My Story Read online

  The next kitchen-maid to arrive at Nalapat was the pale Kunhukutty who came from a village across the Connolly canal, ferried in by a barge, and she carried with her a bundle of clothes. She was short in stature and had a fine tracery of blue veins on her throat. My grandmother was satisfied with her deportment. She spoke only in monosyllables and in a nasal voice that reminded us of a pig. She was a hearty eater but on some evenings she went behind the cattle-shed and vomited all that she ate.

  One day, I followed her and stood behind her watching while she threw up noisily and wiped the perspiration from her face with the corner of her dhoti. What is wrong with you, I asked her. It is nothing, she said. I ate a lot of green tamarind today, and that is why I am sick. Everytime I eat green tamarind I get sick. Don’t tell your grandmother about it... And, I asked her why she insisted on eating green tamarind when she knew how bad it was for her system. I am not educated like all of you, I don’t know English or anything like that, she said. I am only a poor and ignorant girl. What can a girl like me do but be foolish...

  I thought her an awful fool. One or two months later I woke from my sleep in the morning hearing a commotion downstairs. Change your clothes and get out this minute, shouted my grandmother at Kunhukutty who stood in a pool of blood outside her dingy room. I looked around. The walls were spattered with blood. What has happened, I asked my grandmother. She only gave me a shove.

  In half an hour’s time Kunhukutty was ready with her bundle and all, to take leave of us, and, the field-hand who was assigned the responsibility of putting her on the ferry-boat muttered profanities waiting at the gate. It was obvious to me that the kitchen-maid had fallen from favour. I did not know what her crime was. It seemed more like an accident to me. Had she fallen from the rafters and hurt herself?

  Later the cook told me that she was only an immoral woman and that she had conducted on herself an abortion. The words were new to me and made no sense. Your grandmother is too good a person to suspect anything ill of anybody, said the cook. The moment I saw this one walking in with her dirty bundle I knew she was bad. But whoever listens to my advice?

  8

  Matriarchy

  Beyond the northern rice-fields lived Lazar, the oil-seller who drove his white cow and the three women of his house round and round his old mill, to extract oil from the copra and the sesame while he rested, leaning against a tree, abusing them in pornographic language which only amused his victims, for he was always a good provider and they were, by nature, masochistic.

  He had gifted to each of them gold-chains and heavy earrings. He was a heavy drinker, but the oil from his mill was unadulterated. The sesame oil was frothy and sweetsmelling.

  The wealthy ladies of the locality bought it for their oilbaths and mixed it with turmeric and sandalwood to make an unguent that was supposed to keep their skin golden and wrinkle-free. Lazar’s son, who was a matriculate, carried the oil from door to door, but he was too conscious of his formal education to make any special effort to sell. The ladies appreciated his difficulty and bought the oil without haggling over its price. They were born hagglers, enjoying a good debate when the other pedlars arrived, carrying with them their wares, the glass-bangles, the reed-mats and the seasonal vegetables.

  Behind Lazar’s house were the thatched huts of the Pariahs who were by profession basket-weavers and sorcerers. Their women wore around their necks, strands of red beads and left their breasts uncovered. The poor people approached them for love-potions and for promise to destroy by terror their enemies. Therefore the Pariahs were regarded as outcastes and kept at a distance. But in the month of Makaram, between January and February, they attained a sudden importance, for it was the month set aside for the worship of Kali to whom, being aboriginals, the Pariahs were dearly beloved.

  It was in Makaram that they dressed themselves to look like her and came to our houses to dance. They wore gleaming breasts of brass, jingling anklets and large wigs of tarred palmleaves. They were accompanied by the drummers and the reedpipe players whose wail lashed at us like a ribbon of pain in the hot noon.

  When Kali danced, we felt in the region of the heart an unease and a leap of recognition. Deep inside, we held the knowledge that Kali was older than the world and that having killed for others, she was now lonelier than all. All our primal instincts rose, to sing in our blood, the magical incantations. Om Aim Hrim Klim Mahadurge Navakshari Navadurge Navaimike Navachandi Mahamaye Mahayoganidre, darkness spawning light, night that begets the day, shame that fractures the oracles’ voice and, blood’s spilt roses in the sacrarium, Rupam Dehi Sriyam Dehi Yaso Dehi Dvisho Jahi.

