Theeyoor Chronicles Read online

  By now, you must be thinking that I’ve become a revisionist. Well, I don’t have any fundamental dislike for the word ‘revisionism’. I believe communists should be open to self-reflection and to revising their ideas and practice, rather than resisting change at all costs. But don’t for one moment think that I have become a CPI supporter. Their revisions and reflections are only cunning plans to enable them to share power with the Congress. I have absolutely no interest in such things.

  I left politics because, as I said earlier, I felt that none of the current communist parties had any use for the likes of me. Public service, whether revolutionary or not, is now considered worthy only if it is backed by power – either direct governmental power or economic power. I learned my politics and the practice of it at a time neither of these were considered important in order to serve one’s community. My values and habits are incompatible with this modern era. Either I’d become an annoyance to the Party, or I’d have to put on an act knowingly and toe the line. I would not, I realized, be able to live with either of those options.

  The only person from our political days with whom I persevered in maintaining a close relationship was A.K. Gopalan. He passed away yesterday. I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to see his lifeless body, so I’ve decided not to attend the funeral.

  I know very well that I, as a human being, have incurred some losses because I left the Party, but I am not embarrassed or sad. What some people consider deplorable might be, in another’s estimation, something of value, of relevance. I try to remember this when I think of you, to imagine things from your perspective. Still, I feel that a lot of what you and others like you pontificate and practise is sheer foolishness.

  It’s foolish to try and build a revolutionary pathway for people without considering their history and culture, and their potential. Those who think of themselves as intellectuals with all the solutions and of the common people as incapable of making their own decisions are paving the way for their own and others’ destruction. Awareness does not come from reading a lot of books and discussing them endlessly. I’d hoped you would realize this from your own experience. But from what I hear, you seem to be set on a foolish path. It would be good if you saved yourself from this path as soon as possible.

  You might be able to find comrades ready to spew revolutionary thoughts and engage in philosophical discussions for some more time, but do not be fooled into thinking that this will last long. Many of your associates are egotists and opportunists, capable of showing the same enthusiasm that they have for revolutionary ideas today towards roundly criticizing them tomorrow. They are turncoats with no compunction or conscience. You’ll find yourself alone. I would not like to hear others making fun of you, ridiculing you. That’s why I have taken the liberty to write to you.

  Remember that you have four daughters, all younger than your son Sudhakaran. You have no money other than what you made stripping and selling the house your father Narayanan left you, I know, and you’ve thoughtlessly given up your job at the bank. Stop whiling away your time, I implore you, don’t let those children suffer.

  That’s all for now. Don’t let the fact that I asked you for a loan upset you, and don’t feel obliged to fulfil this request if it is inconvenient.

  Yours, with love,

  Achu

  CLEOPATRA AND SOME OTHERS

  1.

  5 October 1997 turned out to be a busy day. In the morning, I went to the Theeyoor panchayat office to collect a map of the panchayat and some other information. By the time I finished these tasks, the panchayat president, C.K. Sreedevi, returned to her office after having inaugurated a children’s literature workshop at Theeyoor Government High School. My plan was to go to her house in the evening to meet with her, so her unexpected arrival was expedient.

  According to Sadanandan maash, the president, although a staunch Marxist, was inexperienced as a politician. Her husband had been a well-known orator and an energetic organizer for the Party. He was stabbed in an altercation between the Party and the RSS in Chenkara, and had died of complications soon after, and the Party had given the panchayat presidency to Sreedevi out of a sense of obligation towards him.

  Sreedevi looked to be around fifty years of age. She had an innocent, childlike face, and a nervous expression.

  ‘Don’t you go asking me all sorts of questions,’ she said when I introduced myself as a journalist.

  ‘I won’t ask you anything difficult.’

  ‘What is it that you want to know?’

  ‘I am interested in the suicides that have taken place in Theeyoor,’ I replied. ‘From January of this year until now, there have been fourteen suicides in Theeyoor village alone. I wondered what you thought of that … What, in your opinion, made so many people take their own lives in such a short period of time?’

  ‘People have their own worries and anxieties in their lives, don’t they? When they become more than they can bear, what else can they do?’

  ‘You don’t think there is any other reason?’

  ‘Perhaps … Go to the police station and ask them. They might know.’

  ‘You don’t have any insights to share?’

  ‘Me? No, no.’

  ‘All right. Let me ask you this. In the time period I mentioned, four people have gone missing from here. What do you…’

  ‘No one has gone missing,’ Sreedevi interrupted me. ‘They’ve just gone off to other places.’

  ‘What other places?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  I suppressed a smile. ‘I’m really keen to find out more,’ I said. ‘If you know someone who might be able to help me, please tell me.’

  ‘In that case, go and see Sreedharan maash. That’s best.’

  I had already heard of Sreedharan maash. Although everyone in Theeyoor tagged the respectful ‘maash’ to his name, he had never been a schoolteacher. Before the split in the Communist Party, he had been a reporter for the Party and was based in Delhi. Later, he gave up journalism and got involved in business, first in Delhi and then in Bombay, which had enabled him to lead a comfortable enough life for the past twenty-five years.

