The Covenant of Water

1900, Parambil

Inside the kitchen, the packed-earth floor feels cool on her soles. The walls are dark from smoke, and they enfold mouthwatering scents; she is immediately at home in this shady sanctuary. Thankamma, bent over, blows through a wide metal tube, her cheeks ballooning as she coaxes the overnight embers in the aduppu back to life. Of the six brick slots in this raised hearth, pots are sitting on four. She marvels at how fast Thankamma moves for a big woman, her hands a blur, feeding dry coconut husks under the pan with the frying onions here, and flattening embers there so the rice can now simmer. Thankamma pours the bride coffee brewed in milk and sweetened with jaggery. “I made puttu,” she says, pushing a spongy white cylinder of steamed rice flour out of its wooden mold and onto her banana leaf plate. For JoJo she mashes it with banana and honey. She’s warmed up the beef fry—erechi olarthiyathu—and the fiery fish curry—meen ­vevichathu—from the previous night. “Isn’t the fish tastier in the morning? That’s the beauty of this clay pot! Treasure it and never use it for anything but meen vevichathu, all right? Every year, your curry will get better. If there’s a fire in my house and I must choose between my husband and my clay pot . . . well, all I can say is he’s lived a good life. The curries I will make in my pot will ease my widowhood!”

Thankamma’s laughter rings out. The bride sits dazed, cross-legged, contemplating her first breakfast at Parambil: it is lavish, and more nourishing than what she and her mother ate in a week.

“Your husband ate standing, as usual. He’s already gone to the field.”

Thankamma insists that a bride should do nothing but let herself be spoiled. She tries, but it is against her nature. She watches Thankamma’s fingers, trying to keep track of the ingredients they toss into the curries, but it’s hard when there are never fewer than two dishes being made at the same time. Thankamma’s hands must have a memory of their own, she thinks, because their owner pays no attention to them as she chatters away. JoJo drags her away, proud to be her guide, walking her through every room, forgetting he just did it two hours before. The house is L-shaped, one limb being the older, original house, sitting well off the ground on a high plinth, and constructed around the strongroom, or ara, in which a family’s wealth—money, jewelry, and paddy—are stored. A cellar sits below the ara, while an unused bedroom and a large pantry flank it; next to the pantry is the kitchen. A narrow outer verandah connects everything. The newer limb of the house is lower to the ground, with a broad, inviting verandah on three sides. It has a sitting room that gets little use, then two adjacent large bedrooms—her husband’s and the one she, JoJo, and Thankamma sleep in—and another room that is used as a storeroom.

Old and new limbs embrace a rectangular muttam, or courtyard, surfaced with yellow, gold, and white pebbles hauled from a riverbed. Each morning a pulayi woman, Sara, sweeps the muttam with a stick broom, leaving a fan-shaped pattern as she clears away dead leaves while evening out the pebbles. The muttam is where mats are rolled out to dry boiled paddy, where clothes hang on a line, and where JoJo kicks his ball.

After lunch, she, JoJo, and Thankamma take long naps. Her husband never naps and spends most of his time outdoors working the land. When she catches a glimpse of him in the fields, he’s always accompanied by a few pulayar, standing out from them because of his height, and because compared to theirs his skin looks fair. In the evenings, Thankamma puts her feet up and the three of them sit in the breezeway outside the kitchen, as the older woman tells endless stories while spoiling JoJo and her with treats from the cellar. Belatedly it occurs to her that Thankamma’s stories are a form of instruction. She tries to recall them at night when she lies down to sleep, but that’s also when homesickness clutches at her insides, and her every thought turns homeward. Thankamma’s affection is so reminiscent of her mother that it can accentuate her sadness. She allows herself to cry only when she’s certain everyone is asleep.

On her second morning, when they hear the fishmonger’s yodeling cry in the distance, Thankamma asks the bride to hail her. Five minutes later the woman is outside the kitchen, the scent of the river clinging to her. Thankamma helps her lower the heavy basket off her head.

“Aah, and this is the bride!” the fishmonger says, brushing scales off her forearms and squatting down. “For her only I brought special mathi today.” She removes the sackcloth covering the basket as though uncovering precious jewels.

Thankamma sniffs a sardine, squeezes it, then slaps it down against its mates. “Just for the bride, is it? Keep it if it’s that special. What’s under that cloth? Aah! See that! Who’s that mathi for? Was there another marriage I didn’t know about? Give it here! Not a word!”