  In the month of Makaram, all the Bhagavati shrines sprang to life and blazed with their thousand lamps. Long lines of young women carrying in their hands a salver with a lamp, a coconut and other auspicious objects meandered towards the temples in the dark evenings, while the drums throbbed against their ears, mesmerising them so that their walk began to resemble the glide of a somnambulist and their eyes began to glow, nestling in the pupils the red flame of their lamps. After the orchestra ended, the oracle began his dance. He ran up and down, through the crowd of people, brandishing his scimitar before his trance thickened and a tremor quickened his limbs. He leapt and he roared. His voice changed into the guttural voice of an angry Goddess. He whacked his own head with his scimitar. Then the trustee spoke soothing words. The oracle’s son removed the scimitar from his father’s hands, and rubbed turmeric into the wounds on his head. Kali was pacified for the time being. The people heaved sighs of relief and returned home.

  The oracle used to visit the houses of the wealthy on some special days, escorted by the drummers and the trustee’s men. He danced in front of the elders, throwing on their bowed heads rice to bless them with prosperity, and he warbled, I shall protect you and your descendants from enemies and from disease, is this not enough... and, the eldest woman of the house said, that is enough, I am grateful, I am grateful...

  While I grew as a child at the Nalapat House, I was trained to decorate the porch with paddy and coconut blossom for the oracle’s visit and to welcome him in the traditional way, leading him in with a lighted votary-lamp. I learned to light the temple-lamps and the many oiled wicks which had to be placed every evening at several spots around the house to honour the Gods of directions. The ancient scriptures too thought of the earth as a circular one. The North was presided over by Brahma, the South by Ananta, the East by Indra and the West by Varuna, the water-God. The North-East was ruled by Siva, the North-West by Vayu and between the two lay Kubera’s kingdom. The South-east was ruled by Agni and the South-West by Ratri and somewhere between the two but above that of Ananta, was the dusky empire of Yama, the God of death.

  In the quieter months, mainly during the rains, came the Ottanthullal dancer with his drummer and his cymbalist. He brought his kit of traditional make-up, the green Manola for his face, the powder to redden the eye and the collyrium. In his bundle was the wide gilt-crown, the skirt of ribbons and the imitation jewellery. The Nalapat House used to have those performances several times a year. I used to sit close to the dancer in the afternoon while he slowly and methodically painted up his face to resemble that of a supernatural being.

  After the adults had had their siesta and their tea, the dance began. The roll of the drum brought the school children and the poor to fill the courtyard. Friends and relatives sat on reedmats, chewing betel. The tales were picked up from the Mahabharata. The one I liked best was Kalyanasougandhikam, which narrated the exploits of Bhima who went in search of the legendary flower that grew in a demon’s garden, only because his wife Draupadi desired to adorn her hair with its petals. In daydreams I too became a Draupadi who commanded her adoring mate to brave the demons to get flowers for her wavy tresses...

  9

  Grand-Uncle Narayana Menon

  My grand-uncle’s Mother, Madhavi Amma, was the daughter of the Well-known sorcerer of Malabar, the eldest Namboodiripad of Kattumadam. She inherited from him
a great capacity for silence. She was like one of the swamps that form themselves during the Malabar monsoons, with hard crusts concealing the slush and its carnivorous hunger that draws in with splashy sounds every living creature that comes its way. I used to call her Valiamma, Big Mother, and ask questions, only out of a habit of asking questions, but she seldom gave any answer.

  Hers was a hard face, a shut safe of iron, that locked in all the bitterness of her unhappy life, of which the others gave me only sketchy details with some reluctance. It was not seemly for the child of an orthodox family to ask questions of importance and the elders expressed their resentment. I learned that Valiamma had been married to a handsome scholar who gave her a son and soon afterwards fell out of favour with her uncle, who threw him out one day asking him never to return.

