The Saga of Muziris

By A. Sethumadhavan (Sethu)

The Saga of Muziris is a fascinating tale of the glory and decline of a major port, a hub of maritime trade in Kerala, in South India, which had mysteriously disappeared from the face of earth during the fourteenth century. Historians, archaeologists and academics, from the world over, had been looking for the lost Muziris, ever since. Some interesting leads, at the excavations at Pattanam, prompts Aravindan, the narrator, to pay a visit to his homeland. What follows is a magical journey, enticing Aravindan to sail into the dark annals of history.

In an effort to document his findings, Aravindan unravels the evolution of the area over several thousands of years—through political turmoils, social struggles, emigrations and more—unfolding an alluring history through powerfully and indelibly etched characters. The result is a gripping mix of history, myth, legend, fiction and magic reality. It takes the reader on a journey through antiquity, moving back and forth to reflect on the socio-economic ferment of varying periods, also, interestingly, establishing an organic link to the most recent times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Niyogi
• Release date: Dec 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9789385285578

Book preview

JAYAKUMAR

Prologue

Flowing waters have their own truths and untruths. Rivers are destined to change their flow during the floods of time. In the great flow of waters, new shores are formed. Old ones vanish. Old river mouths close. New ones open. That is the rhythm of nature. The tribute that man has to pay. The equations created by time.

When maps are dampened by water, new shores break out of the ties of latitudes and longitudes. New pieces of land, new contours and new settlements are born.

That was what happened in the great flood of 1341. River Choorni, otherwise known as Periyar, flowed unchecked during the endless monsoon rains and split into tributaries. She changed her course. She must have roared with laughter when she broke out of the grip of the sandy shores that had held her for eons and found new paths.

This is how I settle my scores. This is how you pay for your sins.

Water should not be held by commands, guidelines and shores. Sandy shores are meant to melt…

Huge trees were uprooted in the laughter that frothed her. Bushes and grasslands moved away. Water that flowed down, covering everything, spread everywhere. There was only water to be seen, just water. A great flood that covered generations. And the water stayed on for many days. Finally, when the water left the shores, which had accepted defeat in the battle, the profligate Choorni, displayed her new shores. And her new tributaries.

When the old sandbars gave away, new ones came up. They became isthmuses, endless expanses of sand. A whole settlement was crushed beneath the new layer of sand. A city that had lived extravagantly, forgetful of time’s speed, vanished. When the wealth brought by the sea was taken away by the river, there was no one left to mourn. The grains of sand did not give anyone time to even groan as they covered everything.

A whole landscape had vanished.

Muziris, which had been the largest port in the western shore of India, found its river-mouth blocked by sand, its face covered. The inlet was completely covered by mud. Cranganore, otherwise known as Mahodayapuram, froze in time. A little further to the west, a new port opened up. That small port of Kochazhi later became Kochi, the port of Kochi.

When the wind blew towards Kochi, the sailing boats turned there. New waterways opened. As the warehouses of Mahodayapuram became quiet, the merchants of Muziris moved towards Kochi. Soon, new warehouses opened in Mattancherry. The ruling elite, the descendants of the Perumals, also shifted to Kochi. The fall of Muziris was complete.

And then one day the land that had been buried under the sand woke from its slumber and tried to count the breaths of rebirth. Folded fingers counted in some language, but without losing track of the count—One, two, three…

She would not have known that centuries had passed on the surface and that new settlements had formed. She had been lying quietly, waiting for the fresh green sprouts, for the tangled veins of life, for the blood that flowed through them, carrying the warmth and smell of the new times.

Muchiri, otherwise known as Muziris was taking birth again. Two or three centuries must have passed. The man with the grey beard, who alighted from a ship at noon one day at Kochazhi, must have been the descendant of some Greek sailor of old. The streets of Kochi did not recognise the lonely historian, who had perhaps crossed the seas in search of the dulled memories of his ancestors. The locals and the Portuguese soldiers crowded around him, unable to recognise his complexion or the language he spoke.

The people who crowded round him did not understand that he had come in search of the land called Muziris. When his gestures shaped ships in the air, seeking the place called Muziris, where ships used to land, the Portuguese became suspicious. Could he have been sent by the Dutch? Was he trying to signal that Dutch ships were following him? The Portuguese did not have the capacity to face the Dutch, who were good at sea-battles. Even as they supported the ruler of Kochi and the Zamorin in turn, they had to take care of their own land.

