S Hareesh’s new novel: The kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor refuses to join India after independence

I knew the man by sight, but the first time I met him in person was at the post office ground in Muhamma. Towards the end of 1939, I think it was. In those days, I went by the name of Bhasi. I had arrived a couple of days earlier, hitching a ride in a coconut boat from northern Paravoor to Thavanakkadavu, and then walking the rest of the way via Cherthala.

In those days, the whole place was a waterscape with isolated islets within it. Walk a few yards in any direction and the path would end at a canal or a dyke. One could jump across the smaller ones. But to cross the others, one had to wait for a boat passing by. That was dangerous. The obliging boatmen usually wanted you to fulfil their curiosity in return for a ride. Name, native place, caste, purpose of visit – they asked questions that dug deep, even into one’s past life, as though they were on a mission not to let anyone live with even a little bit of privacy.

Making up lies was an unavoidable part of my job. Except in the most crucial instances, I was careful not to fabricate too many stories or go into details. If I did, I would then have to remember all those details in case I ended up meeting the same person again and they cunningly asked the same questions. So, whenever my path was bisected by a canal, instead of waiting around for a boat to pass by, I would choose a direction and walk along the canal bank until I came to – and I invariably did – at least an old and decaying length of coconut tree laid across it. If you took care to step on it only with your big toes, imagined yourself to be entirely weightless, you might just make it across. If someone were to map my meandering journeys … Ha! It would be quite amusing.

Except for a few hovels and ponds stinking with the coconut husks left to soak in the water to make coir, the place was full of tall coconut trees with their heads tapped for toddy. A stench rose from the rotting dried fish strewn around the trees as fertiliser. In between were huge mounds of silver sand, almost as high as the trees. They looked like mountaintops covered in snow, or at least as I imagined them to be. They blazed in the sunlight. Ignoring my burning feet, I climbed one of them like a child on a haystack. Covered in sugar-sand, I reached the top and looked over to the other side. Two women sat by a tiny channel of water bordered by verungu trees, plaiting coconut fronds. The younger one split the fronds and bent the leaves, and the one that looked like her mother finished the job, braiding them neatly and tightly. They raised their heads and looked at me as though wondering why anyone in their right mind would climb up to where not even grass sprouted. They did not seem perturbed by the sight. I climbed down quickly and walked towards them, hoping for a drink of kanjivellam. But when I got there, they had faded away into the sunlight.

I reached Muhamma by evening, lay down on a kalithattu, the resting place made of rough-hewn stones where folk sat chatting during the day, and slept for a while. When darkness fell, I walked eastwards, went to a Muslim household, and asked them for something to eat.

“Where are you from?” the householder asked as I ate the boiled tapioca they gave me.

“Ah, south,” I said, “a bit away.”

“And where are you off to?”

“Oh, nowhere in specific. I deal in copra. I’m looking for coconut to buy in bulk at a reasonable price.” As we continued chatting, I tried surreptitiously to wangle information about local activities of the State Congress from him.

“Pricks!” he said. “All they’ve managed to do is get beaten up or shot to death. Like they can stand up to the Pattar, our esteemed Diwanji!”

“Still, Ikka, justice is on their side, no?” I tried prodding him, addressing him politely as older brother, wanting to know what he actually thought, but he ignored me, walked to the edge of the lake and sat down to urinate.

I went back to the kalithattu and spent the night there. The next day, I woke up early and wrote a short report of all that had happened. When I finished, I took out the government circular and read it carefully once again. This is what it said:

The government has been made aware that the State Congress is planning to hold assemblies in several locations in the country this month. It is hereby ordered that the pravruthyars in charge of the villages in these locations should round up 15 rowdies in their respective jurisdictions, ply them with intoxicants such as toddy and arrack, and instruct them to go to the venues and disrupt the meetings in the following manner:

1. Insinuate themselves into the crowd and cause a ruckus by pushing and shoving one another.

2. Pelt gravel and stones into the crowd and create an atmosphere of disorder.

3. Praise Amma Maharani, His Royal Majesty and Diwanji, shouting “ki jai” to all three at the top of their voices.

4. If the meeting still continues, run onto the stage and start a skirmish.

5. Try to disrobe the speaker and the others on the stage by force.

I spent the day wandering around the place pretending to be a coconut trader, meeting landowners and a man who ran a wholesale coconut depot to fix prices in advance. My meal was a plate of kanji at a Chovan’s house in Kayippuram. The information I gathered from the people I met is summarised below.