  The Nairs, particularly the males, were coarse when their ire was aroused. The young Brahmin walked away not daring even to glance back once at his wife and son. The young woman was, within weeks, married off to her father’s nephew who was not sensitive or gentle like the one who had gone away. For days she waited at the fence under the lime trees hoping to see her first husband pass that way but he did not.

  Valiamma never used to talk to her son. She was shy and kept herself away from the men’s quarters. Except on his birthday she did not even serve food to her son, and she seemed ill at ease in his company. Perhaps she felt that she had betrayed him by marrying for a second time, and one who was so different from his father. Her son’s eyes pierced her heart and unsettled all the vague feelings of guilt and bitterness. But she need not have worried at all, for her son was a child of light, easygoing and unruffled. There were no dark sewers running beneath the streets of his mind.

  He grew up learning English and Sanskrit, a spiritual child to Varahamihira and Plato. The greatest of thinkers he regarded as his parents. It was not important for him that he came from the loins of a lesser being, an effeminate scholar who charmed his mother with his rosy skin and sweet smile. He built for himself a library with grilled walls and began to collect books. He made friends with Vallathole who was at that time the rising star of the Malayali literary firmament and together they went around discussing their raw philosophy and captivating the listeners. He joined the Theosophical Movement. Flamboyant people like the late Sardar K. M. Panikkar, James Cousins and Miss Lightfoot, the Australian danseuse, became his friends. The Nalapat House hummed with intense and intellectual talk. And, floating above the hum like a heavy-winged bird was Vallathole’s full-throated laughter. Vallathole had become deaf, and he did not know how to modulate his voice. His sentences flowed, as he spoke, with the gush of rivers blind to their destination, his happy voice, tremolo, at times trembling in midair...

  My grand-uncle became famous after he wrote the elegy that was entitled ‘Kannuneerthulli,’ the translation of which was printed at a press in Great Britain. Its sales were not good. Between Vallathole and my grand-uncle tension began to grow, and perhaps a touch of professional jealousy. Grand-uncle was jealous of the ease and felicity revealed in Vallathole’s writings, and Vallathole was probably jealous of his friend’s capacity to think in depth. My grand-uncle’s first wife had died in childbirth shattering his happiness. It took him nearly fifteen years to get over hear death. When he married for a second time he knew well that it was not like his first marriage, a love-match. The Malayali readers who had wept copiously while reading his famous elegy were dismayed to hear of his second marriage. They would have liked him to go to bed with a ghost every night. I remember a young lady called Sarada who was a house-guest for two months telling my mother that she could never never forgive Nalapat Narayana Menon for marrying again.

  When grand-uncle’s mother died of cancer, he was lying ill in a room a few yards away with large diabetic carbuncles all over his body. He could not wear clothes at all. He lay covered by a white sheet that showed bloodstains and the yellow of some ointment. Once when my grand-aunt was washing him I looked in and saw with horror the red hollow boils on his chest. They looked like start-rubies. He was groaning with pain when she swabbed the hollows with boric lotion. His mother had complained of a stomach-ache and had asked for a tablet of Aspirin although she had never in her life touched an Allopathic drug. What is wrong, asked my grandmother, growing anxious.

  Valiamma was one who never showed to the world anything as private as pain. She had lost a lot of weight and looked pale in the face. Then there was some bleeding, and the doctor told the others that it was probably cancer. He put her on Morphine so that she lay peaceful while her scalp began to emanate a sweet mouldy smell and white lice began to crawl about in her hair. When she died after a fortnight and was carried out, wrapped in linen, towards the southern yard my granduncle sat up on the bed and wept like a baby. It was the first time that he was displaying his love for his mother. After a few minutes when the pyre was lit by other hands he collapsed once again on the bed.

  Valiamma had not stepped out of the Nalapat House for over thirty years except to go to the privy that was a furlong away and to the pond for her baths. I cried too when I saw her frail body being removed. She had had long wavy hair touching her calves, incredibly soft, silken and touched with grey. Her poor poor hair, I whispered, while the flames grew large and devoured her. My father took me back to Calcutta on the next day, feeling that I had had enough of illnesses and deaths and required a change.