The historian, who wandered one whole day and one whole night through the streets of Kochi, was not able to find out where Muziris was. Muziris could not find him either. As time passed, generations had forgotten Muziris. As he lay on the cold sand of the winter month, gazing at the night sky, he was unable to read the message conveyed by the eyes of the Orion. The stars who had guided generations of sailors were trying very hard to tell him something too.

Finally, when the rheumy eyes of an old man, who lay taking in the sun on the veranda of the synagogue, glinted—a man whose mind retained the remnants of the Greek tongue—that became a signal to him. The old man’s dry stick of an index finger became a pointer.

And so the traveller crossed the backwaters and the river and the streams, measured the land in seven strides and reached Muchiri one dawn when the mist had come down over the expanse of sand. It was a desert of sand with a few sparse shrubs and no sign of any man. He could not accept it. The Muziris that he had heard of, the stories that had floated around in the breeze of Greece, were so full of colour and life. He did not know that rivers had the capacity to redraw contours and the flow of sand, which crushed settlements under it.

The traveller, who had lost even his sense of direction, wandered through the winter mist that had refused to depart even after the sun came up. After a while, when the day brightened and started getting warmer, the open spaces beyond the thickets started coming alive. The heads that rose above the leaves of the thickets became dark forms as they came out. People surrounded him. They did not know who he was. He too did not know who they were.

Was this the Muziris that had been buried in the stories? The traveller felt as though he had wandered into a small port in a dark continent. This was definitely not the land he had come in search of. Though he had heard some of the stories, scratched out by the voyages of the sturdy Greek sailors, the historian could not accept a change like this to the world of colours and sounds that had so tempted the West.

He was very tired and thirsty. It was day now. When the sun became stronger, oases appeared from nowhere, making the traveller thirstier. When the descendant of the ones who had scattered gold and pearls in this land wandered in search of water, the forms that followed him, held him with suspicion in their eyes.

His gaze was slowly losing its focus in the visions of the oases. When his legs started growing numb, he saw a small pool of water between two mounds of sand. Clear water that reflected the sky. As he bent down greedily and poured a handful of water into his parched throat, he shivered, shuddered.

The familiarity of those drops of water shocked him. Memories of generations seemed to have merged into it, making it sweet. Clear water that had cooled the throats of a number of Greeks.

He felt slightly better when his insides cooled down. The good deeds of the previous generations had perhaps poured this water into the sand dunes for the sake of the traveller who came across the seas. Or was it the mercy of the Goddess Anankh, the one who ruled from the hill top?

He pressed his ear gently to the sand that was still moist. He felt as though familiar sounds came from the layers of sand into his moist ear—a continuation of the conversation he had left behind in the Greek land. People were trying to speak to him in an old language, in the old manner.

He pressed each ear in turn and lay there for a while. A peculiar coolness was entering his being through his ears. Muziris was telling her story in the language of the Greeks—the stories narrated by the elders of Muziris; the stories of generations.

As he lay there, forgetful of everything, his head burrowing to catch the layers of the past, something fell on his back. A fruit that looked like a green stone. As he tried to turn, another fell on his neck.

As wild fruits and nuts fell on him, one by one, the bushes moved again. New forms came out from the hidden depths. People came rushing up, shouting loudly. By the time he struggled up on his knees, he was surrounded by a fairly large crowd.

As he looked round, bewildered, the blows fell. The first one was on his neck, the next on the back of his head. As his eyes saw shooting stars, as his ears felt the wind blowing, as he shook his head to haul back the gaze that had slipped somewhere, he saw sticks rising all around him. Thick stems of cactus, coconut fronds, fronds from the palm, thorny sticks…

Memories were seeping into him as deathless germs in the scabs that would never dry up.

There was no one to listen, as he cried out aloud. They were all searching for thorny sticks. As his voice dried up in the parched throat, he tried once more to struggle up.

Finally, as he fell bleeding, swollen from the beating, the last blow of ingratitude fell right on his head. None of those who had gathered round could understand the meaning of the sounds that came out of the skull that was reluctant to split apart.

