The Covenant of Water

1943, Parambil

Philipose was lucky to get out of Madras when he did. The papers say that bus and train stations are jammed with people decamping. He wonders if his classmates are gone too. Everything in Madras is on hold. He is on hold.

He had dreaded having to explain to everyone why he’s back but for now no explanation is needed. Fears of a Japanese invasion grip Travancore. Overnight, the price of paddy skyrockets. South Indian rice is so prized that it all usually goes for export; what is available for consumers in India is cheap imported Burmese rice. But with the fall of Rangoon, imports of rice cease and meanwhile the British have seized and stockpiled locally grown rice, saving it for the troops. This is how one triggers a famine.

Soon, the war slides off the pages of the Manorama and limps up to the house; it takes the form of a decently dressed man with a sardonic smile, a consequence of cheeks so lacking fat that they are glued to the bone. The points of the man’s shoulders jut out like areca nuts, and deep hollows sit above his collarbones. His wife waits with her baby in the shade. The man’s voice quavers. Displaced from Singapore by the Japanese, he came home with nothing. “Forgive me. This morning I said, ‘Should my baby die because pride won’t let me beg?’ So I beg, not for money. Just a morsel of rice, or the water left over from its boiling. We’ve been living on chaff and now that’s gone. My wife’s breasts are shriveled like an ancient’s. She’s just twenty-two.”

Another day, it’s a gaunt man speaking on behalf of his silent brother. The brother’s wife threw herself and their children into a well, seeing that as a kinder fate than slow starvation. One girl managed to pull away, and she stands there now, imprisoning her father’s hand, while her uncle tells this story and begs for food. Philipose identifies a new scent: the fruity, acetone odor of a body consuming itself, the scent of starvation.

Tormented by these sights, Philipose drags out to the muttam the great brass vessel used for Onam and Christmas and sets it on bricks. With Shamuel’s help, he cooks a rice and kappa gruel, mashing in bananas and with coconut oil in place of ghee. He readies banana leaf packets that can be handed out discreetly to select supplicants. If word gets out, there’ll be a stampede.

A few weeks after Philipose’s return, glum relatives gather at Parambil after church, drinking tea. Philipose listens and lip-reads, following the gloomy conversations. The visitors, who don’t really lack for food, talk only about how the current hardship affects them. Surely, they have also had starving people coming to their houses to beg.

“Did you hear about our own Philipose?” Manager Kora says in his usual jocular tone, as though to cheer everyone up. He wheezes chronically and chops up his sentences to take a breath. He speaks as though Philipose isn’t there, while grinning at him. “Philipose came back with a radio! But problem is radio needs electricity. Aah! If there’s no electricity in Travancore, how can it come to Parambil?”

His words get under Philipose’s skin. Kora’s father had the honorific “Manager” bestowed on him by the maharajah for his volunteer work when he lived in Trivandrum. The father deserved the title even if its only privilege was to be addressed as “Manager.” The title isn’t hereditary, though Kora insists it is. The poor father cosigned a loan Kora took out for a business that then failed, and the father lost his Trivandrum property. He would have been homeless had his third cousin—Philipose’s father—not gifted him a house plot at Parambil. After Kora’s father died, Kora showed up at once with his bride to claim his inheritance. It was in the same year that Uplift Master and Shoshamma moved back. Kora was younger and seemed the more outgoing of the two men; Philipose would have guessed Kora was more likely to succeed. He was utterly mistaken. Kora is full of schemes, but nothing comes to fruition.

Everyone adores Kora’s wife, Lizziamma, or Lizzi, as she is called by most. Lizzi is an orphan, convent-educated through pre-degree. She’s good-natured, beautiful, and the spitting image of the goddess Lakshmi in the Raja Ravi Varma painting found on so many calendars. Varma was from the Travancore Royal Family. His foresight in having his own printing press allowed him to widely distribute prints of his paintings. He portrayed his Lakshmi with distinctive Malayali features: a wide cherub’s face, thick, dark eyebrows framing doe eyes, and long wavy hair that reached beyond her hips. Given Varma’s popularity and shrewd business sense, his Malayali Lakshmi is the Lakshmi embedded in the consciousness of Hindus all over India. Philipose thinks Lizzi has no idea how pretty she is; she is humble and quite the opposite of her boastful husband. Big Ammachi adores Lizzi and treats her like a daughter. Lizzi spends a lot of time in Big Ammachi’s kitchen, and when Kora is gone overnight on some new “business” of his, Lizzi sleeps with Big Ammachi and Baby Mol. The only good thing one can say about Kora is that he adores his wife; for all his failings, one must grudgingly admire his devotion to her.