  10

  A Children's Theatre

  My brother and I, with the help and co-operation of our friends began a theatre movement, calling our group the Vannery Children’s Dramatic Society, and staged each of our productions on the multi-levelled patio of the Nalapat House, hiring gaudy curtains, costumes and the stagehands from the nearest town.

  The prominent citizens sat in the first three rows. Behind them on the hired school benches sat our relatives, and in the courtyard, on the sand rested the pittites who clapped their hands and roared in enthusiasm when emotions touched their highest peaks. The village had no electricity in those days. The footlights were hurricane lamps, covered according to changing moods, with coloured cellophane.

  The first play we staged was a Malayalam adaptation of a chapter from Victor Hugo’s Classic Les Miserables, the one that described Jean Valjean’s visit to the house of Tennardierre to meet the little orphan Cossette. I was Eponyne, the haughty daughter of the Tennardierres. When I first entered the stage and saw the footlights glimmer palely like the stars of a wintry morning and the upturned faces, I shed all wraps of shyness and began to sing in a clear, cool voice.

  Our team succeeded in wringing out tears from the stony hearts of the chieftains who sat in the front row. The pittites sobbed their heart out when Jean Valjean brought an expensive doll for the orphan. They cried out of joy. After that the applause and the magic of the footlights haunted us. We had to go on acting to hear more and more of the applause.

  My best performance was in the role of the Moghul queen Noor Jehan and my best scene the one in which she was shown visiting the battleground after the gory war was over. A cardboard elephant was stuck to a stool on which I sat with my right leg thrown over the cutout. My crown of board and tinsel was heavy and the posture was uncomfortable. But there was such a silence in the auditorium that it seemed to us then that they had forgotten the fact that a kidlet was playing the queen’s role. I felt intoxicated with the warmth of their response. My brother later congratulated himself for having insisted on giving the role to me against the wishes of other members who had felt that a prettier girl would be more suitable. The prettier one got the part of Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of Prince Khurram, and she did display creditable prettiness.

  In a year’s time we had staged the Malayalam translations of all Dvijendralal Roy-plays and had got on to Kalidas’s Sakuntalam and Bhasas’s Swapnavasavadattam. My brother as Rana Pratap was a hammy treat. He trod the boards like a seasoned thespian, wearing crowns and glittering achkans with swords tucked into his sash and spoke emphatically of dying
for his land. Every drop of my blood I shall spill to protect you, oh my dear country, he roared, and the footlights cast a wild red glow over the sequins of his dress. A lunate aura circled his brow. From the greenroom’s chaos, the make-up men beat the drums, softly, moodily, to warn the audience of impending death...

  My grandmother was worried about the duskiness of my skin and rubbed raw turmeric on Tuesdays and Fridays all over my body before the oilbath. She oiled my hair and washed it carefully with a viscid shampoo made out of the tender leaves of the hibiscus. It was fashionable then to have curly hair and naturally she took pride in showing it off to our relatives who praised my thick tresses but mumbled unkind things about my colour. I remember going to our cook in the afternoon and asking him secretly if I were really ugly. He had laughed loud exclaiming “No, no, not at all. In fact I feel that you may become, in ten year’s time, a real beauty.”

  When I was nine, my father, coming home on leave, found me to have become too rustic for his liking and immediately admitted me into a boarding school run by the Roman catholic nuns. I went with him in a taxi, carrying with me a long black box shaped like a child’s coffin in which my grandmother had packed my meagre belongings: four white frocks made of mill-khaddar, four old-fashioned knickers and two towels. My grandmother did not know at that time of the function of a petticoat or a chemise. I was ignorant too of city-fashions.

  My father introduced me first to the Mother Superior who wore round her waist not only a rosary with a silver cross but a tiny pair of scissors which was perhaps to snip off little hairs that might grow on her scalp. All the nuns had, under their black veils, clean shaven scalps that shone pink in the dim lights of their dormitories while they undressed for the night.