“Sundaram, our uncles have decided to sell their ancestral house, and request us to empty our household items stored there before it changes hands. Can you travel to Palghat and handle it, please?” asked my eldest brother. Those were the items with which we had migrated to our maternal grandfather's house when our father's flourishing business collapsed overnight, thanks to World War II.
Chudamani, my friend in the village, accompanied me to the decades-uninhabited house that awaited a full-blown sneeze to collapse. He checked the rooms on the ground floor. I went upstairs and tried to climb the attic with a jump-start. It was too high. I found the table and chair that stood by me in my school days still there. I placed the chair on top of the table and barely managed.
The attic was poorly lit, and the twilight added to the darkness. I felt the dust-ridden items one by one, braving bats, lizards, centipedes, and scorpions that mounted a joint assault at my invasion into their unhindered lives.
First I chanced upon the set of ten king-size Tanjore paintings (kept one on top of the other upside down so that the glasses stayed safe). I could recollect they were embossed with gold. ‘A solid few lakhs, to begin with,’ I said to myself.
Still groping, my hand reached for a large utensil with ‘ears’ to hold by. It was used in the bathroom, for the maidservant to fill water from the well for all of us to bathe. Suddenly, attired in pancha-gachham and uttareeyam, bright vibhooti on forehead, my paternal grandfather surfaced from out of the utensil, smiling at me. “So you are Sundaram, aren’t you, my child,” he asked. I was both struck with fear and drawn in by his affection. When he died my father was not even married; thus there was no way he could have placed me. Anyway this was no time for logic.
“Yes, I am. And from the photo I have seen at home, you are my Kunjanna Thatha, aren’t you?” “Yes I am, my child. I used regularly this and a host of other utensils that you see around here for feeding the poor until in your father’s time this particular one found its way to the bathroom. Promise me you will donate all these utensils to the Grama Samooham for mass feeding during religious festivities.” “I shall, Thatha,” I reassured him. He vanished into the thin air.
With pimple-like sweat from head to foot, I looked up through the solitary glass roof-tile for light and, if possible, fresh air as bonus. The branches of the mango tree above were dancing merrily to the late evening breeze. As I tried to enjoy more of it, I saw Krishnan Kutty, the handyman of the village balancing on a branch plucking mangoes. (Every season he plucked from all the five tress at our backyard. In return Patti gave him a basketful of assorted mangoes and a four-anna coin. He never grumbled, but he was hard-pressed for money.) His eyes fell on me casually. Instead of extending the customary smile at meeting someone ages after, he stared at me, followed by a volcanic eruption. “Did you know why I had to commit suicide, Sundaram?” I was ill at ease at his calling me by name. I wished he didn’t place me after such a long gap. But he did. “But you are alive, plucking mangoes,” I retorted. “No, I am his ghost. You villagers gave me such a raw deal for my work that I could hardly subsist, let alone get married. That is why I had to take that extreme step.”
“Sorry friend, I didn’t know it. You know I have been away for many years. Anyway, tell me what can I do for you,” I asked him off-guard not realizing that there was very little I could do to a dead. “I have borrowed several times from your grandmother vettu kathi, spade, axe, the entwined rope for climbing the coconut tree, the multi-hooked trap to dig out kodams from the well-bed. Look around the attic. You might stumble on them. Hand those over to the President of the Grama Samooham, and instruct him to… No, he might change his mind and keep them for the Samooham. Better still, give them to Chudamani and ask him to donate these to Velu who visits the village regularly looking for odd jobs. He can hardly afford to buy these.” “I shall, Sir,” I added the salutation unwittingly. But then they say the dead are to be treated with more respect.
Enough of it, I said, the sweat now turning into a stream. Let me get down; let the buyer of the house take it all, I murmured, and headed down. Now the chair was missing. “Oh my God, what elemental force is loitering around here? Is it the neglect of daily puja in the house for years that is causing this?
No sooner did I utter the word puja than I heard the drumbeat of Chendai from beyond our backyard. It was Friday, and the time 7. Ponnu Thai, the midget, maidservant for many houses in the morning, and an ardent Devi devotee otherwise, was still kicking and continuing with her Friday pujas, I guessed. Yes, as children, we dreaded most the Friday nights with the drumbeat, sound of the oracle wielding her sword, and screams and howling that let our imaginations run riot.
With a full-blown bright red sindhoor, Ponnu Thai confronted me, fully in trance and wielding the oracle-sword. She smeared vibhooti on me, and asked me how on earth could we think of selling the house. I clarified that it was not mine; it was our grandfather’s. “You... telling me?’ she asked, her sword getting a little closer to me. I pacified her saying that it would in all probability be sold to someone from within the village. “Well that is somewhat heartening,” she said a little pleased, and asked me to continue the good work I was doing. I reassured her. To this day I am figuring out what that is.
Hardly had I got over this bout when I saw a chair surfacing all by itself up the stairs in slow motion. This terrified me to the hilt till I saw Chudamani’s head underneath - struggling to balance the chair. “Where did you take the chair?” I asked him in desperation. “I wanted to check something in the small cellar in the kitchen store-room. The opening was at four feet high. Why? Anything happened?” he asked. “No nothing, just like that,” I said regaining my composure. With utmost care we brought down the ten Tanjore paintings and took them to his house. Under bright light we found all the gold pieces having disappeared, and the hapless paintings staring at us stripped.
I shared with Chudamani disposal instructions exactly the way I received them, but as though they were my brainchild.
“Should we just have one final check to be sure nothing is left out,” Chudamani asked. “No, not necessary,” I replied, substituting in time my real answer, “Never again.”
19 May 2015
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