Theeyoor Chronicles Read online

  While his interactions with his clients were unemotional, he had a different sort of relationship with the objects they brought to him. He would shut himself in his room and run his fingers over their vital parts as though entering a secret realm of pleasure. When he touched the running capacitor of a table fan, or the bush bearing of a mixer, or the presser bar lifter of a sewing machine, waves of energy would course through him warming his veins, and he would feel as if the experiences other men lusted after had already become reality for him. This feeling was the secret behind his unwavering attachment to his profession.

  To make up for the time he had lost because of his uncle’s death, he worked a couple of extra hours for the next four days. But people were reluctant to take appliances to be repaired to a house which had suffered a recent loss, and Bharathan found himself with free time on his hands. That was the reason he entered the small room his uncle had occupied, with no specific plan in mind.

  He ran his eyes over the empty bed, the faded clothes hanging on the clothes line across a wall, and the dusty books on the wall shelves. Since he had nothing else to do, he picked up the books: Pattabakki, Amma, Ningalenne Communistaakki, Manninte Maaril, Rakthapushpangal … As he flipped through them, he came to a bound notebook, and his interest piqued when he realized that it was his uncle’s diary. Reading the first couple of pages, he realized that it was not an ordinary diary. Only the first few entries were dated. The rest were numbered, but with no clear timeline or order of memories – things that had happened, old songs, ordinary experiences and such. Many of them were incomplete. Regardless, Bharathan decided to read the diary, and took it back to his room.

  12.1.1994

  I saw Kunjappa Nambiar today. He told me to stop wasting my time and to control my drinking and smoking. Kallunkal Balan was publishing a book about his political experiences and life in hiding, he told me. He said I could also try doing something like that.

  Kunjappa is now working as a proofreader in his son’s printing press. He is sixty-eight years old, but looks so much younger. Seems energetic and in good health, and has put on some weight. His two older boys are working in the Gulf. The press belongs to his youngest.

  Politics has no purpose these days, he said. It’s a career, a paid job, now that people are concerned only about their own welfare. He had lots to say about the dismissal of Gauriyamma from the Party.

  13.1.1994

  Prasannan and some other comrades visited today. It is the fortieth anniversary of ‘Udaya’ on the thirtieth of this month. He said they were planning to felicitate me and Vayalumkara Krishnan for our services. I think I offended them when I asked whether they could give us 500 rupees instead of the usual felicitation cloth with the golden zari border. They also didn’t like what I said about how embarrassing it was to bring over drama troupes and their sentimental plays from southern Kerala instead of putting up our own productions.

  14.1.1994

  I went to Aamachal today to see Appettan. He’s not in a good situation. He receives the monthly pension for freedom fighters so he can look after his affairs and get by, but none of his children have prospered. He was on the brink of tears when we talked about Krishnapillah and Keraleeyan, and quite angry about how political activism had lost the vigour of ideals and had become commercial.

  I stayed with him until it was time for the 8.30 p.m. bus from Aamachal. I too am saddened when I remember the old days. The love and relationships we had in the political scene in those days have been lost. Times have truly changed, but people like us have not been able to change with them and put on different costumes to suit different situations. That’s why we are in this dreadful state.

  15.1.1994

  Today was Agnes’s younger daughter Cecily’s wedding. All the old theatre people were there. Agnes and I had acted as wife and husband in Krishnan maash’s play Kadalinu Thee Pidikkunnu. We must have performed that play on at least sixty stages. All it would have taken was to ask Agnes, ‘What if we were to be like this in real life too?’ But I didn’t. I bit my tongue on every occasion.

  She met the man she eventually married – Chacko maash – when he had come to play the harmonium at one of the performances. She continued acting even after her marriage. I remember clearly the time she came to act in Vishakkatt, bringing Cecily who was only four or five then. How time flies!