As in most other places across the land, the Christians here supported the State Congress. However, the rich among them did not express their support openly. The poor too – Nairs, Chovans and Muslims alike – supported them. Regardless, lately there seemed to be increasing resentment among the rank and file towards leaders such as Pattom Thanu Pillai and TM Varghese. There was a considerable number of Thiruvithamkoor National Congress supporters among the Nairs, who, by the way, have more power socially. Taken as a whole, very few people held bad feelings towards the Maharaja or Amma Maharani. The majority would rise from their seats, their eyes lowered respectfully, at the mere mention of His Majesty. However, they had equal respect for people like Gandhi and Rajagopalachari. Hatred for the British was widespread. Local activities of the State Congress were being led by a man named Narayanapillah, a man with a school education. TNC did not seem to have any organised activities around here.

In the evening, I sat with a man from the Paravan community by the side of a canal and drank arrack. As a coconut picker, he knew every household and every person in the locality like the inside of his palm. Careful not to lose my head, I sipped the arrack and listened to him.

“My lot is pathetic, you know, if you think about it,” he said, referring to his occupation. “There’s nothing I haven’t seen from the top of a coconut tree. But can I talk about it? No! They’ll cut my head off! Some things I see, some things they show me…”

“Same with me,” I replied in a serious voice. “The things I see as I wander around … I forget them immediately. What else!”

Encouraged by my response, he began pouring out all the secrets he had witnessed. I have a lot of experience listening to such revelations and am quite capable of telling truths and lies apart, so I sat there with a smile on my face. Some people like revealing secrets. Others enjoy listening to them.

The next day was a Sunday. In the morning, the Paravan took me to Naduvathachan who was the pravruthyar, the village officer. He owned a three-acre coconut grove in Kalavoor. Agree on the price now and come back with a boat for the next harvest, said Naduvathachan who was a respectable man. I think he liked it when I said I would pay him on the same day I picked up the coconuts. At his command, the Paravan cut down a young coconut and gave it to me.

“Aren’t you having one?” I asked, sitting on a branch of a cashew tree that bent almost to the ground.

“Hm! His Lordship won’t even let the children have one!” said the Paravan reverentially.

“That’s true!” Naduvathachan said. “I don’t mind if they eat a coconut at the time of harvest. Wasting it when it is still young – that I don’t like.”

From our chit-chat, I soon deduced that the local leader of the State Congress, Narayanapillah, was the son of a sort-of sister of Naduvathachan. Nevertheless, as the pravruthyar of the land who looked after matters relating to its revenue, he tried to follow the instructions in the government circular. He had not succeeded in rounding up the required fifteen rowdies, but six or seven had been organised from the seaside villages around Arthunkal on the initiative of the parish priest there. A man named Bhaskaran had agreed to arrange the toddy and arrack for the rowdies. Still, Naduvathachan was hoping that the events tomorrow would end without creating too much havoc. If the police came, things would only get worse.

“Can’t they mind their own business?” he said, his voice only a whisper even though there was no one around to overhear. “What all they did last year … and did they achieve anything? Some people got killed, that’s all.”

“Really?” I said, acting surprised. “I don’t pay attention to such things. Work hard and have a bellyful of kanji. That’s all I care about.”

Naduvathachan’s face brightened. “And you’re absolutely right. Let them lose control of themselves and end up in jail. See what happened to that Akkamma and Kunju Pillah.”

I told him I had no idea who they were, and that put him in a better mood. I asked him why, when across the country the State Congress kept a low profile, they were getting ready for a public assembly. He had no real explanation.

“Making trouble, what else!” he said.

Excerpted with permission from August 17, S Hareesh, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil, HarperCollins India.