The Covenant of Water

1943, Madras to Parambil

The other passengers in the cubicle have long ago settled in, stored their luggage, and pulled out their cushions and playing cards, by the time a soaked, bedraggled Philipose boards. His porters shove around the other passengers’ bags, trying to make room under the two benches for both his trunks and the carton with the radio. A large woman in a yellow sari, baby on her lap, is incensed when one porter topples her suitcase, and she scolds him in choice Tamil; the porter responds in spades. A young woman in dark glasses and with a scarf over her hair defuses the situation by telling the porter to put the carton and one trunk on the uppermost berth—hers—just as the train jerks into motion.

Ten cubicles in a carriage, six passengers to a cubicle, three seated on each facing bench. At night, two berths above each bench fold down, and the benches become berths as well. From adjacent cubicles Philipose hears laughter and happy voices. But in his, the fellowship of a shared journey eludes them; he is responsible.

He pulls out his notebook. On the first page he’s written axioms from Gurumurthy. “One writes to know what one is thinking.” “If hearing is impaired ensure that olfaction and vision become hyperacute.”

In the periphery of Philipose’s vision he is conscious of the bobbling Adam’s apple of the thin chap next to him; the man’s fluttering fingers that adjust his spectacles are sure signs of incipient speech. He gives off a mysterious scent of camphor, menthol, and tobacco.

“Next station is Jolarpet,” the man blurts out. “The busiest alleged junction in Asia!” Philipose finds his hearing is enhanced on the train, just as Gurumurthy predicted, because in noisy places, people turn up the volume and pitch.

“Is it really?” Philipose caps his pen, grateful to be spoken to.

“Indubitably! Technically, it’s not a junction. Junction means four ways, is it not? But Jolarpet is only three ways! Salem, Bangalore, and Madras!”

Philipose indicates he’s impressed. His seatmate beams and proffers a bony hand. “Arjun-Kumar-Railways.” He opens a tiny, engraved metal box that explains the strange scents, takes a pinch, and sniffs, expertly absorbing the instantaneous double-sneeze. He settles back, noticeably calmer.

The young lady with the scarf sitting next to Arjun who had allowed the porters to store his baggage on her berth removes her sunglasses and leans over. “May I see?” she says politely. Her fingernail traces the etched leaf-and-bud-pattern engraving. It’s unusual for a single woman to initiate conversation. Philipose is struck by the delicate vein arching over the back of her hand, tributaries gathering from between her knuckles. Her hands look capable, like those of a tailor or a watchmaker.

“This is such fine engraving!” Her voice is striking for its low timbre. She turns the box over and squints at the lettering, worn away by use. “Do you know what it says?”

“Yes, I am knowing, Young Miss!” Arjun-Kumar-Railways giggles and swallows, his eyeballs magnified by his spectacles. She waits.

“And . . . can you tell me?”

“Indubitably I can!”

She and Philipose exchange glances and come to the same realization: for Arjun-Kumar-Railways, anything but a literal answer is as egregious as calling something a “junction” when it isn’t. She smiles. Her scent is fresh, a faint hint of a perfumed soap that Gurumurthy wouldn’t approve of (because perfumes overpower olfaction) but Philipose finds delightful.

“Then would you please tell me what it says?”

“Certainly! It is saying, ‘Don’t swear, here it is.’ ”

There’s a pause before she laughs, a bright, delightful sound.

Arjun Railways is beyond pleased. “You see, Young Miss, snuffing is very impatience! Supposing it is time, and supposing you are wanting your pinch, then if you are not having, swearing will be there, is it not?” His excitable, high-pitched voice is a contrast to hers. “I am having collection of snuffboxes at home,” Arjun Railways says proudly. “My hobby. This one is for travel only. However, just now in Madras I purchased new one. One moment, Young Miss.”

As he searches, Young Miss tears a sheet from her notebook, places it on the snuffbox, then rubs with her pencil to reveal the exquisite foliate pattern. Arjun hands her his newest acquisition, a jeweled box, hand-painted with a fine brush, showing turbaned horsemen riding through a mother-of-pearl desert.

“Art on a snuffbox!” Young Miss says, almost to herself, completely absorbed, tracing the outline with her fingernail.

