He wakes to blinding light and a shockingly verdant landscape: flooded paddy fields with narrow mud bunds snaking between them, barely containing the water whose still surface mirrors the sky; coconut palms that are as abundant as leaves of grass; tangled cucumber vines on the side of a canal; a lake crowded with canoes; and a stately barge parting the smaller vessels like a processional down a church aisle. His nostrils register jackfruit, dried fish, mango, and water.
Even before his brain digests these sights, his body—skin, nerve endings, lungs, heart—recognizes the geography of his birth. He never understood how much it mattered. Every bit of this lush landscape is his; its every atom contains him. On this blessed strip of coast where Malayalam is spoken, the flesh and bones of his ancestors have leached into the soil, made their way into the trees, into the iridescent plumage of the parrots on swaying branches, and dispersed themselves into the breeze. He knows the names of the forty-two rivers running down from the mountains, one thousand two hundred miles of waterways, feeding the rich soil in between, and he is one with every atom of it. I’m the seedling in your hand, he thinks, as he gazes on Muslim women in colorful long-sleeved blouses and mundus, with cloths loosely covering their hair, bent over at the waist like paper creased down the middle, moving as one line through the paddy fields, poking new life into the soil. Whatever is next for me, whatever the story of my life, the roots that must nourish it are here. He feels transformed as though by a religious experience, but it has nothing to do with religion.
Young Miss returns from the washroom and stops Philipose when he makes to move his trunk and carton from the bench; she squeezes in beside him and Arjun. She dons her sunglasses with their cat’s-eye corners and wraps her scarf round her neck, as though steeling herself for what’s ahead. Arjun, he sees, is freshly shaved and sports a crisp shirt and a Vishnu namam, its three-pronged pitchfork a contrast to the elderly Brahmin’s namam, which is a horizontal brushstroke, indicating his allegiance to Shiva. Lines are drawn—Shaivites versus Vaishnavites—but both men smile. Arjun confides to Philipose, “Half my life is spent on trains. Strangers of all religions, all castes getting on so well in a compartment. Why not same outside train? Why not simply all getting along?” Arjun looks out of the window and swallows hard.
Philipose hasn’t time to respond because they’re in Cochin. A porter grabs one of his trunks, while Meena’s porter threatens to take off with his radio. In the confusion, Young Miss taps his shoulder and hands him his folded sheet of foolscap paper. It must have slipped out of his notebook. She says farewell wordlessly with a brief tilt of her head and a smile. Good luck, her eyes say. Then she’s gone.
Once he’s on the bus to Changanacherry, with all his luggage accounted for, he can relax. But he’s furious with himself for not asking for Young Miss’s name. “Idiot! Idiot!” He smacks his forehead on the seat in front of him. Its occupant turns and glares at him. He digs out his foolscap, embarrassed at the thought of Young Miss reading his list of careers. But there’s an additional sheet folded in. It’s one of hers—a portrait. It shows him asleep, his head resting against the window of the train, his body bent sideways, the carton with the radio pushing at his ribs. His lips are set together, the philtrum a dugout in the flesh above the vermilion border of his upper lip.
We have no practice, he thinks, of seeing our real selves. Even before a mirror we compose our faces to meet our own expectations. But Young Miss has captured him completely: his thwarted ambition, his anxiety about what comes next. She has also caught his determination. He’s heartened by this, and even more thrilled to see the way she depicts his hands, one resting on the radio, the other on the trunk full of books. Their resting posture speaks to his old courage, his confidence, the hands of a determined man. My father cleared a jungle; he did what others thought impossible. I’ll do no less.
How is it that in just a few pencil strokes she captured all this, even the cool breeze that blew in during the early morning, numbing one side of his face? Thank goodness he didn’t invent some story for her and just told her the truth. Because she’d have seen through everything.
At the bottom of the paper, she’s written:
Bent and broken, but in better shape. Good luck.
Always,
E.
A lifetime ago, a schoolgirl named Elsie had sketched him as he took his first-ever ride in her father’s Chevrolet. He’d been so preoccupied then, so sick with worry, knowing that given the flash flooding, his mother would be fearing the worst. A much younger Young Miss had sat in the back seat with him and slid her fingers over to touch the hand that had somehow helped a baby live. He’d affixed that early portrait of him to the inside of his wardrobe: it was a more accurate reflection than the mirror image on the outside.
If Young Miss is none other than Chandy’s daughter, grown up and even more skilled with her pencils, then surely fate brought them together. He revisits their exchange on the train, and the way she looked . . . her wordless goodbye, her parting smile indelible in his memory.
The bus lurches to a stop and the driver streaks out behind some bushes. “Had to go, is it?” a woman grumbles. “If men only knew how women suffer! ‘Had to go’ means you wait!” The scent of his fellow passengers—coconut oil, wood smoke, sweat, betel leaf, and tobacco plugs—smothers him and brings him back to reality. Saint Thomas Christians are a relatively small community and rarely marry outside. Even so, Chandy, with his Chevrolet and his vast tea estate and his State Express 555 lifestyle, has many, many candidates to consider for his only daughter, all of whom will be boys who are extremely rich and incredibly accomplished, or at least extremely rich. At Parambil, they are very well off, but it doesn’t compare to the likes of the Thetanatts.
The bus starts again, and the motion jump-starts a change in his attitude, a new resolve taking hold. I won’t give her up. Elsie is beautiful, talented, willful. Surely she felt their connection, felt that they shared more than just snuff. She must have recognized him at once, though she only revealed herself to him at journey’s end. Elsie, I’ll make a name for myself. I’ll be worthy of you, he thinks. And then I’ll have Big Ammachi approach Broker Aniyan to propose an alliance. The worst that can happen is your side says no. But at least I’ll have tried, and you’ll know I did. “But, oh, Elsie, please wait. Give me at least a few years.” The couple in the seat in front turns to glare at him—he must have spoken aloud. The man says to his wife, “Avaneu vatta.”
Yes, I am mad. You can’t set out to achieve your goals without a little madness.
CHAPTER 43
To Thine Own House
1943, Parambil