Muse India Fiction Contest 2008 - Special Commendation

Dark Side of Belief 

‘Finally the Diwan Peshkar agreed to his request.’ 
Bala-maan’s (Uncle Bala’s) aging baritone drifted into the kitchen. 
Sarala frowned in exasperation.
‘There he goes again with his stories. Doesn’t he realize that the children’s exams are round the corner?’ she grumbled as she helped Karthiayani, their elderly maid, with the chores in the kitchen. 

It was late evening; the lamp in the puja room had been lit and the fragrance of jasmine scented incense drifted across the house. A little blob of yellow flickered in the gloom from the oil lamp placed on the thulsi thara (platform with the sacred thulsi plant) in front, some distance away from the main building. 

‘Ramu, Dhanya, go finish your homework before dinner,’ she shouted from the kitchen, conveying the not so subtle hint to her granduncle. 
‘Better do as she says my dear children or else we’ll all be in for it,’ grinned the old man conspiratorially. 

He took a piece of chewing tobacco, stuffed it into his mouth and settled back on his armchair as he watched two reluctant children drift back into their room. His thoughts shifted to the Trichur Pooram, the famous annual festival, due in a month. He was one of the committee members, as he had been for years, in charge of the event: a festival, which drew hundreds of thousands of devotees and tourists to their little town of Trichur from all over the country. Even tourists from overseas flocked to Trichur for the summer festival to watch the celebrated rivalry between the two temples, Parmekavu and Thiruvumbady. He had witnessed ever so many poorams but could never get over the exhilaration at the spectacle of fifteen flamboyantly caparisoned elephants from each temple, with men sitting on top, holding sets of giant, decorated umbrellas – orange, purple, green and so many more, with exquisite gold and silver borders – constantly discarding one set and displaying a new set, challenging the other side to try and beat them in the colour game, all the while accompanied by the pulsating rhythm of the Panchavadyam (a percussion ensemble consisting of five instruments); the beat rising gradually from super slow to a breathtaking crescendo, almost as if the instruments were being taken to their very limits, compelling the crowd to move their bodies frenziedly to the rhythm. And in the wee hours of the next morning, the thunderous roar of giant firecrackers sounding like the gods having a shouting match, shaking the buildings in town! 

Balakrishna Menon, the third in a family of seven siblings from the aristocratic Thekke Karoth tharavad (family) in Chittoor near Palghat, left his moorings as soon as he completed his degree. The elders in the family never tired of talking about their glorious past, the hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland they owned ages ago, the connections with the Cochin Royal Family and such other faded grandeur. By the time young Balan got to college, the family holdings had shrunk to less than a tenth of the original size, thanks to the obsessive absorption of a successive line of karnavars (head of the tharavad) in weighty matters like kathakali, chakkiar koothu and other fine arts matched by their complete disinterest in matters of administration of the properties. Fed up with the indolent, decaying lifestyle Balan decided to cut himself loose and go about his own life. One of his father’s cousins, Krishnettan, worked in far off Calcutta and he had heard stories of the place from the gentleman, stories that fired his imagination, of opportunities galore with all those big British firms. 

Calcutta of the late 1930’s proved to be all that and more. Krishnatten fixed him up as a clerk with a shipping company and introduced him to a couple of other Malayalee youngsters, Damu (short for Damodaran) and Appu (short for Appukuttan). He took up residence with them in their small one room apartment at the far end of Park Street where it blurs into Park Circus – what was known those days as the poor man’s Park Street. 
Being an enterprising young man, Balan, as his friends knew him, had no intentions of a long-term stint as a clerk in a shipping firm. He gradually widened his circle of friends and got to know Ouseph Kottakaran, a Malayalee running a workshop near the Kidderpore Docks. On a couple of occasions he helped Kottakaran tide over crises of the pecuniary kind, by loaning him money. Over time, he became a partner and they diversified and flourished, running a second hand spare part business in addition to the workshop. 

