The narrow panchayat road wound through the periphery
of the Lower Primary Government School and abruptly ended sloping at the entry
into the vast expanse of the paddy fields that stretched beyond into Kuttanad.. From the school it took about twenty minutes, a
distance of about three quarter of a mile to reach the cul de sac in the road, on nights when the moon was
free from clouds that often threw their mantle across its lucent face.
One could see the couple of street lights en route, atop the tall poles with moths and insects swarming around the glow of the bulbs and occulting
their incandescence. Some dead and stuck on the face of the bulbs like
barnacles. The street lamps gave the image of forgotten ancient detritus. Folks depended more on the torch
made out of a bunch of coconut fronds than the faint glow of those electric
street lights. The tall Kanjiram stood on the Ouseppachan’s
small plot and silhouetted at night like a lone cliff over the plains. It
dwarfed the Jack trees and the Poovarasu that together threw a thick canopy over
the house . The panchayat road ended little
further down the wired gates of the house.
It was usual for Esthappen to sit at the gate, a movable
barrier made of wire mesh and pieces of log. Some nights, he would recline in
his easy- chair on the verandah pulling profusely on the beedi stubs and
lighting another when the dried rolled tobacco had burnt-over almost scorching
his parched lips. Old Esthappen had
since long forgotten to sleep and he cohabited with insomnia. His hallucinations
and fantastic woolgathering were probably the result of that.
The bats that lived in the kanjiram would circle about and shriek occasionally from their
inverted berth high up on the branches. They moved about in the night sky in
silence, their dark silhouettes gliding, their wings flapping gently in flight
often conveyed awe and yet to some an eerie sight to behold. Those innocuous
winged mammals often are alleged representatives of evil and harbingers of evil
forces in the stories told a dozen and more times by Esthappen. He was quite
deft in mimicking while narrating stories and folklore, something that enthused
the fascination of kids and Esthappen happy.
On some nights, Esthappen’s mongrel “Kaiser” would howl
looking aimlessly into the night sky. Perhaps he saw something we could not;
something Estahppen could not notice. Kaiser may have been annoyed by a
phantasm- a psychedelic shadow, a field rat scurrying past, or the glowing moon.
Folklore has been unkind to dogs; old mother tales and
chronicles in which dogs have some strange sense of perception, power to see
the unknown, feel things that we could not and to foresee bad omen. Esthappen
swore that the street dogs which strayed around the LP school compound wailed
in unionism while the old karnavar at
the Thekkeparambu thravad laid battling snake venom that had paralysed all of his
body. The dogs signaled his end was near-his death by their howling and strange
wailing the whole night until he passed at dawn and as soon as he died their
howling stopped abruptly. Esthappen asserted that most deaths were forewarned
by dogs.
The thatched shed that housed the two cows kept by
Esthappen’s daughter Kochu Maria was a few yards from where he rested on the
verandha. The occasional shuffle of the bovines , their snorting and
Esthappen’s phlegmatic cough interrupted the silence of the night.
It was rumoured that Estahappen smoked strange dry leaves rolled
up in the beedis. He also used them as added flavour to
the beetle leaf he chewed .The old man
often spoke about floating through the clouds and sometimes galloping across
mountains and valleys on a horse. He would fly through the sky on a beast,
which would sprout wings and appears like a white stallion- a Pegausus! He
would be brought back little before day break. Old man spoke about retinue of
fairies who would guide him through the journey. Esthappen claimed that these mysterious
night odysseys have happened many times and he unfailingly would narrate to the
children the very next day.
His
fantasies were fantastic as fairytales of yore and about solo crossings of men,
of men flying through the skies on white Pegasus and magic carpets, crossing
oceans to faraway heavens by night, when the rest of the world sleeps. To come
back by daybreak with intrigues and privy to them only; their stories-
apparently mostly contrived and images of sorcery, of which most have survived
ages not only as fables and folk tales but as apocryphal beliefs. Beliefs for which
men and women are prepared to forsake their lives, to snuff out another life,
to wound and kill without a feel of remorse or guilt, but with casuist fervour.
