Mar Gregorios looks directly at her, smiling. Really? You came all this way for me to put a spell on the boy?
She’s stunned. She heard his voice, but when she looks around, she sees that clearly no one else did.
Mar Gregorios has seen right through her. She cannot hold the saint’s gaze. “Yes,” she says. “It’s true. You heard what the boy said. He’s so determined. What am I to do? The boy has lost his father. I’m desperate!”
One of the legends about Mar Gregorios is that he had wanted to cross the river flowing past this very church to visit a parishioner on the other bank. But near the jetty, three high-spirited women were bathing in the shallows, their wet clothes clinging to them, their shrieks and laughter floating in the air like festive ribbons. Out of modesty he retreated to the church. Half an hour later, they were still there. He gave up, muttering to himself, “Stay in the water then. I’ll go tomorrow.” That night his deacon reported that three women seemed unable to get out of the river. Mar Gregorios felt remorse for his casual words. He fell to his knees and prayed, then said to the deacon, “Tell them they can come out now.” And they did.
Big Ammachi is there to shamelessly ask for the inverse: that Mar Gregorios prevent her only son from stepping into the river. “I’m a widow with two young ones to raise. On top of that I must worry about this boy, who, just like his father, is in danger around water. It’s a Condition they were born with. I already lost one son to water. But this one is determined to swim. Please, I beg you. What if five words from you, ‘Stay out of the water,’ mean he’ll live long and glorify God?”
She hears no answer.
Philipose is frightened to see his mother, her face ghost-lit by the rows of candles before the tomb, talking to the saint’s photograph.
On their way home she tells Philipose, “Mar Gregorios watches over you every day, monay. You heard me make a vow before his tomb, didn’t you? I vowed that I would never let you get into water without someone by your side. If you do then harm will come to your mother.” That part is true. She would die if something happened to him. “Will you help me keep my vow? Never go alone?”
“Even after I learn to swim?”
“Yes, even then. Forever. Never swim alone. A vow cannot be broken.”
He’s shaken by the thought of harm coming to his mother. “I promise, Ammachi,” he says earnestly. She will often remind him of their visit and of her vow and his.
When he turns five, her little boy goes to their new “school” for three hours a day; it’s just a shed with a thatched roof, open on three sides. On their first day, Philipose and the five other new students bring betel leaves, areca nut, and a coin for the kaniyan, who receives the gift and then takes each child’s right index finger and traces the first letter of the alphabet in a thali filled with rice grains. This school is her creation, a place to keep the children out of trouble for a few hours, teach them their letters. The pupils—the children and grandchildren of the Parambil families, as well as those of the ashari, the potter, the blacksmith, and the goldsmith—will learn their alphabet.
The kaniyan is a small, fussy, bald man with a shiny wen, or cyst, on top of his dome that Baby Mol labels a “Baby God.” The kaniyan scrapes by reading horoscopes for prospective brides and grooms. Teaching gives him some welcome additional income. Some Brahmins think of the kaniyan caste of astrologers and teachers as pretenders or pseudo-Brahmins, but this kaniyan doesn’t let such prejudice bother him.
As soon as Big Ammachi is out of sight, Joppan, the son of Shamuel pulayan, emerges from the plantain grove where he’s been hiding. He winks at Philipose and walks into the classroom. The two are playmates and best friends. Since Joppan is four years older, he’s also Philipose’s official minder. Whenever they march about with arms around each other’s shoulders they look like twins, especially from a distance, because Joppan is short for his age.
Joppan carries a leaf that isn’t really a betel leaf, a stone that’s meant to stand in for an areca nut, and a coin he carved out of wood. He steps inside the classroom, bare-chested, holding out his gifts, displaying his strong teeth, his hair slicked back with water but already springing up like trampled grass.
The kaniyan says, “Ah ha! So you want to study, is it?” The kaniyan’s smile is unnatural, the wen on his scalp getting turgid. “I’ll teach you. Stand there behind the threshold. Aah, good.” The kaniyan turns away then whirls back to crack his bamboo cane across Joppan’s thighs. Philipose’s cries of protest are drowned out by the kaniyan’s screams of “Upstart pulayan! Filth! Polluting dog! Don’t you know your place? What’s next? Would you like to bathe in the temple tank?” Joppan races out of reach, but turns around, disbelieving, his expression one of hurt, and shame. The others cringe to witness this. Joppan is their hero. No other boy has his self-confidence, or can swim across the river and back, or fearlessly kill a cobra. Some of the children (being little adults in the making) are secretly pleased by Joppan’s humiliation.
Joppan’s chest expands, and he bellows out in the loudspeaker voice of his for which he’s notorious: “TAKE THAT EGG ON YOUR HEAD AND EAT IT! WHO WANTS TO LEARN FROM AN IDIOT LIKE YOU?” This blasphemy carries to the paddy field and Shamuel raises his head. The kaniyan lunges, swinging his cane. Joppan feints one way and jumps in the other and the kaniyan stumbles. Joppan’s amplified guffaws as he struts off have the other children grinning. The teacher has a moment of doubt: Could Big Ammachi have sent the pulayan child? Parambil is known to give land to its pulayar, but does such eccentricity extend to educating them? She may pay my wages, but I’ll starve before I raise up children of the mud.
At home Philipose spills angry tears and tells his mother all. The world’s hypocrisy burns on his face. Big Ammachi holds her little boy and rocks him. She’s ashamed. The injustice he witnessed isn’t the kaniyan’s fault alone. Its roots are deep and so ancient that it feels like a law of nature, like rivers going to the sea. But the pain in those innocent eyes reminds her of what is so easy to forget: the caste system is an abomination. It is against everything in the Bible. Jesus chose poor fishermen and a tax collector as his disciples. And Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” They are far from being all one.