“Correctly you told, Miss! Every human bad habit generates art! Cigarette cases, whisky bottles, opium pipes, is it not?”

“I read that this is called the ‘anatomical snuffbox,’ ” says Young Miss, arching her thumb back to exaggerate the shallow, triangular depression on the back of her hand between the two tendons that run from the thumb base to the wrist. Philipose is mesmerized by the elegance of that bowed digit resembling a swan’s neck, and by the fine, translucent hairs on her forearm. She looks up at the two men inquiringly. Her close-set eyes slope up at the outer edges, an angle echoed by her eyebrows, giving her an exotic look, like an Egyptian queen. Her nose is sharp, in keeping with her slender face. Young Miss is erasing every woman on earth from Philipose’s head, just as in Shakespeare’s play Juliet displaces Rosaline.

Arjun frowns. “Indubitably, some are putting podi there only and snuffing-sniffing! Pinching is preferable.”

Young Miss looks tall even while seated, with a dancer’s elongated posture. Her scarf has slipped to reveal thick black hair gathered in a simple plait, which she now draws over her left shoulder, an unconscious movement, its tapered end snapping like a whip and reaching her waist. Hers is not a beauty that is easy to grasp, Philipose thinks. (Later, in his notebook he will write, “A woman with unconventional beauty raises the hope that the viewer might be the only one to see it, that in recognizing and appreciating it, he alone has created her beauty.”)

Young Miss says, “Well, now I think we must try it.” Her lips curve up. Her eyes show mischief. She looks directly at Philipose. “What say you?”

If it pleases Young Miss, yours truly will snuff-and-sniff baby scorpions. Young Miss and Philipose each take a pinch, heeding Arjun’s caution to “sniff only! No breath inhaling. Sniiii-fffff-ing gently only to front of nostril! Kindly avoid going to backward compartment. Kindly observe.” Arjun demonstrates and at once, like the recoil of a rifle, he sneezes twice, after which his face relaxes. “Precisely two sneezes will be there. Unless there are more.”

Young Miss and Philipose sniffffff . . . then sneeze in unison, twice. Their mouths are agape as another sneeze hangs there. They sneeze four more times. A duet. Mrs. Yellow Sari bursts into loud peals of laughter and the others join in. The ice has melted.

After Jolarpet, Philipose rocks the infant to sleep as Meena—Mrs. Yellow Sari—repairs to the toilet and her husband readies their berths. Arjun deals cards, teaching Young Miss to play Twenty-Eight. When the sun sets, the tiffin carriers and dinner packets emerge. All class distinctions have vanished in Third Class, C Cubicle. Philipose has food thrust at him from every direction; he’s grateful because he brought nothing. The taciturn Brahmin with winking ear-diamonds and shabby slippers is of course vegetarian and he offers his thayir sadam (rice soaked in yogurt and salt) in exchange for a taste of Meena’s chicken roast. “Not telling wife. Why to simply worry her?” Meena’s eight-tiered tiffin carrier is the size of an artillery shell. Young Miss’s contribution is a tin of delectable Spencer’s biscuits, packed in pink tissue.

By ten o’clock, Meena’s husband and baby are asleep on the middle bunk and the Brahmin snores above. Meena, her mouth red with paan, leans forward to confide to Young Miss (and therefore to Arjun and Philipose) that the man snoring on the middle bunk “is my cousin only.” They’ve lived as husband and wife in Madras for three years. “How it happened, you ask?” Young Miss had not. “We studied together till fifth standard. I liking him and he too liking same. But cousins, no? What to do? My parents married me off. On wedding day only I’m first seeing my husband. Good-looking, fair complexion, like you. But after marriage I find he is child only. Outside, looking normal. Inside, he is ten-year-old. After two years, I’m still remaining innocent. He didn’t know how!” Her in-laws blamed Meena. When her cousin, who had prospered in Madras, came to visit, they fell in love and eloped.

The anonymity of a train journey, Philipose thinks, gives strangers license for such intimate revelations. Or the freedom to invent. If I’m asked who, where, and why, I’ll make something up. If they want a story, they shall have just that. But what is my story?