May the shore that will not remain the shore, fill with pearls and herbs.

Fill with pearls and herbs.

Fill with pearls and herbs.

This was not the curse of the traveller who had followed the memories that had been preserved by time. Nor was it a blessing. But from the earth, on which his blood and sweat and dreams had fallen, medicinal plants with small white flowers grew first. Then, other plants, bushes, trees grew. As the sandy grounds flowered in the abundance of medicinal plants, the rare herbs spread the smell of healing. It was the birth of a new settlement.

Ten-year-old Athira knew that when it rained after a break of some days, pearls would come up like moths from the soil. Soon, she found that there were other compounds near her house where pearls grew when it rained. When the sky cleared suddenly at dusk on a wet, rainy day, Athira and her friends ran to the compound next door. She had been collecting such pearls and stones for a while now from these places. Places that would later become the excavation site.

When she separated the different pearls—into those that came from tears, from sweat and from blood—she did not know that the mildew that covered them was the history of a place. The history, which historians all over the world had been following for centuries, slept in the small metal box with its broken edges, in the house with its bare stone walls.

The place had buried itself in the mud to evade all searches. The land spoke of relationships that had developed across the seas. The story of Muziris was opening up through the pearls in Athira’s metal box. Muchiripatinam was the city of Muziris to which Romans and Greeks and West Asians had come centuries back.

When the land where pears and corals grew woke from a deep sleep, it gave these new pearls to history. The shore that remained not a shore, filled again with pearls and herbs. And stones of memories, spilled from time past into time future.

PART ONE

‘I’m going to your home town…Coming?’ Perumal rang up from Madurai.

Home! Aravindan hesitated. It was years since Perumal had rung up. It was years since he thought of his home.

‘Why are you going?’ That was what he asked.

‘To recall a place, a time, to regain it, to awaken history again,’ Perumal said.

Aravindan felt like laughing. Perumal, who taught history, was saying this?

‘Can history ever sleep, Perumal?’ Aravindan asked.

‘Not exactly sleep, but doze off and open her eyes every now and then. And trouble us by pretending to sleep,’ Perumal laughed.

‘Can history awaken me?’ Aravindan’s thoughts wandered. History had departed long since from the life of someone who spent all his time in Mumbai working at logistics, tracking the movement of cargoes and containers in the high seas. History had been reduced to columns of figures by the channels of the sea.

‘The city of Muziris,’ Perumal was speaking again. ‘When I realised that it was very near your place, I found it interesting. You have walked with history under your feet all these years and never told me about it. When I went that way some time back, I tried to call you. But your number had changed. I finally got your new number today.’

‘Oh yes!’ Aravindan remembered. ‘I read about the excavations at Pattanam in the papers. I heard that they found some things there. My father’s place is near that. My mother’s place is on the other side, at Chendamangalam.

‘I know,’ Perumal said. ‘I’ve come there once to your tharavad, the family home at Chendamangalam. I stayed there one night.’

‘Those old Maharaja’s days.’

‘Yes, the Maharaja’s College days. I’ll never forget that night at your place. It was the first time in my life I saw so much darkness in one place.’

‘Those of us who had grown up seeing the darkness were afraid of the light at one time,’ Aravindan said. ‘Later, one grew used to separating darkness from light and light from darkness. For a long time that old chimney lamp continued to burn inside, even in the hostel room at Maharaja’s.’

Perumal was silent. Perhaps, he was thinking of those times, of that age.

After a while Perumal said, ‘It was you who got me to drink toddy for the first time. I’ve never had another drink that tasted like that before.’

It was fresh toddy, brought down from the palm. Toddy-tapper Kumaran’s offering to the guest who had come from outside. The place had been famous not just for handlooms but for country toddy, those days.

Perumal said that he wanted to stay for a few days in the neighbourhood. It was very hot in his place that year. And he was fed up of seeing the dried-up red mud of Tamil Nadu. He badly wanted to see some green. He had some books he wanted to read too. Perhaps, he could read them in peace and quiet.

‘I’ll try,’ Aravindan said. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

As he took down the number and put down the telephone, he heard Vasanthi’s voice from behind, ‘Who was it?’

‘Perumal from Madurai. He was my senior in Maharaja’s College. And room-mate for quite some time,’ Aravindan said.

