She did not speak to Kali for a month after this event. ‘If I had simply taken your side in front of everyone,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t they have said I was merely taking my wife’s side? That’s why I made a general remark. She is an uncouth woman. Why are you taking her words so seriously?’ But still she did not speak to him. She felt isolated from everyone and confined herself to the house. She also took to sleeping at odd hours. Sometimes she cooked, at other times she forgot to. She didn’t go anywhere near the field or the barnyard. Her face looked swollen most of the time, her hair dishevelled. Normally, she wouldn’t even allow him to leave his hair untied. She would also wash his hair for him. But now she did nothing. When he came home, she laid food on his plate. When she forgot to make any food at all, Kali’s mother brought his food. Now he mostly ate his mother’s food. It also became very difficult to make her eat.
Kali and his mother were quite alarmed seeing her lie around with no sense of day or night. They feared she might be possessed by some evil spirit. They even thought of sending for her parents. When Kali came home at midnight and knocked on the door, it took her a long time to unlock it. She looked demented. Her arms, which once used to embrace him with desire, now lay limp and dead. Kali was frustrated. But just when he was at a loss to figure out what to do, something happened that revived her.
A goat in the barn was in the throes of a difficult birthing. Kali ran to Ponna, imploring her, ‘You used to take such loving care of it, calling it your goat, remember? You used to say, “It doesn’t matter that I don’t have children. My goats and cows will always yield abundantly.” Now will you consider going to the barn and taking care of the goat in its suffering and give it some strength? Or are you going to let it die? It is a struggle of two lives now. Kattu Karuppanarayya! Show us a good way. Karia Kali! Be on my side, Mother!’
The moment she heard that, she rose as if she had just regained consciousness and ran to the barn. Even after the kid had been force-delivered, the goat’s legs were shaking. For the next ten days, until it was able to get up on its own feet and look at its young one, Ponna stayed in the barnyard. She washed the goat with warm water twice a day. She ground the pulp of aloe vera and applied it on the goat’s wounds from the delivery. She fed it steamed millets. It was her love for this mother-goat that revived her. The next year, when he brought up the subject of going to the Perumal temple, she retorted, ‘Why? So that you can bring some woman along to humiliate me?’ and, instead, walked all the way to the temple. She also stopped lifting and holding anyone’s children. Their barnyard always had little calves and kids for her to play with.
TWENTY-FOUR
Ponna loved the eyes of the little child who, sitting on her mother’s lap, kept looking at Ponna. The child smiled through her eyes. In her mind, Ponna lifted the child and kissed her. Maran drove the cart faster than her father did. He was also able to overtake some of the other vehicles with great ease. For all this, he didn’t land the whip on the bullocks even once. All he did was touch them on their flanks with the handle of the whip. He seemed to be adept at the language of the animals, and since he was busy with the driving, his conversation with her father did not continue. It was a relief to her.
As they neared Tiruchengode, she could see the hill at a distance through the gaps in the tamarind trees en route. Atop the hill, like a hand folded in prayer, was the barren rock. The hill’s peak was resplendent in the receding light of the day.
Ponna prayed: ‘If you do not show me a way this time, the only option I have is to fall from that hilltop … I am coming today to see the god. I might fail to recognize you. You have to help me. You have to give me a child. I do not know in what form you will come today, where you will stand, what you will say, and how you will approach me. Kali’s hands are like large, rugged sieves. When they touch my cheek, my love pours forth despite the roughness of their touch. How will your touch be? How will you enter my body? I know nothing, but I am coming now, trusting you … My husband’s permission to this is not whole-hearted. He has said yes because my brother asked for it. Just like you, he wants to keep me in his body. He would never want to tear me apart from his body and give me to someone else. Despite all that, I am coming to you now. Let him hold his head high among people. Let him not stay confined to the barnyard, let the spring be back in his gait. May his embrace regain the love it used to have. You have to help us be like others, be accepted by everyone. Sengottaya, my Father … Pavatha, my Mother …’
Her mind was immersed in prayers.
She felt as though a new power was entering her. She felt dizzy, so she lay on her mother’s lap. Though she could not shrink herself and lie like a baby, it was comforting to lie with her head in her mother’s lap. She even forgot that this was the same mother who had been annoying her the whole morning. After a long time, she felt her mother’s gentle hands on her back. Her mother’s hand had sacred threads wrapped around the wrist, and she relished this maternal touch. Her mother’s eyes had teared up thinking about something. It seemed that a mother needed the joy of having a child, and the child that of having a mother.
Uncle Nallupayyan used to say, ‘Why do you think we have and raise children? For them to grow up well? No. We do it because we seem to need it for ourselves. That is why we have children and raise them. And then in old age we complain that those children are not taking care of us. This is all plain madness …’
Let him be right. We don’t expect our children to take care of us when we are old. It is enough if we can have a social life because of them. Now we are forced to act like untouchables, fearing if our sight or touch is inauspicious. All we want is to show these people who ostracize us that we too are people just like them.
