by Anita Nair
Sankunni Ettan wrapped the towel Meenakshi Edathi had brought him around his waist, crumpled up his mundu and tucked it into the rafters. He began to smear the oil methodically over his body. Even after he had oiled his hair and body generously, half the oil was left over. Amma’s silent anger was directed entirely at me.
I had not thought that Sankunni Ettan would sprinkle the vaka powder kept for him on a piece of paper into the remaining oil. He let the powder soak in the oil, rolled it into a ball and pressed it into his palm. Swinging his arms, he asked,
‘Where’s the tank, Unni?’
I’m not sure why, but Amma did not ask me to show him the way.
I went to the edge of the southern courtyard and pointed it out. ‘You have to go that way.’
Meenakshi Edathi lit the lamp and showed it to everyone.
‘Unni must be very hungry,’ said Amma, speaking to me and Meenakshi Edathi together.
I pretended not to hear.
‘We’ll eat as soon as it grows dark.’
Amma picked up the piece of paper in which the vaka powder had been wrapped, mopped up the oil that had dripped on the ground with it and threw it away, grumbling all the while to herself, ‘The cost of oil now! But we can’t let anyone say we were mean to visitors from Andathode.’
Why was she saying all this to me? All I was aware of was the flavour on my tongue of rice mixed with the oil in which pappadams had been fried. I waited, watching slivers of darkness gather like little dark-skinned Cheruman children amongst the banana trees.
Sankunni Ettan came back from his bath to the eastern veranda, took his mundu down from the rafters, put it on and patted his hair into place with his hands. He handed me his wet towel.
I heard Achu Ammaman coming. You could hear him coming from a great distance because he belched loudly. A digestive problem, too much acidity.
‘Who is that?’ asked Achu Ammaman hesitantly.
‘From Andathode,’ said Amma.
Achu Mama’s voice suddenly grew soft. ‘Who?’
‘Sankunni.’
Sankunni Ettan washed his feet, came up and sat down on the wooden veranda seat.
‘How come you found your way here?’
Sankunni Ettan stood up.
‘Sit down, go on, sit down.’
So Achu Ammaman too had great respect for the visitor from Andathode.
And all this respect was for the Sankunni Ettan who usually hung around Achan’s kitchen yard picking his gums, waiting hungrily for Ammini Oppu to call him in to eat.
Achu Ammaman belched loudly and lit a beedi. ‘What’s all the news from your side?’
Swinging his legs, Sankunni Ettan said, ‘Nothing much. Just thought I’d come and find out how Ammayi and the children are doing.’
‘I’ve been wanting to come that way for a long time. I’ll do it when my brother-in-law is here. I wanted to worship at Guruvayoor as well.’
It grew dark early in Karkitakam. A kerosene lamp was lit and hung on the nail on the front veranda wall. The oil lamp in front of the puja room went out and the odour of the burnt wick hung in the air for a moment.
Amma called out as she went in, ‘Haven’t they got a chimney yet in Vappu’s shop for the lamp in the big veranda, children?’
I had nothing to study today, since it was Friday. Usually, I sat with my books at this time every day. Except Friday, when I had all of Saturday and Sunday before me.
It had started to drizzle outside. I lay down against the wall of the western veranda. Achu Ammaman was describing a fish curry he had eaten at Andathode once, when he was on a visit there.
I could hardly hold my head up, I was so sleepy. The cool breeze made the hair on my body stand on end.
I heard Amma’s voice again in the veranda.
‘Achuthan, are you going to have a bath?’
‘No. I’ve been having this persistent cold after the rains started. I’ll just have a wash.’
‘Come on then, Sankunni, and eat.’
The wooden ledge creaked when Sankunni Ettan got up.
‘Where’s Unni?’
‘He’ll eat later. He ate as soon as he came from school.’ Sankunni Ettan followed the chimney lamp and Amma inside.
At that moment I really wanted to cry.
I could hardly stand up, but I managed to. I went to the front veranda. Insects fluttered around the kerosene lamp on the wall. An insect that had fallen accidentally into the lamp squirmed inside the glass. I crept into the dark tekkini and hovered at its northern door like a thief. Sankunni Ettan was seated in the kitchen on a grass mat with his legs crossed. There was a mound of steaming rice on the big banana leaf in front of him. Sankunni Ettan crumbled a pappadam for the stray cat standing next to him and started to eat with relish.
