Fiction: Rajesh flounders when ‘socially inferior’ Veeramani performs better than him at school

In the 1970s, Malawa Loka was big; it included the present-day state of Chhattisgarh. News of the Vibhasi rule there was quick to reach us. Even we kids knew about it. Elders at home, teachers – everyone spoke with great approval about the reforms being undertaken there. The Vibhasis were making rice available to the poor for a mere fifty paise, and a sari for just fifty rupees. Smugglers, profiteers, hoarders and corrupt government officials were being caught and punished promptly and harshly. Whole droves of foreign spies were being smoked out of their lairs and arrested. Slum removal and other development projects had gained a lively pace.

Not long after their victory in Malawa Loka, the Vibhasi party also triumphed in Maharashtra. It started at Raigad, but soon the string of victories included Kolhapur, Nashik and Pune. In the end, they won in Bombay too. The headlines “VIBHASI WAVE” appeared in pumpkin-sized letters on the front pages of newspapers, and they also carried the photo of a veritable ocean of Vibhasi-party workers surrounding the Gateway of India. Bombay will henceforth be known as “Mumbai”, they announced.

On the boundary wall of the Big Temple, someone painted the opening words of a Vibhasi patriotic song in huge lettering. They had also drawn two anaadichakras on either side of the khaki-coloured letters. The Kerala chapter of the Vibhasi party has been formed, Veeramani told us. Besides some retired professors and doctors, its leadership consisted of mostly politicians who had either left their parties or been thrown out of them. But right from the beginning, the Vibhasi party gave the impression that it was above the moral degradation of politics.

“Such a social and political change has never happened since the Indian freedom struggle, one could say,” Nambutiri sir (nickname: Egret) argued fervently in class. “A time is coming, when you’ll say ‘India’, ‘Bharata’, and the whole world will sit up and pay attention! Like the times of emperors Shibi and Bharata, and indeed, the times of none other than Lord Sri Ramachandra! Fifty years later, all of you will be able to proudly claim that you were witness to such a historic moment!”

It is more than 40 years now since he said this. It will be 50 soon. Nambutiri sir is no longer around to see that his prophecy came true. Not even half an hour of my life now passes without remembering that moment of History that I did indeed witness.

Nambutiri sir, who was also the assistant headmaster, taught Social Studies and English only in the English-medium divisions. Even the sleepy-eyed laggards who dozed through most other classes waited eagerly for his truly engaging classes. We broke into goosebumps of pride listening to his stories of Chhatrapati Shivaji, Veer Savarkar, Ram Prasad Bismil, or Chennamma, Rani of Kittur. His retelling of the story of valorous Velu Thampi Dalawa left the whole class – and him – in tears. He always referred to the British period as the “wasted centuries”. Holding up the Social Studies textbook in class, he would declare: “Half of what you study as ‘History’ is false! … They are all made up by the white sahibs and Indians who try to imitate them! This is full of the half-truths that they have deliberately manufactured, so that we remain slavish in our minds! This is the deceitful ‘history’ that they have put together by denigrating our culture and faith, and misinterpreting them!”

Around this time, some minor misunderstandings and bad feelings cropped up between Veeramani’s family and me. One day, when I was doing my sums, I noticed Veeramani’s mother’s wedding locket, her thaali, which hung from her neck. It was new to me – the “M”-shaped, rather big locket. And so I asked her about it. But her face reddened. ‘Why are your eyes wandering when you are expected to focus on your calculations?’ she spat out, pushing the thaali inside her blouse again. I looked away. But she was still irritated and scolded me for no reason. I was getting too easy with studies because my test-paper marks were improving, she claimed, adding that I was getting too many questions wrong because of carelessness! Veeramani and Vidya hid their smiles. I was utterly dejected. Dilip looked startled, too, I noticed. I felt that her ire towards her son’s rival had just peeped out, really.

When I shared my discomfort at home, my mother and Ammumma laughed. ‘Eda,’ they said, ‘didn’t you know? A kuseedyar’s thaali can be seen by no one but her husband!’

How was I to know? Was it fair to punish someone for something that they didn’t even know to be wrong? My annoyance over this lasted for quite some time.

One day, when the class was just about to get over, Veeramani and I were discussing Nambutiri sir. Whoever nicknamed him Egret is a genius, I remarked, thinking of his birdlike, skinny frame, pale complexion, long neck, and him walking while lifting his legs crane-like. When I referred to him as a “Brahmin”, Veeramani interrupted me.

“Not Brahmin,” he said, “Namboori.” That is the colloquial way of referring to a Kerala Brahmin, or Nambutiri.

