessel—this was as much as one could do.
When he had set out from Bombay at Perumal’s call, he had not imagined such a development. Was it actually Perumal’s call? The call was from others through Perumal. A place that lay beneath and above the soil—A time; many times; people who passed through that place and those times. Perumal was just an excuse. A man who had devoted his life for lonely journeys through history had performed a mission. If he went through those notes, he too might say the same thing.
At the faltering beginning, Aravindan had not been confident that he would be able to move forward. He had doubts at each stage, ‘Should it be I, who said this, I myself ? Should it be said like this? Will these letters that stand in opposition ever yield to me?’
Somewhere along the way, though, it caught fire. It became an excitement, a mission. Letters and words obeyed him, stayed with him.
From the metropolis to the village of his birth. From there, through history, through births, he had travelled forward and backward. Some people joined him on that journey. The feeling that there were people before and after him became energy, became light, became sight.
As he folded away these papers, they would all say goodbye— from Vadakkoth Thanka to Achumman and Ramabhadran and Perumal.
‘I can understand the sadness I see on their faces. They had all been with me for some time now, they were walking within touching distance. When they walked with me like playmates, telling me their stories, they lost their separate existence at some point. They became part of me. It was as though they were clutching me in fear of being discarded. But, I too wanted them. And so, I too held them tight, reluctant to let them go.
‘The decision not to make people living in the village, now, characters in the story had been a wise one. Most characters would take the chance to leave the writer midway and find their own way. Since I am not a writer, and they are not my characters, I can call them back again, keep them with me.’
And through them, a place, a time, times.
Who knows?
Aravindan felt as though he heard Dr Kulkarni’s suppressed laughter from somewhere. The laughter of a seeker who had the ability to see into the bodies of the future.
Aravindan was startled for a while. He sighed then.
Aravindan stood on the Goshree Bridge with his hand on the railings.
Huge cranes lifted their head against the red of the evening sky, clear after a day of rain.
Vallarpadam Terminal. The new half-way house on the western shore. Ships that waited for the panting to subside after a long journey. Huge bundles of merchandise that waited for the containers.
This year had been one of unusually long rains. The rain that went on for months reminded one of the old days of Muchiri. The monsoon that had been waited for by the shore. The monsoon that the Yavanas waited for, that waited for the Yavanas.
This is the rebirth of Muchiri, Aravindan thought to himself.
The uncut umbilical cord stretched to Vallarpadam. When fresh blood from the new age flowed into the arteries that did not know decay, history repeated again. A mingling of countries and continents that was beyond the simple coming and going of ships and merchandise.
The young sailors who waited on the ships that waited for the tugs that would lead them into the port would not have heard of Muchiripatinam. The sailing vessels that waited for the right winds, the stars that showed them the way and the monsoon that they waited for, existed only in the history books. These young men had machines to show them their way. There would be no one waiting for them except the loading workers. They would not see any enticing sights from their viewpoint on the decks. They would be in a hurry to finish their work and go on to the next port.
But surely someday, there would be someone from the old generation of Yavanas getting down from a ship that reached the shore.
He thought of the historian who had come in search of memories of his dear ones centuries back. The Yavana with the grey flowing beard. He had crossed the backwaters and the river and measured the land in seven steps. But when he reached Muchiri he was welcomed by narrowed eyes and whistling thorn sticks. When pearls and grass grew in the land that had been dampened by his tears and blood, it was in some sort a penalty paid by a time that had been bad.
Another man like that, perhaps in the same monsoon season, was following the smell of the same western wind…
If it had been a historian who came earlier, the next traveller might be an artist. The traveller who reached here following the roots of the colourful stories he had heard in childhood, might be unable to find anything new. The old Muchiri area now had a few compounds divided by fences, some open spaces, spotted cows that chewed cud under the spreading tamarind trees in the open spaces…and far away, the sea and river.
But an artist is someone who sees something not easily visible. On that day, when the rain stays away, new sights would take shape in his mind, as a part of this journey, mixing dreams and memories. In the moments of meditation, in the weight of the silence, a new Muchiri would fill him as sights, sounds. When that turned into a rare mixture of colour, the sailing vessels that floated down in the monsoon wind and the shore that greeted the ships with loud shouts, the seashore, and the river bank would enter. When Adrian and Orion, Thanka and Ponnu, and several Yavanas and the people of Muchiri took life and came into it, he would realise the real purpose of his coming.
This was the return journey that some ancestor had longed for.
The fulfilment of the man who came bearing the weighty bundles of someone else’s desires was in these pictures. As he embarks on a ship, keeping these for some future generation, the seashore that had welcomed the first sailors would be waving a hand. There will be faint music on the sea breeze.
This may not end with him. Later, it could be a writer, a sculptor, a singer. Someone, listening to the call of the links that could never break fully but needed to be united again.
The sun had vanished into the red of the dusk. The thin darkness was filtering in.
Aravindan stood there for a little while more. The eyes of the vehicles formed flowing rows behind him. Old Muchiri was coming alive, through Vallarpadam Terminal, looking to the coming centuries.
Another night, to remember, to forget, to remember again.
Aravindan walked back. To the call from behind of the nights to come.
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to many well-meaning people without whose help I would not have been able to bring out this novel.
I am thankful to Prof. M.G.S. Narayanan, who provided considerable encouragement from the very beginning. Also grate
ful to Dr Cherian, Director KCHR, and his team, and Mr V. Selvakumar of the Tamil University, the driving forces behind the Pattanam excavations. Journalist, Ravi Kuttikad, needs a special mention for all his help in my research efforts.
Ms Prema Jayakumar’s association with me as a translator has been long and rewarding, and she has done an excellent job in the case of this book as well. She was well complemented by Ms Jayalakshmi Sengupta, Senior Editor, Niyogi Books, who went through the text patiently and edited it professionally. My sincerest gratitude to Mr Nirmalkanti Bhattacharjee and Mr Bikash Niyogi for bringing out this book in the present form.
Last, but not the least, I am thankful to my readers for reposing their trust on me as a writer. I hope to live up to their expectations.
SETHU
The Saga of Muziris Page 41