Amma said, ‘There’s been no fish in the sea after the rains set in. The curries are not very good, Sankunni.’
I went back to the front veranda. If only I could make myself think of something else, I would not feel so hungry. I thought of the Kalladathoor temple festival. And about Rangan’s rubber wire hanging from the roof in class. And about the time I had escaped Veeraraghavan Master’s needle-sharp pinches. Then everything went dark.
I opened my eyes to see Meenakshi Edathi standing in front of me with a lamp. ‘Come on, are you already asleep?’
We went past Sankunni Ettan who was seated on the eastern veranda smoking a beedi. I heard him belch. It was not the kind of belch caused by indigestion. It was like the sound that emerged from Pandi the cow when someone filled her basket with karuka grass.
Amma was in the kitchen, seated by the chimney lamp. I took the small stool which was kept against the wall and sat down on it. Meenakshi Edathi brought me a bowl. It was filled with the water drained from the smelly rice.
I did not look up. Amma whispered, as if telling me a secret, ‘There’s no rice, child.’
Meenakshi Edathi’s heels made a sharp sound against the floor as she walked.
‘Tell her that she should have coaxed her nephew to eat some more. She kept forcing more on him, even when he said he had had enough. She could have at least kept a handful of rice aside after she drained it, to add to his kanji water now.’
I had never heard Meenakshi Edathi talk so arrogantly before. Amma bent her head and said quietly, ‘Talk softly, Meenakshi. Don’t you know I have to continue to face the Andathode people?’
I swallowed three or four mouthfuls of the kanji water and felt like throwing up. I took a bite of the salted plantain bulb. The kanji water refused to go down my throat. I got up and washed my hands.
I lay down as usual near Amma in the tekkini, but could not sleep. I could hear Sankunni Ettan snoring in the front veranda. Meenakshi Edathi, who lay on a mat near Amma’s feet, tossed and turned. Hunger prowled inside me like a blazing torch, like steaming vapour, like a gentle ache. From time to time I thought I would lose consciousness, then I would suddenly open my eyes. I could hear Muthassi’s racking cough and the sound of crickets in the distance. The croak of the frogs in the field grew so loud sometimes that it seemed next to my ears. Then it would drift away.
‘Are you asleep, Meenakshi?’ asked Amma.
‘Um … m …’
‘Ameena Umma will have money. Go and ask her for two rupees in the morning. Tell her I’ll pay her back when Unni’s father sends me money. I have to give Sankunni at least two rupees when he goes back tomorrow.’
Meenakshi Edathi did not respond.
‘And I can’t give him just the bus fare. Where can I get hold of some tea in the morning?’
Meenakshi Edathi did not answer.
‘Whether he leaves or not, I have to give him a glass of tea in the morning, don’t I? When people come from Andathode, we have to show them courtesy, don’t we?’
Amma waited for a while, then said, ‘How quickly you fall asleep, Meenakshi.’
Sankunni Ettan’s snores glided around me like a snake in the cold darkness.
I closed
my eyes and lay on my face. Pulling one half of her big shawl over me, Amma patted me and said, ‘Poor boy, he’s asleep. Guruvayoorappa, all I want is for him to sleep soundly.’
The sound of the raindrops on the banana leaves was like the thudding of drums. I heard thousands of musical notes flowing out of the secret lairs of the black Karkitakam night. But where could I find sleep lurking amongst them?
The Voice
Suresh Menon
There is football; there is Marxism; there is Onam, there is Vishu, Christmas and Ramzan. And like a golden thread running through all this, there is Yesudas. Malayalis who have nothing else in common share him with pride. When a CEO mocks his secretary with ‘thamasamenthey varuvan …’ (why are you so late in the coming?), he knows it sounds ludicrous, he is taking the song out of context, but both realize its import. Nothing further need be said, the CEO has made his point in a language the secretary identifies with. Thus it is wherever Malayalis live. Yesudas is the common currency. Malayali Samajams around the world measure their effectiveness by the number of times they are able to organize a Yesudas concert. Sometimes there are two or three in the same city (because, the legend goes, if you have two Malayalis you already have three opinions); they can’t agree on anything except Yesudas. He is part of the collective consciousness of a people.