“Kora,” Uplift Master says, “with your maharajah connections didn’t you know that Trivandrum has electricity? The diwan has a campaign to electrify all of Travancore.” The diwan is the chief executive of the maharajah’s government.

“Who said?” Kora’s tone is challenging, but it’s clearly news to him.

“Chaa! There are thermal generators already at Kollam and Kottayam! And here I thought you had your fingers on the pulse of Trivandrum.”

Georgie, sitting next to his twin, says, “Kora’s fingers were in Trivandrum’s pockets, not on the pulse.”

Kora’s smile won’t stay on his face. He makes his excuses and leaves. Philipose doesn’t know whether to feel pleased that Kora was put in his place or to feel sorry for the man. But Kora’s “joke” still bothers him because he knows that what he spent on the radio that sits gathering dust could have fed so many.

He’s haunted by the faces of the starving who show up every day. The packets of gruel he dispenses are just a salve. We must do more. But what? He comes up with a plan and enlists Uplift Master to help him with the execution.

They put up a thatch-roof shed by the boat jetty, then borrow large cauldrons from the Parambil houses, the sort everyone keeps for weddings. They seek out old Sultan Pattar, the legendary wedding cook, who is reluctant until he sees the shed, the stacked wood, the four firepits, and the polished cauldrons. The old man’s blood stirs. Pattar concocts a cheap, nutritious meal with kappa as its base, because every household can donate a few tapioca tubers.

Soon the “Feeding Center” opens. Each person gets a mound of kappa, one dollop of a thoren of moong beans, a dab of a lime pickle, and a teaspoon of salt on their banana leaf. An animated Sultan Pattar is unrecognizable: clean-shaven, shirtless, bouncing on his toes, and barking orders at Pattar’s Army—the enthusiastic Parambil children who are pressed into service to chop, scrape, ladle, and clean. Pattar entertains them, dancing with mincing steps, his breasts jiggling while he belts out songs with sly meanings.

On the first day, they feed nearly two hundred before they run out. After two weeks a reporter visits. He describes Pattar’s simple meal as one of the best in memory and gives Philipose credit for the Feeding Center, describing him as a young man who found it hard to witness so much suffering and not act. Philipose quotes Gandhi: “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of food.” The accompanying photograph shows Sultan Pattar, Uplift Master, and Philipose standing behind Pattar’s Army, the youngest of whom is only five, the oldest fifteen. The article triggers donations, volunteers . . . and more hungry people. Inspired by their example, other Feeding Centers open up across Travancore.

At the end of each day, Philipose writes in his notebooks, trying to capture the conversations he overhears at the Feeding Center, the tales of misery and sacrifice, but also of heroism and generosity. He’s surprised by people’s capacity for humor in the face of suffering. The writing is an exercise, not a journalist’s report, and so he can conflate characters, invent elements that weren’t in the original telling, and make his own endings—“Unfictions” is how he thinks of this genre. He thinks often of Elsie as he writes; is she doing just this with her charcoal stick, trying to make sense of these uncertain times? He closely studies the stories and essays he admires in the Manorama’s weekly magazine. What he’s writing feels different. He decides to submit one of his Unfictions to a short story competition in the Manorama.

SATURDAY COLUMN: THE PLAVU MAN

by V. Philipose

Is it possible to confuse a man with a jackfruit tree—a plavu? Yes. It happened to me. I’m an ordinary man, not a storyteller, so I give you the ending at the beginning. (Why not every story begin with the ending? Why Genesis, Zephaniah, and whatnot when we can begin with the Gospels?) Anyway, this story begins at our Feeding Center. Don’t call it Famine Center because the Government says there’s no famine, no matter what your eyes tell you. After everyone left, a pencil-thin old man came carrying a giant chakka bigger than him. This is for you to feed the children tomorrow, he said. If you have a decent cook you can make a good puzhukku. Brother, I said, forgive me, but you look like you are starving, so why give away your chakka? Ha, I don’t give it, he said. The plavu gives it! Nature is generous. I wanted to say, In that case let the plavu send pickle and rice too. Next day he brought an even bigger chakka. From afar he looked like an ant carrying a coconut. I said, brother, eat puzhukku before you go. He refused. Who refuses a meal in these times? I said, brother, how is it a thin old man can carry such heavy things? What’s the secret? He said: Secrets are hidden in the most obvious places.

That day I passed our famous Ammachi plavu—the mother of all jackfruit trees—the very one in whose hollow our Maharajah Marthanda Varma hid from enemies, centuries ago. Yes, your village claims it has the legendary tree, but you’re wrong. It’s here, so let’s not argue. Anyway, I heard a voice say, Have you come to find my secret? I recognized that old man’s voice. But I saw no one. Show yourself, I said. He said, You’re looking right at me.