Her mind was filled with various confusing dreams. There was one in which she walked a long distance with a child across her shoulder. It occurred to her that she could never see the child’s face. Was it even her child? From the way she walked, it looked like she had stolen the baby from somewhere. Was that true? Why was Kali never part of this particular vision? Where had he gone? Did he abandon her thinking that she didn’t need him when she had a child? With images and memories mingling with one another, she lay on her mother’s lap, tossed between sleep and wakefulness.
There was a lot of noise. Above the din of carts pulling over, the voices of people could be heard. They sounded unintelligible, like the cawing of crows at dawn. Maran drove the cart into the market, which seemed to be in full swing already. Ponna’s mother woke her up only after Maran pulled over at a spot wide enough for their cart. It took her a while to get her bearings. She couldn’t remember how long she had slept in her mother’s lap. She was fully awake only after a little while. The sun was down, and the shadow of twilight spread over everything. She covered her bosom properly, wiped her face with the end of her sari and, holding her mother’s hand, got off the cart. She saw that the market was filled with people and cattle. She was amazed. Had the heavens landed here? She hadn’t seen this much of a crowd even on the days when people came to see the chariot. If there were already so many people here, how many more must be coming through the roads leading up to here from all four directions! Ponna looked at everything with a great sense of wonder.
‘Samee,’ Maran said with great reverence, ‘may you be blessed. But for your help, we couldn’t have made it all the way with these children. It is Pavatha herself who showed you to us at the right time. She has somehow brought us here. Please let me know if you need any work done. When there is no work at my landlord’s farm, I will work for you. It is people like you that I should serve.’
His wife bent low in obeisance and said, ‘We will take leave.’ Ponna’s mother undid a knot at the end of her sari, took out an anna and gave it to Maran’s wife, who received it in her pallu. They walked backwards for a few steps before walking away.
While Maran and his wife were taking their leave, their little child had been smiling at Ponna. It was a good omen. Ponna had wanted to affectionately pi
nch the child’s cheek. Until the family vanished into the crowds, she kept looking at the child. Please bless me with such a charming child, my lord, she prayed.
Her father untied the bullocks from their harness. Bringing them around, tied to the front of the harness, he threw some fodder for them to gorge on. As darkness settled in, fire torches started glowing here and there in the market. Human faces became wandering figures of smoke. Her mother opened the food package. To Ponna, everything appeared foggy. She perceived everything as images from a dream that was not even hers.
GAP P A A . ORG
TWENTY-FIVE
Muthu and Kali walked along the meandering paths and elevated boundaries between the fields. They were enveloped in a variety of sounds—birds settling on the palm trees, the rustle of dry leaves in the mild wind, the sound of palm fronds grating against each other. Intertwined with all of these, their voices too had lost their human quality. Though Kali had been to these places several times when they were children, he was now unable to guess where Muthu was taking him. So much had changed in all the years he had stayed shut inside his barn.
They walked past fields belonging to both villages and reached the stream. It was flanked by thick bushes on both sides. The avaram shrubs had grown as tall as trees. Muthu walked past them, suddenly turned a corner and climbed higher. There was a coconut grove in front of Kali’s eyes. There must have been a hundred trees. They had been planted following the dictum that there must be enough space between two coconut trees for a chariot to pass through. Almost all the trees were of the same height. He could even see the tender coconut and the toddy pots on many of them. He had never seen such a grove in these parts. When all the elevated fields lay dried up, how did such a coconut grove thrive here?
For most other crops, you could manage even if you had very little water in the well. It could even be as little as what a small cuckoo would need for a drink. With that you could grow some chilli, a square-measure of raagi or some cotton. But coconut trees needed plenty of water. Otherwise, the coir covering would dry and hang, and that in turn would make the top of the tree shrivel up. Such trees looked like broken-winged birds frozen in mid-air. Kali had four coconut trees. In the rainy season, he would widen the circle around the tree for it to hold more water. But in summer, the circle would shrink close to the roots, and he would release two loads of water through the little canal. How much of it would get to the coconut trees? Not much. Kali called this ‘Life Water’. This water was meant to give just enough strength to the coconut trees to survive. He’d do that because they needed coconut for their food. Ponna would also sell what she didn’t need. After all, it was only the two of them.
But Kali could not get over his sense of wonder that here, in this dry land, was a coconut grove with a hundred trees. As they entered, a chill palm breeze took them in its embrace. Dried-up barks and fallen fronds had been stacked up on a side. Some fronds had also been spread under each tree. He was full of questions: ‘Machan, who owns this place? I never realized there was such a grove so close to us. There would be a hundred trees, right? Looks like they have all ripened. What do they do for water?’
Muthu told him the story of that place. A Muslim merchant who owned a cotton storehouse in Tiruchengode also owned this place. Before this grove of trees came up, this too was a dry piece of land like the surrounding stretches. But the cotton merchant had a lot of money. He brought a Gounder family from yonder and gave them a place to live here. This family had been languishing in a farm there, working as farmhands. He had met them during his visits there to buy cotton. When he called them here to take care of the place, they moved. Since he had no major concerns regarding money, he gave them what they needed. There were three wells for this land, and one well was used for irrigation every day. What more did the trees need? There was also a tile-roofed house right in the middle of the property for the owner to stay in when he visited occasionally. The Gounder family stayed in the thatched-roof hut. The moment the flower sheath started showing and the trees started yielding, a Sanar family too forced its way into the grove. Not only did they take over the trees but they also started making and selling toddy.