  16.1.1994

  Kunjamu Haji is no more. When they brought the dead body back from Manipal, I went to pay my respects. Poor thing … He was a good man, godlike. He helped me a lot, back in 1948. It was in his godown that the Producers-cum-Consumers’ Society stored the rice to be distributed to the shops. He was the first Muslim to be a Congress man around Theeyoor, a respected leader. He knew I was a communist, and yet he called me over one day and said, ‘I need a nightwatchman at my godown. The job is yours if you want it. You’ll need to work from around nine in the night until morning. I’ll give you sixty rupees per month. What do you say?’

  I agreed. There were many who tried to whisper bad things about me in his ears – ‘He’s a communist’, ‘He’s violent’ – that sort of thing, but Haji paid no attention to any of it, and I lived under his protection for five or six months.

  What a wretched time it was, living hand to mouth, doing odd jobs during the day and the watchman’s job at night … I tried to stay away from my old comrades as much as possible. I too had desires and dreams. Save some money … Get married … Then, one day, Appettan came to me and asked me to put up Kuniyankunnil Ananthan who needed to lay low for a few days. I agreed only because it was Appettan who made the request, and needless to say, I suffered the consequences.

  Appettan sent for Ananthan after a few days, and I was beginning to feel safe again. A couple of days later, one night, I was sitting in front of Haji’s godown, smoking a beedi and thinking about the deal I had made with Chenkara Raman about a cow. We had agreed on a price – sixty rupees – but I had not been able to go back and finish the deal because I had to look after Ananthan. I was concerned that someone else might cut in, as such a wholesome cow was not easy to come by at that price. I was deep in these thoughts when I saw Kunjikrishnan, the son of Puzhakkara Pokkan Maestri, come running in the dark. ‘Achuetta, run!’ he shouted. ‘The police have surrounded your house.’

  I ran, but had only reached as far as the west lane when four policemen surrounded me and dragged me like a dead dog to the jeep parked on the side of the road. Four comrades, including Ananthan, were already in the jeep. I saw the police rushing around looking for some others.

  ‘Let’s hope they don’t take us to Mangad,’ Ananthan said. We were all worried about that. In the Mangad Police Camp, there was an inspector by the name of Rai from Karnataka, and if we were taken to him there would be no interrogation. Just the shout – ‘Son of a dog!’ – followed by a kick to the stomach with his booted foot, after which one would not be able to stand up straight for the rest of one’s life.

  Luckily, we were taken to Kannur, and I ended up spending the next year in the Central Jail.

  2.

  One

  It was in 1953, if memory serves, that a new art collective called ‘Navodaya’ was formed in Kilimala. The secretary of the collective, Nanu maash, wrote its first play, titled Ranankanam. Navodaya’s office was in a room above Kunjappa’s chai shop. One night, a few of us got together to listen to the reading of the script. The story was about a brave young man who fought against the superstitions and inequalities at home and in society. There were two female characters – the young man’s mother and his lover. Nanu maash had a special skill in portraying female roles and would act as the mother, but we needed to find a female actor for the role of the lover. The first name that came to our minds was Leela in Chenkara, Ambu Panicker’s daughter. She had given up acting after her marriage, but if Nanu maash and I went and asked, she might agree. Then someone mentioned a Lucy in Thavalakkundu, who had performed the part of Jhansi Rani in a production of Veerangana that an art collective
in Kuniyankunnu had put up. Tailor Vasu had played the part of a white man in that production. So Vasu and I decided to go and find Lucy. Thavalakkundu was about eighty kilometres away to the east, an arduous walk through deserted lanes.

  We set out early in the morning and reached Thaliparamba by 8 a.m. It was a hard slog from there, and we reached a forest lane by the time the heat was fierce. The lane seemed to go on forever, no end in sight even after eight or nine kilometres, not a house or person around. Soon it was obscured by tangled vines and thorny bushes. We turned back and went down another lane which took us to a stream and a flat rock by its side. The rock was too hot to sit and rest on as it was in full sun, so we drank some water from the stream and continued walking. Eventually, we came upon a group of young cowherds, and talking to them, we realized we were lost. Following their directions, we walked for another mile and came to a walled enclosure with a stone altar and three tridents. Turning left, we walked on for three-quarters of a mile, presently coming to a small cluster of shops by the roadside. Exhausted, hungry and thirsty, we stopped and revived ourselves with a glass of sweetened coffee and a plate of sweet potatoes. The shopkeeper told us that it was another couple of hours’ walk to Thavalakkundu.