‘Why did he ring up?’

‘He’s going to our place. Wanted to know if I was interested in going too.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘History…’

‘Oh! And, what did you say?’

‘That I’d see.’

Aravindan did not need to turn around and look to know what Vasanthi’s face looked like then. He also knew exactly what she would say—the bypass surgery that he had undergone the previous year; the complications. Though his cholesterol and sugar levels were under control for the time being, they could get out of hand, at any moment. Also, his blood pressure was still wild. Routine, food, exercise…She would go on, with the help of the unreconciled figures in the laboratory report, with all the exactitude of a medical bulletin. He also knew how her speech would end: ‘If you take care, you won’t have to regret it in the end. The doctor has said that you should take special care that nothing should affect your kidney. Kidneys are the organs to be feared the most in the human body.’

But, she did not say any of that, this time. She was probably angry with him for not going to the lab on the correct date. How could she prepare the medical bulletin without the latest figures?

Aravindan’s thoughts were elsewhere though.

It was recently that his mother had revisited him with the memories of their place. It was perhaps at dawn. Or was it when he dozed off after lunch? His mother’s rosy face, her grey wavy hair, the two teeth, slightly out of alignment and the earrings with white stones were all memories of his hometown for him. Amma came to him in his dreams only to remind him of his place. Amma would be the black-bordered white mundu, the cloth wrapped round the waist; the white blouse with its pattern of stars; the mole on the chest.

He did not tell Vasanthi about amma’s sudden appearances. She would have been scared that Aravindan was homesick and might go to the railway station looking for the first train to return home. Vasanthi had gone only a couple of times to his native place, in so many years. That too, with great reluctance. As she would start looking at the calendar from the third day. So much so, he had started to hide the railway guide.

Aravindan was not surprised that Vasanthi, who did not know her own native place, who did not know her mother, turned out like this. Her mother held on for two of her birthdays before she walked into an album as a photograph. When people said that the mother in the album resembled her, Vasanthi took it as a matter of fact. It was the same with Kuntapur, where she had been born and brought up. She reached Mumbai as soon as she finished school and became sure that she should not have been born in Kuntapur.

Her father, a Menon from Ottapalam, used to say with pride that his daughter knew a whole lot of languages but not Malayalam. He had found a Kuntapuri mother for her during his stay at Mangalore. He had moved from the Mangalore port to the Mumbai port when Vasanthi finished her schooling.

Aravindan had met Menon during one of his official visits. He met his daughter, Vasanthi, later at the Onam celebrations of the Malayali Samajam.

Menon introduced her proudly, ‘My daughter sings, dances and paints. Besides English, she knows five languages. The only language she does not know is Malayalam.’

‘Not five, Papa, six,’ the daughter corrected him immediately. She started counting them out on her fingers, ‘Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Marathi, Hindi, and French.’

‘Oh yes! French. I’d forgotten that. That’s right, six languages.’ Menon also counted on his fingers.

‘The only language you don’t know is Malayalam, right?’ Aravindan asked.

‘What to do, Aravindan? She grew up outside Kerala.’ Menon from Ottapalam expressed his regret.

Aravindan later realised, when she rang up once in a while it was only at the prompting of her father. They spoke to each other in English and Hindi. If once in a while Vasanthi tried to speak in Malayalam, Aravindan would stop her, ‘Don’t,’ he would say. ‘I can’t bear to see my language bleed.’

When without much delay Menon from Ottapalam came with a wedding proposal, Aravindan had been stunned. It was only then that he realised the pitfalls of the Onam celebrations of the Malayali Samajam.

‘Still, Mr Menon, without knowing much about each other, so suddenly…’ Aravindan had stuttered.

‘What’s there to know, Aravindan,’ Menon laughed. ‘I liked you at first sight.’

When Aravindan asked how that had been possible, Menon had a clear-cut answer. People from Ottapalam were like that. They could recognise a person’s value at first sight.

Somehow Aravindan’s mother had not been enamoured of that special gift of the people from Ottapalam. ‘The father is a Menon, the mother a Tulu, they belong to Bombay, speak some mixture, and dress French. Do you want this alliance?’

Aravindan was not particular. Perhaps Vasanthi too had not been particular. But the man from Ottapalam who had recognised his worth at first sight was not willing to give up.

