Onam in a Nightie: Stories from a Kerala Quarantine

By Anjana Menon

In India's tropical paradise, stands a town wrapped around a giant roundabout, where a canny caretaker with a French connection holds sway. Vying for his attention are two competing neighbours. Appu holds lessons for the living but Maya cares only for the dead. And a gastronome dog plays ball girl to tennis-loving nuns.

At the centre is an imposing temple so ancient that no one knows exactly when it was built. Here, even a tiny railway station has set its own rules for acceptance and belonging. On the other side of the tracks, a baker runs errands for total strangers in the middle of a pandemic.

Malgudi Days meets reality in the search for joy and belonging in a book that is alternatively heartwarming and hilarious. Anjana Menon takes you to a place that you wish stays that way forever, in these true stories of hope and resilience from a midway Kerala town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9789354893124

Anjana Menon

Anjana Menon has been wrestling with words for as long as she can remember. After studying literature, she got sucked into a journalism career that took her to Southeast Asia and Europe with Bloomberg News. She returned to India as one of the founder-editors of the business newspaper Mint and then ran a television newsroom before setting up her own content strategy consultancy. She is a co-author of What's Your Story? The Essential Business Storytelling Handbook, published by Penguin Random House. A columnist who thought she would grow up to be an artist, she likes people more than gadgets, dogs even more than people and slow life over hurried living. Anjana divides her time between Delhi and London, wishing instead to be in Kyoto, knowing fully well the foolishness of her desires. This is her debut creative non-fiction book.  

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Preface

IHAVE NEVER LIVED IN KERALA. I AM WHAT YOU COULD CALL THE proverbial outsider, with a claim to being an insider.

My parents are both Keralites. They belong to Thrissur, whose centre is defined by the Swaraj Round, a roundabout, or the Round as everyone calls it.

At the heart of the Round sits Vadakkunnathan, an ancient Shiva temple. Each year in April, the town, the Round and my parents enter the whirlpool of the pooram, or to be more precise the Thrissur pooram.

Poorams are temple festivals, and the Thrissur pooram is the festival of them all. Keralites, even those who are not from Thrissur, descend on the Round for thirty-six hours of crushing, sweaty crowds, caparisoned elephants, drumbeats, and a theatrical changing of giant colourful parasols called kudamattom.

Staged as a fierce competition between two temple groups in Thrissur, Vadakkunnathan graces as the backdrop, presiding as a calm observer, soaking in the cacophony.

If you are a Keralite and leave town during the pooram, you are not really a Keralite, and if you are a foreigner visiting the pooram, as many do, you become a token Keralite.

I can’t explain the fervour because I’ve never fully understood it. I’ve wondered why grown men abandon their families and their work, thronging the maidan, braving the heat that creates rivulets of sweat, making every curve of their body a messy waterfall of tiny trickles each day, all day, for those days.

My emotion has always stood at helplessness for the showstoppers —the elephants—who bear the incessant cadence of the percussion orchestra, the prodding mahouts, the throbbing crowds and the thunderous fireworks called vedikettu. The pooram, to me, is a meticulously embroidered festival laced with brutality.

I’ve tried to like the pooram twice, many years apart.

As a child, holding my grandfather’s hand tightly, staring at the mass of legs in tucked-up mundus which looked like a thicket of mangroves, I remember being scooped up by him as the crowd broke loose amid shouts that an elephant had run amok—the anxiety of a lifetime flashing across his face in a minute.

The gentle elephants were standing still, tolerating, flapping their ears, cooling themselves. It was imagination running amok, led by a few drunk men in the oppressive vapour of the afternoon heat.

The next time I saw the pooram was as an adult. By then, I was festival-ready. I had learnt to grab good lookout spots at festivals, on the fringes of Kyoto, in Inverness and Trafalgar Square.

I was wrong about my preparedness. My second attempt at pooram, turns out, was worse than the first. I was the grown-up this time, chaperoning girls from California—visitors, fascinated by the festival, desperate for a local flavour.

