The Legends of Khasak

‘It is not the damned shaven head that

  will wear the crown of Bharat.’

  He went over it again in silence, and laughed, and said, ‘Kalyanikutti, my daughter, taught me these lines, Maash. Isn’t the poet right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  But alone on his way home, Sivaraman Nair turned compulsively to gaze at the mountain; a cloud had darkened the wild beehives ... When he reached home, his wife Narayani was on the veranda with nothing on but a wet and threadbare towel round her waist. She was spreading sandalwood paste on her body. As she rubbed the fragrant paste on her breasts and thighs, Sivaraman Nair gazed for one fleeting moment, devastated; Narayani hadn’t changed in these thirty years she had been his wife.

  She broke off in the middle of the song she was singing and turned to her husband with a caustic welcome, ‘Has my Nair’s frenzy passed? And how goes the war over the seedling house?’

  Sivaraman Nair pretended not to hear, chanted a name of God and walked past her into the house. He called out to his daughter, ‘Kalyanikutti, my child, is there something to eat?’

  Anklets tinkled down a corridor, bangles clinked softly, then hands went to work over hearth and vessel.

  Narayani was still on the veranda ... It had begun thirty years ago, within days of their marriage. Narayani would bare herself to the sunny forenoon winds and smear sandal paste all over her body. Sivaraman Nair had objected. She had done it again. She wore a turquoise pendant over her breasts and walked across the paddies for a bath in the brook, and took a long time to return.

  ‘Where were you all this while?’ Sivaraman Nair asked her once.

  ‘The seedling house.’

  ‘What have you to do there?’

  ‘My mother told me paddy mildew is good for the complexion.’

  ‘I know of no such discovery.’

  ‘Mother knows.’

  ‘Let your mother keep her knowledge to herself. You aren’t going to that wretched shed anymore.’

  But she went again, and again, until Sivaraman Nair confronted her.

  ‘Who was it in the tamarind yard of the seedling house?’ he asked.

  Narayani looked silently and menacingly into his eyes. Sivaraman Nair repeated. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Kuppu,’ she said, ‘Kuppu, the palm-climber.’

  ‘What did he come there for?’

  ‘He wanted fire to light his beedi.’

  ‘But where can one find fire in the seedling house?’

  The years went by ... Sivaraman Nair recalled it all, the mildew on the breasts and the palm-climber’s quest for fire. He would look on Kalyanikutti’s face, on her eyes and nose and lips, sometimes in frozen horror, sometimes in sad and forgiving love.

  There was an upper-primary school in the adjoining village, one that taught bad English and arithmetic, but this did not worry the mullah, as he was certain that not many Muslim children would walk two miles across shelterless fields to the school when it opened in June. June was the month of rain and lightning. This school was owned by Kelan, an untouchable, but one who had not forgotten his lowly birth; he had come to Sivaraman Nair and sought his blessing.

  ‘Prosper, O untouchable!’ the feudal chief had said—that was a long time ago and he had meant do not prosper beyond limits. But Kelan had prospered. Kelan’s wife came dressed in shining sarees and made offerings to the little gods of Khasak. Kalyanikutti, a sad spinster trapped inside her feudal home, looked out through ancient peepholes at the assailing silk and colour. Kelan’s school and his burgeoning property began to aggravate Sivaraman Nair; he denounced all teaching by the low-born, he talked ramblingly to the villagers and even more to himself. He was ill. The doctors in Palghat town strapped a pneumatic tube round his arm, took readings and put him under sedation ... When the new school came to Khasak, Sivaraman Nair felt revived. It was to be on his property, and would make a better school. He offered his seedling house to the District Board. The seedling house would henceforth be the school, and nobody’s rendezvous.

  ‘Where will you store the seedlings?’ Narayani asked in scarcely disguised anger.

  ‘Damn the seedlings!’ Sivaraman Nair said in reply. It was the night after the disastrous panchayat meeting; the mullah sat in his tiny strip of veranda trying to mend his broken sandal. Thithi Bi watched her husband’s labour, the frayed leather and the kitchen knife. She said, ‘The Sheikh will not forsake us.’ The mullah punched and stitched futilely. She gave him money to mend the sandal; instead, he bought her a copper ring embossed with a piece of honed glass.

  ‘Why didn’t you get the sandal mended?’