Esthappen’s molars had all fallen out except a couple and
all that remained of the rest of the teeth was the incisors. And they
stood precariously. The perpetual stubble on his cheeks resembled the parched
paddy fields, dry and life less like after the harvest. Because of age his eyes
were rheumy. His hearing was faulty and he often bowed angling his head and
holding his palm to the ear as a deflective barrier to direct the sound he
wanted to pick up. This created an impression that he was eager to listen,
while often he meant the opposite. He loved to chatter, tell stories and of adventures
from his days in the Army and before that his life as the cook at the bungalow
of the plantation manager the English man. Esthappen was eighty five.
Ouseppachan, his son-in-law bought the 18 cents of land with
a loan on his retirement funds and the house was painstakingly put up. The
majestic jack fruit tree stood at the gate and mocked at the seasons with the
perennial bearing of green jack fruits. Folks were awed how that tree produced
those fruits round the year in such spectacle of abundance all over its trunk
and bow. In fact the tree bore fruits even when jack fruits were an unseen
thing in the market.
Esthappen was the errand and cook to the British manager of
the plantation who lived for long in Peeremade, in Idukki before he went
back to England. But before the English man went away he did not forget to reward
Esthappen for his loyalty and most of all for his culinary skills. No one knew how
he acquired his culinary attainments. In any case Esthappen by the stroke of
fortune became the owner of five acres of Tea and Cardamom plantation in
Idukki.
His daughter Kochu Maria was from his earlier wedlock. When
his wife died young soon after childbirth he married again, something that he
would later rue. As ill-luck may have it, his new bride who was about half his
age and little older than his own daughter was a termagant and feral woman. Her
parents did not care much about the age of the widowed Estappen and had no
qualms in giving away the young lass Rahel.
The past in Rahel’s life were not without mysteries so as to
attract a young suitable boy from a respectable denomination. A widower was the
best bet. When she was nineteen Rahel eloped with a Tamil labourer, a tea
picker from a nearby tea estate. She spent about a year with him in some town
across the border in Tamilnad before presumably when matters had got unbearable,
took the rickety bus that deposited her back at her father’s door step. She
would not talk a word about her whereabouts, the fellow with whom she eloped or
her life with him. It is a fact of our times that sententious folks are common
but of little value. Equally obnoxious are the ones who pass pharisaical
judgments and have scornful opinions on other people’s lives, their follies and
personal grief. Esthappne understood
that well. When he solemnly took the
wedding vow accepting Rahel as his bride at the altar of the St Joseph church
in Peeremade, Esthappen was not eschewed by such queasy lots, the people who
chose to be unkind and rude, alleged malicious stories about his bride.
Esthappen's large heart, was not touched and was not to be shriveled by vicious comments,
all of which he rubbished as innuendos. He was unmoved by those
shenanigans. He did not probe Rahel with
disquieting and unkind questions. As a good Christian he believed in the
salutary effect of forgiving and forgetting and also acknowledged the frailty
of man. He was only concerned of making a secure home for his little daughter
Kochu Maria and did not want her live through childhood, motherless. A foster
mother is a consolation than not having the affection of one, he presumed. For
that he needed a woman- a wife. He hoped to found one in Rahel.
However his bride for that matter was incisive about the
tidy fortune of Esthappen- the gift left to him by the Englishman, than a life
with the man who was her father’s age. She was not to be impressed about having
to be foster mother to his daughter. Rahel was cantankerous and rude to
Esthappen and the little girl. She did not bother to hide her dislike for both.
When war reached the Indo-Burma border, Esthappen
volunteered to go to the front. Unable to bear the shrew wife, quite upset and
saddened he enlisted in the Army. He entrusted his adolescent daughter to a
catholic nunnery run by the order of the Congregation of the Mothers of
Carmalite in Vandiperiyar. He left Rahel and the two sons she bore him and
journeyed to the place of his stationing, in the trenches in the jungles of
North East Frontier.
