When Palani came home, Karuthamma was completely taken aback. She asked him what was wrong.
“You are a bad woman,” he said. “So they had decided that I am not fit to go to sea.”
Karuthamma stood there stunned. She had heard many say that she was a bad woman, but it was the first time her husband had said it to her face, even quoting the words of other people.
Because of her, a good fisherman was being ostracized.
“Why did you as a young girl play and laugh with that boy when you knew you were a fisherwoman and couldn’t ever marry him?” Palani asked her.
Nobody had asked her such a straight question before, even her mother, who had taken her to task sometimes. But what answer could she give? Karuthamma accepted her guilt. With tears in her eyes she said, “all that has happened. And now you must accept it and forgive me.”
His anger was not directed against her.
“Why should I blame you?” He said. “It is not your fault.”
Karuthamma felt relieved. He had forgiven her. It showed that he didn’t blame her. He only blamed her parents for not taking proper care of her.
Palani continued.
“They let the child play about with a Muslim boy-now it is the daughter who is suffering. Shouldn’t the parents look after their children?”
Palani’s bitterness did not end there. He looked her in the face and said. “Perhaps your father bought his boat and net by flaunting his daughter in front of that boy and cheating him. Fine thing to do!”
It was natural for Palani to suspect such a thing, although she had not divulged that secret to him. Karuthamma now felt guilty that she had not told him. Palani warned his wife.
“Look! You should bring up the baby in your womb the same way your father and mother brought you up. If it is a girl, you must bring ruin on some fellow on the seashore. You hear me?”
“No,” Karuthamma said. She understood what he meant. She would never left her baby suffer what she had to go through. She had learned her lesson.
Even though this was a great crisis in their lives, Karuthamma felt somewhat relieved. It was the first time that Palani had mentioned the baby inside her. Also it was the first time he spoke plainly of her faults. Palani did not believe the scandal that was the talk of the village. What a great relief that was.
“How will we live now?” She asked.
She cursed the others.
“The brutes. They wouldn’t let me go and sell fish at the village and manage a living somehow. And now they won’t let you go to sea.”
Palani took a deep breath.
“I am a fisherman,” he stated firmly, “and I shall continue to live a fisherman. I shall die a fisherman.”
Karuthamma saw in front of her a man who was full of manliness. She saw his muscles, toughened with hard work, throb with life. She was under the protection of a fisherman with guts.
Palani clenched his teeth and said, “who has the right to say that I am unfit to go to sea? I was born to work on the sea. Everything that is in the sea is mine. Who has the right to deny me that?”
Palani’s mind was full of his rights as a fisherman. He was the inheritor of an endless treasure house.
“A fisherman does not go to dig and cultivate the land. And Palani won’t do that. That is certain.”
He comforted his wife, “don’t you worry. Palani will live on what the sea has to offer.”
Out at the sea the nets were being gathered. He had worked on the sea since the age of five. In all those years this was the first time that he had sat at home with nothing to do.
As he looked westward, Palani saw the boats lying in mid- ocean. It was a day for herring and sardines. Palani became restless. What was he to do? Full of resentment, he began to swear. His manlibess was awakening?
Karuthamma’s strength, too, awakened. If he was a fisherman, she was a fisherwoman. She, too, had been destined to live by the riches of the sea. No fisherwoman had lived by any other means. She wasn’t expected to.
“Shall I go east to sell fish?” She asked.
Palani wouldn’t not allow that.
“No. You better stay at home. Don’t go anywhere with a heavy load on your head in this condition.”
“I am not tired. Is it not time for me to be tired.”
Palani said confidently, “I brought you home because I thought I could support you. Remember that. You need not do anything.
It was a day in her life she would never forget. In fact, it was the day she really became his wife. What did she lack? No wife on that seashore had a husband with more courage. They had arrived at a full understanding of the husband-wife relationship. Only one thing remained.
“Karuthamma,” Palani said. “You just live your life according to custom and the law of good living. You will live as a fisherwoman of this seafront.”