‘We know you’re a good boy. One doesn’t have to go to Ottapalam to find that out,’ his mother said. ‘But, Amma, he…’

‘I was just thinking. Isn’t there any other good boy, in Bombay or Tulunad?’

‘He says, it is difficult.’

‘Hmm.’ His mother had stood for a moment with her eyes shut and then walked to the puja room.

By this time, Menon had collected the time and date of his birth and gone to Mangalore to find if the horoscopes matched. The astrologer was a Poduval from Payyannur, who stayed in a lodge there. Nine out of ten sectors matched. Best of best matches. It couldn’t be better. Aravindan knew, at once, that the sector that did not match would have been language…

It was only later that he realised the reason for Menon’s desperation. His elder daughter Aparna, who was in California, had eloped with a man from the Syrian Orthodox Church. He was from Thiruvalla and had been her colleague. She did not convert, but both the children had been baptised. Besides, the husband was particular that she should accompany him to church every Sunday for Mass. That was why he so badly wanted a Menon for his younger daughter. If not a Menon from Malabar, at least one from Kochi.

‘What are you thinking?’ Vasanthi’s voice came from behind him.

‘Nothing in particular.’

‘What have you decided?’

‘I’ve decided to go.’

He had been afraid that Vasanthi would enter into the medical-bulletin mode immediately, but that was not what happened. She spoke of other things.

‘The children will come from Kuwait for the vacation. Have you forgotten that?’

‘Not just from Kuwait, from Delhi too.’

‘Yes.’

‘I can come back by then.’

‘It’s very hot this year. A train journey will be uncomfortable.’

‘They say that airlines are giving wonderful discounts these days. I’ll ask the office to look that up.’

‘How many days are you planning on?’

‘I haven’t thought of it. Let me hear of Perumal’s plans.’

‘Why do you need to know his plans? You need take care of your plans only.’

‘He’s coming to my native place, I’m not going to his.’ Aravindan was getting angry.

‘I was just saying that you shouldn’t go there, and thereafter extend your stay.’

He just nodded. Aravindan knew that his being away from some days was no problem for Vasanthi. She had a lot of relatives in this city—people who had migrated from Ottapalam, Nenmara, Kollengode and places like that. She often visited them or they came over. Vasanthi would not notice the days passing.

Though he had prayed that he would not see his mother at night, she came early in the morning.

‘Good,’ said his mother.

‘Vasanthi will be upset,’ he said rather hesitantly.

He did not hear his mother’s reply to that. He had slipped into a doze again, by then.

Ramabhadran was waiting at the Cochin airport at Nedumbassery. Ramabhadran was called ‘Kuttan’ (a word generically used for small boys), when they studied together. When he grew up he became Ramabhadran ‘Achan’, using the title his birth in the Paliyam family entitled him to. As he saw Aravindan come pushing the trolley, he called someone up on his mobile.

‘Kuttan, he has reached; come soon.’ Ramabhadran spoke to his son over the phone. His voice was still as rough as ever. ‘The parking fee is terrible. So most of us leave the car outside the airport. And, call the driver on the mobile, when the passenger arrives.’

Ramabhadran had not changed much. But one could see that he was developing a pot belly. The marks left by smallpox on his face had mostly faded.

‘It was the railway station the last time. This time it is the airport. One can say that you are progressing. Right, Aravindan?’ Ramabhadran remarked.

‘The airlines are in a soup. They have to give massive discounts just to get people,’ Aravindan replied.

‘Good. It’s more stylish to wait at the airport.’

Ramabhadran took a good look at Aravindan and commented, ‘Your head looks great.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, it is a lot neater than when I last saw it.’

‘It’s so many years since then, Ramabhadran. I came here last when Amma was ill.’ Aravindan was running his hand over his bald pate.

‘That’s right. The bushes that remained have been cleared. It looks good, anyway.’

Aravindan wondered if Ramabhadran was about to laugh. If he did, he knew that could be dangerous. The masters were afraid to crack jokes when Ramabhadran was in the class. He’d start laughing at some odd moment and he would not know how to stop. If he tried hard to control his laughter, his eyes would fill. Everyone would have to wait till he tired himself out and stopped panting.

