Theeyoor Chronicles Read online

  Sadanandan maash was of the opinion that Marykutty was a schemer, and that she had pursued Sudhakaran and trapped him in a relationship. The nature of love within a relationship is not for someone on the outside to know. Besides, Sadanandan maash, who lived as though within the straight lines of a ruled notebook, was not the sort of man who was capable of judging such relationships.

  Sadanandan maash was concerned only with making sure that his life went by without any hurdles or hiccups. He was a Congress Party supporter, but he did not express his political views publicly. He had been a Malayalam teacher but had no real interest in literature. He studied hard and got a job, worked diligently and bought a house and a bit of land. He had two children, a son who was an Ayurvedic doctor, and a daughter who was doing a degree in engineering.

  For the last twenty-five years, Sadanandan maash had been the local agent for the newspaper I worked for, Janavartha. He was fifty-eight years old, and had never once asked anyone to help him with the task of receiving the newspapers that were delivered from the press by the 5.40 a.m. train at Theeyoor station, dividing them up and handing them over to the local distributors.

  During the day, he had plenty to do. He cultivated the little land around his house, grew a variety of vegetables, and looked after a few heads of cattle. He never hired outside help, believing firmly that it was not right to seek other people’s help, even if they were paid for their labour, that one should do one’s own work. Despite this attitude, he was generous with his time when I came to Theeyoor, and his help was invaluable in writing my series ‘A Village that Burns’ and this book.

  Sadanandan maash voiced, more than once, his opinion that the person responsible for Sudhakaran’s death was his wife, Marykutty. I don’t agree, even today. It is possible to have such an opinion, I can see that, but it is not the whole truth of the matter.

  Right from the start, Sudhakaran’s mother and his sisters had taken against Marykutty. They hated the fact that she was a Christian, and that she was a southerner. From the day he brought her home, after the marriage ceremony that was conducted at the Theeyoor Public Library and Reading Room, problems arose between his family and his new wife. On that first night, his mother served food only for her son, and went off without saying a word to the new bride. When women from the neighbourhood came to visit the next morning, she declared loudly, making sure that Marykutty heard her, ‘She’s not even a proper Christian, you know. Just a converted lower-caste Velathi! Look at that graceless face.’ The sisters, too, contributed thorny words in abundance.

  Not the kind of person who succumbed to bullying without a fight, Marykutty took no notice of their jibes. Realizing quickly that the household survived on her husband’s salary, she set out to control the situation. She forbade the purchase of superfluous items, and began keeping a record of every item purchased, from salt to chillies.

  Marykutty became pregnant in due course, and her behaviour became even more controlling. With the intention of moving out from the extended family, she had Sudhakaran purchase a ten-cent piece of land, and laid the foundation for a house. Sudhakaran had no savings of his own, so bracing himself against the consequences, he borrowed money from friends, from the bank, and finally, from the flower merchant Pichayya who was the local moneylender.

  By the time Marykutty delivered their baby, Sudhakaran was completely broke and found himself in penury. At home, his mother and his wife warred with each other continuously. Marykutty had barely any family, and had grown up suffering the neglect of a father who was a drunkard and the ill-treatment of his second wife. Sudhakaran knew that her love for him was genuine and deep, but her extreme practicality and stubborn nature were at odds with his own. He found it difficult to fulfil her needs and desires which increased day by day, and he realized, painfully, that the heady sweetness of the days when their love was blossoming had already become a distant memory. The spiritual tomes he used to immerse himself in gave him no solutions or succour. Finally, caught between a married life which he began to believe was a truly hellish experience and endless financial worries, he ended it all with a piece of rope tied to a rafter.

  I went to see Marykutty with Sadanandan maash. Before marrying Sudhakaran, she had lived in a rented house shared by women who worked locally as teachers or government officials. After Sudhakaran’s death, she had gone back to this house with her newborn baby.