Palani demanded this of her in clear terms. Every day she used to talk to him, begging for and demanding things at his feet. But he never demanded anything in return.
In truth it was not necessary for a husband to demand or ask for such things. But it was a wife’s right. Without that, her happiness would not be complete. Such a demand was even part of the wedding ceremony. “You must live according to custom and tradition,” that demand was an integral part of a wife’s duty to her husband.
Happy and satisfied, she leaned against his broad chest. Her eyes flooded and overglowed with tears. She asked from the bottom of her heart, “why do you talk like this? I have done wrong once. Would I go off the right path once again?”
Palani stroke her back.
“Don’t cry, please don’t cry,” he comforted her.
Their desire, which had gone out, blazed forth once again. His strong arms held her in a tight embrace which nearly choke her. They regained that ecstatic state once again.
Palani, for whom no one had a care or thought, realized fully that someone cared for him. And she, in turn, who had neither a home nor anyone to support her, found a true partner. Just the two of them. They would clasp their hands firm and go forward fighting together.
The foundations of their life have been made. They were now one. But what would they do? They had to live.
“What shall we do?” Karuthamma asked. “I have put by twelve rupees.”
That wouldn’t take them far. Even a small hand net would cost thirty rupees.
An idea occurred to Karuthamma, “why shouldn’t we go fishing with hooks?”
“If we get the hooks, where shall we get a small boat?”
“And then we shall need another person to work with. Who will come to work for us?”
Palani made light of it and said, “forget it. If I had a small boat, I would go alone and make enough for our daily needs.”
There were five or six small boats on the seashore which went out fishing with hooks. Karuthamma wondered why they shouldn’t hire one of them.
“No one will give it to us. They will be afraid of losing the boat.”
“What other way is there?”
Palani thought for a while and said, “get me that money. Let me get some hooks.”
Karuthamma counted out the money and Palani went to buy the hooks.
She felt fortunate that she was the wife of one who had the will to live. Once again a home and all the accessories of a home, a boat of one’s own and a net - all these began to loom as possibilities. Even the Ayilyam festival at Mannarsals would come round once again.
She prayed that the baby inside her would not be a girl. She had known the sufferings of a girl. It was possible that the story of her life might be repeated. No, it wouldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t let her little girl grown up with little boys. Her child should not get involved in any love affair. What if it were a boy? She wouldn’t let a girl get into trouble through him.
In the kitchen she cooked some rice and curry. Today she wanted to eat off the same plate as Palani, as they had done before. She would make a ball of rice and feed him. Not small morsels, but big morsels. And so Karuthamma daydreamed of many things.
Even if they starved, she could bear everything now. Her husband loved her. He had forgiven her. What else did she need? This was God’s own protection to her.
Just after dusk Palani came home with the hooks. Big and small hooks. He sorted them out and strung them up, getting everything ready.
When the seashore had gone to sleep, Palani prepared to go out with the hooks. Karuthamma wouldn’t let him go until he had told her what was in his mind. He was planning to take somebody’s small boat out to sea. Before the seafront was awake he would get back with his catch.
“I must also live by the sea,” he said.
Karuthamma was terrified. To go to sea alone at night. All kinds of danger lay ahead.
“Please-” she said.
“Well, what is it?”
“ Alone?”
“I am a son of the sea.”
When he walked away she called, “don’t follow the fish too far out!”
He did not make any promise.
Karuthamma could not sleep. She came out and sat under the coconut tree on the west side. A little to the south she saw a small boat being launched. Karuthamma’s prayers were to be his guardian angel.
Palani returned before anyone was up. He had secured some fish. By morning he had reached Karthikappilli market. He had managed to catch eight rupees’s worth of fish.
He must get a small boat. If he had to save up for it, it would take a long time. He could buy an old boat for a hundred and fifty rupees. There was a way. Karuthamma had some gold ornaments. But Palani did not like the idea of buying a boat with the money from that gold.
“No, it is mine,” she said. “It was my mother who gave it to me.”
“But, to sell one’s wife’s possessions-”
“Am I then a separate being?”