As a child, holding my grandfather’s hand tightly ... I remember being scooped up by him as the crowd broke loose amid shouts that an elephant had run amok.

Instead of legs, this time, hands were all I could see. Strangers’ hands, encircling hands, opportunistic hands wanting to brush their teenage bottoms. Eventually, the anxiety of it all overwhelmed us and we left sooner than we had intended.

The pooram and I never embraced, aborted by vulgar interludes.

The hero of Thrissur, the raison d’être for the Round, and the town itself remained a stranger to me until the pandemic forced me to revisit our relationship.

Isolation does that. It makes you look at things more closely, examine your relationships and surroundings in minutiae.

This book is about the unravelling of a town, stuck at the midpoint of a state, and me stuck inside my parent’s home in a mandatory quarantine. A stay that dehusked memories—of things, places, people—who have nothing and everything in common. A recess that uncovered the townsfolk, and their relationship to the state, and my relationship to them.

A state wedged into the tip of India, imperfectly squeezed against the sea and the mountains, flexing itself for a sliver of space—a victim of high literacy, low poverty, unbending self-assuredness and elastic resilience.

The quarantine offered me a pause, even a welcome one, from things that keep us awake—ambition, comparisons, responsibilities, bills, decisions, misgivings. The dreams we go to sleep on—imagined discoveries in foreign places, outlandish things, new beginnings without endings—the pandemic took away. It stamped only survival on our psyche.

In Kerala, I learnt to let go of the things that don’t matter and find the ones that do. A spot between the past and the future—the present.

This book started as a humdrum journal of my quarantine, until epiphanies emerged in the tiny details—a remark here, an episode there that triggered a smile or a memory.

Kerala moved very quickly from a place I would occasionally visit to a place I could imagine as home. A place where I’ve come to find a future in the present, the collective in the individual and humanity in the everyday. A slender passage to joy in a lingering pandemic.

Dodging Covid

MY PARENTS, RETIRED, LIKE TO TELL EVERYONE THEY ARE SETTLED in Thrissur, but I’m not sure that is entirely correct.

They are floating between two worlds. The hellish lure of Delhi with its impertinence—the street foods, the tandooris, the labyrinthine shopping streets, memories of their youth, parenting and us, their children—all inescapably swathed in foul air. And the charm of Kerala, ‘God’s own country’ to tourists, civilized, rested, efficient, unflappable and easy-paced—wrapped in shades of green.

This constant dashing about between Delhi and Thrissur means they still haven’t made up their minds whether they are Delhiites or Keralites, two vastly different species.

Mom and Dad are very much in the vulnerable category (only age-wise, I daresay) and are under a forced senior-citizen’s house arrest in the aftermath of the Covid lockdown.

In Thrissur, they live in the heart of the town, slightly away from relatives clustered in the suburbs. This choice of wanting some privacy has also left them isolated in a pandemic. Kerala has had a head start in the pandemic because it spotted a case as early as January 2020.

Its lockdown also kicked in earlier than the rest of India, leaving my parents cooped up at home for more than four months. This has taken a toll on my usually upbeat and fiercely independent parents.

Their calls to us in Delhi are more frequent, more anxious. Mom, at any rate, is conjuring up imaginary problems—a chest pain, a vague bad feeling and so on.

‘You both should be here—it’s work-from-home for everyone, so doesn’t it apply to you?’

She means me and my brother, my only sibling.

I tell her I am already working from home.

By late July, I give in. I’ve had enough. As a former journalist, I get my share of fake news, believable news, bad news, unreported news and then some.

The latest rumour on the spread of Covid is the kind that would make headline news. Covid will grip eight million people in Delhi and its nearby areas in a few months, and it will unravel unstoppably.

I wonder what it will be like should the pandemic spread full tilt, which it will. And what if you get caught up in it, which eventually most of us might, and what if you have to depend on the administration, which you would have to, for a rescue?

I live in Noida, the not-so-tony suburb of Delhi, with some token tony parts to it.

Delhi’s heart lies in the leafy boulevards that give it the look of a European city peppered with neoclassical buildings and Indian shrubbery, including jamun trees that stain the pavements a deep purple when the ripened fruit plops to the ground. It symbolizes power—self-assured and handsome, with the stains visible only to keen observers.

