Her pride in getting into the rhythm of the household, of making a few dishes under Thankamma’s watchful eye, is undercut by the knowledge that Thankamma must soon leave. When Thankamma lavishly praises her chicken curry, she glows with pride, but in the next moment she finds herself clinging to Thankamma, burying her face on that well-padded shoulder to hide her tears. Please stay! Never leave! But already she loves Thankamma too much to say it. Thankamma has her own house to run, a husband who awaits her. She mumbles, “I will never forget your kindness. How can I ever thank you?” “Aah, when you have a daughter-in-law, treat her like a jewel. That’s how you can thank me.”
The day before she is to leave, Thankamma steps out of the kitchen and peers up at the sun, finding it directly overhead. “Molay, cut a banana leaf and pack a lunch for your husband. Let him taste your bean thoren and also the mathi we fried. Put plenty of rice. He’s out there somewhere with Shamuel no doubt, always surveying his land. See that tall coconut palm? He’ll be somewhere there.” The bride obediently ladles the food onto a banana leaf, folds it, and secures it with string; she picks up a small brass vessel with jeera water—water boiled with cumin seeds—and heads out. She’s anxious about Thankamma’s imminent departure. That morning she discovered that no paper or pen existed at Parambil. Her hopes of writing down some of Thankamma’s recipes are dashed. What if she forgets them?
The footpath is lined by tall grass that reaches her shoulder; Thankamma had said it was once so overgrown that neither God nor light could penetrate, and the undergrowth was alive with scorpions, cobras, giant rats, and biting centipedes. “What Hindu or Christian would be mad enough to try to settle here?” Thankamma had said. “Your husband came here after our oldest brother tricked him out of the family home by getting him to make a mark on a piece of paper.” Shamuel’s father, Yohannan pulayan, came along, seeing it as his duty to serve the rightful heir; later Yohannan brought his wife and son. The two men built a rough shelter. “Can you imagine my brother sleeping under the same roof as his pulayar? Eating with them? All barriers of caste vanish when you enter hell, is it not? Only the saints kept them alive. The first week a tiger carried off their only goat. They had more days with fever than without. But they dug, drained the marsh, never stopped clearing. Molay, I tell you this not just because I’m proud of my little brother, but so that you know his ways are not the ways of everyone. Yohannan was like a father to him. And like that only, his son Shamuel will be there for you and your family for a lifetime.” Thankamma said her husband enticed a skilled Hindu thachan and a blacksmith to move to the area by offering them cleared plots by the stream, and ensuring that the pulayar huts would be downstream, so these craftsmen couldn’t complain of ritual pollution. The potter, goldsmith, and stone mason came later. After his house was built, her husband gave one-to two-acre plots to a number of his relatives. Once they cultivated their land and sold their harvest, these relatives could buy more land from him if they wanted. “You understand what I’m telling you, molay? He gave the land outright! They can pass it to their children. He wanted this area to prosper. He’s not done. Who knows, next time I come to visit there might be a proper road, provision stores, a school . . .”
“A church?” she’d suggested, but to that Thankamma made no answer.
She finds her husband gazing up at a tree, his bare chest flecked with bark, a fierce vettukathi hanging from his waist, the billhook pointing back. He’s surprised to see her. He takes the food. “That Thankamma!” The smile is in his voice, not his face. He sits, resting against the tree, but not before spreading his thorthu for her to sit on. He wolfs down the food. She doesn’t say a word. She’s astonished to realize that her shyness is matched by his.
When he’s finished, he rises and says, “I’ll walk back with you.”
She hears shouts and laughter. On their left in the distance a log straddles a rivulet she hasn’t seen before. On the other bank in a clearing sits a large burden stone. These crude structures stand like primitive monuments along well-traveled footpaths, allowing a traveler to ease their heavy headload onto the horizontal slab and rest for a while. She sees a young man push and rock the horizontal beam of the burden stone, while two friends egg him on. All three have streaks of sandalwood paste on their foreheads. The one doing the pushing is powerfully built, his head shaved except for a knotted tuft in the front. The horizontal slab comes off its supports and hits the ground, raising a cloud of red dust. The miscreant’s face is flushed with pride and excitement.
She pictures Shamuel returning from the mill, balancing a heavy sack of ground rice flour on his head, anticipating the burden stone where he can bend his knees just enough to slide the sack onto the horizontal slab. He would be forced to go on, or else to drop the sack and wait until someone came by to help lift it back onto his head. In a land where most everything is transported in this manner, where roads are regularly washed away or too rutted for bullock carts, and where only the footpaths are reliable, a rest station like this is a blessing.
The young men spot the couple and turn silent. They look well-fed, the sort who never have to carry a load or require a burden stone. By their dress and appearance she thinks they are Nairs. A large Nair family lives along the western edge of Parambil. The Nairs are a warrior caste, employed by generations of Travancore maharajahs to defend against invaders. Her father’s Nair friend had looked the part, sporting a fierce mustache to go with his strong physique. Under British rule, the maharajah had their protection and no longer needed his Nair army. Govind Nair had been bitter. “How can he call himself ruler of Travancore? He’s a puppet who hands over our taxes to the British. The British ‘protect’ him from what? Isn’t the enemy already inside the walls?”
Her husband half-hitches his mundu, exposing his knees as he marches to the log bridge, but reaching it, he crosses very gingerly. The youths snigger at this, but still, they brace themselves as this older bull elephant approaches. Her stomach churns. To her astonishment, her husband ignores them and squats down to the stone instead. “So, you’re strong enough to push it over. Are you strong enough to put it back?”
“Why don’t you?” the boy says cheekily, but with a quaver in his voice.
Her husband gets his fingers under one pole of the fallen beam, heaves it to waist height, and walks it upright. Then he lets the stone beam tip back on the fulcrum of his shoulder, where it seesaws. His quivering thighs are like tree trunks and his neck muscles are thick ropes as he maneuvers one end and then the other back atop the vertical pillars. He leans on the restored slab to catch his breath. With a sudden thrust he pushes it off its support again. It thuds to the ground and rolls to the youths, who must leap back. Flicking his eyebrows up, he challenges the tall youth. Your turn.
An unnatural quiet hangs over the clearing, like water suspended in the air. At last her husband calls out to her, “They’re just dressed like men. This boy’s father and I put up this stone before this one was born. Now in his old age, Kuttappan Nair must clean up behind his calf, but he’ll lift this stone as if it is a toothpick.” He turns his back to them and returns.