The next day, the bride sees Shamuel pulayan crossing the muttam, straining under a headload of coconuts in a wide basket. Thankamma had pointed him out as Parambil’s foreman and her husband’s constant shadow; Sara, who sweeps the muttam, is his wife. Shamuel’s family has worked for them for generations, Thankamma said; his forebearers were probably indentured to the family in ancient times, before that was outlawed. The pulayar are the lowest caste in Travancore, rarely owning their own property, even their huts belonging to the landlord; the sight of them is enough to pollute a Brahmin, who then must take a ritual bath.

Under the weight of his basket, Shamuel’s neck and arm muscles are taut cables on his small, compact frame. His bare chest heaves, his ribs appear to be more out of the skin than in; his body is quite hairless save for stubble on his cheek and above his lip and a cropped head of hair, graying at the sides. He looks her husband’s age, though Thankamma said he’s younger.

When Shamuel spots her, a huge smile transforms his face, his cheekbones shining like polished mounds of ebony and the white, even teeth highlighting his fine features. There’s a childlike quality to his excitement at getting to welcome the new bride. “Aah!” he says—but there’s a practical matter to deal with first: “Molay, could you ask Thankamma chechi to come out? This basket might be too heavy for you to help me.”

Once Thankamma helps him lower the basket, he removes the thorthu coiled atop his head, shakes it out, then wipes his face, neither his smile nor his eyes leaving the new bride. “More baskets coming. We’ve been climbing all morning, the thamb’ran and me.” He points and she sees her husband in the distance, arms crossed, sitting astride a crooked palm at a spot where the trunk is almost horizontal. His legs dangle carelessly, and he looks lost in thought. The sight makes her shudder involuntarily, stirring up her fear of heights. She can’t imagine a landowner risking his life like that when there are pulayar to do that work.

“How come you let the thamb’ran up there so soon after his wedding?” Thankamma says, acting cross. “Tell the truth—if he climbs, it’s half the work for you.”

“Aah, you try to stop him. He’s like the little thamb’ran here,” he says, prodding JoJo’s belly. “Happier in the sky than on the ground.” JoJo is pleased to be called the little master.

Shamuel’s bare chest is flecked with bark. Still grinning at the thamb’ran’s wife, he fastidiously pleats his blue-checked thorthu lengthwise and then drapes it over his left shoulder. She turns shy and drops her eyes, noticing his deformed right big toe, flattened out like a coin, the nail gone.

Thankamma says, “Aah, Shamuel, please husk three coconuts for us, then. After that, wash up and come eat something. Your new mistress will serve you.”

Shamuel has his own clay dish hanging from a hook under the overhang of the roof at the back of the kitchen and that’s where he will eat, on the back steps. Pulayar never enter the house. Sara cooks for him at home, but a meal at the main house spares his store of paddy. After rinsing out his dish, he fills it with water and drinks it all, and then squats on the step. The bride serves him kanji—soupy rice in its cooking water—with a piece of fish and lime pickle.

“You like it here, then?” he asks, a big ball of rice bulging his cheek. She stands shyly before him and nods. Her finger absentmindedly traces ആ, the first letter in ãna, or elephant, a letter she thinks somehow manages to resemble an elephant. “I was younger than you when I came to Parambil. Just a boy, you know,” he says. “Before there was even a house. I feared we’d be trampled as we slept. A house protects you. The secret is the roof, did you know? Why do you think we always build it this way?”

To her eyes the roof is like any other. Only the front gable—the face of the house with its pattern of carved openings in the wood—is unique to every home. Everywhere else, the thatch eaves flare out, as though the roof intends to swallow the dwelling. Shamuel points. “When the rafters stick out like that, an elephant has no flat surface on which to lean. Or push.” He’s like JoJo in his pride in instructing her. She takes to him.

“The elephant came to greet me on my first night,” she offers in a small voice.

“Did he? Damodaran!” Shamuel says, laughing, shaking his head. “That fellow comes and goes as he pleases. I was about to sleep but I felt the ground shake. I knew it was him. I went out and there was Unni sitting atop of him, grumbling because Damo chose to come from the logging camp when it was already dark. Aah, but Unni didn’t complain too much. Whenever Damo is here, Unni gets the nights off to be home with his wife. And the thamb’ran sleeps next to Damo. They talk.”