Four years was a long period but they went fleetingly. When
Esthappen returned to Peeremade after the war he realised that Rahel had not
changed her ways and was crotchety as before. He felt unwanted, a stranger and
an intruder. It was during one of those days then that a robust young man, a
tall dark complexioned and well-built fellow of about thirty came to see him.
His hair was black as a raven’s, well-oiled and combed back. Thick tooth brush
moustache was well trimmed .He wore kakhi drill trousers and white
short-sleeved cotton shirt neatly buttoned and well tucked inside the waist of his
trousers. However his brown leather shoes were untidy and badly needed a coat
of polish.
He spoke head held high and straight into Esthappen’s face.
“I’m Ouseph, the mechanic at the Merchiston Tea Estate in Vandiperiyar. I was
born up north, in Malabar. Though, now for all practical purpose my home is
here in Idukki .My mother passed away a few years back and since then I have
not been to my native town. In fact I do not have any close relatives back
there”.
Esthappen heard out the young man, but was at
the same time searching for some clue as to why he was standing there and
telling Esthappen about himself. The reason for his coming was yet not evident in
his words.Perhaps noticing Esthappen’s searching eyes, the young man
decided to get to the point. But he had to speak about himself before he
touched on the subject. It would not help to broach the subject without the
preamble. Because who he was and what he was mattered most when the subject
come up. “Of late, I drive down to the
St. Fathima convent daily on some substitution of work- you know transporting
tea leaves and I happened to see your daughter there. I do not think that she
would disagree with my decision to ask you her hand in marriage. Though I must
confess I have not spoken a word to her or asked her willingness yet. But I do
not have reason to believe that she may have a different opinion about this or
about me.” He paused and followed Esthappen’s face, which now showed a mouth
slightly agape and eyes squint in surprise. Seeing that he continued, “I can
promise you that I shall take care of her for all her life". Esthappen was a bit
surprised but impressed by the young man’s demeanour and frankness, the choice
of his words and how he spoke in a voice of clarity and masculine. Esthapen surveyed him head to toe and looked him in the eyes
and placed him as an exponent of free will, innocuous, youthful in spirit and
perhaps pollyannaish in emotion. He was not wrong. Esthappen continued to watch
the young man for some moment. But to the young man Ouseph time stood still.
Would his words be seen as the audacity of youth and improper on a subject that
is customarily dealt by elders? Esthappen rewound the young man’s words “I can promise you that I shall take care of
her all her life”. He noticed the glint in the fellow’s eyes and he felt
the fellow meant what he said. Esthappen studied him; he had a straight face,
an honest face. He has shown the courage to seek his approval for his
daughter’s hand. He is young and strong and he could not disbelieve that his
daughter will be unsafe with him. There seemed to be nothing inscrutable in the
man. His face seemed to evidence his personality, his words and how he let them
flow vouched further. His countenance was reassuring.
Meanwhile, Rahel who was in the kitchen noticed the arrival
of the stranger and sneaked behind Esthappen to eavesdrop-an exercise that she excelled.
Rahel was seamlessly pleased when Kochumaria was sent to the convent. She only
had to plot a bit and finesse Esthappen’s plans for his daughter. Plans, she
thought could make her and her boys’ position weak and precarious. She must
ensure that Kochumaria will not be coming home to be a threat to her and her
children. She must ensure that the girl was ordained a nun. She had in fact
with seductive lure of an enchantress, speciously confronted the war ravaged
and disheveled Esthappen not long after he was back from the front; to persuade
him by all means to accept the offer from the convent to let Kochumaria take up
nun-hood. She knew the idea may not fail to work if tapped shrewdly as she was
aware of Esthappen’s taste for matters of the Church. Rahel had not forgotten
his penchant to sign off of his land to the church when the parish committee
expressed anguish at the precarious state of the parish finances. Under no
heavenly skies shall offering a girl to God and his church be a lesser
sacrificial act than willing some ground of land laden with undergrowth.