  By the time we finally reached Lucy’s house, it was dusk. A winding single-track path took us to the top of a hill. The hillside was terraced and cultivated with rice and tapioca, and in the middle of the terraces was a small grass-thatched hut in a yard enclosed by stone walls. A poster of Veerangana and a couple of pictures cut out from matchboxes were pasted on the wall of the hut. No one was around, so we called out, ‘Anyone home?’ There was no response but we stood around, waiting, convinced that this was the right place. After a while, we saw Lucy and her mother coming up the steep climb, carrying pots of water on their waists and heads.

  ‘Christ, I’ll die carrying water. Is there any water on top of this godforsaken hill?’ Lucy’s mother exclaimed before we could say anything.

  Lucy knew Vasu, but she didn’t display any particular friendliness. When we told her why we had come, she made her demands quite clear. If there was going to be only one performance, she wanted thirty-five rupees and expenses, and fifteen rupees in advance. Between us, we had only thirteen rupees, so we said we couldn’t give her any money in advance. She did not respond at first, just scowled at us. Then she started describing in detail the horrendous way in which the United Brothers Art Society had treated her: Veerangana had been staged forty times, but all she had been paid was a total of 200 rupees. The play was three hours long, and she was present on stage for two and three-quarter hours, and the last scene was quite physically demanding, with sword fights, running and jumping. ‘Then when you ask to be paid, they behave as though they’re being bitten by leeches,’ she said.

  As she was talking, her father arrived, a man with a body that looked like it was carved out of ebony, and clad in a towel the colour of red dust. He stank of the local hooch.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. ‘Come to get my daughter involved in another play?’

  Vasu and I kept quiet.

  ‘If it’s the commies’ drama, she won’t come. The church has forbidden her.’

  Lucy stepped forward, took his arm, and dragged him inside the hut.

  As Vasu and I stood in the yard wondering whether we had come all this way in vain, four or five men arrived. They were well built and strong, like men who did regular physical work.

  One of them looked at us and asked, ‘What brings you here?’

  The situation was dicey, we felt, but we told him what we had come for.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said, sneering.

  I did not like his sneer or his remark. ‘Who the hell are you to decide that?’ The question slipped out of my mouth.

  ‘Who else will decide? Your father?’ he said, and took a swing at me.

  Thankfully, Vasu pulled me back so his fist didn’t connect with my face. The rest of them stepped forward shouting, and we realized we had to escape. We ran, without caring where we were going, and somehow scrambled down the hill and reached a creek. By the time we figured our way back, the moon was up in the sky and a thick fog had descended. It took us a long time to pass a treacherous terrain of potholes, loose boulders, steep climbs and slopes, and reach the road with the little cluster of shops we had come across on our way. We were utterly exhausted and not in any shape to face walking through more forests.

  We were not hopeful of finding anyone awake at that time in the freezing, moonlit night, but fortunately for us, there was a flicker of light in the shop where we’d had coffee earlier in the day. We walked towards it eagerly. The light was in the lean-to behind the shop. An indistinct shape was huddled in front of a fire, blowing into it, and scrambled up frightened when he heard our footsteps. ‘Who’s there?’ he called out. We identified ourselves and he seemed to breathe easy.

  Vasu told the man what had happened. The shopkeeper seemed interested in us, and offered us plates of steaming puttu and cherupayar curry. He said he was waiting up for lumber trucks whose drivers were his regular customers. His name was Abdulla, he said, and he was originally from Pappinisseri. He used to be an activist in the farmers’ collective and had left home when things got hairy. That was over seven years ago. Things were bound to have settled down back home and he could go back, but he had put down roots here, made a decent living and had friends in the community. When he had arrived, there were only a few homesteads here, he said, the rest migrated up from the lowlands later. And now, there were people and dwellings on top of almost all the hills.