Power, though, has changed its look in India. Our current prime minister has humble beginnings. Narendra Modi, or Modiji as we like to call him, used to serve chai on a railway platform—a story that’s compelling in its ordinariness.

Noida, in keeping with the times, is changing its storyline and skyline with a fancy mall here and an expressway there. Under the gaze of Uttar Pradesh’s monk-turned-chief-minister Yogi Adityanath, it is pulsating with ambition. Ever so often, we are reminded of the strides the city is making—a mega statement here, an advertisement there. I’m not averse to the odd brag, but deep down there are limits to what I’m willing to believe.

Let’s face it, I know my way about Delhi and its hinterland. And yet, even I have moments of self-doubt about the favours one can pull during a citywide pandemic outbreak.

WhatsApp, the most trusted news source for half a billion Indians, has already been swirling with horror stories. Patients are being turned away by hospitals, doctors are passing off Covid-19 deaths as non-Covid-related to help fudge the numbers and dead bodies are getting mixed up.

Occasionally, these stories are corroborated, without the hyperbole, by traditional media. In the pandemic world, WhatsApp is key to information dissemination.

In late July, my brother and I decide to leave to be with our parents. But first, we must get an e-pass to be allowed into Kerala, give details of where we will stay and how we will quarantine.

I’m labelled a returnee on my e-pass, though I never really left Kerala because I was never there.

I’ve led a peripatetic life, living a bit here and there, passing through cities, wilting in some, blooming in others. I’ve brooded in Singapore, thrived in London and toiled in Delhi, India’s capital, the city of my birth and growing-up years—a city now familiar only in its name-dropping culture, poor air and searingly hot summers.

I shuttle erratically between Delhi’s sulphuric days and London’s graphite-grey ones. In all this, Kerala has never been on my map. My memories of Kerala hinge on my summer holidays, my grandparents, their ancestral house or tharavad and later, token visits to meet my parents after they moved to the state.

Given all that, I’m no returnee.

I’m an imposter, who must follow the returnee rules, in which a fourteen-day quarantine is mandatory. I ask around a bit, like Delhiites do, if one can skirt the rules. No, even god can’t let you off in his own country.

Kerala lives by its rules. There are rules within rules. For example, the house you plan to stay at must have a separate room in which you can isolate. If not, the government will house you in a quarantine facility.

I’m tempted to make up a story to check the government’s quarantine facility, purely out of curiosity. Then again, it seems churlish to use up public resources.

So a home quarantine it is. My parents, overjoyed, are determined to extract this visit from us. They have it all set up—a floor to garrison us safely. They have already invited the local councillors to come and check the suitability of the space and get the all-clear.

A July Adventure

WE EMBARK ON THE FLIGHT FROM DELHI TO KOCHI WITH great trepidation, a face shield, a surgical mask, blue disposable shoe covers, a white hair cap, rubber gloves and our own packed food.

I prepare food the night before, only sandwiches, and stick a Post-it on the fridge—‘take your sarnies from the fridge’. The airline isn’t serving any food onboard and carrying food for air travel is a new habit, a likely forgettable one.

I double-check that the government’s Covid-19 contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu, is working and has not disappeared from my phone. It has already earned a lousy ranking from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that keeps itself busy grading such apps. Truthfully logging your health condition on the mandatory app is entirely voluntary, making it somewhat less reliable, in a way that governments are.

The airport drop-off arrives on time—a corporate taxi service, promising high sanitization. The car smells more air freshener than sanitizer, but 4 a.m. is not the best time to quiz the driver. I spray the back seat with my disinfectant and ride to the airport, air-conditioning on. I’m sweating. I don’t know if it’s a hot flush or nervousness.

At Delhi airport, hardly anyone is maintaining social distancing.

There is an overdose of sign language, starting with the security personnel wanting to check my status on the Aarogya Setu app. They do so by pointing to a mobile phone and drawing a square in the air. That done, they hold up their palm to my face which means they are asking for an ID. The way to win this game of dumb charades is to watch closely what the passengers in the front of the queue are doing.