Sreedharan Master, who taught them science, could not bear it one day. ‘Nothing’s happened here to make anyone laugh. What’s there to laugh in science, anyway?’

Sreedharan Master came to the class swaggering like a small elephant, with a belly that could not be contained in his half-sleeved shirt jutting out; his head like a globe on a non-existent neck. It was said that the umbrella he carried across his back, one end tucked in his under arm, gave him some balance.

He called all his students by the names of their fathers. So, Ramabhadran became Sambhu Namboodiri in class, Aravindan was Pappanava Pillai, Sureshkumar became Sannalam Moopan, and so on. When he called Anthappan from Gothuruthu, Lonappan, it quite upset the lad. ‘It is like giving your father a bad name,’ he complained during the interval, as they played in the schoolyard.

Sreedharan Master had a hair-trigger temper, but he could not beat anyone. Instead, he would give a sharp knock behind the ears with two fingers. Xavier, from Pazhampilli Thuruthu, claimed that he pissed in his pants when that round ring fell, ‘deeng,’ on his earlobe for the first time. With that, Sreedharan Master had a new name—Damman!

Though Ramabhadran was five years older than Aravindan, they went to the same class as he failed many times. On the first day, as he was about to sit next to Aravindan on the first bench, Ambujakshiamma Teacher warned him, ‘Look, Kuttan, that boy studies well. Don’t get him into trouble too.’

‘Sure, Teacher,’ Ramabhadran nodded in agreement.

When Aravindan’s marks turned out to be poor for the quarterly examinations, Ramabhadran was blamed by everyone. Ramabhadran found nothing to worry about the students who could not get through examinations. He told Aravindan, ‘The boy who writes the exam and the master who corrects the paper need to have a sort of equation between them. You just need to accept that sometimes it does not exist.’

Aravindan had once heard Damman, who only believed in mathematical equations, mutter to himself, ‘This fellow should have been born in some fisherman’s hut. How did he come to be born in the Paliyam family?’

But Aravindan knew that Ramabhadran did not fail in exams because he lacked intelligence, but because he was too intelligent for them. Ramabhadran did not believe in examinations. Examinations had no faith in him either. Ramabhadran’s argument was that there was no point in asking questions on what had already been taught. Wasn’t asking about what had not been taught the proper examination?

Though he was bad at examinations, he was very good with machines. As soon as he saw something new, he had to take it apart. Nothing else would get into his mind till he had managed to fit it together properly. If only he had half the interest in his studies. ‘He is old enough for college,’ Ambujakshiamma Teacher would complain.

Ramabhadran too knew that that was true. He should not have been sitting in that classroom but doing a degree class somewhere else.

‘Let me be frank, Aravindan, these school masters know nothing. If we ask any doubt, they get angry, and then it is the cane and trouble. It’s so easy to get angry with the students.’

Aravindan knew why it was like that. Ramabhadran’s doubts were always about matters that were not in the books. And so school masters, whose knowledge about matters in the text book itself was limited, got angry when they saw Ramabhadran get up to ask doubts.

By this time, Kuttan, Ramabhadran’s son, had brought the car.

‘You’ve brought two suitcases. That means that you plan on staying rather long this time,’ Ramabhadran looked at the trolley and said.

‘It’s not that. It’s just habit.’ Aravindan added, ‘And I thought the suitcase would like some company.’

When he said this, and the way he said it, Aravindan thought it was fun. As though he had got back the rural way of talking that he had lost. He had grown a new tongue over the years. Not just a new tongue, new ears too.

Ramabhadran introduced his son, ‘This is the younger one. He’s an engineer at InfoPark. Though they’re well paid, there’s no time or certainty. He comes and goes anytime. It was very difficult to get him to take a day off. I have a driver, whom I usually call, but he was not available today.’

‘Why did you bother? I could have taken a taxi.’

‘No. This is something I enjoy. I like meeting people who are visiting me. I never go to see them off, though. That makes me feel sad.’

Kuttan tried to explain his difficulty, in between. ‘It is always tough for us in the IT field, Uncle. We have to follow the time schedule of the Westerners.’

‘I know,’ Aravindan nodded. Your clock is set by the foreigners.’ The car moved at a fairly good speed.