  It was evening when we got there. Marykutty was an attractive woman, thin and dark-skinned. I felt a tinge of pity when I saw the black thread tied around her neck with the tiny gold cross against her emaciated chest. But she did not exhibit the distress of a newly widowed woman. Instead, her body exuded the singular energy that only those who are determined to face life head-on displayed.

  When we entered the compound, Marykutty was sitting on the veranda with her baby on her lap. She did not seem daunted by the arrival of two strangers, although the other women with her on the veranda stood up uncertainly. Sadanandan maash introduced himself, and proceeded to introduce me as a journalist from Janavartha.

  ‘What, so you want to write some stuff up in the newspaper?’ Marykutty asked us. ‘What’s the point in that? In any case, I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  I could have tried to make her talk to me, but I didn’t.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll take your leave then.’

  ‘Where to now?’ Sadanandan maash asked me.

  ‘I’d like to meet with Sudhakaran’s father.’

  ‘You want to do that today?’

  ‘Preferably. Unless you’re busy…?’

  ‘One of my calves has a fever. I was hoping to take it to the vet.’

  ‘All right then. Let’s do it tomorrow.’

  6.

  The next day, it was evening by the time Sadanandan maash arrived. I had spent the day collecting all the information I could find about Kunjigovindan, Sudhakaran’s father, and his grandfather Kanisan Narayanan.

  Towards the end of 1964, the right-leaning faction of the Communist Party had organized a clarification meeting in Theeyoorangadi. Kanisan Narayanan was the main speaker. Ten or fifteen minutes into his speech, some members in the audience began disrupting the meeting, shouting and booing, and it had to be ended. Much of the criticism was directed at Kanisan Narayanan. He who had served the Party faithfully for over twenty-five years was now being heckled and bad-mouthed by a bunch of youngsters, and it hurt him deeply. Even more hurtful was the fact that the comrades he had grown up with, worked side by side with, were allowing, even encouraging, this to happen purely because they were now on opposite sides.

  ‘That’s it. I don’t intend to live and work among these ingrates any more,’ Kanisan Narayanan decided that very night. Four or five days later, he was gone, without telling anyone, without leaving word. No one expected that he would do such a thing, that he would have the courage to do such a thing at the age of sixty-two.

  No one heard about him or from him for the next five or six years. Later on, there was talk that he had made a name for himself as an astrologer in Madikeri. He had learned astrology from his father, Ambukkan, when he was a young boy. Ambukkan had died from the bite of a banded krait that had floated in with the water from the hills during the floods of 1923. After his death, Narayanan became the main astrologer in Theeyoor, and pretty much everyone in Theeyoor and the neighbouring villages had their horoscopes written by him. A week before his death at the hands of Policeman Chandu, Koneri Vellen had come to see him, leaning on his stick, limping and hunched over. The sun had set and darkness was beginning to spread. As he climbed into the yard from the lane, the end of his mundu snagged on a twig. It was only when he reached the veranda, discarded the stick and stood up straight that Narayanan recognized him with a sudden sense of fear.

  Vellen wanted to buy a field in Vayalumkara and cultivate it himself. He was giving some serious thought to retiring from burglary and spending the rest of his life as a farmer, and he had come to find out what his horoscope sa
id and how the stars aligned for him. As he was talking to Narayanan, a gecko had fallen on his right shoulder and scrambled away, and they had smelled the acrid stench of burning clothes. Narayanan had told him to come back after a week. ‘The time does not bode well right now,’ he said. A week later, when he heard the news that Vellen had been shot dead, Narayanan, just like everyone else in Theeyoor, was shocked and sad, his sorrow only increasing when he recalled the inauspicious incident.

  Until he joined the Communist Party, astrology was not just a means of income for Narayanan. He had genuinely believed in it, and had taken a great deal of interest in it. The bag of cowrie shells and the wooden plank to spread them on to calculate the fortunes of people were part of his being. Joining the Communist Party had changed his beliefs, slowly but surely, making him realize that human lives were controlled not by celestial bodies, planets and stars, but by the economic structures of the time. The idea that the destinies of societies and individuals could be changed through collective resistance and action had filled him with a new sense of energy and determination. It was a time when people equated being a communist with being an atheist, a time when communists denied and denigrated not only superstitious beliefs but apparently harmless local cultural rituals and traditions.