At Indira Gandhi International Airport, named after the deceased prime minister Indira Gandhi, several key workers are wearing a mask for protection—that is the extent of their personal protection equipment. No gloves, no caps, no shoe covers, no face shields.

My brother and I are overdressed.

We head straight to the boarding gate. No loitering around the shops. Some twenty minutes later a fellow passenger arrives in the waiting area compressed into a PPE suit. Not any PPE suit, but a PPE suit with a square label on the outside announcing it’s made in the European Union, with instructions that are too tiny for me to read. The suit is elasticated in the middle and pearly white. Had he been an inch heavier, or the suit a size smaller, it would have burst at the seams. The passenger is burly. I’ve found him a name.

As he scans the area looking for a seat, we sink deeper into ours trying to melt into the crowd of ordinaries, to avoid being judged careless by him.

Burly’s only competition is from two parents and their young children—all four in disposable green medical overalls, but not nearly as tightly wrapped up.

Burly’s arrival has created somewhat of a problem because the younger of the two children, a boy, is pointing in the direction of Burly, yanking his mother’s arm and stomping his feet. I don’t take off my ear pods in time to catch the exchange, but I sense there is acute PPE-suit-envy.

As Burly hovers around, waiting to choose the most isolated seat, a cleaner brushes past him, wearing a mask that barely covers his mouth, leaving his nose exposed. His mask dangling from the chin is loose at the edges and he is going about brushing up stuff from the floor.

Burly cowers, covering his face with his arm instinctively, although he already has a face shield and a mask on. The cleaner doesn’t notice a thing.

We are all handed a face shield, sanitizer and mask by the airline as we board. I take mine and stuff it into my bag for the contingency that I’m unlikely to have.

The flight itself is uneventful. There are hardly forty passengers on board, and we have empty seats to our sides. Burly is in the row right behind us.

I’ve never been on an emptier flight in all my travels, nor seen greater anxiety on the faces of the service crew and passengers. But we are only flying to Kochi and with all the high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters that aircraft have, air travel might be far safer than most people give it credit for. Or so I’m hoping.

We land at Kochi on time, in India’s first airport that runs fully on solar power.

It’s named after the neighbourhood it serves. It’s an airport, not a memorial.

And here, the Kerala experience begins.

We are told to dispose of our protective clothing in the biohazard bin. I see Burly peeling off his suit, the suit relieved of him, he relieved of the suit, emerging a real and muscular person.

My brother tells me he is a young Malayali actor, but since my Mollywood exposure is limited and my brain fog is unlimited, I can’t place him.

I don’t see anyone mobbing him, but then pandemic has robbed many a star of fangirl moments. Besides, we all have more important stuff to do—undergo a thermal body scan and log the details of our stay if we are to ever get out of the airport.

As I wait in line to do so, I notice several people walking around in PPE suits. Not as fancy as Burly’s, but PPE suits nonetheless. A tiny panic creeps in—are they here to evacuate Covid patients? Were there infected people on my flight?

I look on for a few more seconds, beadily, to discover they are cleaners who are sanitizing the airport, fully kitted out. No loose masks, no casual attitude. Burly belongs here.

We order a prepaid taxi and I notice large standees saying ‘break the chain’ all over the airport, with instructions on social distancing and masks and hand hygiene, in multiple languages too. I’m missing the sign language of Delhi because there is none.

We are given our taxi number and the pillar number at which to find it. As we set out to find the pillar, a few cabbies run wildly towards me, flailing their arms, pointing at my feet. I’ve forgotten to get rid of my shoe covers.

I limp back to dispose of them under their watch. A tenacious lot, they hang around in a loose circle, wanting to make sure.

As soon as I dump the covers, they peel away and I head back with my wheelie, my eyes on the floor, theirs on my bottom. My brother, standing at the distance, waits for me to join him near the numbered pillar, looking a bit red-faced.

My embarrassment alters into surprise as soon as I get into the taxi—there is a