ENGLISH PART

PART ONE

One

“You know, my father is going to buy a fishing boat and a net, which will then be our own.”

“Your good fortune, Karuthamma!”

Karuthamma was lost for an answer. After a moment she said, “But we haven’t enough money. Could you lend us some?”

“Where have I the money?” Pareekutti shrugged his shoulders. Karuthamma laughed.

“Then why are you going about calling yourself Kochumuthali?”¹

¹ Muthalali literally means “owner”, owner of land, etc. Kochu means young or small. Kochumuthali is a friendly way of addressing muslin , particularly Muslim traders.

“Why do you call me Kochumuthali, Karuthamma?”

“What else should I call you?”

“Call me Pareekutti.”

Karuthamma started: “Paree---,” then stopped and burst out laughing. Pareekutti wanted her to finish it. But Karuthamma suppressed her laughter, and assumed an air of seriousness. “No.” Shook her head.

“I can’t call you that,” she said.

“Then I shan’t call you Karuthamma either.”

“ What then are you going to call me?”

“I will call you Valia Marakkathi.”¹

¹ Marakkathi : a fisherwoman of the Marakkan caste. Valia means elderly.

Karuthamma laughed again. Pareekutti also started to laugh. They laughed and laughed as if they couldn’t control themselves.

“All right. After you have bought the boat and the net, will the big Marakkathi ask her father to sell fish to me?”

“Yes, we shall sell you fish if you offer us a good price,” Karuthamma said.

Again they were convulsed with laughter.

What was there in that conversation to make them laugh so much? Was it witty? Or could even the most commonplace things seem amusing?

Karuthamma laughed and laughed until her eyes filled with tears. Out of breath, she said, “Kochumuthali, don’t make me laugh so much.”

“All right, and don’t make me laugh either,” said Pareekutti. “Oh, Kochumuthali!”

Again they laughed. They laughed as if they were tickling each other. This kind of laughter sometimes ends in tears.

Suddenly Karuthamma became serious. Her face turned red. She seemed offended, angry.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

She shrank from him, crossed her hands in front of her bare breast and turned around. She realized she had only a single piece of loin cloth covering her.

“What is this, Kochumuthali!”

From her house somebody called Karuthamma. Her mother, Chakki, had come back from the market. Karuthamma ran home. Pareekutti realized that she had gone away angry. He was sorry. Karuthamma also felt that she had said something a little too sharp. Perhaps he was hurt.

She had never laughed like that in front of him or anyone else. She had experienced an unusual feeling. It was as if she couldn’t breathe, as if her lungs were going to burst. Karuthamma had felt as if she stood naked in front of him. She had wished she could vanish from his sight. She had never experienced such a feeling until then.

Her breasts were a symbol of the exuberance of youth, throbbing with life. When he looked at her and fixed his eyes on her breasts, Pareekutti had felt as if his nerves were on end and shivering. Was that why the laughter ended? Karuthamma had only a single piece of cloth worn round her waist. She had nothing underneath. And the single piece was a thin one.

Pareekutti was distressed that she had gone away angry. Was his behavior to blame? Would she come to him again?

He must ask her to forgive him. He would not repeat that act of impropriety.

They must ask each other’s forgiveness.

As a little girl of four, Karuthamma used to play on the seashore picking shells and collecting little fish that the fishermen shook out of their nets. And one day she found a little playmate. Karuthamma remembered very well the day Pareekutti first came to Nirkunnam. Wearing trousers and a yellow shirt, a silk scarf round his neck and a tasseled cap on his head, he had clung to his father. They set up their curing yard to the south of her home. It was still there, but young Pareekutti now ran the establishment.

So the two young neighbors grew up on that seafront.

After lighting the fire in the kitchen Karuthamma sat daydreaming about those happy days. The fire was burning away outside the fireplace when her mother entered the kitchen. She nudged Karuthamma with her foot. Karuthamma woke up from her dream with a start.

“What are you thinking of, sitting there?” Chakki asked angrily.

It was Karuthamma’s little sister Panchami who spoke. “Mummy, Karuthamma was standing behind the boat on the seashore laughing away with our Kochumuthali.”

Karuthamma blushed. It was her guilty secret. Now it was exposed.