  Narayanan had begun to feel ashamed of the profession that had been handed down to him by heredity and tradition. So he had given it up altogether for many years, and picked it back up only when there was no other way to make a living. Also, he began to realize that no matter how much people spouted communist philosophy, everyone, with the exception of a few young people, still wanted their horoscopes written and astrological charts checked, and that these traditions were not going to be easily eradicated. Still, he was not able to engage himself as fully and dedicatedly in his work as he had done previously, and he felt bad when he had to make things up in order to satisfy people’s expectations. He struggled to find the right words to express himself in these sessions, whereas previously, he had possessed a confident, eloquent style. Life went on in this way until, entirely unexpectedly, a terrible tragedy occurred. He was attending to a group of people who had come to ascertain the compatibility of the horoscopes of the bride and groom of a potential marriage, when his wife, for no discernible reason, poured a tin of kerosene over her head and set fire to herself. By the time he and the others ran to her, she was dead. On that day, Narayanan abandoned astrology, and did not return to it for the next twelve years.

  When, in 1964, he decided to leave his native land behind and go to Kodagu, he had picked up his bag of cowrie shells, determined as he was to make a decent living as an astrologer and prove his mettle to his fellow countrymen. Seven years passed before he returned to Theeyoor, and when he did, he had the confidence and demeanour of someone who had succeeded in life. The very next day, he made arrangements to demolish the old house – a structure with four rooms including the kitchen, a veranda and a tiled roof – and built, in its place, a marvellous two-storey concrete bungalow. The work was completed in six months, and the entire community was invited to the grand housewarming function. He returned to Kodagu after the event. It would be four more years before his lifeless body would be returned to the spacious living room of the new house. He had been killed in a vehicle accident in Gonikuppa. He was seventy-five years old.

  Kanisan Narayanan had remained a supporter of the right-leaning faction of the Communist Party all his life. His son, Kunjigovindan, on the other hand, was a confirmed leftist. Growing up, he had been close to his father and had followed him everywhere like a shadow, but when he was twenty-one, they had fallen out over some minor issue. From then on, Kunjigovindan began to adopt a stance that was the diametric opposite of his father’s in all matters. With his mother’s death, the animosity he felt towards his father increased. Kunjigovindan believed that his mother had killed herself because his father had begun an affair with the wife of a comrade in Chenkara. Whatever the truth of the matter, father and son never saw eye to eye again. And when the Party split into the rightist Communist Party of India and the leftist Communist Party of India (Marxist), it was this animosity that made Kunjigovindan stay firm with the leftist side.

  An employee at the Theeyoor Cooperative Rural Bank, Kunjigovindan remained an active member of the CPI (M) until the end of 1968. He took his place right at the front of the demonstrations organized by the Party, leading the slogans. What eventually changed the course of his political life was the friendship that developed between him and Chandran, a man who had come to Theeyoor from Thalassery to work as a clerk at the primary health centre.

  Kunjigovindan’s friendship with Chandran, who claimed to have participated in the attack on the Thalassery police station on 22 November 1968, developed quite rapidly. Although twelve years his junior, Kunjigovindan felt that in Chandran he had found a kindred soul with whom he could share his political views as well as personal issues. Soon, they established a comfortable routine. Every evening, they would meet at Hotel Harikrishna near the bank where Kunjigovindan worked, have a glass of tea, and climb to the top of Theevappara.

  Theevappara was the evening sanctuary for the men of Theeyoor. In groups of three or four, or sometimes alone, they could be seen wandering across its vast rocky expanse. It was only a short, steep climb from Theeyoorangadi, but once on top, it was as though one had entered a different world. Standing on top of Theevappara, it was difficult to imagine that a busy, bustling market was right there at the bottom. To the east, one could see the endless greenery of coconut treetops, and beyond it, Theeyoor River, the railway bridge, and paddy fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. The Arabian Sea glittered in the western corner, and to its front, the undulating hills of Kilimala. To the north and south, the rocky surface extended as far as the horizon.

