Theeyoor Chronicles Read online

Kumaraswamy loved to talk. He had an opinion about everything under the sun, a story for every occasion, and he spoke with a sense of humour and a certain detachment. He was laid-back, not worried about anything in life, unconcerned about the future, and had no deeply held wishes or desires. Fascinated, Wardha Gopalan sat engrossed in his stories. He felt that their lives had some similarities.

  Life, in general, was nothing but maya, a mirage, devoid of any true meaning, Kumaraswamy opined. All we have is one life, and it would be foolish to spend it in one place, worrying about family and relatives. Travel as far and wide as you can, partake in life’s bountiful pleasures, try to avoid causing harm to others, yearn for nothing – this was Kumaraswamy’s philosophy. Never get into an argument about God, because no one can say with certainty whether or not He exists. Stay well clear of other people’s problems. Everyone has their way, and it is impossible to arbitrate the rightness and wrongness of things. Understand your innate nature and live as true to it as possible. Only then the path to happiness and contentment can be found. ‘Let go,’ Kumaraswamy said. ‘Be like a log floating down the stream. Don’t worry about the destination.’

  In that one night, he became Gopalan’s closest friend. Kumaraswamy had no particular plans about how long he would stay in Theeyoor or where he would go next. Gopalan invited him to stay with him at his house as long as he wanted, and he agreed.

  Kumaraswamy rose early and performed his morning rituals. Then he smoked a ganja beedi and ventured out to make a circuit of the well-to-do houses in the neighbourhood. He did not accept offerings of rice or groceries. ‘I have no woman or children, or the habit of preparing my own food,’ he would say. He accepted all offers of money, however small the amount, and if nothing was offered, he would leave empty-handed. In the houses where he was welcomed with respect and interest, he would stay longer, discussing world affairs, sharing stories about the holy places he had visited, and entertaining the children with a few simple magic tricks. Usually, he would also be able to organize his midday meal from those houses.

  Some days, he earned as much as three rupees. This was at a time when one could have a full meal in a hotel for thirty paise, and eat well on a rupee for a whole day. If he made a decent amount of money, he would spend the next couple of days at home, and in those days he would do all the cooking. He was surprisingly good, and Gopalan ate well on his tasty preparations.

  One day, Gopalan’s brother-in-law Kunjikkanarettan came from Chenkara for a visit. He was not happy with the fact that a swami had taken up residence in their house, and demanded that the family property be divided among the siblings without further delay. Gopalan did not object. A couple of days after that, his younger brother paid a visit. He was on his way back from a theatre engagement and was, as usual, inebriated. He showered abuses on Kumaraswamy, using language so foul that Gopalan felt his ears would shut down from the assault. But Kumaraswamy remained calm and listened to the tirade with a half-smile playing on his lips.

  In the end, it was Kumaraswamy who took the initiative to have the family property divided and distributed among the siblings. ‘Get it over with,’ he said to Gopalan. ‘Holding on to what belongs to others only brings trouble.’ Gopalan went to see his older brother in Pattuvam, his sister in Chenkara, and sent word to his younger brother. It was all over within a week. The family home went to Devu edathi, and the brothers got twenty-five cents of land each. The sister was to pay them their share of the house in cash. Kumaraswamy was the one who negotiated the terms. ‘It’s time for me to leave,’ he said to Gopalan on the day the final documents were signed and stamped. ‘Perhaps this is what brought me here, to get this done. It’s over now and I should move on.’

  3.

  Gopalan could not think of a life without Kumaraswamy. In the brief period they had known each other, he had developed an intense connection with him.

  ‘Would you mind if I came along with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Why would I mind?’ Kumaraswamy said. ‘But let me warn you. Don’t have any expectations about us being together. We’ll eventually have to part ways. That’s inevitable. And when that happens, you should not feel upset with me.’

  Gopalan agreed, and the next morning he set out on a train from Theeyoor station with Kumaraswamy. It would be two years before he came back home again.

