The wedding was fixed, there was no need for elaborate arrangements because Palani had no one in the world to demand anything on his behalf. Palani gave the good news to the owner of the boat he was working for. Chemban Kunju accompanied Palani when he went to the Headman of his seafront to pay his respects and obtain his blessing. Chemban Kunju also took offerings to his own Headman.
The complaint that Chemban Kunju was not giving away his daughter in marriage thus came to an end.
“So you see. Chemban Kunju has managed everything well,” he said to his wife.
Chakki hit back.
“What kind of a bridegroom have you got? No home, no kith and kin-good,” she said.
Chemban Kunju swore at her.
“What do you understand? He is a good worker. He is strong and sensible. There isn’t a youth like him on any seafront near here.”
Chakki didn’t attack any further.
“And now we can enjoy ourselves,” she said smiling.
“We shall have fun. We shall enjoy ourselves like the Pallikunnaths.”
“If we are going to have fun like young people, we must settle the matter of repaying Pareekutti,” Chakki said.
There was a way of doing that too. Chemban Kunju had not forgotten. He would solve all his problems one by one in good time.
“Listen. We have no boys. I am thinking of adopting Palani as a son,” he said seriously.
“In any case he will be eldest son-in-law,” Chakki said.
As if Chakki had not understood his point fully, Chemban Kunju explained everything. Palani had no one. Therefore he might as well stay with them after the wedding. Now there were two boats. If Palani would agree to stay, it would be a good thing. Chakki agreed it would be good to have a son, but she had her doubts.
“Would he agree to it?” She asked.
“Why not? Why shouldn’t he?” Chemban Kunju said.
“What young fisherman has stayed on at his wife’s place?”
Chemban Kunju thought for a while and said, “he is bound to like it. He is a poor chap.”
“Is he?” Chakki said. “When you married me, did you stay two days with my family?”
“I had my father and mother.”
Chakki did not believe that Palani would stay with them.
Karuthamma came to know of her father’s idea. She went for her mother. Her attitude puzzled Chakki.
“You are a fine one,” Chakki said. “Your mother and father arrange your wedding and then you want to run away from home. Did we bring you up for nothing? The moment you hear that a fisherman is coming for you, you have no use for your father and mother.”
Chakki’s words went straight to Karuthamma’s heart. It wasn’t because she didn’t love her father and mother that she spoke like that. And she hadn’t thought that it was degrading to stay with them after her marriage. She would, of course, always be her mother’s own child. And she knew her mother was always ready to do anything for her. How could she live away from Panchami? The day she walked out of that home - how could she bear that day?
And yet Karuthamma wanted to get away from that home and that neighborhood.
“That wasn’t what I meant, Mother. You shouldn’t think that. Who have I got except my father and mother?” she said desperately.
She burst out crying, unable to control her sobs, and fell on her mother’s shoulder. Her mother embraced her.
Chakki hadn’t intended to be taken so seriously. She hadn’t thought Karuthamma was crying her heart out. Chakki also cried.
“I-I-don’t want to stay on this seafront any more. Let us all leave this place together,” Karuthamma said.
“What are you saying, child?” Chakki asked, her heart full of love.
Unable to control her feelings, Karuthamma said, “If I stay on this seafront-”
“What is it, child?”
Chakki thought that the sharpness of her tongue had made her cry. But there was a great sorrow in Karuthamma’s heart which she could not communicate to her mother.
Suppressing her sobs with difficulty, Karuthamma said, “If I were to stay here - this seafront will come to grief, Mother!”
Chakki’s eyes filled with tears.
“Don’t talk like that, child.”
“No, Mother. I must go away from here. That is my only hope. To whom can I say this except you, Mother?”
Yet even to her mother Karuthamma could not open her heart fully.
“That boy, it seems to me, has bewitched you,” Chakki said. Karuthamma denied that. No one had bewitched her.
“Have there been other girls like this on this seafront, Mother?” she asked.
“Girls like what, my child?”
“ Can’t you follow me, Mother?”
“Goddess of the sea! My child has gone mad.”
“No, I have not gone mad, Mother. I am asking if there has been any other girl on this coast in my plight?”