Rahel knew the art of malarkey, when to blow hot and when to
relent, when to stoop to conquer; most of all how and when to wrench. She would
remind Esthappen of the words of the Genesis. “Adam knew his
wife Eve intimately and she conceived and bore Cain. She said, "I have had
a male child with the LORD's help." Then she also gave birth to his
brother Abel. Abel became a shepherd of a flock, but Cain cultivated the land.In
the course of time Cain presented some of the land's produce as an offering to
the LORD. And Abel also presented an offering-some of the firstborn of his
flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering,
but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cane was furious and
downcast. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you furious? And why are
you downcast? If you do right, won't you be accepted? But if thou do not do
right, sin is crouching at the door.”
Nun-hood was the easiest and the surest way to eliminate the
burden a girl child may become. At the outset and most importantly it may also
appear as a sacrifice and penance by the girl and her family. A deed, of piety! However the losers was the
girl, who more out of condition than own volition consigns her life as if
destined by fate into the dark, dreary, repressive cold world of cloisters and
nuns. A renegade is ostracised by the Order, community and her family. It is a
one way ticket for many young girls in Kerala who are driven to choose a life
ostensibly pronounced and described as “God’s maidens”, “God’s beckoning”. Penury
drives families to offer girl children to the Church and for some sending a
girl into a nunnery is a convenient way of casting away an inconvenience or a
liability.
Alas, now here stands
the spoiler in the form of this avtar,
this intruder, this dark tall specter who descended here heaven knows where
from, in quest of asking Kochumaria’s hand in marriage. Rahel’s agitated mind
began to churn fast -thoughts, ideas, plots which only must have one end and
that was to see that the girl Kochumaria stays inside the convent and as a nun.
A life for the girl outside the convent would be disaster for Rahel. She was aware and apprehensive about Esthappen’s boundless affection for his daughter
and will have no hesitation in bequeathing all that he has for her. She cannot
let that infliction, the lass corner Esthappen’s modest fortunes.When she agreed for the wedding with this middle-aged man
who was already at the threshold of edentulous existence, it was because she
was desperate for a life, a life that will bring her some respectability and
financial security, nothing more and nothing less. Derisive comments, spiked
glances that impales alive, muffled derisive laughter when she attended the
mass at the church services made her realise how insincerely, callously and
cruelly society can attend to a woman; who have perhaps in hindsight foolishly
tethered her life to the promises and gallant assurances of a man only to be tormented
and abused by him later. It was then that she decided she needed a refuge even
a decrepit one that will lend her respectability. It was not for nothing that
she was quiet and pliant to the mental duress and emotional blackmail of her
parents and others who delighted in bearing upon themselves the right to
rubbish her. She decided to bore his children, cook him food, wash his clothes
and asphyxiate in the vice like carnal grip of the old man. No woman can lie back and relive the
odour of the sweat and slime of a man- a man she has no love for, a man whose
proximity she despises, a man who she decided shall only be an instrument, an
aid to wrench back self-worth and not barricade from the world any more. She
will stand up to life’s betrayals and do not intend to be shriveled and closed
with fear, shame and pain. She harboured no sympathy for this man Esthappen.
She cannot love anymore, no man –and the feeling that stays within her is only
the love for her.
Esthappen was unsure of giving the man his word either way.
He was not displeased with this young fellow. But he needed time; he needed to
discuss the matter with the parish priest. A shuffle of the feet made him turn
and look towards the kitchen door behind. Rahel stood there looming like the
goddess with eighteen arms, like a juggernaut; teeth bared, fire blazing from
her mouth and nostrils. Her blood-red tongue extended dripping blood; eyes as amber
intending to incinerate to ashes all that it surveyed. Rahel stood there with
one hand on her hip and the other on the door frame, signaled him with the
corner of her eyes to go in with her. ”You oafish, mister I do not want you
standing there drooling and blinking like a nitwit bowled over by that fellow’s
sugared monologue.”
