The Covenant of Water

1943, Madras

But he isn’t prepared. He isn’t prepared for the relief that washes over him—relief mingled with humiliation. Relief, because his body must have known that college would be a struggle, and meanwhile his soul pines for Parambil. His romantic notion of the study of English literature has been cruelly dashed by the dry texts, and even drier lectures—judging by his fellow students’ notes that he borrows. He had secretly wished for a miracle to spring him free, but he isn’t prepared for this kind of degrading exit.

Nor is he prepared for the line that snakes out from the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic at General Hospital, just opposite Central Station. One patient breathes down the neck of the next, right up to the examining stool beside Dr. Seshaya, and no patient is on the stool more than a minute. Dr. Seshaya has a bulldog’s jowls, growl, and breath. He spins Philipose sideways on the revolving stool, grabbing his earlobe in a mastiff’s clamp, then swivels his head-mirror down, to peer and poke in his ear canal, before spinning him the other way to manhandle the other ear.

Seshaya holds his fist by Philipose’s ear and says, “Tell me what you hear.” Hear what? “Never mind.” He repeats on the other ear. Seshaya unclenches his fist and restores his watch to his wrist. Now he presses a tuning fork here and then there, saying wearily, “Tell me when the sound stops,” and “You hear it the same on both sides?” while ignoring Philipose’s answers. Exam over, Seshaya scribbles on a piece of paper. “Your tympanic membranes are fine. Middle ear is fine. Show the peon this chit. He’ll take you to Gurumurthy for formal audiology tests.”

“So am I all right, sir?”

“No,” Seshaya says, without looking up. “I’m saying that it’s not a problem in your eardrum, or your ossicles—your ear bones. Things we might fix. The problem is in the nerve that takes sound to the brain. You have nerve deafness. Very common. Runs in families. You’re young, but it happens.”

“Sir, is there treatment for the nerve—”

“Next!”

The next patient, a woman with a red, mushroom-like growth pushing out of her nostril, bumps Philipose off the stool with her hip and the peon leads him away.

Vadivel Kanakaraj Gurumurthy, BA (Failed), doesn’t hear them knock or enter or call his name, and is busy scribbling with ink-stained fingers, papers spread out before him and thick with his writing. The peon finally shouts, “GURUMURTHY SAAR!”

“Yes? . . . Yes, welcome, yes!” He hastily puts his papers away and studies the chit. “College student, aah? Oh . . . So sorry.” And he truly is sorry, unlike Seshaya, who hardly registered his existence. Gurumurthy’s patients must be very deaf because his voice is unnaturally loud. “Not to worry! We shall tesht! Auditory and vestibular. Fully teshting will be there!”

Gurumurthy’s tests are more sophisticated than Seshaya’s. With the tone generator, Philipose hears tones that Gurumurthy does not—the audiologist’s hearing is worse than the patient’s. He deploys two different tuning forks, does tests of balance, and finally injects cold water into each ear while studying Philipose’s eye movements. The last causes shocking dizziness.

“Doctor Seshaya is miserably correct,” Gurumurthy says at last. “I’m sorry, my friend. It’s nerve deafness. Me also! Not canal, not ear bones, but nerve only.”

“Is there nothing to be done?” Philipose hears his mouth reflexively sound this question. His brain is still in shock.

“Everything can be done! You’re doing it, only you are not knowing! Face-reading, is it not? Preferable term to lip-reading because we must learn to read whole face. I will show you how to read the world, my friend, not to worry! I will give you tips and some personal observations in a booklet. See, I may not be medical doctor, but I am audiologist. And also physicist. BA only! Madras University!”

“Yes, I saw on the door.”

“Aah, yes. ‘Failed,’ but one day it will be ‘Honors.’ ” His smile is that of a man who must give himself frequent motivational talks. “See, I am always clearing the written exams!” he says, as if Philipose had asked. The bright smile crumbles at the edges. “But every year in viva only, Professor Venkatacharya is failing me. He is ­whispering—who can hear his questions? Anyway, if not before he dies, most certainly after, I shall pass viva.”

Philipose spends the next two hours with Gurumurthy. Sesh­aya does not seem to send him many patients at all, and so Gurumurthy has plenty of time and is eager to share what he knows.

Back in the college hostel, Philipose repacks his trunk, ties his bedroll, and takes down the “picture” that Baby Mol gave him. Her self-portrait captures the essentials: a smile stretching to the edge of the disc that is her face, and a red ribbon poking out of her hair. He waits till there are no voices in the corridor; everyone is now off to class. He pulls out the letter Uplift Master gave him at the railway station.

Satkar Lodge turns out to be a narrow five-story structure in a warren of such buildings, each one just inches from its neighbors. Mohan Nair, the “man to see in a pinch,” is not to be seen. Philipose hears a radio crackling. He calls out. A face creased like an old map peeks out from a curtained area behind the counter. Mohan Nair’s eyes are bleary and bloodshot, but he has an innkeeper’s easy smile. “How is that old goat?” he says after studying Master’s letter of introduction. “Does he wear that Favre-Leuba watch? Don’t ask how I got it for him. And at that price!”

Philipose says he needs a room for two nights, “and a train ticket to Cochin in three days if you can, please.” He tries to sound like someone who’s sure of what he wants, instead of one whose legs have been chopped off.