“Me? I’ve run away too, I suppose,” says Young Miss when Meena asks. This startles her listeners. It’s not surprising that a college-aged girl is traveling unaccompanied. The communal atmosphere of the third-class sleeper is safer than first class (there is no second class), where the individual private cabins have doors that lock, rendering a woman vulnerable to whoever gains entry. “The nuns at college didn’t care for me,” she says. “Perhaps because I didn’t care for them.”

“And your good father and mother?”

“My mother is no more. My father won’t be too happy.”

Philipose is thrilled to realize they are in a similar predicament. Her confession diminishes the sting of his retreat to Parambil. But Young Miss is weathering her return better. He notices the cross on her necklace; she must be a Saint Thomas Christian, though all conversation in this cubicle with passengers from Madras, Mangalore, Vijayawada, Bombay, and Travancore has been in English thus far.

Meena clucks sympathetically. “Why college anyway? A waste. After wedding it won’t matter.”

“I hope my father sees it that way. But I’m not ready for marriage, Meena. Not yet.”

Soon Meena stretches out and just the three snuff-sniffers are awake. Philipose’s berth is the bench on which they sit; he can retire only when they do. Young Miss’s pencil flies across the creamy pages of a notebook twice the size of his. Philipose wishes Arjun would go to his berth, but he is making calculations on a racing form. Of course, if Arjun retired, Philipose would have to find the courage to talk to Young Miss. His pen flows with his glittering ink, giving voice to an inner dialogue that has perhaps always been there. It’s exciting. Why did “Ink-Boy,” as Koshy Saar calls him, come to this discovery so late? How many insights vanished in the ether because they weren’t written down?

A loose, folded foolscap paper falls out of his notebook. It is a scribbled list of possible careers he’d considered, careers that didn’t require a classroom or normal hearing. A painful memory emerges of his new classmates turning to look at him: Wake up! Isn’t that your name they’re calling? Discouraged, he puts the paper away. Besides, every career he listed there he crossed out. Yes, he’d been aware that his hearing wasn’t as acute as others’ before this, but in the insulated world of secondary school, sitting in the front and so close to the teachers that he could feel their saliva spray, he’d managed. He’d always felt the burden was on others to make sure he heard them. All his life to this point, it has been his feud with water—the ­Condition—that has felt like the real handicap. Never his hearing.

Young Miss leaves to wash up. Arjun climbs to the middle bunk and is soon snoring. Philipose must get his luggage off Young Miss’s bunk if she is to lie down. He removes the bulky cardboard box with the radio, setting it on his bench. Next, he grapples with the trunk full of books, sliding it to the edge, but then, when it tilts onto his hands, it threatens to topple him. A pair of strong hands—Young Miss!—comes to his aid and together they lower it to the bench. She grins, as though they’ve pulled off a superhuman feat together. She waits.

“Don’t mention,” she says, looking directly at him.

He failed to say thank you! It was because of her presence so close to him. He was caught up in the scent of her minty toothpaste, forgetting his manners, forgetting everything.

“Sorry!—I mean, thank you. And thank you for letting the porter . . .” It feels intimate to be staring into her pupils. He has never made eye contact for this long with a woman who wasn’t family. The train feels suspended in space.

“That trunk feels full of bricks,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Yes, as many books as I could afford.” Did she say books or bricks? “And more in that trunk too,” he says, pointing to the one under the seat that toppled Meena’s suitcase.

She ponders this information. “And that carton? Also books?”

“A radio. You see, I’m heading home. For reasons similar to yours,” he blurts. What happened to his plan to spin a tale? “Not nuns, but I too was sent away from college. Issues with my hearing . . . they claim. But it’s all right. It’s probably a blessing.” He’s shocked by his own confession.

She nods. “Me too. I was studying home economics.” She makes a wry face and laughs. “Which one can surely study at home. Still, I would have stayed in college. But it wasn’t up to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. As you said, it’s a blessing.”

“Well . . . For what I wanted to learn—literature—I didn’t need to be in Madras. I won’t let it stop me. One thing I know, I love to learn. I love literature. With these books I can sail the seven seas, chase a white whale . . .”

She glances down. “Unlike Ahab you have both legs.”

She knows his favorite book! He follows her gaze helplessly, as though to confirm that he does indeed have both legs. He laughs. “Yes,” he says, with some feeling. “I’m luckier than Ahab. I have been bent and broken but I hope into better shape.”

