The Gypsy Goddess (12 page)

Paappa, heavily pregnant and full of stories that she culled from her friends, said that Rasathi of Velankanni had been attacked by a landlord, and the elders of her caste had decreed that he must seek her apology and bear her medical expenses, but the landlords had taken offence and crippled them through social boycotts and 200 men came in six tractors to rampage through the
cheri
and two days later Rasathi committed suicide by drinking Polydol, ashamed and afraid of all the evil that she would further bring upon her people.

And then they shared more stories.

And then these women said that if the men wanted their mothers and wives and sisters and daughters to live with some honour and dignity, they should stay by the Communists and continue to fight these rowdy landlords.

One can also safely assume that at this critical juncture, Muthusamy, the Communist Party leader in Kilvenmani, would have giddily quoted Comrade Sukumaran's favourite French Revolution quote – ‘Those who make revolutions halfway only dig their own graves.' He had been saving up these words for a long, long time.

Any sociologists and other bored academics who may scour my novel for information about the sexual, alcoholic and deviant indulgences of my protagonists will be sorely disappointed. I am telling a story so that a story gets told, not with the intention that somebody, somewhere, is going to be awarded a PhD for studying the postmodern perversions of this novel. If you want to learn who was boozing that morning, who were the two lovers who stayed away from the village meeting for a secret rendezvous, or which was the one family that had switched its loyalty to Gopalakrishna Naidu, you won't find that information here.

Okay, curiosity is inevitable and I can understand why you would want to know at least some of the things said at the village meeting. Of course, you are aware of the fact that I was not there, so to make up these monologues-dialogues-speeches-soliloquies on demand causes great discomfort to me as a writer. Here are three snippets. Go ahead, paste your smiley faces on them.

Dialogue 1
: Srinivasan, angered by his brother Subramanian being the go-between, threatened to stop talking to him if he kept pleading the case of the landlords. He is also said to have called Subramanian a
thodanadungi
, a Tamil insult that signalled way more derision than its literal translation: a man-with-twitching-thighs.

Dialogue 2
: ‘Bait does not become food,' Muthusamy said.

And in order to dangle a convincing explanation for his aphorism, he pointed out that everyone in the village would have witnessed first-hand the fate of the hungry fish who seeks to eat an easy worm. This fishy symbolism was not immediately understood because the people who were fighting for increased wages and more paddy were in no mood to listen to a man who was pontificating about a mysterious fish that should hunt for food and not be beguiled by an offered feast.

‘What is being offered to us by the landlords – like the loans they lend us during marriages, like the arrack money they give us once a week, like the promise to provide us jobs when we join their association – these are baits. None of these will change our life. None of these will give us rights. None of these will make us own the land we till. None of these will make us their equals. None of these will make them treat us with respect. They are not waiting to become our brothers. They are using every opportunity to lure us into their fold. We should remain clever,' he said, and, returning to his metaphor, added, ‘and not bite the bait.'

Then he underlined the importance of sticking with the Communists because they were fighting for the rights of the workers and the tillers and the toilers. He also reminded the others that the Agricultural Labourers Trade Union was fifteen years old, but the Paddy Producers Association
– an overnight mushroom – was only three years old. He believed this fifteen-year-old fledging movement would fight and uproot centuries of caste and feudalism.

‘Oppression must be met with transgression,' he said.

So, he asked the people of Kilvenmani to be brave.

He also said, ‘Transgression will be met with more oppression.'

And so, he asked the people of Kilvenmani to be more brave.

Dialogue 3
: Karuppaiah swore that his pubic hair will not be plucked either by the elder-sister-fucking Gopalakrishna Naidu or the elder-sister-fucking god who created that elder-sister-fucker. The others might have nodded in vehement agreement, reaffirming their firm belief either in the tensile strength of his pubic hair, or in the epilatory ineptitude of Gopalakrishna Naidu and his maker.