She was seething. She
pushed Esthappen to the wall and thumbed her finger in his chest. “If not for
your sake, at least for the sake of my two boys better not forget the vow I
took in your name while you were holed up in some goddamn trench in some
goddamn jungle eating grass and fighting somebody’s war for all the past four
years. Remember your daughter is meant for the church, for the Lord and not for
some vagabond whom you think have descended like a messiah.”
The day Ousepachan wed Kochu Maria, the Esthappen household
was almost in shambles. Rahel vent her distress and anger on all that she saw.
She threw the household goods all around, uprooted the banana plants,
deracinated the coconut palms in the small nursery that Estappen maintained,
chopped down pepper vines, she flailed the cows and starved the dog. She rubbished
Esthappen’s entreaties to be at the Church for the wedding. Disheveled and
incessantly wailing Rahel walked about the house like a schizophrenic. She
cooked no food. She swore at Esthappen and Kochu Maria. She tore Estappens
dhotis and shirts. She ensured utter cluttering and disarray. Her boys wailed
and ran behind her tugging her.
Sarah was eighteen
and was the first one to discern that there is world beyond the fantasies and gibberish
that Esthappan fed her and other children. She sensed that there is a wide and
interesting world outside, big cities like Madras , Bombay and yonder. And she
was not awed by the quite meaningless existence and life in that little hamlet
where they lived.
Sarah was born to Ouspeh and Kochu Maria in the ninth year
of their wedding. Kochu Maria believed
that she owed the child to the forty one days of novena she did at the
Vellankani Church which appeased and
pleased the heavens that finally she and Ousepachan begot Sarah, their eldest child.
Sarah, named after the wife of Abraham the Biblical patriarch of Israel, (who
when Abraham and Sarah remained childless into their old age, took it upon
herself to have children through a surrogate, her Egyptian handmaid).
Apparently her fervent prayer for a child must have moved God over the top that she begot 6 more children after Sarah!
Sarah often displayed an air of imperiousness. She demanded
and ensured that she as the eldest of Ousepachan’s children deserved the best and
preference in all matters. Sarah insisted that she be served food first. She
chose the biggest chunk of fish Kochu Maria fried for lunch and dinner. Only
she got to garnish her rice and lentil with butter that Kochu Maria made
whipping the creamy milk from her cow which she otherwise usually sold out. She had her own room, an
alcove that she wrested and made an exclusive territory for her and hers alone-
her private chamber. She chose the most
colourful cloth and the colourful flip-flops Ouspecahan bought for Xmas. She
ate almost all the candy that he brought home leaving crumps and tit-bits for
the rest. Worst of all she enjoyed the vicarious pleasure while she ate
chocolates, the Cadbury bar she bought with the little money she shaves off
from the groceries. She enjoyed eating them alone and not sharing with her
siblings who stood about drooling like alley cats but fearful of being mauled
if they asked for a crump. She sashayed. This display of dominance was a ploy
to ensure the obedience and the pliancy of the younger ones. But unbeknownst to
her, Sarah desired. She dreamt of a life that is rich, opulent and believed one
day she will have servants and butlers waiting upon her and huge estates of
land. Cars parked in the porch, huge wrought iron gates with gate keepers. Her
parents will not have to break their back and be stressed for meeting ends. She
will often take the airplane to distant lands and come back home with exotic
gifts. She believed in the dream of possessing.
Esthappen called aside his daughter Kochu Maria one day, few
days before he died and he said, presciently, “The domineeringness Sarah shows
is partly a ploy and partly her desire to possess. Sarah is a person who will
not hesitate to invite hardships and sufferings upon her if that would help the
family. For, she will carry the quality of benefaction and caring within her to
an extent which will make your family obligated and bound to her for all your
life. But even if she desires she will not find a life of comfort and
happiness. She will in the end lose her youth and life in search of felicity.
