After his first squawking breath, her baby boy looks around at the world of Parambil with an alert, serious expression, frowning in concentration. She’d already decided (with her husband’s blessing) that she’d name him after her father, Philip. But her newborn’s scholarly expression makes her record his baptismal name as Philipose. She could have chosen “Peelipose,” “Pothen,” “Poonan”—all local variants of “Philip.” But she likes “Philipose” for its echo of ancient Galilee, its soothing last syllable that sounds like flowing water. She prays he will know the pleasure of being carried by a current, then striking back to shore.
His baptismal name will be used in school and in anything official. She prays it won’t be altered into some diminutive before then. Too many children get a pet name early that they can never shake: “Reji,” “Biju,” “Sajan,” “Renju,” “Tara,” or “Libni,” to which a tail might be affixed: “mon” (little boy) or “mol” (little girl) or the genderless “baby” or “kutty” (child). Baby Mol has two tails in lieu of her Christian name, which sits abandoned in the birth register. When Philipose is middle-aged, younger people will address him with a respectful suffix: Philipose Achayen or Philipochayen (and for a woman it might be Kochamma or Chechi or Chedethi). When he’s a father, he’ll be Appachen, or Appa to his children, just as he’ll soon call his mother Ammachi or Amma. Confusion is inevitable. She heard of a man known to his family as Baby Kutty and to his adult friends as Goodyear Baby, though he’d left that company after his marriage and now worked for the tax office in Jaipur. His wife’s relatives knew him as Jaipur Baby. His wife’s portly uncle arrived in Jaipur after a long journey and went seeking him in the tax office and became enraged when the staff said no Jaipur Baby worked there; the police were called. When George Cherian Kurian (aka Jaipur Baby) heard of this and went to post bond, he couldn’t find the uncle because he only knew him as Thadiyan Baby (fat baby) and not by the name he was booked under, Joseph Chirayaparamb George.
A few weeks after she gives birth to Philipose, her husband takes to bed for five days with a crippling headache, along with alarming projectile vomiting. She’s beside herself with worry, trying to nurse the child while rubbing oil on her husband’s brow, and reassuring Baby Mol, who is upset by her father’s state. Shamuel camps outside the thamb’ran’s room, refusing to go home. The vaidyan’s pills and poultices make no difference. She wants to take her husband to Cochin, to the sa’ippu doctor Rune, but he refuses to travel by boat. Then, as mysteriously as it began, the headache eases, but in its wake he has a droop on the left side of his face; he cannot quite close the left eye, and water dribbles out of that corner of his mouth. It bothers her more than it bothers him. He takes off to the fields. Shamuel reports the thamb’ran is working as hard as ever, though he’s now stone deaf in his left ear.
Her husband’s face lights up every time he sees his newborn son, but his smile is lopsided; she learns to look at the right side for his true expression. There’s something new in his eyes; at first, she thinks it’s sadness. Is he recalling the fate of his first son? No, it’s anxiety, not sadness; anxiety untethered to anything she can put her finger on, and it troubles her. Baby Mol too is worried, abandoning her bench to trail after her father when he’s in the house, or to perch on his bed, silent, staying there until her mother takes her to bed.
When Philipose is a year old, Big Ammachi cannot deny the truth about her little boy: he bathes willingly, but alarms her whenever she empties the pail over his head: his eyes close but then open to reveal his rolling eyeballs, and often his limbs turn floppy. Despite this, and unlike JoJo, he laughs, as though he welcomes the disorientation. He thinks it’s a game. His swimmy eyes urge her to do it again. When he’s big enough for her to put him in the shallow uruli, the giant unused vessel meant for cooking payasam on festive occasions, he splashes with pleasure, laughing as the vertigo tumbles him out of the uruli onto the muttam. Like a drunken sailor, he gathers himself and crawls back in. His shocked parents watch in disbelief.
Big Ammachi says to her husband, “I cannot lose this beautiful child.”
“Then let him live. Don’t imprison him,” he says vehemently. “That’s how my older brother could take advantage of me. Because my mother never let me go anywhere. Did I tell you that story?” Has he truly forgotten? “What I don’t understand is why my son seeks out water when it is no friend of his,” he concludes.
A few months later, in the evening, while Odat Kochamma looks after Philipose, Big Ammachi escapes to plunge into the river. Unlike her husband and son, nothing restores or renews her more than this. Nearing the house on her way back, she hears a repetitive scraping sound. She finds her husband squatting and digging half-heartedly with a stick at the edge of the muttam. For a moment, she feels she’s watching a child at play, but his face is serious.
“Why are you digging? That too after your bath!” He looks up. For the briefest moment it’s as though he has no idea who she is. He rises and staggers. But for a few stuttering steps he’d fall to the ground. Her heart rises to her mouth. She’s peering into the future.
In the ensuing weeks, it happens again: she finds him scraping at the soil, but he doesn’t say why. It prompts her to say to Shamuel, “Keep a close eye on your thamb’ran.”
He’s startled. “What’s happened? Why do you say that?” She doesn’t answer, just looks at him. “There’s nothing wrong with him,” Shamuel says vehemently. “His face is tired on one side, but who needs two sides? That’s what I tell him. One is enough.”
“Well, he’s not a young man. How old are you, Shamuel?” Shamuel’s hair is gray, and his mustache, where it’s not yellow from the beedi, is white. The wrinkles around his eyes are as plentiful as Damodaran’s.
Shamuel makes a twisting motion with his wrist. “At least thirty years, maybe more,” he says. She bursts out laughing, and then he does too—a rare sound for both of them these days.
She decides to tell Shamuel about the digging. It’s as though she struck him.
When he finds his tongue he says, “Maybe thamb’ran is looking for coins that he buried. Before we built the ara we did that. There may be one, or one hundred coins. Gold, silver, brass,” he says, taking refuge in nouns, which he prefers to numbers.
“You really think there’s buried treasure?” she asks.
He avoids her gaze and his voice trembles. “Why ask what I think? I think only whatever the thamb’ran thinks.”
His fear is palpable. For his forefathers there was never certainty of shelter or of food. They were indentured laborers to a household, forever paying off ancestral debts, but that practice is now illegal. Shamuel gets paid for his labor and he owns the plot his house sits on. He could work anywhere. But he can’t imagine working for anyone else. Her heart breaks for this man who for all his years has been at her husband’s side, his shadow. She senses Shamuel’s enormous love for her husband. Without the thamb’ran, what happens to the shadow? If he can’t depend on the thamb’ran, he must depend on her.
A few days later, she stands holding Philipose on the verandah in the late afternoon while they watch Damo. Suddenly the hairs on the nape of her neck rise and she senses a hulking presence behind her. It can’t be Damo and yet it is the same sensation of an immense form throwing a shadow over her. She turns to see her husband. He looks over her shoulder to where Damodaran feeds noisily, kicking his leaf pile around. Standing beside her father is Baby Mol, dabbing at her face with both hands. Baby Mol, who never cries, doesn’t understand the nature of tears, or why they are salty, and why they won’t cease.
Damo becomes very still, eyeing the thamb’ran. The two old giants face off, expressionless, and for a moment Big Ammachi imagines they’ll charge and lock tusks. Her husband puts a hand on her—not for support, but to indicate possession.
“What’s he want?” he says in a low voice, saliva glinting at one corner of his mouth.
“What do you mean ‘want’? It’s our Damodaran!”