She digests that. “Good for you,” she says finally. “And with a radio, the world comes to you, doesn’t it?”

These are the most words he’s ever exchanged with a woman his age. His eyes are on her lips. She asked a question. He’s already invoked Ahab. And Dickens. He worries he’s sounding pompous. He should crack a joke. But what if it sounds stupid? Besides, he can’t think of one. He opens his mouth to speak, to say something . . . but God help him, she’s so beautiful, her eyes such a pale gray . . . She can see every thought of his as it bounces around his skull. His brain is overheating and seizes, when all he has to say is yes.

“Well, goodnight then,” she says softly. She moves to the ladder, one foot on the first rung, then pauses. “Was that Great Expectations?”

“Yes! Yes, it was. Estella!”

“Please can you say it again?”

“Indubitably I can.”

After a beat, she bursts out laughing. They glance guiltily at the sleeping Arjun, and she leans forward, lowering her voice. “Well, would you please say it again?”

“I have been bent and broken but I hope into better shape.”

She smiles her thanks. She nods slowly. Then her face disappears.

He watches her pale soles, so creamy and soft, float up the ladder, trailed by the hem of her cotton sari and the shimmery slip beneath. She vanishes but the image lingers—the fleeting glimpse of the ball of her foot, of the underside of her big toe, the other toes winging out in its wake, babies trailing the mother. A slow heat starts in his belly and spreads to his limbs. He slumps heavily on the bench, then raps his head on the window bars—but softly. Idiot! Why didn’t you converse more? Did you even ask her name? I didn’t want to be inquisitive. What do you mean “inquisitive”? It’s called making conversation! Belatedly he remembers a joke: What do you call a Malayali who doesn’t ask for your family name, where you live, your income, and what’s in the bag you carry? A deaf-mute. That’s you.

He settles in as best he can against his luggage, unable to stretch out. He sets aside the loose foolscap paper with its list of careers crossed out, and now his pen races back and forth in the bound journal.

She must think I’m the sort who sniffs when others sniff, eats when they eat, and speaks only when spoken to. But I’m not! Please don’t judge me, Young Miss, from my hesitation. And was it fair for him to judge her as he had, sure of herself, willing to ask about things that interested her but content also to keep her peace when someone doesn’t reply? He’s acutely aware of her lying above him, only Arjun Railways between them.

He wakes to blinding light and a shockingly verdant landscape: flooded paddy fields with narrow mud bunds snaking between them, barely containing the water whose still surface mirrors the sky; coconut palms that are as abundant as leaves of grass; tangled cucumber vines on the side of a canal; a lake crowded with canoes; and a stately barge parting the smaller vessels like a processional down a church aisle. His nostrils register jackfruit, dried fish, mango, and water.

Even before his brain digests these sights, his body—skin, nerve endings, lungs, heart—recognizes the geography of his birth. He never understood how much it mattered. Every bit of this lush landscape is his; its every atom contains him. On this blessed strip of coast where Malayalam is spoken, the flesh and bones of his ancestors have leached into the soil, made their way into the trees, into the iridescent plumage of the parrots on swaying branches, and dispersed themselves into the breeze. He knows the names of the forty-two rivers running down from the mountains, one thousand two hundred miles of waterways, feeding the rich soil in between, and he is one with every atom of it. I’m the seedling in your hand, he thinks, as he gazes on Muslim women in colorful long-sleeved blouses and mundus, with cloths loosely covering their hair, bent over at the waist like paper creased down the middle, moving as one line through the paddy fields, poking new life into the soil. Whatever is next for me, whatever the story of my life, the roots that must nourish it are here. He feels transformed as though by a religious experience, but it has nothing to do with religion.

Young Miss returns from the washroom and stops Philipose when he makes to move his trunk and carton from the bench; she squeezes in beside him and Arjun. She dons her sunglasses with their cat’s-eye corners and wraps her scarf round her neck, as though steeling herself for what’s ahead. Arjun, he sees, is freshly shaved and sports a crisp shirt and a Vishnu namam, its three-pronged pitchfork a contrast to the elderly Brahmin’s namam, which is a horizontal brushstroke, indicating his allegiance to Shiva. Lines are drawn—Shaivites versus Vaishnavites—but both men smile. Arjun confides to Philipose, “Half my life is spent on trains. Strangers of all religions, all castes getting on so well in a compartment. Why not same outside train? Why not simply all getting along?” Arjun looks out of the window and swallows hard.