He wasn’t prepared to say she was, but it was slightly degrading to buy a boat with your wife’s jewelry.
All the same, he took the gold and sold it. And he bought a small boat. It wasn’t altogether satisfactory, but it was the best he could get with the money he had.
Palani’s new venture was not bad. Sometimes he made five or ten rupees. At the other times he made nothing. But the boat was too small and light for him. He didn’t feel he did a full day’s work. His strength was not being fully used. He wasn’t getting tired. No, the boat and oar were not meant for a man of his strength . He must get a bigger boat. He must stand at its helm with a big steering oar. After the Chakara he must go out deep- sea fishing.
“If you had a big boat, could you go out alone? Karuthamma asked.” You wouldn’t get anyone to go with you?
“When I have my own boat, they will follow me like dogs.”
He decided one thing.
“Palani will not go out to sea in another man’s boat,” he said.
Karuthamma was beginning to feel the tiredness which comes with advanced pregnancy. Her figure clearly showed her present state. When he went out to sea, Palani worried about her sitting alone at home. He couldn’t stay out for long at sea. One day when he returned, he saw four or five women standing around. They smiled at him cheerfully and said, “It’s a girl.”
They were bathing the little baby, It was crying like all newborn babies. They handed over the freshly bathed baby to Palani. He did not know how to take it or hold it. He had not handled a baby in his life.
When husband and wife were alone, he asked her, “why are you somewhat out of sorts? Is it because it is a girl?”
She said, “If it were a boy-”
“ You don’t mean it.”
She continued, “aren’t you also thinking the same?”
No. “What does it matter whether it is a boy or a girl?”
She made her feelings clear to him in one sentence, “whatever happens, I won’t bring this baby up to be another Karuthamma.”
“In that case Palani will never become a Chemban Kunju,” he said with a smile.
The arrival of the baby gave their life a new meaning. Now they both lived for still another human. As far as Palani was concerned, the baby was meant for his perpetual happiness. When he went fishing, the waters of the sea reminded him of the eyes of that little angel. Then he would want to return home. Karuthamma showed him how to carry the baby. Then she would chide him.
“If you keep carrying the baby all the time, she will be spoiled.” Worried, Palani would put the baby down.
As far as Karuthamma was concerned, the baby often gave rise to painful memories. Her mother couldn’t see the baby. When she looked at her face, she thought of Panchami. Panchami used to kick her legs and hands about like this. She wondered how Panchami was getting on. That thought burned in her like fire.
One day Palani came home with a fresh bit of news. Chemban Kunju had brought home from Chertalai or somewhere a woman as his wife. Palani heard of it from someone at Nirkunnam. Thus in the home over which her mother had presided and where Karuthamma was born and brought up, someone she neither knew nor had heard of was now mistress. Her mother had built that house. Everything there was her mother’s. What would that stranger of a woman do to Panchami?
One day when she was bathing the baby she said to Palani, “when I look at her face, I am reminded of Panchami when she was a baby. I never put her down for a moment.”
The corners of her eyes moist, Karuthamma continued, “Perhaps the poor thing may now be pushed about by her stepmother.”
“Why?” Palani asked.
“Stepmothers are like that.”
“ What are we to do?”
Guardedly she said, “I would love to see her.”
Palani said nothing.
On still another occasion when they were in a happy playful mood, Karuthamma added, “shall I go to Nirkunnam? To see my Panchami.”
He didn’t like that.
She laughed a laugh which would have touched any heart and said, “See, it is a daughter you have. Won’t you want her to come to visit you when she is grown up?”
“What is it that you want?” He asked her in a biting tone. “You say you want to see Panchami. Or do you still hanker to see Pareekutti?”
Karuthamma was shocked. The man in him had not changed a bit. The dark shadow of Pareekutti had not passed. Would it ever pass?
Karuthamma realized that she had taken a wrong step.
“No. I shall never again go to Nirkunnam,” she said. “I shall not even mention the subject of going.”
But she was not at peace. The shadow still darkened her life.