  At the western boundary of Theevappara, there was a dilapidated Shiva temple and a pond that was full of water even in the driest summer. It was from the shape of the pond – roughly the shape of a cup-like lamp, a ‘deepa’ or a ‘theeva’ in the local dialect – that the rocky expanse got its name: Theevappara, lamp rock. Its boundless solitude beckoned to Theeyoor’s unquiet minds, and it would be difficult to find a man in Theeyoor, Chenkara or Vayalumkara who had not followed that call and spent endless hours losing himself in its calming vastness.

  Kunjigovindan and Chandran were among these respite seekers from the bustle below, and could be seen chatting amicably on top of Theevappara until eight or nine in the night. The main topic of their conversations was politics. Although he did not possess a philosophical bent of mind, Chandran would get emotional talking about the idea of the liberation of the oppressed classes through armed revolution. He argued, continuously and with complete personal conviction, that although the direct action that had taken place in Thalassery and Pulpally had been unsuccessful, the farmers, the labouring classes and the Adivasis were conscientized, and the fire of revolution that had been kindled within them could not be put out by the government or by reactionary forces. He would declare, dramatically, that he would remain forever unmarried and without a family, and sacrifice his life to the cause of liberating the Indian working class.

  Chandran went home to Thalassery once every two weeks, and on his return to Theeyoor, he would bring with him books, pamphlets and magazines. It was Chandran who gave Kunjigovindan the little red book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, published by Rebel Publications, the People’s Daily editorial of 5 July 1967 titled ‘Thunderclaps of Spring on the Indian Horizon’, the pamphlet containing the reports ‘Indian Public Loves Chairman Mao’ and ‘Bihar Farmworkers Take Up Arms to Take Back Land’ published by Sinha News Agency, and the magazine Idathupaksham. And he read every word in these publications, his eyes and heart ablaze with revolutionary fervour. Each time he returned from Thalassery, Chandran brought exhilarating information: the revolutionaries had taken complete control of Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh; thousands of class enemies had been annihilated; the Mushahari region
of Bihar had been liberated; all young people and intellectuals in Calcutta had become supporters of the Naxalbari movement; Nagbhushan Patnaik, Sheikh Hassanar and Adibhatla Kailasam who had escaped from the Visakhapatnam prison had come to Kerala…

  During this time, a young man named Srinivasan who had fallen out with the Kerala Socialist Youth Federation unit in Vayalumkara became acquainted with Chandran and Kunjigovindan. Srinivasan had completed a BSc chemistry degree from Kannur S.N. College, but was unemployed. He was much further ahead in his thinking and reading than Chandran. He had read and committed to memory all the fundamental texts written by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Srinivasan explained, clearly and succinctly, the analysis put forward by the Marxist–Leninist communists of the classist structure of the Indian government, and the existing differences of opinions and positions around this within the Party itself.

  ‘India is semi-colonial and semi-feudal,’ Srinivasan told them. ‘The protectors of feudalism and the comprador bourgeoisie guarding the vested interests of foreign powers have one thing in common – exploitation of the Indian public. They’re controlled by British and American imperialists as well as the Soviet revisionist clique that’s in power now. In reality, our government doesn’t have the support of our people. To put it simply, it’s a childish fantasy to think that the oppressed classes will ever attain power through elections or other established peaceful processes. In colonial and semi-colonial semi-feudal countries, the only way to liberation is through armed revolution. The material conditions in India are absolutely conducive to it. But the self-discipline needed is not something that can be created through propaganda. It can only be kindled by an actual armed struggle in some corner of the country. Its flames, once lit, will then blaze through the entire nation, and people will jump into it in their thousands. This phenomenal process has already begun in our country.’