Yet, lo and behold sacrifices will never be truly beneficent, can one day
extract more than its share of the pound of flesh. But pity the child for she
will not know contentment and will be always seeking, stretching her hands to
grab the mirage, the rainbow. People who lived by her will purloin her. She
will not be shown gratitude. Her birth star is such”.
Sarah was endowed by Nature with qualities that compensated
for the average chiseled beauty that she possessed. She had elegance and charm
that would beguile any. But she was smitten by traces of hedonism. Sarah decided that she
will not coagulate herself in that bottled place, she felt the yearning to fly
out into the world. She heard about Bombay and the window of opportunity there,
the life in a metropolis! Her hostel mate in the convent the Anglo Indian lass
gave her rollicking stories of the city and the possibilities of life she could
hit out there. She was ambitious and resolved that whatever may balk she will
weather them.
One week-end evening after supper, after the younger ones
were sent to their bedroom she confronted Ousepachan and Kochu Maria with her
plan to go to Chennai. Her parents were aghast. Ousepachan had a couple of
months more to retire. The thought of the loss of income that it will bring
about was giving him sleepless nights
. With five young mouths to feed, clothe and school,
two adult girls and old father what can his wife Kochu Maria do besides what
she has been doing all these years, tend to the daily chores at home? But he
refused to accept his daughter’s plan. “Sarah, I as your father cannot sit idle
and in comfort while my daughter a young woman, who has not seen the world
beyond a hundred kilometers from here venture out alone to a strange and far
away city. Life is uncertain there, full of pitfalls and danger. Do you know
that?”
“ Appacha it is not that mysterious and
frightening as you make out. I will be living with a friend, you know the Anglo
Indian girl. She has been here last Xmas too. Don’t you remember Ammachi?” She
turned excitement dancing in her face to Kochu Maria.
“What do you know of her, her family? All that
you know of her is in the few months she was in the school with you. And you
decide to hitch your life to her fantasies? She is an Anglo Indian. A chattakari. They are very different from
us. They claim to be more English than the English themselves. It doesn’t
matter to them what others in the society speak about them.”
“But Appacha,
there is nothing to be worried of, besides I will get a job to begin with. She
has promised to help me out. You see, her family has been there for a long time
now. I could do a secretarial course and move on. The apprehension you have
will be short-lived. I assure you that.” Sarah was now using her guile and persuasive
tool. Kochu Maria was uncomfortable and
was unsure what she should say to dissuade the child. She was not happy with
Sarah’s audacity. The looming retirement of her husband was scary though as her
daughter’s proposal to travel to foreign lands in search of living. She
fervently prayed that the girl gains reason and sense. She was different from
the rest. She volunteers to take up responsibilities, she decides on matters
that are at hand but the impetuosity of youth can lead to pitfalls. Yet she has
been a yoke. Kochu Maria reminisced that time when Sarah ran to fetch the
mid-wife in the blinding, rain five kilometers through the hilly terrain in
Peeremade early before dawn. Kochu Maria had slipped into labour of her boy
Cain and Sarah brought the nurse on the pillion of a bicycle well in time to
assist Kochu Maria in her final wailing pushes to get out the child. She was as
helpful in assisting in the parturition as the midwife herself. For her three
younger children Sarah was like mother except she did not suckle them. How
could they as parents let this young girl of eighteen, in fact she is a woman
now, travel far away from home alone and live in a strange land with no one
responsible to fall upon if need arose?
Ousepachan was grim. “What do you think of us Sarah? That we
can sit back idly, listen and enjoy the innuendos and slander people will throw
at us for sending alone a young girl to Bombay?” No, certainly not. I will see
if we can find you a job with some traders in the kambolam or even in Allapuzha. After all they will need someone who
could handle English and their accounts. This is not America or England; this
is a tiny village in Kerala. And we are not living in a western society. This
is a little small town where even walls and lamp posts breathe, see and talk,”
Sarah, from early childhood developed a close bond with her
parents. Though Ousepachan would cane her when she was young for the many
infarctions she was adept at, he did not let go a chance or a moment to be
reproachful and showered unrestrained affection upon her. But she was aghast at the prospect of having
to spend the rest of her life marooned in that tiny village, where people still
have medieval mind set and whose lecherous upper caste men folks are a bigger nuisance
than the vicissitude and vagaries of life in a distant and foreign
land. She was not sure if just being fortuitous is helpful. She shuddered at
the prospect of having to run errand or commit to clerical work in the shadowy,
smelly, narrow claustrophobic places at one of those many traders in the market.