  Their first destination was Pazhani. From there, they went to Rameswaram where Kumaraswamy went his separate way. Gopalan travelled on, alone, through countless roads, celebrated temples, ashrams, deserted mountain paths, crowded suffocating lanes, dilapidated inns…

  He had left home dressed in a khaddar shirt, a mundu and a Gandhi cap. By the time he came back, he had discarded these in favour of a long piece of cloth made out of two khaddar mundus stitched together, and emulating Kumaraswamy, he had draped a corner of the long cloth across his chest and over his shoulder. Except for his way of dressing, there was nothing of Kumaraswamy in Gopalan’s demeanour or behaviour.

  The saffron clothes, the sacred ash, the rudraksh necklace – to Kumaraswamy, these were part of a convenient costume, a ruse to roam the world free from all responsibilities and relationships. He did not pretend to be anything more than this. Despite professing that life was but a mirage and desires were to be shunned, Kumaraswamy was fully invested in worldly pleasures – good food, ample rest, ganja to smoke, and sex whenever he could chance upon it … In the beginning, this lifestyle had enticed Gopalan, and he did not worry about the ethics of using an ascetic’s outward appearance to foster an indulgent life. It was only after he parted ways with Kumaraswamy that he felt ashamed of his gullibility.

  Not one of the countless swamis and ascetics he had met on his journeys deserved the reverence they received. In the end, he was convinced that in his whole life he had only met one person – Mahatma Gandhi – who was truly saintly and deserved veneration, and that chances of ever meeting another person like him were minuscule. He felt the urge to return to Wardha, but something, cowardice perhaps, or perhaps the fear of finding Wardha changed in some fundamental way, kept him away.

  The journeys that Gopalan undertook after he parted ways with Kumaraswamy were not entirely purposeless. He was, without realizing it himself, searching for something, answers to the age-old questions perhaps – Who am I? What am I? What is this life? What consumed him more than these questions themselves was the need to figure out what he could do with the rest of his life that others around him would also find meaningful and valuable.

  It is unclear whether he ever found satisfactory answers to these questions. In any case, when Gopalan returned home, he was an even more dedicated Gandhian, humbler and more introverted than before. Gopalan’s sister, Devu edathi, had finished her evening meal and was getting ready for bed when he arrived. She took one look at his clean-shaven face and tonsured head, his dirty mundu-garment, and the big iron trunk he carried, and burst into tears.

  It was not yet a month since her husband, Kunjikkanarettan, had died in a boating accident on Theeyoor River. Gopalan’s younger brother was gone too, stabbed to death by one of his drinking mates in a toddy shop. And the frail old aunt had been dead for over six months.

  Gopalan moved into his old attic room in what was now his sister’s house. Devu edathi had two sons. The older, Ramachandran, worked at the Kannur collectorate, and the younger, Rajan, at the Chenkara village office, and both lived at home with their wives and children. Her daughters were married and lived nearby with their husbands. They dropped in often, and so did the women in the neighbourhood. All in all, the house was busy and noisy, but Gopalan paid no heed to the ruckus and showed no interest in anyone.

  Gopalan’s iron trunk was full of books, by Mahatmaji and about him, written in English and Hindi, and he spent most of the day in the world of these books, reading and rereading passages reverentially. He had also developed a few new habits around his food. He started his day with a glass of cold water, followed by a bowl of unsalted kanji at 10 a.m., lunch with parippu curry, and
a Nendran banana and a glass of water at 6 p.m. He did not eat or drink anything else after that.

  At dusk, Gopalan would leave the house and walk to the banyan tree in front of Theeyoorkaavu, where he would spend the evening discussing local goings-on and spiritual matters with a group of old people who congregated there. He had a particular knack for bringing Mahatma Gandhi into every discussion. If someone mentioned that he was looking for a name for his son’s newly constructed house, Gopalan would say, ‘The only thing to remember when choosing a name is that it must have an innate truth. It should not be deceitful. Mahatmaji describes an incident in his autobiography about this. When, in 1915, he and his friends established an ashram in Ahmedabad, there was a suggestion to call it Thapovan. But Mahatmaji refused because he felt that the name was pretentious.’ Or if the talk turned to new machines coming into the market, he would say, ‘Mahatmaji was never against mechanization. But he made it quite clear, as early as 1925 in Young India, that machines should not replace human labour.’

  People did not find his opinions and interjections problematic. There was a new clarity to his voice and an authority in his speech, qualities that forestalled all objections, and he soon became the unofficial preceptor of the evening gang of old people under the banyan tree.