Kali’s mouth watered at the thought of the toddy. Until some years ago, you could get coconut toddy in shops. You could drink a bellyful at whatever time you wanted to; it was not as sharp as palm toddy. It was, in fact, sweet. But it was a real shock when all toddy and arrack businesses in Salem district were ordered to be shut down. One could not see toddy bowls on trees. The Sanars were at a loss about what to do; it had been their traditional livelihood. Life, in general, lost its flavour. So, people started brewing arrack in secret. But there was a persistent fear of the police. People wondered why Brahmins were making these decisions. In the middle of the white man’s rule, who suddenly gave these Brahmins the power? How else would things turn out if this Brahmin lawyer from Salem—a man who knew nothing about alcohol, who had never tasted meat in his life—was made the minister?
Also, this order was only for Salem district. No other place had such a rule. It was supposed to be a favour this lawyer had done for his district. Could everybody afford to go to the district of Coimbatore next door just to drink? But some people did. Thankfully, the lawyer went away soon and the white man’s rule was back again. Although the shops didn’t open again, the rules were relaxed. Nonetheless, Kali hadn’t drunk toddy in a long while.
Delighted that Muthu had brought him to the right place, he put his arm around Muthu’s shoulders and they walked towards the end of the grove, next to the stream, where the Sanar’s living quarters were. This was a small, thatched-roof hut. Little mud toddy pots had been kept upside down in front of it. There were also four or five mats for people to sit on.
By the time they reached there, the day was casting a yellow light everywhere. Inside the grove, the light came filtered in thin rays. Two children were happily playing around. When Kali and Muthu sat down on the mats in front of the hut, they could hear sounds from inside, of dishes banging against each other.
‘Who’s there?’ Muthu asked.
‘Please sit, brother. I’ll be there in a minute,’ a voice replied from inside.
She stepped out saying, ‘What happened, brother? You have come so late.’ And Kali recognized her immediately.
‘Katthayi! What are you doing here?’ he said in amazement.
‘Do you know her already?’ Muthu said to him.
Kali just said, ‘Hmm,’ and turned to look at her. ‘Where is Mandayan?’ he asked.
‘He went saying he wanted to have a word with the Gounder. Let me call him,’ she said and walked a little distance into the grove. Then she called out to her husband, ‘Pilla! Pilla!’
That was how she called her husband. If he was nearby, she would use one of her children’s names to address him. Since it sounded like he had responded, she returned to the hut.
‘How long have you been here?’ Kali asked her.
Katthayi poured out her woes: ‘It is in this dark place that we have been languishing for two years now. We used to live with other people; now we are all alone by ourselves. After that wretched whore made sure we got out of your land, we roamed around all over the place before landing here.’
TWENTY-SIX
Four or five years ago, Mandayan and Katthayi had come to Kali’s land to climb palm trees, and they had stayed there for some days. They were newlyweds then. Katthayi’s beauty was undisturbed. Mandayan had left his village because of a feud with his brothers. Deciding that they would make their living elsewhere, they had come to Kali’s village. After all, a toddy tapper could find work to do wherever there were palm trees. All he needed was a strong rope and a sharp knife. Just like the gypsies, they could set up a hut with a few dried fronds on any rock they found. It was not very difficult.
Mandayan was very good with palm. He had acquired a deep understanding of the palm tree from a very young age. There had been trees that people had given up on, which Mandayan revived an
d made them spring toddy again. He was also excellent with working with the coir sheaths. Palm toddy was just as sweet as coconut toddy. If you tasted the top layer of alkali, it tasted as sweet as cane juice. The jaggery that came out of this just melted in your mouth. Since he was a master of all this, there was no village where he could not make a living.
They made a hut on a piece of rock on Kali’s land. Half the produce was toddy, and the rest was the clear alkaline water. Katthayi’s job was to boil and reduce the latter into jaggery. Most of the toddy was for consumption within Kali’s property. But whatever was left of it, Mandayan sold to daily-wage labourers.
A man called Pazhani Mooppan was doing similar work in the adjacent plot of land. His wife was a troublemaker. She decided that her business was not going to flourish as long as Mandayan and Katthayi were around. After all, it was not as if a lot of men came to drink every day. And how hard it was sometimes to get the money from them! One had to practically untie their loincloths and take the money out. And who needed a competitor in the middle of all this?
The day fresh toddy was brought down was when they could sell and make some money. Though some people drank on credit, there was quite a crowd on Tuesdays, the day of the market in Tiruchengode. The list of creditors was quite long, but if the owners persisted in asking the customer each time, it was possible they cleared their tabs. There was a caste dimension to this too. While it was easy to handle most castes, it was quite a challenge extracting money out of the Gounders. But they expected you to pour toddy whenever they came.
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