Ousepahan asked Kochu Maria for a glass of water. He stood
up from his chair at the table and went around and held Sarah around her
shoulders and caressed her head. Sarah felt she would choke, the nerves from
her toes tingled up to her forehead and she felt the blood gush about faster
through her veins.
Esthappen coughed and called out from his capacious chair in
the verandha. “KochuMariey, Ousephe,. don’t hold her back.”
Sarah stood up and looked pleadingly towards her father. He
held her close and kissed her forehead. Sarah looked up into his eyes and her
eyes widened seeing her father nod approvingly what her grandfather advised a
moment ago. Before she could know she let out an ululation. She heard a muted
murmur from her heart. “Really Appacha?”She kissed him in the cheek.
Ousephachan said, “If it is your wish, your
destiny, yes my dear. God will be with you my child. I heed to your wish not
with a quiet heart, but how can I decline my girl?” He walked towards the
verandah and went down the steps, stood in the still night and inhaled a
lungful of the cool night air. The wind blew across the paddy fields with a sough.
He repeated the inhalation and exhalation as prolonged as he could so that he
would not choke uncontrollably. He has never lost to his emotions, not when the
children where around. He sensed that the courage and resolve that were his
companions in youth seem to have deserted him. The long years of being a beast
of burden- the commitments, the daily tussle to bring home bread, ensuring
shelter and clothing for his seven children has taken its toll. His orphaned
childhood life doing meanly works at workshops, earning about enough to sustain
him and his widowed mother; at the young age he had to begin running for errand
jobs, an age when kids are cavorting in their adolescent exuberance. Those
periods of loneliness, isolation, rejection had whetted him and his resolve.
Then his mother died. And suddenly he was left with nobody to call his. He had
never known his relatives; his memory of his father was abstract. Later, he
could get a permanent job as the errand boy at an automobile workshop owned by
a Parsi. That gradually turned around his life. It gave him hope and the old
Parsi was good teacher- a master of mechanics and an artful teacher of life. He
learned a skill, the skill that would help him walk into any mechanical shop
and ask for work. The skill that he mastered required just his hands and mind
to finesse work. Tools were only an aid. He could even set up a shack by the
road on the highway and offer his skills to earn enough to sustain him. He lived and worked with the Parsi for fifteen
years. The Parsi had two sons, the elder a noodle and the younger who was not
keen about the greasy business inside of a mechanical workshop. When the Parsi
died and his son decided to close shop and move into newer pastures, Ouseph
packed his canvas bag slung it across his shoulders and boarded a bus, a bus to
nowhere. He did not care to notice the destination the bus would travel. The
journey, nevertheless deposited him in the faraway hills of Idukki. There he
began his new life. After a few days of wandering about in the town, he could
found a job as the mechanical assistant in the workshop of Harrison & Cross
Fields Plantation Estate. The life there was to take him to the convent and to Kochu
Maria and later, one day he walked into Esthappen’s house boldly and proudly
proclaimed that he had the capacity and will to take care of Esthappen’s
daughter Kochu Maria, till death does part and hence he ask of him , Esthappen, his daughter’s hand in
marriage.
Now, soon in less than two months he will be retired. And he
has been feeling for some time now that his knees where buckling, legs going
weak. He looked up to the sky; the sky was undefiled by clouds and clear. The
stars where twinkling or where they winking at him? The Southern Cross was in
the south west horizon as he walked through the gate towards the fields; he
needed some time alone, to himself. The soft and billowing green fecund paddy
fields had a lambent shade in the dark blanket of nox.