‘Don’t drive so fast, Kuttan. Though the car is ours, the potholes belong to the government. You know with what care they look after them!’

Though Aravindan was again worried that Ramabhadran may start laughing, that did not happen.

Ramabhadran had somehow passed his tenth and got into the polytechnic at Kalamassery, to do mechanical engineering. But he left even before completing a year. The problem there too was the question of equations. He complained that the masters who taught him did not know anything about machines.

‘They only know how to throw up what they’ve learnt by heart from the text books. What is education? You have to teach the students something that they don’t know. And how can people who don’t care for machines teach mechanical engineering? Machines are organisms like us as well.’

From there, he went straight to an uncle in Trichinopoly or Tiruchirappalli. He worked in an engineering company for some time. There too, the old question of ‘understanding’ cropped up. When he discovered that some of the parts of the machine, to be shipped to the UK, designed by the IIT-ian Rao, were asymmetrical, things became more complicated.

Aravindan remembered what Ramabhadran had said at that time, ‘He’d done such a stupid thing. The white man would have thrown it into the sea. You can’t even ask Rao why he had done what he did. His face would grow red. He’d start speaking a peculiar sort of English; a sort of English that we people from Kochi are not used to. When you have a big degree and studied in a big college, that’s probably the way you speak.’

The head of the engineering department was a member of the royal family of Nilambur Kovilakam. He was very fond of Ramabhadran.

‘Do you need to be so rude, Ramabhadran?’ he had asked affectionately.

‘How can you ask me that, sir?’ Ramabhadran was surprised at the question. ‘Whether it is a machine or a thing that is alive, the parts have to match each other, don’t they? It’s the law of nature. Similar to cosmic balance. If you have just one and half nose and two and three quarters ears, even a member of the Nilambur Royal Family won’t be able to cope, will you? The whole universe exists on the basis of some law of compatibility, doesn’t it? It’s when the pancha bhoothas, the five essences, space, air, water, fire and earth, do not balance that you get tsunamis and floods and lava flowing.’

The Nilambur Thampuran had no reply to that.

‘But Ramabhadran, Rao is a rank holder from the IIT and has got admission for MS in the MIT. With scholarship too. He’s just waiting for his papers to come. A typical ivy-league boy.’

‘IIT and MIT are all right. But it would be better for the company to pray that his papers come without delay.’

Thampuran knew that there was no point in arguing with Ramabhadran. But a large order to be supplied overseas was held up due to this difference of opinion.

Finally, Ramabhadran himself came to Thampuran’s rescue. He asked, ‘This job in the company is worth only a quarter sheet of a paper, isn’t it?’

Thampuran nodded without saying anything. A quarter sheet of paper was more than enough to write a resignation letter.

Ramabhadran had learnt some new words during his stay at Trichinopoly: wave length…frequency…tuning! That was what had gone wrong between him and the Telugu chap, he explained. When he returned home all he had was the old Morris Minor car; and the courage given by the two acres of coconut palms that had just started bearing fruits.

‘Do you remember that old Morris Minor car of mine?’ Ramabhadran asked. ‘The one I had brought from Trichinopoly?’

‘Of course,’ Aravindan laughed. Ramabhadran had gone to great pains to run that car, which was liable to catch a cold or cough at the least pretext.

Ramabhadran’s craze for cars started with the old Ford he bought from Dr Kunjan Pillai, who had been practising at Salem. After he retired, he set up a dispensary in the village and brought the car with him.

People were reluctant to get into Ramabhadran’s car, though. It would stop suddenly, in the middle of nowhere. Ramabhadran would then pat his passenger on the back and request, ‘You could put your hand to it and give it a push, couldn’t you?’ If that did not work, he would step out with the crank handle. Children gathered to watch Ramabhadran poke that rod into the engine and make it roar. Father and his sons repaired it again and again, and finally they gave it for slaughter to a hardware shop owner in the Broadway.

‘It was a well-born vehicle, but what can you do if it won’t run?’

Aravindan too agreed with that. A car that did not run was definite to end up in a salvage yard of a hardware merchant.

The two boys of Ramabhadran studied well. Both of them were also crazy about machines. The elder had gone off to the US, but Ramabhadran had managed to hold on to the second one, who worked in the InfoPark at Kochi for the moment.