Revolutions are usually verbose and, sometimes, they make too many promises.

Since the issue of funeral processions of the untouchables not being allowed to pass through the caste-Hindu streets had been raised at the meeting, a comrade took this opportunity to tell Kaveri and Kuppammal, the two old women who had the singular misfortune of standing next to him, ‘
Kilavi
,
kilavi
, when you both die, we will take your bodies through their streets.' And then, looking at Veerappan's daughter, who stood there mute and motionless, exorcism having failed her, he said ‘This is not only for the
kilavis
, but for you, too.'

He thought he was being nice.

The system of slavery in these parts has its own hate-list: late-comers, talk-backers, work-shirkers. This system of slavery believes in discipline and punishment and immediate enforcement. This system of slavery delivers justice faster than the local fisherwoman.

Now we take a look at a single case study.

Ratnam had been punished previously for one misdemeanour or the other, but even he was not prepared for the thrashing that he received on 18 December 1968, a date that would remain etched in his mind till his dying day. He was accused of having put the first signature to a memorandum against Gopalakrishna Naidu, he was accused of pasting the party posters up in the Thevur market, he was accused of having beaten up the only man from Kilvenmani who had joined the Paddy Producers Association, he was accused of making his village rally around the red flag. He was called an ungrateful dog and a stupid pig and a whore-son's whoreson, among other appellations.

When a bleeding Ratnam goes to the Keevalur police station, Inspector Rajavel doesn't accept the complaint. He comes up with a convincing excuse – perhaps he says, ‘This will work against you in the long run,' or he says, ‘It is easy for me to file a complaint but that will turn both of you into permanent enemies,' or he says, ‘You may be the secretary of the Communist Party in Kilvenmani, but do you have even a single person who would dare to give witness in your
favour?' or one of those other things that policemen say when they have decided not to take you seriously.

A stubborn Ratnam is sent away home.

Today, at the meeting, he is Kilvenmani's hero. His first daughter, Virammal, married in Niruthanimangalam, has come with Sankar, her infant son, to see him. His fame has travelled far.

What did the party do? What could the party have done?

The party had seen glorious days. But the red salute could only unite up to a certain point. Fault-lines began to appear along the issue of untouchability. People started choosing convenient options that kept their caste codes intact.

Some deserted the party because the Indian National Congress made no ideological demands of them. Others deserted the party because the DMK had emerged as a new alternative to the Congress. Even the black-shirted Self-Respecters who did not contest elections started treating communism as though it were nothing more than a superstition. In East Tanjore, the party was patronized only by the Pallars and Paraiyars and other outcastes.

When approached by the people of Kilvenmani, the party made it clear that it did not make a decision on every isolated strike and uprising. It also said that it would not intercede with the landlords. The party said that it stood by the
cheri
because the
cheri
stood by the red flag. The party demanded loyalty: the feudal origins of this important trait were conveniently forgotten.

When they complained to the party about the 250 rupee fine that Gopalakrishna Naidu was demanding, the party told them not even to dream of paying up. The party said that soon Gopalakrishna Naidu's Paddy Producers Association would be banned, and therefore there was nothing to fear.

When the people said that the landlords would not give them work during the harvest season, the party promised to speak about the issue in the Legislative Assembly. The party said it had its representatives there.

When the party's local office told the party's high command that Gopalakrishna Naidu had held a meeting in Kilvenmani, the party's high command wrote back to the party's local office that the will of the working people would always defeat the feudal forces.

When the people found the theory too romantic to be reassuring and when they cried that Gopalakrishna Naidu had publicly announced a ten-day deadline for burning their village, the party's high command told them, through the proper channel, not to panic unduly. At this point, the party's secretary in Nagapattinam, Meenakshisundaram, reminded the perturbed villagers that he had written to the chief minister of the Madras presidency a few days before, pointing out all the havoc that was being wreaked by the Paddy Producers Association, and had sought for security for Kilvenmani. The high command unofficially said that the people would not come to any harm because their party was in a coalition with the DMK, the ruling party.