  She stretched her hand into the tiny halo of the kerosene wick and stuck out the finger with the ring on. Allah-Pitcha turned towards her and smiled, and resumed the mending.

  ‘Great King of the Universe,’ she said, ‘protect us!’

  Promises weren’t kept; many children joined the school, even the grandchildren of the red-bearded conservatives. A day more for the school to open. The last namaz was over; the congregation had consisted of just two old men. The mullah sat alone in the mosque a long while. The priest and his flock, and even this house of worship were passing through trying times; the mullah stroked his beard, a mere frazzle of silver and brown, as he did whenever he contemplated his own dissolution. From the mosque the mullah could see the school far away. Ravi’s bedside lamp burned bright, the schoolmaster was perhaps reading, as the learned do, to fall asleep. The mullah hadn’t seen him face to face. The women of the village said he was young and handsome. For a moment Allah-Pitcha contemplated visiting him, talking to him, but lost his nerve; what was he but an unlettered priest? From the school the mullah’s gaze turned towards Chetali. Beyond the mountain lay untrodden tracks. Great unseen rains fell on those timeless springheads and the waters avalanched down muddy and turbulent, leaving the silt of age on the enfeebled pilgrim.

  The mullah stepped out of the mosque, leaning on his stick. His way home lay past the school. He crossed the yard and paused awhile at the gate of the mosque. He thought of the stranger in the seedling house with sympathy and love. Innocent wayfarer, what bond of karma brings you here?

  Then the lamp in the seedling house went out.

  Once Upon A Time

  It was the first day of school and Ravi stood beside the blackboard. Like the mullah he wondered too: what karmic bond has brought me here? What purpose, what meticulous pre-determination? Then came a gust of wind which threw open the window behind him. Ravi went to the window and stood looking out. The children left their seats and crowded round him to look through the window and see the beautiful thing their village had framed for their teacher.

  It was the lotus pond of Khasak, proud in newly blooming purple.

  ‘Hey,’ said Ravi, ‘there is a little bird caught in the lotus meshes!’

  ‘A chick of the waterfowl, Saar!’ the children said, and looked up at their teacher. Did he share their excitement?

  ‘Waterfowl?’ asked Ravi. ‘Then it won’t drown.’

  ‘It might if it tires, Saar.’

  ‘Shall we pull it out?’ Ravi asked the class.

  A dozen voices chimed together, ‘Let us!’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Ravi said, ‘there are two more birds now ...’

  ‘Its Attha and Umma.’

  The parent birds pecked away the meshes. Soon the chick, its parents on either side, was waddling ceremoniously along the bank.

  It was a sunny day. Tiny wind-blown clouds floated by, their shadows moved like cows grazing over the pastures of Khasak. Ravi came back to his seat and called the class to order. He sat long in silence, sharing the memory of that framed vision with his twenty pupils who sat before him with postulant faces.

  ‘Maash!’

  It was Madhavan Nair calling from the gate.

  ‘Can we interrupt the lessons?’

  ‘Welcome,’ said Ravi, ‘the school is yours.’

  Madhavan Nair came in with two unkempt children in tow. He had been bus
y till the previous night, trying to persuade parents to send their children to the school.

  ‘Have you anything against savages?’ Madhavan Nair asked.

  The two boys stood bewildered, their slight figures lost in immense thatches of hair and shirts as roomy as surplices.

  ‘Two more for your rolls,’ Madhavan Nair said. ‘Sons of basket weavers from the mountains. They tried to run away but I caught them and made them promise they would enroll. Hey, you!’

  One of them had a running nose and was trying to breathe in the snot.

  ‘Blow your nose, you unclean one,’ Madhavan Nair admonished.

  Ravi patted the child, and said encouragingly, ‘Don’t worry. The well is over there, draw some water and wash.’

  The little savage bounded off and was back in a trice.

  ‘Ayyo!’ Madhavan Nair cried out. ‘This is catastrophe ...’ The child had washed his face first and then blown his nose, and now his shirt front was soiled. Ravi saw the mess on the shirt and the beatific smile.

  ‘The shirt!’ the tailor lamented. ‘It’s ruined!’

  The fabric, not yet laundered, had the glaze of calendering, and would not absorb the water.

  ‘There goes my time and money,’ the tailor went on. ‘I made these shirts roomy enough for them to grow up in.