“Aah, aah!” Nair says. “Ticket in three days? What else? A flying carpet? Monay, if you get in queue at Central Station, you won’t find a ticket for at least two months.” Philipose’s heart sinks. Nair rings a bell. “But . . . let’s see what I can do.” He winks and flashes the smile that says, In a crooked house, there’s no point using the front door.

That next day, carrying the textbooks he recently purchased, he heads out. Moore Market is a vast quadrangular hall made of red brick and closely resembling a mosque, but with a labyrinth of lanes inside that are lined with stalls. A shrill voice screams in his ear, “Come, madam, best price!” Two mynah birds in a cage dare him to guess which of them spoke. He averts his eyes from the puppies, kittens, rabbits, hares, tortoises, and even baby jackals for sale. This pungent, ammonia-scented area gives way to a section that has the fragrance of newsprint and book bindings. It’s like coming home.

The shelves and the stacked tables in JANAKIRAM BOOKS USED AND NEW are in sections for law, medicine, science, accounting, and humanities. Janakiram presides atop a dais, the ceiling fan inches from his scalp. His half-moon glasses lack temples but find purchase on a bump halfway down his nose. “J. B. Thorpe is the Gita and Veda for cost-accounting,” he says to a young man. “Why pay for Priestley when Thorpe will get you through the exam?” His gaze falls on Philipose, then on the books he carries. He descends from his platform; his spidery fingers gently touch the textbooks that Philipose so recently covered in brown paper. He sends a boy to bring tea and ushers Philipose to an alcove—his puja room. “Thambi, I am refunding money fully, not to worry. But, Ayo, tell me what happened?” he says, once they sit cross-legged facing each other.

Philipose had not planned to tell him the story, but the kindness of this legendary bookseller, a friend to every college student in Madras, persuades him. Jana’s expression goes from concern to indignation, then sadness. To be listened to is healing, as is the brick-red tea, thick with milk, strongly sweetened and with fat cardamom pods floating on top.

“Good tea, that much I will say,” Jana exclaims at last, smacking his lips. “Life is like this. Crushing is there, and success is there. Never only success.” He pauses for emphasis. “I wanted to study. Father died. Crushing! What to do? I work! Buying old newspapers firstly and reselling, then secondly old books. Now? I’m sitting on knowledge! I read anything and everything. Better than education. I am saying you will succeed! Never to give up!”

Crushing, Philipose has had aplenty. He’d wanted to sail the seas like Ishmael, but the Condition dashed that dream early. He told himself he’d explore the world by land, but here he is in Madras and already eager to return. He’s had the crushing. What can success look like now? Janakiram has the answer. “Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!”

Back at the lodge, Mohan Nair has a train ticket for a little over a week from that day. “It’s a miracle. All are worried about Japanese bombing in Ceylon. All trains overbooked only. Speaking of that, let me show you something.” He takes him back into the curtained-off area behind the front desk, where Philipose is surprised to see not one but more than a dozen radios. “I’m selling without any license. Nobody bothered with license till last week, till all this fear of Japanese. Everyone is wary. Oh, and no licenses to be had.” With a twist of the dial, Nair brings in an Englishman’s voice. Philipose instinctively puts his hands on the radio. At once he’s in the place where the sound originates, hearing it with his whole body. The dial turns to orchestral music. “With a radio,” Nair says, “the world comes to your doorstep. You’ll never get one cheaper.”

The next day, it pours, a strange and welcome sight. Roads are flooded. By evening the power is out all over Madras. Moore Market’s dim interior is lit only by candles and lamps because there’s no electricity in the entire city. Philipose is there because of an idea triggered by Nair’s “the world comes to your doorstep.” I may be headed home, but I’ll not be exiled. As long as I have my eyes, then novels, the great lies that tell the truth, the world in its most heroic and salacious forms can always be mine. Even after paying for the radio, he has money left over from the tuition refund. It’s money his mother saved for his education; he hopes she’ll appreciate that he will spend it for just that purpose.

“Brilliant, my friend!” Janakiram says, after hearing him out. “But you’re not the first with same idea!” He leads Philipose to a set of bound, blue volumes with embossed gold lettering, packaged neatly inside their own matching, three-tiered cardboard shelf—a beautiful sight. The spine of each volume is stamped with THE HARVARD CLASSICS. Jana reads from the introductory volume. “A five-foot shelf would hold books enough to afford a good substitute for a liberal education to anyone who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day.”

Philipose recoils at the price. “Not to worry,” Jana assures him. “I have same authors, used only. However, I am protesting Harvard choices. Not enough Russians! Too much Emerson . . . Will you trust Jana to suggest true classics?” Philipose does.

He buys another trunk to hold his treasures: Thackeray, but not Darwin; Cervantes and Dickens, but no Emerson. Hardy, Flaubert, Fielding, Gibbons, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol . . . Though he’s read Moby-Dick and The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, he wants his own copies. Tom Jones is the raciest thing he has ever read in his life. As a parting gift, Jana throws in volumes 14, 17, and 19 of the Encyclopædia Britannica: HUS to ITA, LOR to MEC, and MUN to ODD. The used volumes carry the scent of white people, mildew, and cats.

Two trunks of books and a roped carton holding the polished, faux-ivory-knobbed, mahogany radio now occupy the floor of his room. His purchases are the only thing that allows him to return home with a sense of purpose, instead of abject defeat. He isn’t retreating to Parambil P.O. or fleeing the larger world. He’s bringing it to his doorstep.