A fisher girl who loved someone outside her caste, who, however hard she tried to forget him, found herself loving him more - such a woman-had there been one like that on the seafront? That was what she wanted to know. Had there been a love story like that? Had someone from outside the fisherman’s caste loved a fisherwoman and because of the love he bore her, wrecked his life? Had the sands on that beach heard a lover’s song and throbbed with its ecstasy? What was the history of that lover?
Could one ask such questions of a mother?
Yes, one could, but Karuthamma felt that she was the only one who had had such a fate. Only she had loved a man like that.
Even if others had had love affairs on that seafront, no one would have loved anyone as she loved Pareekutti.
“Did you get into trouble, child?” Chakki asked anxiously.
Karuthamma did not understand her mother’s question.
“For grown-up girls-” Chakki continued.
Karuthamma did not realize that what Chakki hinted at was a very serious matter.
“No, Mother. I have not been defiled,” she said casually.
Karuthamma had only one request. A great unknown fear had seized her. A terrible monster stood gaping with its mouth wide open to swallow her. She must escape from its dark shadow. Her mother had promised her salvation. She promised to send her away on the very day of her marriage.
Karuthamma, the bride, now became the object of the attention of her neighbors. They repeated an age-old custom. When a marriage is arranged, it is the responsibility of the neighbors to give advice to the bride on the sacred duties of a wife. If she went wrong, the community would blame the neighbors.
“Child, we are entrusting you with a man,” Nallapennu said to Karuthamma.
By their tradition a girl was not entrusted to a man. It was the other way round. A man was entrusted to a woman.
“Remember, my child, it is on the stormy waves of the sea that our men have to work,” Kalikunju advised her.
“A woman’s heart is easily swayed. Be careful,” Kunjipennu warned Karuthamma.
Thus everyone advised her. All of them had in their time accepted such advice, and they had given it in turn to someone else. It was their duty. No girl who had been sent away from that seafront had given them any cause for regret. Such advice was always given without malice or envy.
Karuthamma listened to all of them and understood. But she yearned to ask them a question, the same question she had been unable to ask her mother.
“Has there been on this seafront any girl who loved someone who returned her love and yet had to marry someone else?”
That question was always on her mind. What would happen to such an unfortunate girl?
Sometimes Karuthamma would visualize the spirit of such a girl haunting the seafront, one who had been cursed by fate and whose hunger for love had never been fulfilled. Alone, by herself, she felt as if she was reliving a story in a strange language she could hardly follow. There must have been grandmothers who suffered like this. The sea breeze murmured the same kind of sad tale. In the sound of the waves, too, one could hear the same story. The sands on the seashore must have known it.
One day Karuthamma talked to Nallapennu.
“Auntie, has there been on this seafront any fisherwoman who strayed off the path of righteousness?” She asked.
Yes. There had been some rare cases. One or two old tales. They did not do wrong deliberately. There was an old song of the beach which described the life of one such woman. Because a woman strayed off the path of virtue, the waves rose as high as a mountain and the water engulfed the seashore. The seashore was infected with poisonous sea snakes. Other monsters of the sea with mouths as large as caves darted after the boats. It was an old tale. Nallapennu sang some snatches from the song.
That too was a tale of love. Karuthamma wondered whether years later such a song would be created out of her own life.
“That is the law of the seafront,” Nallapennu said.
“Even today, Auntie?” Karuthamma asked.
“Today there isn’t that purity, or that discipline. Today the men, too, are like that.”
Men and women were getting away from those old ways and traditions. But the daughters of the sea must guard those old traditions.
Karuthamma often wondered what the new seafront would be like. Would the sunset there, too, scatter the place with golden rays? Even when the storm rages, her own seafront had a beauty of its own. She never felt afraid here. And the breeze which sang the song of the unhappy girl crossed in love was a friendly one. Would the seafront that she was going to be the same?
And the people there? Even though they might be friendly, there was something specially sweet about the people of her own beach who had brought her up. And now she was leaving it forever.
One moonlit night when the sea was calm, Karuthamma heard a song which seemed to mingle with the moonlight.
Pareekutti was singing.
It wasn’t as Pareekutti’s song that the music sounded in her ears. Pareekutti’s entity was no longer there. She felt as if she was being called to a world of joy and happiness, the call of the seashore bathed in moonlight, the music of the seashore she was bidding farewell to. What dear memories it held for her.
Karuthamma stood up. She could see Pareekutti’s figure clearly in front of her. Was he really calling her? Or was he consoling himself with the song?