  ‘That’s a good boy,’ Ravi coaxed, ‘Shall I write down your name in this big book?’

  ‘Write them down, Maash!’ Madhavan Nair said. ‘This is Chatthan and this, Perakkadan, inseparable like Rama and Lakshmana. And if they stop coming to school, I’ll tear these shirts off their backs.’

  Ravi wrote the names down in the register, and turned to the tailor, ‘You have all helped so much ...’

  Madhavan Nair grew bashful and pretended not to hear the compliment; he stepped into the little aisle between the benches and began cheering the children as one would a football team. ‘Alam Khan!’ he called out, ‘Kunhamina, my beauty!’ he chucked her under the chin, ‘and goodness gracious, who’s this but Kholusu ...’ The class stirred in pleasant disorder. Madhavan Nair could well have taken over, but he chose to conclude the encounter with a little advice, ‘See this Master-Etta here. He has passed the fourteenth standard. You children should study like him and become engineers. You will, won’t you?’

  The children chorused, ‘We will!’

  Madhavan Nair left, and Ravi was alone with the class again; he opened the register and silently read the names. Then he reread them, names of caliphs and queens, indigent dynasties which had strayed out of desert sanctuaries and were marooned in Khasak.

  The day warmed, the palm winds were blowing. It was the hour of the teacher. Ravi smiled upon his twenty-two children, and they smiled back, the caliphs and queens, until smiles filled the seedling house. This was the hour of myth, Ravi knew. ‘Let’s tell a story,’ he said to the children. They were overjoyed.

  Ravi asked, ‘What kind of story?’

  The children began chirping all together, and a ten-year-old in the front row raised her hand to tell him something. Her silver anklets chimed when she moved her feet under the desk, and her wide gaze was hemmed by exuberant lashes darkened with surma.

  ‘Yes?’ Ravi said.

  ‘Saar, Saar ...’ she said, then grew shy. ‘A story without dying, Saar!’

  Ravi laughed, ‘What’s your name, child?’

  ‘Kunhamina.’

  Ravi listened to the ballad of Khasak in her, its heroic periods, its torrential winds and its banyan breezes. There was no death but only silver anklets and her eyes sparkling through the surma. Ravi looked deep into those eyes; the story would have no dying, only the slow and mysterious transit. He began in the style of the ancient fabulist.

  ‘Once upon a time ...’

  Ravi’s days went by in order and peace. Madhavan Nair had brought him a maid to sweep and swab and cook a frugal meal that would last the day. Abida was the daughter of Chukkru the diver from an earlier marriage. Her mother was found dead in one of the village wells. Some said Chukkru had drowned her, others believed it was the work of a jealous lover. Abida was a child when it happened. After the days of mourning, Chukkru ranged again through far-flung places to return home at the dead of night. Little Abida grew up crying. A wet glaze lay over her eyes, an orphan glaze, as though the tears hadn’t dried in them.

  On days when there was no school, Abida stayed longer, tidying up the old seedling house as best as she could.

  One Sunday Ravi became aware of the pallor on her face. He asked, ‘Not well, Abida?’

  ‘I’m well, Saar. It’s a mild fever which comes on sometimes.’

  ‘You ought to see a doctor, a vaidyan.’

  She replied disinterestedly, ‘I suppose so.’

  On another Sunday, watching her bend and sway at work, Ravi realized how short she was, and how slight.

  ‘Are you fifteen,’ Ravi guessed at her age, ‘or younger?’

  ‘Twenty,’ she said, her face sad as she answered him.

  ‘Abida, can you read and write?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Listen, Abida ...’

  ‘Yes, Saar?’

  ‘I’m going to put you to school.’

  She was on her knees, cleaning up a crevice on the floor. She rose, arms akimbo, and laughed.

  ‘Me, Saar?’

  ‘Yes. You could find yourself a job in Palghat, say, in a nursing home

  She didn’t laugh now, but looked at him through her undried childhood tears. ‘I shouldn’t leave this village,’ she said. ‘If I do, there’ll be nobody to look after Attha.’

  ‘His wife ...’ Ravi began, and fell silent. Morosely Abida resumed her work. Attha had a beautiful wife, but he lived in loneliness, wandering from well to well, retrieving things fallen into the dormant slime. He had none save her, the child he had brought up in a well of loneliness.