If I tell you he leaned on the tree, you’d misunderstand. No, he leaned into the tree. His skin was bark and his eyes were knots in the wood. He said, When the famine started, I had no more paddy. I sat against this plavu and awaited death. The bark was rough, but I thought, why complain? I’m soon leaving this world. After a few hours I sank into the tree. It was comfortable, as if I was resting against my Ammachi’s bosom. I said, Oh mighty plavu, if you can make giant fruit even in drought, can you not nourish me? The plavu said, Why not? So that’s how I am here. The plavu provides me everything. Nature is generous. I said, Old man, if nature is generous, why this famine? He said, Blame human nature that makes merchants hoard and Churchill take our rice for his troops while we starve. I said, Don’t you miss company, living alone like this? He smiled. Who says I’m alone? Look there on that small plavu—do you see Kochu Cherian? And here next to me you see Ponnamma? Why not you come sit on my other side? Nature provides.

Friends, I ran for my life. What’s the shame in saying so? Dear Reader, the moral is give as generously as nature gives. And take a good look at your plavu because secrets are hidden in the most obvious places.

“The Plavu Man” wins first prize and is the only story of the three winners to get published. Philipose takes it as a sign. In the space of a few months, he’s been mentioned in the Manorama for starting the Feeding Center, and now his writing appears there. Perhaps newspaper writing is his true vocation. His success doesn’t silence the snide remarks of the likes of Manager Kora over his not returning to Madras, nor does everyone care for “The Plavu Man”—Decency Kochamma thinks it’s blasphemy. But there’s only one reader whose opinion Philipose cares about, the one reader he writes for. He prays Elsie has seen it; he hopes she can tell that he is bent but not broken.

It is now over a year since his return from Madras, even if the wound of that brief sojourn is still raw. After his first published story, the Manorama editor is willing to see more, but he turns down three stories in a row before publishing the fourth under the heading “The Ordinary Man Column.” It suggests to Philipose that he might get to be a regular contributor, though he doesn’t care for the title the editor chose—who wants to be called ordinary?

In that year and the next Philipose has a few more of his Unfictions published. His writing is well received judging by readers’ letters, though Malayalis can always find fault, and do. Still, nothing prepares him or the newspaper for the uproar that follows the publication of a piece entitled “Why No Self-Respecting Rat Works at the Secretariat.” The narrator is an injured rat who drags himself into a grand government building at night and is delighted to find none of his kind there to compete with. The next morning, the employees of the Secretariat arrive:

This huge open space must be a place of worship, I concluded. God is on high, invisible. The ceiling fans are the manifestation of God because they sit directly over the high priests (who are called Head Clerks). The lower your caste, the further away you sit from the fan. What is the work? Aah, it took me hours to understand though it was staring me in the face: the work is to sit. You come in the morning, you sit and stare at the files in front of you, and you make a long face. Eventually you take out your pen. When the high priest looks your way, you take the first file and untie the laces holding papers down. But whenever the high priest steps out, you and the others jump up and stand near his desk, under the fan, telling jokes. That’s the work.

The Clerical Workers’ Union takes strong exception to Philipose’s piece and calls for the Ordinary Man’s head; the uproar only brings more readers to his column. Public sentiment (along with the Union for Journalists and Reporters) is on the writer’s side, because every citizen of Travancore has had the experience of getting tangled in red tape and leaving the Secretariat disheartened. Uplift Master is the rare individual with the patience and skill to take on bureaucracy; he even relishes the battle.

One reader announces himself late at night with a laughing-dove call, a crescendo, a chuckling sound like a woman being tickled. Philipose emerges and greets Joppan by punching him hard on the shoulder. “That’s for not coming by to see me for so long.”

“Aah, did that make you feel better?” Joppan is as sturdy as ever, his compact frame low to the ground, and shoulders as broad as his smile. He has a bottle of toddy in one hand and with the other he punches Philipose back. “And that’s for me being the last person to know that you were a Communist all this time.”

“Is that what I am?” Philipose rubs his stinging shoulder.

“Didn’t you start the Feeding Center? You care enough to do something. I’m proud of you. Vladimir Lenin said, ‘The press should be not only a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.’ So you see, your actions, your words—you’re a revolutionary!”

“Aah, alright. Now I can sleep better. So, how are you, Joppan?”

Joppan shrugs. Iqbal’s barge business, just like every business around, has ground to a halt. Iqbal can’t pay him, but since Joppan is like a son to him, he feeds him. Joppan says, “Look at me. I speak and write Malayalam and can read English. I can keep accounts. I know the backwaters inside out. But now I’m lucky to work as a day laborer now and then. In the evenings I attend Party meetings. It feeds my brain if not my belly. I sleep on the barge because if I come home all I do is argue with my father.”