Panchami did not stop. “You should have heard them laugh, Mummy!”

And then Panchami pointed her finger at Karuthamma and made a sign as if to say, “this is what will happen to you if you try to fool me,” and ran off.

Karuthamma had gone out leaving Panchami at home. Their father, Chemban Kunju, had hidden away a little money to buy his boat and net. He was very particular that there should always be somebody in the house. Panchami had to stay at home. This was her revenge.

Panchami’s words weren’t the sort of thing that a mother could overlook.

“What is it that I just heard?” Chakki asked Karuthamma. Karuthamma had no answer.

“Do you understand what you are doing?”

Karuthamma, duty-bound to answer, stammered out, “I was just walking along the beach.”

“Yes, and what happened when you went walking along the beach?”

“Kochumuthali was sitting in the boat.”

“Why should you laugh for that?”

Karuthamma made up an excuse. “I asked him for the money that we still need for the boat and the net.”

“Is it your business to ask for money?”

“Didn’t you and Father say the other day that we should ask Kochumuthali for the money?”

But Karuthamma’s excuse did not fool her mother. At Karuthamma’s age Chakki, too, had known on that beach curing yards with Kochumuthalalis in them. And behind the boats resting on the seashore Kochumuthalalis must have caused Chakki to burst out laughing. But Chakki was a fisherwoman brought up in the tradition of that seafront. She was the inheritor of some old truths and a way of life.

When the first fishermen fought with the waves and currents of the sea single-handed on a piece of wood on the other side of the horizon, his wife sat looking westward to the sea and prayed with all her soul for his safety. The waves rose high on the sea. The whales approached him with their mouths gaping. The sharks charged the boat with their tails. The current dragged the boat into a terrible whirlpool. But he escaped from everything miraculously. Not only that. He came ashore with a very big fish. How was he saved from that storm? Why didn’t the whale swallow him? How did the boat survive the attack of a shark? How did the boat sail out of the whirlpool? How did all these things come to pass? Because, on the shore a chaste and pure woman was praying steadfastly for the safety of her husband at sea.

The daughters of the sea knew the power of that prayer and the meaning of that way of life. That philosophy of life was Chakki’s too. Perhaps in the days when Chakki blossomed forth into a woman, some Kochumuthalali may have stared at her bare breasts. And her mother may have put her wise about the strength of the prayer of the daughters of the sea and of their philosophy of life.

Whether Chakki understood Karuthamma’s problem or not, she said, “You are not a little girl any more. You are a fisherwoman now.”

Pareekutti’s words. “Valia Marakkathi,” echoed in Karuthamma’s ears.

“This wide-open sea contains everything, my child. Everything. Why do you think all the men who go out there come back safely? It is because of the women at home who live clean lives. Otherwise the currents in the sea will swallow them up. The lives of the men at sea are in the hands of the women on shore,” Chakki continued.

It was not the first time that Karuthamma had heard those sentiments. Wherever four fisherwomen gathered, one heard the very words.

But was it wrong to have laughed with Pareekutti? She had not yet been entrusted with the life of a seagoing fisherman. When she had such a life to guard, she would guard it with greatest care. She knew how it had to be done. No one need to teach a fisherwoman that.

“Do you know why the sea goes dark sometimes? That is when the anger of the goddess of the sea is roused. Then she would destroy everything. At other times she would give her children everything. There is gold in the sea, child, gold.” Chakki said.

“Purity is the great thing, child. Purity. The strength and the wealth of the fisherman lie in the purity of his wife.

“Some Kochumuthalalis with neither character not decency defile the seafront. Low-caste women come from inland to help at the curing yard and sift the fish. They defile the sea front. They do not understand the purity of the seafront. They are not the daughters of the sea goddess. But it is the fishrfolk who pay for their deeds.

“The shrubs on the seafront and the cover of the boats stacked on the shore - these are the sort of places you should be wary of.”

Then with the utmost seriousness Chakki gave her daughter forewarning. “You are no longer a girl, but in the full bloom of your youth. Kochumuthalalis and young reckless fishermen with neither morals nor character will stare at your bare breasts and eye you with lecherous eyes.”