The party had morphed itself to enjoy the charms of the parliamentary system, and it consoled its cadre that it was playing by the rules of this new game.

But also to fulfil its role as a revolutionary force among
the proletariat for which it was originally intended, the party's local offices held public meetings everywhere. At Thevur and Tiruvarur. At Iluppur and Karuveli. At Avarani and Manjakkollai and Puducherry. At Sikkal too, where it had lost one of its most daring comrades.

The party continued to work among the people, the party continued to keep their spirits high. The party also provided protection.

The people remained silent, by order of the party.

In the midst of the struggle and the starvation, there are songs.

don't be blind, open your eyes; don't be meek, speak out; don't be a slave, straighten your spine. let the toiling blood thunder, let the crestfallen chest stand upright, let the working class unite! only our shackles shall be lost, in front of us is a golden world! the past is a dream, the future is a new epoch! these times are ours, comrades, we shall see a world of smiling faces and satisfied lives! long live the union, victory to the revolution!

These songs don't work in translation.

They are here only to remind the reader that the historical events of this novel did not take place in any English-speaking country. Don't you even try to get familiar with what goes on around here, for it is not only the sounds of my native land that you will find staggering.

Sorry.

This could be the first and last time you encounter many of the characters who have appeared in this chapter. I plead guilty to the charge of being ultra-utilitarian, but, as far as I know, a novel is not about manners. You do not have to let people stay at your place only because it does not look nice if they are ordered out. Here, I simply push them off the page. Don't bother asking me about authorial decorum and all that jazz. I am not running for Miss Congeniality. I stopped practising politeness at tenth grade.

Because I have taken pleasure in the aggressive act of clobbering you with metafictive devices, I can hear some of you go: what happened to the rules of a novel?

They are hanging on my clothesline over there.

7.
A Walking Corpse

My mother told me never to talk to strangers. Being a woman who has consistently disobeyed her mother, and having caused her a variety of near-fatal panic attacks and palpatations by having all kinds of affairs with all kinds of strangers, I take up this assignment with the belief that my mother will never come to hear of this trespass.

The job at hand goes beyond speaking/sleeping with a stranger; here, I am asked to share a blank page with Gopalakrishna Naidu.

Some day, I should sue myself for exposing a nice Tamil woman to sexual harassment and other untold dangers. Given my ‘decent' upbringing and my mother's never-ending sermons on morality, I should have never stayed in a room with such a vile lecher, but fiction robs me of the little morality left in me. To be honest, I don't remember the door being left ajar, so I could not have walked out in the middle even if I had wanted to. Only the windows are wide open, and, through the security bars, I send my
apologies to my mother. Some day she will understand the multifarious circumstances that demanded me to step into the slippers of Seshappa Iyer, Gopalakrishna Naidu's legal consultant and Srinivasa Naidu, his regular letter-writer. Right now, I have a pressing, depressing job. I cannot allow my mother to judge me when I am at work.

As I am being briefed on the case – increasing Communist violence and intimidation through public meetings signal an imminent threat to Gopalakrishna Naidu, who will be reduced to a walking/sleeping corpse if the chief minister does not intervene – an unfamiliar letter pad is placed in front of me. When I am not set a word count, or there is no mention of a deadline, my imagination crumbles. Thankfully, he comes up with an instruction: ‘All you have to write to the chief minister is that communism will kill me.'

I am unable to fill the gap, being a stranger to the grass-roots situation. My memories of Marx are muddled, and the little that I have read of bootleg Charu Mazumdar seems to confirm this man's suspicions. I am perplexed. My heart swims in a restless sea of blood, and my speechlessness is a result of listening to this landlord asking me to prove that the Indian interpretation of a Communist dream of revolutionary reconstruction and reconstitution of society within the generous ambit of the system of parliamentary democracy poses a direct death threat to him.