  It was during this time that Karunan maash, a close childhood friend of Gopalan’s, came to see him. His father’s house was behind Theeyoorkaavu, but Karunan had moved to Kuniyankunnu where he became a schoolteacher and acquired the honorific ‘maash’ at the end of his name, and later married a local girl and settled there. He rarely came to Theeyoor any more.

  Karunan maash had retired from service three years ago, and currently served as the president of the Kuniyankunnu Palottukaavu Festival Committee. The festival was in its third day and they had organized a lecture on spirituality by a swami from Kanjangad. But the swami had taken ill unexpectedly, and when the committee met to discuss a replacement, Gopalan’s name had come up.

  ‘Why don’t you do it?’ Karunan maash asked Gopalan. ‘Come and entertain us with a few words.’

  Gopalan agreed immediately, as though he had been expecting such an invitation.

  ‘How should I introduce you? I only know your name from before your renunciation.’ There was a tinge of mockery in Karunan maash’s voice.

  ‘I haven’t become a sanyasi that I should change my name,’ Gopalan replied dryly.

  ‘So you’re the same old Gopalan then,’ Karunan maash laughed loudly. ‘I’ll be the one doing the introduction. Shall I introduce you as Wardha Gopalan?’

  The tone of mockery lingered in his voice, but Gopalan nodded mildly, pretending not to notice.

  The sermon he delivered at Palottukaavu was well received, and Gopalan found himself quite popular. Before long, temple committee representatives from neighbouring villages sought him out. He was a pleasure to listen to, his voice clear and diction perfect, especially when he recited shlokas, couplets and snippets of old rhymes. He discussed grave and complex matters simply, sprinkling them liberally with anecdotes from his travels and childhood memories, which made his lectures more like storytelling sessions.

  He had delivered lectures at temples in Chenkara and Aamachal and at a newly renovated Hanuman temple in Kilimala, when a representative of the Bhagavathi temple in Vayalumkara came to see him. The festival at the Vayalumkara temple lasted a whole month. The last week was dedicated to cultural programmes and performances. Leading up to it, they wanted to organize a fortnight of lectures by Gopalan, every evening from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Gopalan agreed.

  At 6 p.m. sharp, Gopalan would have his customary Nendran banana and glass of water, and set out for Vayalumkara, a half hour’s walk away. He would start his lecture at precisely 7 p.m. The topic he chose for his first lecture was ‘The Role of Diet in Spiritual Hygiene’. He spoke, giving examples, about the significance of a vegetarian diet and the importance of consuming only food that was light and clean, before moving on to the subject of fasting. ‘Fasting alone will not help us overcome carnal desires,’ Gopalan declared. ‘We also need spiritual training. We need to be able to fast not just physically, but mentally too. And that is not an easy thing to do.’ He talked about his personal experiences, before ending with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: ‘If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting, it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.’

  Returning home after the lecture, Gopalan was troubled and uncharacteristically elated in equal measure. The image of a woman who had been sitting at the right side of the second row in the audience kept surfacing in his mind, her inquiring eyes, shapely lips and charming cheeks suffusing his thoughts with sweetness. At the same time, he was concerned about his mind, scared of its wayward thoughts. He was not able to accept that his mind, the clarity and hygiene of which he had carefully cultivated through reading, meditation and a disciplined life, was so fickle.

  All night, he waged an internal battle. He was not an ascetic, nor was the attainment of salvation his life’s ambition. All he wanted to do was spend the rest of his days as an ordinary human being amongst his near and dear ones. He did not possess the certitude to take up public service or other such responsibilities. During his travels, a man named Ramayya from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh had trained him in mud therapy, but he had not tried to practise it after returning home, precisely because he did not have the mental strength to take up such a responsibility. There was only one thing he had been certain about – that he would not be distracted by carnal thoughts about women and the ensuing pleasures, a certainty he had worked hard at ever since he had banished Kunjimani from his heart, a certainty that had become rock-hard over the years. But now…

  The next day, Gopalan reached Vayalumkara a little early. He saw the woman standing near the stone lamp in front of the temple as though waiting for him. He only glanced at the beautiful vision, fresh from her bath, clad in a zari-bordered mundu and neryathu and a yellow blouse, and he thought he was going to faint.

