Translated fiction: Kunjootty is struggling to write the stories of the natives of his village

Twenty-one years later, inside a narrow room of the shelter home, Kunjootty was losing his way, caught up in ghastly nightmares.

There was only darkness everywhere.

It had been four days since Kunjootty had lost his moorings. All these days, with a mind heavy with moist pain and eyes swollen with lack of sleep, Eli had been keeping watch at her son’s side, gazing intently at his face. Expecting Kunjootty to wake up at any moment, hoping desperately that even in his stupor he might call out, “Amma”, Eli intermittently swabbed at her streaming eyes with the edge of her kavani and mopped up the sweat on her son’s forehead and neck. Eli did not budge from her seat to change the kavani draped around her torso, which had become a soggy receptacle of tears and perspiration.

Oblivious of the surroundings, Kunjootty lay stretched out, the very embodiment of an impassivity bereft of responsibilities and obligations. He was enchained amid a tangle of tubes like an unbecoming ghost. A face reminiscent of an overgrown wilderness – dried lips that trembled occasionally, blackened eyelids with feeble signs of life. As she watched, a sob emerged from her anguished heart.

“Kunjootty, my son!”

But the calls left Kunjootty untouched. Eli’s sobs did not have the vigour to overcome the formidable distance between them and reach her son. Leaving behind the musty corridors of the shelter home, casting aside his appan and amma, Kunjootty had gone journeying far off. There had been many visions during that sojourn. Halfway across, there were formless beings who had befriended him. The secrets that he had shared with them were mistaken by his mother as the crazed outpourings of his feverish self.

The formless beings took Kunjootty in a black skiff, rowing against the wind, to the mysterious depths of the kayal, the backwaters. He could see, far away on the shore, a lone gooseberry tree, shivering and shrunken. It had hollowed branches, the trunk rotting in the salt-laden wind, the body strewn with desolate holes discarded by birds . . . almost like an impoverished spirit denied of its sacrificial rites. Kunjootty did not have the heart to watch that piteous sight. To the sounds of a low groan, his body shuddered once.

“Am…ma…!”

The mother who was counting each of her son’s breaths gathered close to hear the vague mutterings rising from his scorched lips. Eagerly expecting more words, keen not to miss even a single syllable, as she stared at her son’s lips, Eli heard this:

“A real fruit bearer that gooseberry tree was…eh, Amma?”

With intense grief, she replied, “Do not worry about it, my son!” Eli unwittingly muttered: “A real fruit bearer that gooseberry tree was!”

Over the years, Eli herself had wisened, like the shrunken gooseberry tree.

Twenty-one years earlier, as if the seeds of the celestial stars themselves had been scattered all over, gooseberry pits lay strewn on the courtyard of Edappadathu House. The children of Potta Thuruthu – the isle of potta plants – gathered them up in their little fists, tried to blow life into them and hurled them up into the skies. Even though he tried relentlessly, Kunjootty could never achieve the sowing of those starseeds in the skies. Neither could Susanna, Kanaran, Vareeth or any other child of that isle. When the gooseberry pits somersaulted many times in the air, sparkling in the sunlight, and inevitably fell on the ground, the kids gathered and counted them assiduously. That was the lone gooseberry tree in their land. It was not usual for such trees to take root in the isle of Potta, which was full of dark, brackish mud. Consequently, the children fell in love with that magical tree, cherishing it with absolute adoration. They watered it in the summers and chased away the pesky birds that disturbed its tender flowers.

After many years, a chameleon with a flower-like crown on its head became a resident of the gooseberry tree. Kunjootty could not recollect exactly when that jester first made its appearance. Either on a dawn ushered in by the chirping of the magpie robins, or on a lazy afternoon, or on an evening when he stood staring out of the window, the chameleon had leapt from the southern branch to the main trunk.

Kunjootty disliked it immensely.

“Tche! Such a dirty creature.”

Perhaps, the chameleon took offence at that statement; it opened its eyes wide, jerked its head arrogantly and slid down to hide among the mangroves. There, in the mangroves and the potta plants, many water birds had built their nests. Surrounding the area were the prawn farms, with lots of radishes, and the winds combing their way through. And then there was the naval command of potta plants that thrived lushly on the shore, fighting the waves of the river.

The chameleon came back.

This time, Kunjootty did not feel the same animosity towards the creature. Clutching the bars of the window, he stared at it keenly. Caught in a fleeting sense of wonder, he hailed the creature, “Good day!”

The chameleon seemed to like the formality. It responded by shaking its head. The colour of its body was that of pale sunshine then. A tentative friendship started between two incompatible creatures that day.

Kunjootty had been simply fooling around. However, the greeting ritual between the boy and the chameleon soon assumed a regularity. The chameleon started appearing on the north branch the moment Kunjootty opened his window. Jerking its head, its eyes rolling, it would attempt to converse with the boy.

After some time, Kunjootty started to feel he was able to comprehend the chameleon’s language. It was not a mere thought but almost a palpable experience. People would have called him stupid! So Kunjootty had to continue the teaching and learning process without being noticed by anyone. The adventure exhilarated him like a bizarre form of meditation.

When he mastered the language and the friendship deepened, Kunjootty discovered that his friend was an enlightened seer who knew the past, the present and the future. Soon, the secret of its birth was revealed – cursed dinosaurs were reborn as chameleons! Arrogant human beings would also shrink to become ants in the course of time.

Kunjootty could not help opening his own heart to the creature. One evening ripe with auguries, he confessed:

“Do you know, I have given a name to this gooseberry tree?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Lies! No chameleon should be as vain as you!”

“What if I were to tell you the name?”

“Then, I shall crown you an emperor!”

“You named the gooseberry tree on a moonlit night, didn’t you?”

“Yes, how did you know that?”

“You scratched the name on the trunk using a shell you picked up from the shore.”

“Oh my God! Yes, indeed.”

“It was a girl’s name. Let me…”

“You brute! Stop right now! Don’t shame me by saying anything more.”

That day, amid the whispers of the wind and the hymns of the birds, Kunjootty granted the possession of his gooseberry tree, free of tax, to the chameleon who had mastered time, and crowned it as the emperor.

Excerpted with permission from The Book of Exodus, VJ James, translated from the Malayalam by Ministhy S, Penguin India.