  But she had her people, in a manner of speaking, an uncle and her maternal grandmother in the faraway village of Kalikavu. The ancestral home on a hill was now in ruins, lines of mouldering brick sinking into the earth. Within these bounds stood a hut of mud and thatch in which the grandmother and uncle lived. The grandmother was blind and the uncle leprous. Sometimes, on a cloudless evening, the villagers below would catch sight of him, seated among the ruins, his stiff, flat palms held out to take the sun.

  Ravi sat on his cot, leaning on a stack of pillows, and looked out of the window. The sun was setting. The grazing herd of clouds was gone. Soon it was dark, and the fantasy returned, the fantasy of the journey. The seedling house became a compartment in a train, and he the lone and imprisoned traveller. Dark wastes lay on either side; from them fleeting signs spoke to Ravi—a solitary firefly, a plodding lantern. The wheels moved along the track with soft, deceptive thuds. Then he heard the far rush of another track racing towards his own, the sorrow of another, futilely seeking comfort. The rails met for one moment, tumultuously, to part again. To race away into the many-mysteried night.

  Uneasy Neighbours

  Having spent itself in the first blinding onrush, the monsoon lay over Khasak, indrawn, in samadhi.

  The single-teacher school was now three months old, its strength an unstable twenty. The children came like moving huts, sharing the shelter of large handleless palm-frond umbrellas, heedless of time, as they stopped to play in the rain streams; they lingered at the school gate, some came in, while some turned away splashing and screaming, chasing the creatures of the rain. Helplessly Ravi watched the palm-frond thatches stray back into illiteracy. Some of them never came back, but there were unexpected entrants who came to watch the King’s angular alphabet being written out on the blackboard. Sometimes an earlier escapee returned to nostalgic reunion.

  Ravi was calling the rolls one morning. When he came to the name of Hyder Hazrat, it was an unfamiliar voice that answered. Ravi looked up.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  The newcomer stood up.

  ‘You aren’t Hyder Hazrat.’

  ‘
No, Saar.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘He lent me his slate and pencil, Saar.’

  ‘Very well. Your name?’

  The boy continued standing and smiling but wouldn’t speak. The other children coaxed him, ‘Tell Saar your name, you clumsy one.’

  ‘Karuvu,’ the boy said. It was a name from a long lost dialect.

  ‘Sounds beautiful,’ Ravi said.

  The class was astir. All of them talking together, they told Ravi that it was a name given to boys of the Thottiya caste; the Thottiyas were an ancient martial clan, but now they roamed the villages with their performing monkeys to make a living.

  Ten-year-old Karuvu did not quite relish this introduction, but neither was he unduly resentful. He stood smiling.

  ‘Well, Karuvu,’ Ravi said, ‘now go and blow your nose outside, and come back.’

  ‘Do what Saar tells you,’ little Sohra prodded.

  When Karuvu came back, Ravi made him stand near the table.

  ‘You like the school,’ Ravi said, ‘don’t you?’ Karuvu smiled on.

  ‘Since you don’t dislike it,’ Ravi continued, ‘let’s say you’ll like it tomorrow and the day after ...’

  ‘He will, Saar!’ the children said in chorus.

  Ravi pulled out the admissions register.

  ‘Your father’s name?’

  ‘Chenthiyavu Thottiya, monkey-trainer.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Ravi said, and for want of a better conversational opening, he asked, ‘How many monkeys does you father have?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘A lie, Saar!’ said Kunhamina. ‘He is boasting, Saar! His father has only two monkeys.’

  ‘One makes mistakes while counting,’ Ravi said. ‘Now

  I shall enter your name in this big book.’

  Ravi wrote: C. Karuvu, son of Mr Chenthiyavu Thottiya, prominent monkey-trainer.

  Meanwhile, the basket-weavers had made a few ominous visits to the school. On their last visit they had told Ravi that he should free their children from the oath the tailor had extracted under duress.

  Ravi was puzzled; after much persuasion the wild visitors deigned to let him into the clan’s secret. Their language had no script, as only a scriptless language could help them penetrate the forest depths. Chatthan and Perakkadan spent restless days at school, presenting themselves as their oath to the mountain gods required of them, but keeping away from letters in palpable horror. Finally, the inevitable happened. Ravi and Madhavan Nair looked on helplessly as the boys were led away in their yet unwashed surplices.