Malayalis have similar stories about how they first wooed their wives and girlfriends with his songs; they can remember their first rejections whenever they hear other songs; their eyes cloud over when they hear him singing songs about mothers or sisters (the scenes in the movies where these occur might be tacky beyond measure, but that hardly matters). And, naturally enough for a man who has sung over 40,000 songs (not all of them in Malayalam), there is one for every situation. Songs of innocence and songs of experience. When, approaching his sixtieth year, Yesudas made a foray into experimental, fusion music, and actually sang in English for a South American composer, newspaper columnists expressed strong views. If there is such a thing as a state treasure in Kerala, it is Yesudas. It could be a terrible burden to carry, but the singer himself carries it lightly. Early one morning at his Tiruvanmiyur residence in Chennai, he put it in perspective for me. ‘Music brings people together,’ he explained. ‘And if mine does, then that is the force of the music. I am merely an instrument of a higher power.’ Sincerity rescues the statements from being mere platitudes. Yesudas is aware of his power, of what it means to be the best-known Malayali from a region in the country that has produced scientists, writers, sportsmen and artists of international stature. Even a Head of State, K.R. Narayanan. Equally, he is humbled by the thought of being so many things to so many people. ‘They bring me love everywhere,’ he says of Malayalis of the Indian diaspora. ‘It means that I feel at home wherever I am.’ The reverse is equally true. Most Malayalis feel at home wherever they are in the world the moment a Yesudas song wafts through the music system.
It is said of great sportsmen that they are incapable of an ugly stroke; Yesudas is incapable of an ugly note. He is among the most-photographed of people. The thick hair, the beard, the soft mouth and sensitive eyes speak of a man who is at peace with himself. He has taught himself Sanskrit and a host of other languages in which he sings. In the seventies and eighties, much was made of his dodgy accent when he sang Hindi songs. Yet, he delivered some of the most memorable songs of that period, from Ni sa ga ma pa ni (for the movie ‘Anand Mahal’ which never saw the light of day) to Jub deep jale aana (‘Chitchor’). When Amitabh Bachchan, reigning king of Hindi cinema, used his voice for ‘Alaap’, Rajesh Khanna, the deposed king used him for ‘Majnoon’. The first movie flopped, the second was never released. It didn’t bother Yesudas, whose constituency was in the south. When S.P. Balasubrahmaniam, one of the most talented singers the country has ever produced, performed with Yesudas, he thought it was ‘a privilege to sing with this genius’. The two most successful singers in India have forged a relationship that goes beyond their profession. ‘He is my brother,’ says Yesudas of the younger man.
Through four decades of being the Voice, Yesudas stuck to what he is best at. He kept his feet and vocal chords above all turmoil, political or otherwise. Malayalis somehow find that reassuring; they like their icons to be apolitical, above the strife, as it were. When Prem Nazir, world record holder with over 800 films as hero, entered politics, he was roundly defeated in an election. Malayalis loved him for what he was, not for what he could be. So it is with Yesudas. His early struggles are now part of folklore. His attempts at breaking religious barriers have made it possible for Kerala to move towards true secularism. He is strongly identified with Sabarimala, and Lord Ayyappa. In mid-2001, when he gave his first concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, there was a request for a song: ‘Guruvayoor ambala nadayil oru diwasam njan pogum …’ (‘I will pray at Guruvayoor temple some day …’). Born a Christian, he is denied entry to the holiest Krishna temple in Kerala. He accepts the situation with a mixture of humour and humility that is his hallmark. The humour comes from triumphing over the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that might have destroyed a lesser man. The humility from a deep sense of understanding that he is not just the gifted one, but the chosen one.
‘God chose me, and I am grateful for that,’ he says matter-of-factly.