Karuthamma shuddered. That was exactly what happened in the shadow of the boat. Karuthamma’s aversion for what happened was perhaps something she had inherited. If anyone stared at her bare breasts, it was not befitting the honor of the daughters of the sea goddess.

“My child, you must not be the cause of the ruin of the seafront.”

Karuthamma was terrified.

“He is not a fisherman. He won’t care about such things, “Chakki said.

That night Karuthamma could not sleep. She wasn’t angry with Panchami, who had exposed her secret. She hadn’t meant anything bad. Karuthamma belonged to a community which had a philosophy of its own. It had been maintained for hundreds and hundreds of years. Perhaps she was becoming aware of this now. She was worried she might go on the wrong path.

And then suddenly there came from the seafront the sound of a song bloating into her ears, a song which swept her away from her consciousness of right and wrong. Karuthamma listened carefully. It was Pareekutti who was singing. He was not much of a singer. Yet how else could he let her know that he was there?

Karuthamma felt confused and tempted. If she went out to him, he should stare at her bare breasts. And he would be sitting in the shadow of the boat. That was not a safe place. And he was not a fisherman. Karuthamma remembered her mother’s words.

But he was singing a fisherman’s song. If she listened to it longer, Karuthamma was afraid she might go out there. His stare, which seemed to go right through her, had given her a kind of thrill. She was, after all, made of flesh and blood. Karuthamma lay down on her face and presses her breasts to the floor. She covered her ears with her hands. Yet that song could not be shut out.

Karuthamma burst into tears.

The door of the room could be easily opened. Or it could burst open of itself. But she was living within the four walls of a fort which nothing could destroy. They were the thick high walls of the traditions and taboos of the children of the sea, which have stood for hundreds of years. It was a fort with no doors, no windows.

But couldn’t the living flesh destroy it? Such walls have been destroyed, haven’t they?

Pareekutti’s song wafted over the beach. The song had not been created to entice fisherwomen out of their huts at night. It has no rhythm, not much of a melody. The singer’s voice wasn’t particularly pleasing either. But it had a kind of lift. He had to let her know that he was sitting there. He wanted to ask her forgiveness. Pareekutti’s voice strained under the continued effort of his singing.

Karuthamma took her fingers out of her ears. In the next room her father was talking to her mother. They seemed to be arguing. Karuthamma listened. They were talking about her.

“I know all that, you don’t have to tell me. I am a man too,” Chemban Kunju said.

“What a man! As if it is sufficient that you know. It is your daughter who will go astray,” Karuthamma heard Chakki say.

“Nonsense. I will get her married before that.”

“Anh how will you do it? Who is going to ask her hand without a dowry?”

“Listen,” said Chemban Kunju, and he started to describe his plans for the future. It was the hundreth time that Karuthamma had heard it.

All right then. You go on and get your boat and your net,” Chakki said, both in sorrow and in anger.

“I am not going to touch an anna from that money. Don’t think that any dowry will come out of that,” Chemban Kunju said firmly.

Chakki bristled. “Some muslim boy will get your daughter into trouble. That is what is going to happen.”

Chemban Kunju didn’t utter a word. Did he realize the meaning of that statement? After a little while he said, “I shall find a young man for her.”

“Without a dowry?”

Chemban Kunju nodded.

“Perhaps some dumb idiot,” Chakki said.

“You wait and see, wait and see!”

Chakki was not a bit convinced by all this and said, “you better drown the girl in the sea.”

Chemban Kunju swore at her.

“This boat and net, who are you getting them for?” Chakki asked.

Chemban Kunju did not answer. The boat and the net were his life’s ambition. It had never occurred to him to ask whom they were meant for.

Chakki made a suggestion. “What about that youngster Velayudhan of Vellamanalil?

“No, not him.”

“Why not? What is wrong with him?”

“He is only a Marakkan. A mere Marakkan.”

“Who else are you going to get for your daughter, if not a Marakkan?”

He had no answer for that.

Karuthamma’s ears echoed with the words “some Muslim boy will get your daughter into trouble.” Her father had not realized the full force of those words. She felt as if her heart would burst. Hadn’t a muslim already got her into trouble?

Pareekutti had not stopped singing.