  Abdulla went back to Pappinisseri once every couple of months, hitching a ride in a lorry and coming back the next night. He was unmarried, and was hoping to rectify the situation on his next visit home. He had broken all ties with the farmers’ collective and the Communist Party. He had seen Keraleeyan and some others the last time he was home, but had avoided meeting them. ‘They are good people,’ Abdulla said, ‘but I don’t have it in me any more to get myself involved in fisticuffs and altercations for the Party.’

  Vasu and I spent the night in Abdulla’s shop. In later years, I would have occasion to pass by that place a few times, and each time I made it a point to visit him and renew our acquaintance.

  In the end, the role of the lover in Ranankanam was given to Leela, and she ended up doing a good job. It made her a real actor, and when people talked about her later, it was this character Radha that they remembered. As for Lucy from Thavalakkundu, I never heard of her again. I wonder if she is still alive.

  Two

  The formation of the first cell of the Communist Party in Theeyoor took place in Kanisan Narayanan’s house in January 1940. Five of us were present: Appettan, me, Kannan Maniyani, Ottappurakkal Raman and Narayanan. Appettan told us all about the formation of the Communist Party in Kerala at a secret meeting in Parapram. It was our job to make the news public. On 26 January, we were to write the words ‘Communist Party Zindabad’ and ‘Long Live Revolution’ on the walls of the Theeyoor police station and the registrar’s office. I was known to dabble in drawing, so the task fell to me. The others would be there to support me.

  On 26 January at 2 a.m., we set out from Kanisan Narayanan’s house. We did the walls of the registrar’s office first. At the police station, by the time I had drawn a sickle and a fist, the policeman sleeping inside woke up, and we heard him mutter something about the mosquitoes. We were spooked and left without completing the job.

  The next morning, a small crowd gathered in front of the police station to look at the sickle and fist that had mysteriously appeared on its walls. I had an inkling that it would be foolish to remain at home, so I left without telling anyone. By the time the police came looking for me in the afternoon, I had already left Aamachal behind. They beat up my father and my brother Kunjikannan, and threw our pots and pans and even the grinding stone into the well. It was more than ten months before I dared show my face back home. And that is the i
ncident that gave me the moniker Sickle Achuthan.

  3.

  Three

  15 September 1940

  I went to Keecheri with two farmers’ collective workers from Kulappuram. Drawing the sickle and fist on the police station wall had really pissed off the Theeyoor police sub-inspector, Sankaran Nair. He was a close friend of the Valappattanam sub-inspector, Kuttikrishna Menon. Both men were notorious for torturing the people they arrested. Getting arrested by Sankaran Nair was as good as being dead.

  Appettan had arranged for me to stay in a house in Athiyadam for a few days. After four or five nights, a comrade named Parayil Kottan came to take me to Kulappuram, and I stayed with him in his house for the next few months.

  In those days, there was an art collective in Kulappuram which put up mythological dance dramas such as Ahalya Moksham and Devayani Charitham. Kottan and I and a few others decided to organize a performance of K. Damodaran’s play, Pattabakki.

  It was wartime. The country was in the grip of poverty and famine, and yet people had to make compulsory payments into the British war efforts fund. Black markets and secreting of essential goods added to the general public’s misery. Meetings and protests were strictly prohibited. Every day we heard stories about false accusations and police brutality.

  The Kerala Provincial Congress Committee had called for a day of protest on 15 September. To mark the occasion, the Akhila Malabar Karshaka Sangham, the farmers’ collective across Malabar, decided to hold a public meeting in Keecheri on the same day. When we got to Keecheri, we were told that the meeting had been moved to Anchampeedika. So off we went, and it was four in the evening by the time we got there. Almost three hundred people had already gathered. The whole place was decorated with red flags and the tricolour. There were so many people I knew in the crowd. Some had come all the way from Karivellur. A palpable energy surged through the gathering.