  4.

  That evening, Gopalan’s lecture was a disaster. His topic for the day was ‘God and Nature’, and he had prepared well for it. But as soon as he started talking, he lost track, stumbled over his words, and forgot his examples and anecdotes. In the end, embarrassingly, he had to conclude the two-hour lecture in an hour and a half, and he felt especially guilty that he had forgotten to include even a single quote from Mahatma Gandhi. All night, he stewed over his bungling performance. He was convinced that the woman in the audience was the cause of his disquiet, recalling how his attention had wavered and how his eyes had wandered over to her, each look sending a shiver down his spine. It was with a renewed resolve not to be overpowered by her presence that he went to the temple the next day, and he spoke without stumbling or interruption for the whole two hours, never once looking in her direction.

  For the remaining ten days, Gopalan went to his lectures in Vayalumkara with the determination of a Stoic. On the last day, as he turned into the lane leading to the temple, he saw the woman walking ahead of him. He slowed down, and hoped that she would not turn around and see him. But she did, running her eyes over him from head to toe with a slight smile on her lips. It was a peculiar look. Her wide eyes seemed to be on fire, and Gopalan felt himself melting in their heat. Only when she said, ‘Do go ahead, swami,’ and stepped aside did he feel capable of taking another breath.

  By the time the lecture series was completed, Gopalan had lost all sense of self-control. It saddened him to realize that, despite being fifty-seven years of age, his mind was that of a capricious teenager. It would have been understandable if it was a simple attraction towards a beautiful woman, but he recognized what he felt for what it really was – pure, unadulterated lust. Every fantasy he nurtured in his mind about her, he realized, was something to be ashamed of, especially considering what Mahatma Gandhi had to say, that sexual interactions were to be undertaken only as a means for reproduction, and without that objective, they constituted a sin towards God and hum
anity. The lustful thoughts that bubbled up inside him had no such noble objectives, and were powered only by an irresistible desire for the female body. It was indeed sinful, but he was powerless to overcome it or to keep it in abeyance even for a brief period. Day and night, Gopalan agonized in these thoughts. He could not sleep, lost interest in his daily routine, even the simple food he ate became tasteless. He continued going to the evening gathering under the banyan tree near Theeyoorkaavu, but could not engage fully in the conversations. He declined all invitations for spiritual lectures pleading ill health or prior engagements.

  Meanwhile, he made some discreet inquiries about the woman of his fantasies. Her name was Draupathiyamma, he found out, a childless widow who had spent many years in Singapore with her deceased husband, Ananthan Nair. She lived in the first house on the southern end of the field behind the Vayalumkara temple, with only a servant for company. The rest of what he found out about her was not salubrious. She was said to be arrogant and quarrelsome, and her own family and her husband’s seemed to have left her to her devices.

  Although what he found out scared him a little, Gopalan was unable to banish her from his thoughts, his feelings only intensifying as the days went by. His mind latched on to her with the same obsession it had when trying to resist thoughts about her.

  ‘I’m not a great man, nor have I the capability to achieve great things,’ Gopalan said to himself one night. ‘I like Draupathiyamma and I want to have a sexual relationship with her. That’s the honest truth and I must accept it. Not everyone is cut out to be able to control their desires, and those who try to deny them when it’s not in their nature to do so are only being dishonest with themselves. A dishonest life is the biggest sin of all, and it’s best that I save myself from it.’

  Reaching this conclusion, however, did not quieten his mind as he continued struggling to make a decision. He began questioning Draupathiyamma’s apparent interest in him. Was she just being nice? Was she expressing the sort of spiritual appreciation one might feel towards a swami? Or laying out some elaborate plot to entrap him? His mind became a whirlpool of doubts, conclusions and reassessments. Finally, twenty-one days after his last lecture in Vayalumkara, in the spreading darkness of dusk, Gopalan went to Draupathiyamma’s house. In those days, Vayalumkara had no electricity, and Draupathiyamma was sitting on the veranda, reading in the light of a hurricane lamp. She looked at the anxious, sweaty Gopalan for a while before taking his hand and leading him inside the house. She did not let him out for the next four or five days.