Ousepachan walked along the hedge in the paddy field towards
the, the althara where the ancient Kalvilakku stood now for years. The solitary electric bulb on the
leaning wooden post near the Kalvilakku emitted
a hazy light. Did he yield to Sarah’s entreaties rather soon? Was he being a nincompoop, a careless father?
She is just past eighteen and going on nineteen, Is he doing her justice by
letting her go? Is he being too cushy a father, acquiescing to a daughter’s
wish? Or is he being selfish? Is he foisting on her his burdens? What if she
would one day accuse him of letting her wade into the squelch of life before
she knew what life was about? What if she accused him of not being a persuasive
and caring father to discourage her, talked her out of intemperance and the
impertinence of youth? Yes, he will be jobless in a couple of months. He will be
sixty in a month and with profuseness of jobless young walking around in
desperation, young people who are willing to work for lesser wages and put in
longer hours if need be, which employer would fancy a middle-aged man? His
retirement savings were already spent in buying the land and putting up the house.
He was unsure of how his pension would suffice in meeting the needs of the
house.
Ouseph sat on the dark rough granite steps of the althara and looked into the horizon. It
was dark yonder as dark as his thoughts. It will be a sometime before day
breaks with streaks multi coloured linings and like a kaleidoscopic canvas. The lush leaves of the pipal tree hustled and
rustled in the wind. But mundane thoughts continued to perturb him.
It was his decision to ask Kochu Maria to politely decline
her father’s offer of sharing his land with her and Rahel. “You should not
accept heirloom from your father. Your foster mother and her children are the
rightful heirs to that. I did not think of, nor did I enquire about your
father’s wealth when I asked him your hand, because, my wealth is my will and
the limbs God provided me to achieve my will- to work. God willing we will have
enough to live.” People who knew Ouspepachan , scoffed at his bêtise. They
decided he was naïve and blathering. Some of them warned him that he was being a
dullard by declining his wife’s rightful share of her father’s estate. They
advised him he should understand that he has seven children and five are girls.
Where is he going to found the money to secure their future if he brushes aside
what was coming to him rightfully?
He could not decide if he was hasty in the face of Sarah’s
doggedness. Is he being mentally enervated? He cannot tell what Kochu Maria
would make of all this, his decision. Will she think that he was weak and not
caring? Why did he not discuss with her? Perhaps he should have let the subject
lie and slept over it! The excitement in the girl would have ebbed and she
would have cast away the fantasy. Maybe Sarah is right her life should not be tethered
to the morass of this village. But yet…!
The shriek of a Screech Owl coupled with the frightened
squeaking of a filed mouse from somewhere near in the fields woke Ousepachan
out of the slumber and the wanderings of his mind. He could not tell how long
he slept on the althara. It was quite
late in to the night, must be past midnight. The stars have moved their
positions. New constellations were in place. Nothing is constant. Movement is
inevitable to survive and when you cease to move you are as good as dead- quietus!
He began to walk back home in slow, measured steps. A veil of mist had fallen
low over the fields like gossamer silk. There was slight nip in the air. The
sough of the wind persisted. When he turned in the direction of his house, he
saw the shimmering lone light in the verandah. As he entered through the wired
gate, there was rustling in the stables. Daisy was awake and has noticed him
come back. The bells on her neck jingled. “Calm down Daisy some hours to go
before Kochu Maria is ready to milk you”, he mused. Kaiser must have dozed off
tonight or he must be in the backyard sniffing rats in their boroughs.
“Why
did you risk the chill, outside? Do you know what time it is? It is well past
2’o clock. If you have not come now, I wanted to send Able to fetch you from the althara.” Kochu Maria was awake all this
while. She never sleeps until Ouspeachan was in bed and he slept. He could not remember
a day in their lives when she was not awake until after he slid into sleep and
he cannot imagine of a day when she is not around to wake him at dawn.