This is a man who is aware of his talent, and its source. It is a lesson he hopes to pass on to his children, who live in the lap of luxury. ‘I tell them of my past, of my struggles,’ he says, ‘All this (pointing to his house, his many awards) didn’t spring from nowhere. I want them to have their feet firmly on the ground.’ In the Yesudas book of virtues, level-headedness is high on the list, alongside love for parents and family, and the conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. These were the virtues that sustained him through his days of trial.
Born in Cochin on 10 January 1940, Yesudas, Slave of the Lord, had his first guru in his father Augustine Joseph, a popular singer and stage actor. Their house in Cochin was open to friends and relatives without discrimination. Then, as the actor fell on bad days, the visitors dried up. When Yesudas gives life to the philosophical lyrics of men like Vayalar, he doesn’t have to dig too deep within himself for the emotion. His is a life lived hard. If method acting is an accepted technique in the actor’s repertoire, Yesudas’s ‘method singing’, bringing to the surface emotions from experiences few go through, probably places him at a level others cannot reach. It is not something the singer dwells on.
‘I don’t analyse my singing,’ he says, adding, ‘Perhaps I think about these things before or after a song, but when I sing I just get carried away by the moment.’
And yet it might have all been so different. Now, with nearly half a century of public performances behind him, it might be difficult to imagine a Yesudas being lost to the world. Talent will out, we will tell ourselves, and feel vindicated by Yesudas’s career. But it could have gone wrong. For one, Yesudas nearly had to drop out of music college because he didn’t have the money to pay his fees; for another, when a film director, K.S. Anthony, came seeking a fresh voice for his movie ‘Kalpadukal’ (Footprints), it was Yesudas’s friend Vaikom Chandran he wanted to use. But Chandran suggested Yesudas’s name, and that was how it began.
Yesudas sang in the movie about ‘One caste, one religion, one god,’ which considering his state then, dripped with irony. His Christianity made him unacceptable among Brahmins who dominated Carnatic music. And curiously, in 1961, when the song was recorded, those words from the Kerala reformer Sree Narayana Guru had already become his life’s creed. Advaita, the philosophy, was born in Kerala; in Yesudas it found a modern evangelist. ‘I keep in touch with Chandran,’ says Yesudas. ‘He has the run of my house; he visits me when I am in Kerala, or I visit him. To this day I don’t know what made him suggest my name when the director came seeking him.’ On such chance encounters are great careers built. When Yesudas decided to come to Madras to seek his fortune, his friend, a taxi driver, gave him a lift to
the railway station and lent him a few rupees. In Madras, he often drank tap water to fill his stomach, and simply tightened his mundu when even that didn’t help. ‘Today I tease my wife about it, asking her if she would have married me had she met me in my tap-water-drinking days.’ It is necessary to be able to laugh at such personal misfortune to come to terms with it, he says. Sitting in his room, surrounded by the photographs of his gurus, and his many awards and citations, it is hard to believe this man had to struggle at all. How could they not know once he opened his mouth to sing that they were in the presence of a blessed one?
Recalling those days, his eyes, soft and expressive at all times, can’t keep the irony out. Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, the doyen of Carnatic music, allowed him to stay in his car shed. Yesudas repaid the kindness by cleaning the car everyday. There was no question of entering the house or being fed anything the great singer and his family might eat. Years later when Yesudas, now a star, visited Semmangudi, he was received with all the respect and excitement his status now deserved. He was fed and feted, and given a choice of drinks—tea, coffee or Horlicks. Years of privation having sharpened his sense of irony, Yesudas might have been forgiven for speculating on the difference a cup of tea or a glass of Horlicks might have made to his life some years earlier in the car shed.
‘I was never alone, I had my dreams for company,’ Yesudas recalls. Did the suffering test his faith, cause him to question the path he had chosen to follow, a path where music was his god? No, he says, adding gently, ‘Just because you or I can’t see the pattern does not mean that a pattern does not exist.’ This is the Yesudas of today speaking, a man at the top of his profession, an area where spirituality is what matters. He breaks off at concerts on occasions to deliver a lecture on god, and on the many ways of realizing him. There is no rancour today. He sees the early suffering—Trivandrum All India Radio decided his voice was not good enough for radio—as part of the ‘necessary pain’ that man has to go through to make any achievement worthwhile.