Keeping an elephant, she has heard, is expensive. Not just paying for Unni, who must be the mahout, but the cost of feeding Damo.

“Is Damodaran ours?”

“Ours? Is the sun ours?” Shamuel waits like a schoolmaster for her to shake her head to say no. “Aah aah, just like the sun, Damodaran is his own boss. I tease Unni that Damo is really the mahout, even if he lets Unni sit on top and pretend to steer him. No one told you about Damo? Aah, let Shamuel tell you. Long before there was this house, as the thamb’ran and my father slept outside, they heard terrible cries. Trumpeting. The ground shook! The sound of trees cracking was like thunder. My father thought the world was ending. At dawn they found young Damodaran just over there, on his side, one eye gone, bleeding, with a broken tusk sticking out between his ribs. The bull elephant that attacked him must have been in musth. The thamb’ran tied a rope around that tusk and then, standing far away, he pulled it out. You’ve seen the tusk? It’s in thamb’ran’s room. Damodaran bellowed in pain. Bubbles and blood poured out of the wound. Thamb’ran—so brave he is—climbed up onto Damo’s side and plugged the hole with leaves and mud. He poured water little by little into Damodaran’s mouth and sat there talking to him all that day and night. He said more to Damo than he has to all the people in his life put together, that’s what my father said. After three days, Damodaran got up. A week later he walked away.

“A few days after that, the thamb’ran and my father cut a big teak tree and were trying to lever it to the clearing. Damodaran stepped out from the forest and pushed it for them, just like that. Elephants like to work. He became so good with logs. Now he works in the teak forests with the loggers, but only when he feels like it. Whenever he decides, he comes back here. He came to see the thamb’ran’s new wife. That’s what I think.”

Under Thankamma’s guidance, she slowly eases into her new life at Parambil. With every passing day, she feels the home she left behind fade, which makes her longing more acute. She doesn’t want to forget. After breakfast, Thankamma says, “Today, I thought we can make jackfruit halwa together. Because JoJo and I are craving it!” JoJo claps his hands. “Molay, the sweetness of life is sure in only two things: love and sugar. If you don’t get enough of the first, have more of the second!” Thankamma has already boiled pieces of jackfruit and now she mashes them with melted jaggery. “Here’s a secret: as you mash the jackfruit, close your eyes and think of something you want from your husband.” Thankamma screws her eyes shut, grinning from the effort, and showing off the gap between her front teeth. “Now a pinch of cardamom, salt, and a teaspoon of ghee. Ready! It must cool more now. Taste it. Isn’t it wonderful?” She lowers her voice. “I’m serious, molay. This is the key to a happy marriage. Make your wish and then feed your husband this halwa. Whatever you want will come true!”

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.

The topknot falls forward as the young man bends and tries to lift the stone, grimacing, veins popping out like snakes on his forehead. When he gets it upright, his muscles fail him and his friends rush forward to keep it from crushing him. When he tries to ease it onto his shoulder it sways wildly. They restore the beam, but all three look ruffled and bruised, and the tall one’s shoulder bleeds. Her husband sees none of this, arriving beside her, his face thick with anger, terrifying her. With a quick tilt of his head he conveys his thanks for lunch and his need to get back to work. She runs home.

Thankamma takes one look at her face and sits her down. “Those boys are lucky that he controlled his temper,” Thankamma says after hearing what happened. Her words are hardly reassuring, and the cup of water in the bride’s hands shakes. “Molay, don’t worry. He’ll never be angry without cause. And never at you. He would never mistreat you.” Thankamma puts an arm around her. “I know this is all new and frightening. When I got married, my husband and I were only ten. He was a naughty brat. We ignored each other. We were just children in a big house, and there were so many of us. The boys were all mean. One time I saw him sitting on a log looking at the stream. I came up quietly and I pushed him into the water!” Her laugh is infectious and the bride cannot help but smile. “He likes to remind me of that day even now! Yes, we disliked each other. But see, things don’t stay the same. Don’t you worry.” Thankamma looks at her and adds earnestly, “What I’m trying to say is that my brother is like a coconut. The hardness is all on the outside. You’re his wife, and he cares for you as Thankamma cares for you. You understand?” She tries to. Thankamma, who’s never at a loss for words, seems uncomfortable saying even this much. “There’s nothing you have to do. Don’t worry. It’ll all unfold in its own time.”