  Sreedharan maash had come back to Theeyoor around five years ago. His wife had passed away in Bombay. His older children refused to return, but his youngest son had come back with him. On his return, he found himself isolated. The long exile had left him with few acquaintances in the area, and he seemed to have failed to rekindle relationships with his nephews and other relatives. To deal with his increasing sense of loneliness, he started an evening newspaper – Theeyoor Times. Well-wishers had tried to dissuade him from such an undertaking, but he did not heed their warnings, and within four months, he had to give up this endeavour. He had then retired, and now led a quiet life.

  Sreedharan maash seemed to have a lot of contradictory ideas and a contrary attitude. His first response to my queries was to point out that my investigations were worthless. An uncomfortable silence ensued until he spoke again.

  ‘The real issue is that life today lacks a general sense of ethics.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, a person should have certain aims in life beyond self-interest. If one lives focused only on one’s own well-being, even a small adversity will seem insurmountable.’

  ‘I am not sure self-interest or selfishness is the reason for the suicides that have occurred here,’ I countered. ‘Take Sudhakaran, for example. I hear that he was a man with a clear ethical sense.’

  ‘Yes, I was very sad to hear about his death. He had a lot of family problems.’

  ‘As far as I was able to find out, family crises seem to have been a factor in many of the others as well.’

  ‘Well, in some sense family crises are also social crises…’

  ‘If social crises were the issue, I wonder why only Theeyoor has this high number of suicides … Chenkara is part of this panchayat, but this pattern doesn’t seem to apply there.’

  ‘I don’t think you shou
ld view Chenkara as a separate place. Theeyoor and Chenkara are one land.’

  ‘All right. But what about other parts of Kerala? How come this situation is not replicated elsewhere?’

  ‘Well, there are obviously some variations in numbers, but Kerala, generally, has always had a high number of suicides. On average, one person tries to take their own life every fifteen minutes. That means almost ninety attempts in a single day, and of those at least twenty-seven people actually die. This is based on the statistics from 1993.’

  ‘Don’t you find that shocking? Don’t you think there needs to be a serious investigation into this situation?’

  ‘And what would that achieve? Our society is rotten, top to bottom!’

  ‘How can we say that categorically? Compared to other states, aren’t we doing so much better in many areas?’

  ‘Are you referring to the much-lauded Kerala model of development? That is a development model that has no strong foundation. Even E.M.S. Namboodiripad has said so. As a people, we are rudderless. Nothing keeps us rooted. We become dissatisfied and depressed too quickly. We’re very good at starting new things, but we also give up too soon. We’re adept at convincing ourselves that we are moving forward while standing still.’

  ‘You’re referring to our characteristics, our peculiarities, as a people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But we’ve always had these peculiarities. Do you think there is a direct link between the increasing rates of suicide and us Malayalis as a people?’

  ‘We’re a people who find satisfaction in being in a constant state of disappointment. We’re more interested in theories and philosophies rather than actual experiences. And we lose our bearings when these theories and philosophies don’t quite match up with lived realities.’

  ‘I’m unable to see how any of this is relevant to the ordinary people who are driven to suicide.’

  ‘Ordinary people may not have the time or the inclination to engage directly with philosophy. But this modern state of affairs is bound to affect them also, no? Unconsciously at least? And cause internal strife?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean…’

  ‘If love, and the intense affinity for life itself, is to remain in our society, we need the vigour and vitality of a sound political philosophy. Without it, even a prostitute, whose instinct for survival is so strong that she’d sell her body, will feel that it’s pointless to go on living.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what led Devayani to suicide?’

  ‘If I say yes, you’d disagree. So would everyone else … I’m not saying there might not have been more immediate reasons. All I’m saying is that behind those reasons, there are the problems that I talked about.’

  ‘Were you acquainted with Devayani?’

  Sreedharan maash laughed. ‘There can be only one meaning to that question.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘All I meant was whether you’ve met her in person.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve met her a couple of times.’

  ‘I’ve heard she was very beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, she was. The young people here called her Cleopatra. There’s a funny story about it. When I had my newspaper, Theeyoor Times, I used to bring out a two-page Sunday supplement – a feature article, a couple of poems and short stories, that sort of thing. One day, a young man brought me a short story titled “Cleopatra’s Nose”. I read it, found it amusing and published it. I didn’t realize until later that the story was about the clandestine affair between Devayani and a respectable local man. It was only because of my reputation that I wasn’t beaten up for publishing it.’

  ‘Do you have any verifiable information about her death? There was talk that it was not a suicide but a murder…’

  ‘I’ve looked carefully into it. It’s just a rumour. Hers was a chaotic life. It seems that one night, there was some altercation with some of her clients, and after they left, she mixed poison with brandy and drank it. That’s the actual truth. But of course it’s possible that there are issues that we don’t know about in the life of a woman like her.’

  ‘Whereabouts is her house?’

  ‘Behind Olympia Talkies.’

  ‘I’d quite like to go there.’