Her mother was sleeping. Her father wasn’t home. She knew that the seashore was empty of anyone else. She felt a great urge to open the door and go out.
Pareekutti was singing the song about the tragic fisherwoman. Nallapennu had sung those very lines to her. Perhaps that unfortunate fisherwoman was also attracted by such a song and went out to the seashore in a daze. Perhaps the moonlight also beckoned her on.
Again, perhaps the waves would rise high. Sea monsters might raise their heads and open their mouths wide as caves. And poisonous sea snakes might crawl on the beach.
Karuthamma’s thoughts slipped into another line of reasoning. She was going away. She had to bid farewell to her lifelong friends. She had prepared herself to leave all. But she had not said her farewell to the moonlight on the seashore. She had not said her farewell to the ocean that had been transfigured by the moon. She had not taken leave of the enchanting song of the moonlight. And above all, she had not said farewell to Pareekutti, the angel who had been sent to her.
Another fear gripped her. She might never again be able to give herself up completely to that song and that moonlight. Karuthamma wanted to go once again to the back of the boats stacked on the seashore, to enjoy for the last time the happiness that might be denied her forever.
She had run about that seashore as a child. She grew up to be a young woman. And she loved. And now she was going to be the faithful wife of a fisherman who would go on the stormy, swirling, treacherous ocean. Life would have a new meaning. Before that, let her celebrate her last carefree day.
But Karuthamma was afraid. She was not sure if she could trust herself. She might do wrong, might be defiled. Until that moment she never had such a fear. Still she must talk to Pareekutti. She must ask his forgiveness.
Karuthamma got up. Slowly she opened the door. The moonlight was heavenly. Along the shadows of the coconut trees she walked toward the seashore.
The music stopped. Pareekutti had sung and sung, and lo and behold, there appeared in front of him the angel of his dreams. For a moment, he could not believe his eyes.
“When you go away, Karuthamma, will you think of me?” He asked. “Even if you won’t think of me, I shall sit on this beach and sing. When I grow old into a toothless man-even then I shall sit here and sing.”
“Oh, no, Kochumuthalali.” Karuthamma said. “You must marry a nice girl and have children and prosper in your trade.”
Pareekutti said nothing.
“And you must forget me and the days when we played together as children,” she continued. “That is what is good for us both.”
Karuthamma did not stop.
“I shall return the money we borrowed from you before I go. And for your happiness, I shall-”
She could not say the rest. “Pray for you” was what she wanted to say. But she did not know whether it would be right of her to say it. A fisherwoman should pray for the good of only one man. The duty she owed her future husband would not permit her to pray for any other person.
“I shall always think of you, Kochumuthalali,” she said instead.
“Why should you, Karuthamma? Please don’t.”
For a while they were silent, but the silence was eloquent with unspoken thoughts.
An owl rose from a coconut tree and flew away into the moonlight, perhaps just to let them know that it had seen this drama of love. A little farther away, a pie dog stood watching them.
“The days that we ran about this beach gathering sea-shells are all over now,” Pareekutti said. “Thus one episode in our lives is over.”
Karuthamma agreed it was true.
“And now I shall be alone on this beach,” Pareekutti continued.
That went straight to Karuthamma’s heart.
“I was afraid you might never come to say good-bye to me,” he said. “I am not complaining. If you had gone away without seeing me, I would have been very sad. But I shall never have any complaints as far as you are concerned.”
Karuthamma covered her face with both hands and cried.
“Why are you crying, Karuthamma? Palani is good. He is clever.”
He continued, his voice shaking slightly, “Karuthamma, good things will happen to you.”
Karuthamma could bear it no longer.
“Kochumuthalali, don’t taunt me when I am so miserable,” she said.
Pareekutti could not understand what she meant. He didn’t think he has said anything to hurt her.
Unable to suppress her grief she said, “In any case, you don’t care for me.”
“What do you mean, Karuthamma?”
He crossed his heart. He said that her happiness was the only prayer of his life.
“I shall sit here and sing and sing for you,” he said.
“And I shall hear it on the Trikunnapuzha beach.”
“I shall sing until my throat will crack and I shall die.”
“And I shall die with a broken heart, and then two souls will haunt this beach in the moonlight.”
“Yes,” said Pareekutti.
Slowly and silently she turned away from the sea and walked eastward home.
And so they parted.