The years were good and Balan hardly ever visited his home back in Southern India. Towards the mid forties however, the situation started deteriorating, with the factious and incendiary political scenario in British India. Balan had no use for politics especially the religion-tainted type. He had several good Muslim friends like the dhobi (washerman) in his neighbourhood, Moidu, a gentle soul from Manjeri, who was a frequent visitor to their apartment. They would all spend hours talking about their serene homeland in their native tongue; a strange friendship between individuals from different social strata. Each one would recount his dream. Damu wanted to eventually get back to his native Ottapalam after saving enough money and start a small restaurant. He felt he had picked up sufficient know-how from his friend Rangasami, who ran a small South Indian eatery near Park Circus. Appu wanted to get back to Ponnani and get into farming. His ambition was to save enough money and buy some land for banana and tapioca cultivation. 

Moidu’s dream was to start a laundry, which was an upmarket extension of his current line of work. He however did not want to go back to Manjeri as he felt it lacked the required environment and clientele for the business.

Long after Balan returned to his native land, a well off bachelor, he fondly remembered those far off times, of such trying circumstances and such good friendships. Some years after India achieved independence, he decided to call it a day in Calcutta, and came back to Kerala. Since he had cut himself off almost completely from his family and had little contact with them ever since he went off to Calcutta, instead of going back to his ancestral home in Chittoor, he bought a sprawling old house in Trichur and settled down there with an orphaned niece Saraswati, who, as he was fond of telling everyone, was the only member of his family he was fond of. He married her off to a young college lecturer and the couple stayed with him. Soon, they had a daughter, Sarala, who was adored by her granduncle. 

After four blissful years, their lives were unexpectedly, brutally torn apart when Saraswati and her husband Satheesan died in a mishap, on their way to Tellicherry by bus, to attend a wedding. A drunken bus driver, his lack of sleep and a light drizzle proved a fatal cocktail. 

It was as if Fate had decided to call for an encore, as once again an aging Balan Menon had to take it on himself to bring up a little girl, guide her through school and college and find a suitable groom for her when she was of marriageable age. Sridharan, Sarala’s husband, was employed in the Middle East, working for a supermarket chain. Initially, Sarala spent a few years with her husband but decided to come back to Trichur when their children were of school-going age. This was just an excuse to come back and take care of the old man, who was her father, mother and granduncle rolled into one. She knew that her granduncle found it difficult living alone; her husband also felt it would be better if she stayed in Trichur. 

**

Old Balakrishna Menon was a troubled man; lately he had not been sleeping well. Always the same nightmarish images of the woman being dragged away by the mob! 

Mid August 1946, when the cauldron that was India, was on the boil, the Jinnah / Suhrawardy combine’s ‘Direct Action Day’ turned Calcutta into a blazing inferno. For four days, Balan sat huddled with his mates, Damu and Appu in their tiny flatlet terrified to stir out. All kinds of lurid tales and rumours of carnage floated about in the air. Mid-morning on a humid, airless second day, they heard screams and shouts from below. Peeping out, they saw images that would haunt them throughout their lifetime: Amina Beevi, Moidu’s wife being dragged away by a mob of lathi (large stick) wielding goons, her terrified, imploring face spotting her husband’s friends, crying for help. The three young men stood frozen, not daring to move: shock, fear and helplessness searing their souls. Timid Amina, a doting mother, a devoted wife, soon to reduced to a lump of splintered bones and shredded flesh by dozens of pitiless lathis and stones.

Much later, Moidu’s body along with that of his son, each with a dozen stab wounds, were dragged out from an alley close by; their friendly Kaka (a term of affection/respect for a Muslim) from Manjeri and his playful little child.

**

Balan’s spirit cowered like an abandoned child in a forest; he sweated, tossed around in bed. Sarala had stormed up to him that evening shouting hysterically. He did all that he could, trying to calm her with the immense love and tenderness he possessed. But she was adamant; she refused to see reason. 

He was a tortured soul, cornered, unable to move, questions puncturing his mind like a million needles. How, how, how?

How was he going to explain to his beloved grand-niece that she had to allow her daughter, Dhanya, to marry the young Muslim boy who worked for the same software firm she was employed with; that religion did not matter in the least because … her mother Saraswati was Suharra, daughter of the late Moiduka and Amina? 

***