When Aravindan laughed to himself, Ramabhadran looked at him as though to ask him: What is it Aravindan?

‘Nothing. I just thought of that old ingalamlavatakam.’

Ramabhadran had forgotten that old joke.

Carbon dioxide was called ingalamlavatakam and nitrogen was pakyajanakam. Equivalent of common terms in science sounded jarring in chaste Malayalam. However much he tried, Ramabhadran could not pronounce ingalamlavatakam. After saying ‘inga’ he would be confused and would be trying to finish the word somehow.

The master did not have the patience to wait for the whole word. He would shout, ‘What is this ingu…ingu…? Are you a baby to ask for ingu or baby food? Tell Sambhu Namboodiri to see that you clean your tongue properly with a fresh frond-stick.’

When he remembered that, Ramabhadran also started laughing. It wasn’t the old laugh, it was softer.

‘I remember. I don’t think I would be able to pronounce it even now. Carbon dioxide is just fart. Imagine if it becomes more difficult to say it than to let it go. Anyway, the present generation has it easier, I think.’

They had passed out from Union Christian College, by then. Aravindan could not help thinking of the old journeys in the ‘Student’s Special’. The old Comet vehicle had just one long seat on the left side. At the front end, near the driver, there was a box. That box seat was reserved for Bharatan. It would be left vacant till Bharatan got into the bus, dhoti folded up and mouth filled with betel leaves. He had taken four masters degrees and become the principal of the Maharaja’s College. Even then, his dress remained the same—a crumpled old kurta and folded dhoti.

Aravindan heard Ramabhadran’s voice, in between. He was saying, ‘You can stay with me if you don’t mind. Only Padmavathi and I are at home these days. This fellow stays at Ernakulam usually.’

‘No need, Ramabhadran. Appukuttan has made all the arrangements. A house belonging to a distant relative is lying vacant. I thought I’d stay there. My mother trusted Appukuttan so much, she’d listen to no one else….’

‘All right. I was just telling you that you could stay with us. The only problem is that we are vegetarians. By the way, I didn’t ask you, what is this sudden trip about? Last time you came, you had brought your wife.’

‘Nothing in particular. Perumal had rung up from Madurai. He’s an old friend, my room-mate when we were in the Maharaja’s. He’s supposed to be a famous historian now. He’s coming here to look at some project. When he rang up and asked whether I would like to join him, I felt like coming along too. Vasanthi is not interested in anything like this. It is a long time since I saw Perumal too.’

‘Must be Muziris,’ Kuttan said.

‘Yes.’

‘They say that when they dug in Pattanam, they found some Roman coins and some amphorae artefacts, and things like that. There was also a boat, tied-up.’

‘It is wonderful! Though we’ve always heard that Kodungallur had a great history, I hadn’t thought it was so great. It isn’t a joke to be digging so much to get all that information. They’re talking of making the Paliyam palace, a museum. There’s also talk that the Kottapuram market is going to be given a facelift.’

‘They say Muziris had been a great port on the western coast. Ships berthed there two thousand years ago. Greeks and Romans and Arabs came here in search of our pepper. And so the old Muchiripatinam became Muziris in their language.’

‘They must have made our pepper popular in the West.’

‘Possibly…kashayam, the liquid pepper extract that we used here. When it became a life-saving medicine as well, pepper became even more popular. The search for our western coast became the search for a spice route.’

‘God!’ Ramabhadran’s eyes opened wide. ‘To tell you the truth, Aravindan, I was never interested in history. The same old tales—be it kings fighting for no reason among themselves, or picking up princesses for marriage from various countries, or building rest houses all over the country side, or planting shade trees—enough to put one to sleep. It was a wonder that I got ten marks for the exam. But now, when I hear of things like this, it sounds interesting. The only thing is, I can’t help wondering how much of it is fact and how much is made up.’

‘Quite a lot is probably made up. These don’t have nuts and bolts in the right places like your machines have. What we get as history is coloured by interpretations and misinterpretations. And so people in positions of power have from time to time interfered and messed with it. It is not easy to keep history safe from the hands of such people.’

‘I’ve heard the history of our Paliyam interpreted in so many different ways.’

‘It is said that nothing is history, until it’s proven. It is almost impossible to search out the little