“But a Namboori is surely a Brahmin?” I was surprised.

“No.”

‘Yes, they are Brahmin!’ I contested. ‘Amma, aren’t we the real Brahmins?’ Veeramani referred the matter to his mother’s court of appeal – in Kauseeda.

“Yes, my dear…” she replied in Kauseeda.

Until two generations back, Veeramani’s ancestors were priests. “They were called kusvahiyar,” she said.

I said nothing.

When I raised the matter that very evening during supper, Appooppan began to laugh with the rice gruel still in his mouth.

“Eda,” Ammumma said, “the Nambooris are the real Brahmins. Your Appooppan is one. These foreign Brahmins are second-rate!”

“In the olden days, they were cooks in the royal kottaram, these kusdars,” Appooppan said. “Pushing the firewood into the hearth, that’s what they used to do!”

“Have you heard of the thaal leaf?”

“Of the taro?”

“Yes. There used to be a saying: ‘No-thing? Then thaal! No-body? Then kusdar!’ You eat the thaal only if you can’t find anything else to eat and you marry the kusdar only when you can’t get anybody to marry you!” Ammumma explained.

“But what about Jaya chechi?” I asked her about a relative of ours. She had married a Kauseeda Brahmin and was settled in Sradamachala.

“But that happened recently, didn’t it?” Ammumma clarified. “What can’t happen these days?”

“I don’t know a single Kauseeda Brahmin who can recite the mantras without going wrong,” Appooppan added.

“Ah, Pouchy Creature’s kuseedyar isn’t bad at all!” Acchan, who had been silent until then, quipped all of a sudden.

“Pouchy…?”

Acchan told us about that nickname only then. Apparently, Veeramani’s father, Harihara Kuseedar, came to the bank looking rather lowly, carrying a grimy cloth bag, like the ones you’d take to the vegetable shop. He simply didn’t look dignified enough to be the manager. That was what had led to the nickname. I made a mental note to share this with Dilip the first thing the next day.

“Even the peon Ramachandran comes better dressed!” Acchan observed.

Kochumon had been quietly observing all this.

“I will become a Brahmin when I grow up,” he declared. We couldn’t help laughing at that.

Within a month of starting the private tuitions with Veeramani’s mother, my performance in class began to show remarkable improvement. I followed the kuseedyar’s suggestion about learning by heart the answers to questions. My confidence rose. When teachers asked questions in class, I stood up straight and the answers just shot out of my mouth. Once the answers were stamped clearly in my memory, it became easier to seek out the meaning of each word and phrase. I would keep reciting to myself the answers whenever I was by myself. That made me notice that some long sentences could be divided into two for better clarity, and some words could be replaced by others. I began to experiment with framing sentences to express ideas outside the textbooks and class notes. When my marks began to look up in the first test papers in the sixth standard, I paid special thanks to Mahakaleshwara Swami and Sri Krishna Swami.

When I became a regular reader of the English comics from the goldcapped-tooth kusdar’s house, the English words in our textbooks began to give in too. Veeramani’s mother had asked me to simply memorise everything, without working to find out the meanings. I secretly altered this to memorise everything after grasping the meanings. My hope was that this would help me compete with Veeramani and Nirmal. I had taken a look at Nirmal’s answer sheets (Nirmal always came second in class) and realised that this was his method. His answers were quite different from those in the textbooks and the guidebooks.

Once going to Parameswara Kuseedar’s house became a routine thing, we, too, began to call him “Maama”, or Uncle, like Veeramani did. We did this reluctantly. It was hard for me, really, because I wasn’t used to calling other-caste people maama or appooppan.

The kusdar would always engage us in some chitchat before he let us go in. He would talk to us about the English and Malayalam lessons we had learnt that day, and ask us some really fun, interesting questions. He’d share tricks to master grammar too. One day, he asked: “What’s in ‘appam’, but not in ‘ada’?” Both have rice, jaggery and coconut in them … none of us could think up the right answer, though all three thought hard. In the end, the kusdar himself told us the answer with a hearty laugh. It had been a trick question. The answer was “lips”. Because to pronounce the word “appam”, you need to bring your lips together, but you don’t need to do that to say “ada”! The riddle was meant to make us comprehend the logic behind the classification of Malayalam consonants into danthyam, oshtyam and thalavyam, based on their place of articulation. And sometimes he would speak about the book I was reading, or important things going on in the world. His talk was as sweet and enjoyable as the contents of picture books.

Excerpted with permission from The Red Badge, Rajesh R Varma, translated from the Malayalam by J Devika, HarperCollins India.