Philipose hasn’t time to respond because they’re in Cochin. A porter grabs one of his trunks, while Meena’s porter threatens to take off with his radio. In the confusion, Young Miss taps his shoulder and hands him his folded sheet of foolscap paper. It must have slipped out of his notebook. She says farewell wordlessly with a brief tilt of her head and a smile. Good luck, her eyes say. Then she’s gone.

Once he’s on the bus to Changanacherry, with all his luggage accounted for, he can relax. But he’s furious with himself for not asking for Young Miss’s name. “Idiot! Idiot!” He smacks his forehead on the seat in front of him. Its occupant turns and glares at him. He digs out his foolscap, embarrassed at the thought of Young Miss reading his list of careers. But there’s an additional sheet folded in. It’s one of hers—a portrait. It shows him asleep, his head resting against the window of the train, his body bent sideways, the carton with the radio pushing at his ribs. His lips are set together, the philtrum a dugout in the flesh above the vermilion border of his upper lip.

We have no practice, he thinks, of seeing our real selves. Even before a mirror we compose our faces to meet our own expectations. But Young Miss has captured him completely: his thwarted ambition, his anxiety about what comes next. She has also caught his determination. He’s heartened by this, and even more thrilled to see the way she depicts his hands, one resting on the radio, the other on the trunk full of books. Their resting posture speaks to his old courage, his confidence, the hands of a determined man. My father cleared a jungle; he did what others thought impossible. I’ll do no less.

How is it that in just a few pencil strokes she captured all this, even the cool breeze that blew in during the early morning, numbing one side of his face? Thank goodness he didn’t invent some story for her and just told her the truth. Because she’d have seen through everything.

At the bottom of the paper, she’s written:

Bent and broken, but in better shape. Good luck.

Always,

E.

A lifetime ago, a schoolgirl named Elsie had sketched him as he took his first-ever ride in her father’s Chevrolet. He’d been so preoccupied then, so sick with worry, knowing that given the flash flooding, his mother would be fearing the worst. A much younger Young Miss had sat in the back seat with him and slid her fingers over to touch the hand that had somehow helped a baby live. He’d affixed that early portrait of him to the inside of his wardrobe: it was a more accurate reflection than the mirror image on the outside.

If Young Miss is none other than Chandy’s daughter, grown up and even more skilled with her pencils, then surely fate brought them together. He revisits their exchange on the train, and the way she looked . . . her wordless goodbye, her parting smile indelible in his memory.

The bus lurches to a stop and the driver streaks out behind some bushes. “Had to go, is it?” a woman grumbles. “If men only knew how women suffer! ‘Had to go’ means you wait!” The scent of his fellow passengers—coconut oil, wood smoke, sweat, betel leaf, and tobacco plugs—smothers him and brings him back to reality. Saint Thomas Christians are a relatively small community and rarely marry outside. Even so, Chandy, with his Chevrolet and his vast tea estate and his State Express 555 lifestyle, has many, many candidates to consider for his only daughter, all of whom will be boys who are extremely rich and incredibly accomplished, or at least extremely rich. At Parambil, they are very well off, but it doesn’t compare to the likes of the Thetanatts.

The bus starts again, and the motion jump-starts a change in his attitude, a new resolve taking hold. I won’t give her up. Elsie is beautiful, talented, willful. Surely she felt their connection, felt that they shared more than just snuff. She must have recognized him at once, though she only revealed herself to him at journey’s end. Elsie, I’ll make a name for myself. I’ll be worthy of you, he thinks. And then I’ll have Big Ammachi approach Broker Aniyan to propose an alliance. The worst that can happen is your side says no. But at least I’ll have tried, and you’ll know I did. “But, oh, Elsie, please wait. Give me at least a few years.” The couple in the seat in front turns to glare at him—he must have spoken aloud. The man says to his wife, “Avaneu vatta.”

Yes, I am mad. You can’t set out to achieve your goals without a little madness.