Philipose says, “You can’t expect him to change.”

Joppan sighs. “He and Amma want me to marry, can you believe? I barely support myself!” He laughs. “I may do it to make them happy. Nothing else I do pleases them.”

They talk just like old times till past midnight when Joppan rises to leave, glowing from the toddy of which he’s had the lion’s share. “About the Feeding Center. I meant it, Philipose—I’m proud of you. You’re saving lives. But think about this, Philipose: if nothing changes, if the people have no way to escape poverty, if the pulayar can never own land or pass on wealth to their children, then the next time there’s a famine, it’ll be the same people standing in line. And it will take people like you to feed them.”

That thought makes it harder for Philipose to fall asleep.

A few weeks later, Big Ammachi announces that Joppan is to be married the next day.

“What? It can’t be! He never told me. Did he invite us?”

“It’s not for Joppan to invite. Shamuel invited us today. And now I’m telling you.” Seeing his crestfallen face she says, “Look, it’s not some alliance they spent months planning. It must have just happened.”

“Where’s the wedding? At their CSI church? I’m going.”

“Don’t be silly. It doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m going anyway,” he says peevishly. “Joppan will be glad to see me.”

“No, you are not,” his mother says firmly. “That family means too much to us. Don’t embarrass them just because you don’t understand your place.”

After the wedding, the new couple and the groom’s parents come calling, bearing jaggery sweets. Joppan grins sheepishly as he squeezes Philipose’s hand. He murmurs, “I told you I would.”

“You said you might!”

His bride, Ammini, is shy, and keeps her head covered so Philipose never gets a good look at her. Shamuel beams as if all his worries are over and he holds his son’s hand affectionately. Big Ammachi presents the couple with three bolts of cotton, a shiny new set of brass vessels, and a fat envelope. Joppan brings his palms together and bends to touch her feet, but she stops him. Shamuel and Sara run their hands over the gifts like excited children. Philipose marvels at his mother’s foresight. After they leave, she tells him that she’s given Shamuel a rectangular house plot behind his own for him to build a separate dwelling for Joppan and his new daughter-in-law if he wants to, or to give to the couple outright.

One year and four months from the time Uplift Master first began his petition campaign, electricity comes to Parambil P.O. from a substation two miles away. Only four families were willing to share the cost for the extension. Uplift Master says, “When the others decide they want electricity, they’ll have to pay a share of our initial costs adjusted for price increases. We might even get our investment back.”

In the glow of twenty-watt bulbs, the electrified households celebrate while their neighbors grumble. For Philipose, the expression on Baby Mol’s face as she switches on the “small sun” makes it all worthwhile. Insects swoop in from the dark and swarm around the bulb as though the invertebrate Messiah has arrived. Philipose fires up the radio that has sat idle for so long. A man’s voice fills the room, reading the news in English, and at that moment, Philipose, his hand on the cabinet, feels vindicated. He has brought the world to his doorstep. Odat Kochamma, hearing the disembodied foreign voice, comes at once, grabbing the first thing she finds on the clothesline to cover her head—it happens to be Baby Mol’s underwear. Philipose sees her in the doorway, making the sign of the cross, with the strange cloth hanging over her forehead. “Stand up, monay!” she says sternly. “A voice from nowhere is the voice of God!” She’s not entirely convinced by his explanations. He dials in music, and Baby Mol dances till she has to go to bed. Hours later, he’s still bent over the radio, feeling like he is Odysseus steering his galley over crackly shortwave oceans. He stumbles onto a theater performance and is transported from Parambil to a distant stage, echoing words he has by-hearted. “If it be now, ’tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.”

Big Ammachi declines an electric bulb in her bedroom, or in the kitchen. Her oil lamp, her old, faithful friend, its base worn and shaped to her palm and fingers, suffices; she takes comfort in its golden halo, the liquid shadows it throws on the floors and walls, and the smell of the burning wick. These swimming elements of her night she’d rather leave just as they are.

Before she goes to bed, Big Ammachi brings hot jeera water to her son. The ethereal glow from the dial illuminates his face. The world deserves his curiosity, his good heart, and his writing, she thinks. He once sought a larger world than she could ever imagine. Instead, he has settled for his books and his radio. She hopes it suffices. Lord, she prays, tell me this was where my son was meant to be.

Philipose senses her, turns, and says, “Ammachio!” He waves her in and turns off the radio for the first time in many hours. His face is flushed with excitement, and he looks a little nervous. She braces herself for what his new passion might be.

“Ammachi,” he says. “I want you to send for Broker Aniyan. I’m ready.”