  ‘There’s no one there now. It’s been locked up since her death.’

  ‘Still … I’d like to see the place.’

  ‘All right then.’

  Olympia Talkies was around two kilometres away from Sreedharan maash’s house. One had to traverse a small hill and climb to the top of another, and the only way was by foot.

  I had hoped that Sreedharan maash would be able to give me some new information about Devayani, but it turned out that he did not know even as much as I had managed to find out.

  Devayani was not a native of Theeyoor. She had come to Theeyoor with a man named Krishnanunni, a hawker, originally from Malappuram, who sold plastic toys and other objects from house to house. A well-behaved man usually, mild-mannered, and he liked to avoid friendships or altercations. He was in Theeyoor and the surrounding areas only for a couple of months in a year, and spent the rest of the year elsewhere.

  When he was in town, Krishnanunni lived in a lean-to behind a shop in Theeyoor Meleyangadi, the upper market area. A hole in the wall, really, selling buttermilk, beedi and paan, run by a man named Vishnu Nambisan. He lived alone after having fallen out with his wife and family, and Krishnanunni’s visits were a godsend for him. Nambisan had many made-up stories about his brave, youthful years – stories that he had convinced himself were true – and took great pleasure in regaling people with them. Almost everyone in Theeyoor avoided having to listen to him, and it was visitors from outside, mainly those who came to worship at Theeyoorkaavu, who became his unsuspecting prey. Looking for a drink of buttermilk or a paan, they would go to his shop, and Nambisan would begin untying the sticky knots of a story. But they too escaped eventually, cutting him off mid-flow – ‘and as I was on my way back from Kashi…’ – leaving Nambisan staring dejectedly at their vanishing backs as they ran to catch the bus that had finally arrived.

  With the arrival of Krishnanunni, Nambisan had a different type of audience for his stories. After hawking his wares all day, Krishnanunni would walk up Theevappara by sundown to bathe in the Theevakulam pond, stopping for his evening meal at Hotel Harikrishna on the way back, and coming home by 8 or 8.30 p.m. Nambisan, who cooked his own food, would have the rice boiling on the stove by then, and would be chopping vegetables for the upperi. As soon as Krishnanunni spread his mat in a corner of the lean-to and settled in for the night, Nambisan would begin, and the narration, encouraged by murmurs and occasional queries from Krishnanunni, would continue long past the meal and until Krishnanunni fell asleep.

  Krishnanunni’s acquaintance brought a rare energy and brightness to Nambisan’s face and demeanour, which lasted as long as he was in town. But as soon as he left, Nambisan looked as though he was about to break into tears at any moment.

  One day, early in December 1975, as Nambisan sat befuddled in a fugue of depression, an altercation occurred in front of his shop. The Theeyoor Public Library and Reading Room had, by that time, grown into an important local institution with a collection of books in excess of four thousand. Every evening, young men sat in the library and discussed literature and politics as though their souls were on fire. Most of them were unadulterated lovers of literature, who discussed O.V. Vijayan’s Khasakkinte Ithihaasam and K.G. Sankara Pillai’s poem ‘Bengal’ with the same fervour. They were not interested in meddling with the governance of the library or the reading room.

  The membership of the library had a more or less equal number of Marxists and those who supported the opposition parties – the Congress and the CPI – and influence over its governance was also more or less equally shared. The secretary was a CPI supporter while the president supported the Congress, and the librarian was a Marxist. This atmosphere of mutual understanding began to be sullied when the librarian Sivaraman sold some tickets to the film V
ietnam to raise funds for the Students Federation, a Marxist organization. There were murmurs among the Congress supporters, and one day, an open argument ensued between Sivaraman and a member of the Youth Congress. From then on, the Marxist members plotted the takeover of the library, and at the next general body meeting, they organized a panel with no representation from any of the other parties and succeeded in taking over the governing body. It was an unexpected setback for the Congress. They considered it a great loss of face that the Marxist Party could organize such a coup during the time of the Emergency. Deeply upset and not knowing how to retaliate in political terms, they set fire to the library. Luckily, a crowd gathered and the fire was brought under control before it could do much damage.

  The next evening, Marxist Party members caught one of the Congress members who had set the fire, and beat him up in front of Nambisan’s shop. Nambisan closed his shop and walked to the top of Theevappara before the incident escalated. The next morning, the police summoned him to the station, and as he was being questioned, Nambisan began to tell the police sub-inspector Balachandran a story about how he had captured a pickpocket on a bus to Kollur. Wardha Gopalan, who had come to discuss the altercation with the sub-inspector, was at the station at the time, and it was he who intervened and got Nambisan to stop his storytelling, and got him out of the police station.

  When Nambisan got back to his shop, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Krishnanunni was back. And he was not alone. He had a woman with him, a stunningly beautiful woman!

  2.

  Krishnanunni and the woman spent the night in the lean-to of Nambisan’s shop. He told Nambisan that the woman was his uncle’s daughter, and that her name was Devayani. They were in love, but Devayani’s family was against the relationship and was in the process of getting her married off to someone else. So the couple had eloped.