Shrunk

by Indu Parvathi

Is that a whitebreasted crow sitting on the lowest branch of the mango tree?  Never seen one like that here! The tree is laden with bunches of fruit ripening into a sunshine yellow. Sankaran mangoes, that’s what these mangoes are called. Sankaran, presumably a forefather who planted the tree, is probably watching his namesakes from one of the sepia prints on the whitewashed drawing room wall.  Strange legacies this ancestral home has bestowed upon me!

I live with my husband Rajettan in this ancient, weather beaten home where memories hide in invisible,honeycomb cell crevices. During lazy afternoons, stories of long forgotten people ooze into our placid existence. This sprawling ettukettu, a Kerala ancestral home, is thus an abode not only to both of us, but also to so many others who  walked these glistening red oxide tiles in the past. But I don’t think I am doing justice to the house if I don’t mention the rich verdant countryside that surrounds it.  I am in perfect harmony with my living, breathing home which blends seamlessly with its environs.

Time is music here—mellow and everlasting. From the earliest hour of the  perforated morning suffused with bird chatter and distant bhajans to the last wakeful moment in the diaphanous  night punctuated with the  chirp of crickets, I enjoy every moment of my life here.

There was a brief period of time in the past when I was forced to leave my house. What caused the departure was our decision to go and live with our son Sreehari in the distant metropolis of Mumbai. I clearly remember that cold December morning when we stepped into his new flat.. Sree, his wife Latha, and Ram, their naughty five-year-old son, and their happiness–my village home was forgotten quickly. Though small, the flat, perched on the tenth floor of a new apartment block had all modern amenities. Even selling off most of the land around our village home did not seem like a sacrifice then. It was on my insistence that the house remained, though gasping within the confines of a high compound wall which left only a narrow strip of land around it.

But we had to do that because Sree needed the money to buy a flat in the city.Not that he demanded any money. We gave it to him because we knew that it was a struggle for him with the exorbitant rent he was paying at that time. We stayed for a brief period, lasting only three months or so. Day by day, little by little, the initial sheen of happiness and togetherness wore off.My son’s family withdrew into their busy city lives, leaving us to plod through never-ending, arid city days, made more unbearable by the sullen maid.

Slowly I realized that it was not the lonely, purposeless life that did not suit us, but my son’s home. The vacuous sky beyond the glass windows was no match to the dew-sprinkled, grassy courtyard around our village home. Most of all, I missed the rhythm of the days at the village. The city did not sing. Life there hurried through its cacophonic noises and fretted till it paused for those tired of its frantic pace. Nor did the city ever sleep. It remained awake at all times in   its twinkling lights and the glowing river of vehicles coursing incessantly through the streets below. The suffocation swelled within me till I started gasping for breath. The doctors whom we visited blamed it on the pollution, but how would they know that it was the house all the time which did not allow me to breathe.Even the daily walks around the manicured lawns in the apartment complex did not help me. The days hung dead and heavy around me and the nights kept me awake. My condition troubled Rajettan and my son to no end. At last, the doctor himself suggested a shift back to Kerala, to our beloved, countryside home.

That’s how I am able to sit here now, in my favourite, saggy cane chair on the breezy front veranda.

But  the  day I returned, I realized that everything was not well with the house. The moist, fresh country air was the same; the whispering noises which made the days’ music was the same; but the house was different. I could see that it missed its premises.  The confinement inside the monstrous,newly-built compound wall had killed it.

The birds did not visit anymore. Neither the early morning sparrows nor the pheasants, and of course no herons as the pond was gone with the rest of the property. The family temple with its oracle and the sarpakavu–the abode of the snake gods– tucked inside a grove of ancient trees, were  both gone. Along with the house I pined for the trees in the old premises. I missed even the yellow snake that used to slither purposefully across the courtyard exactly at two every afternoon. My home was dying gradually; how could I allow that?

Wandering about listlessly, the house’s pain coursing through my veins, I became aware of Rajettan’s anguished whispering over the phone to Sree, complaining about my edginess  and long silences. Even my companion for 50 years didn’t  understand. To him the house has always been just an old, comfortable dwelling. As for me, our destinies –the house’s and mine –are one and the same, inseparably intertwined.

After long-drawn days and sleepless nightsspent on the veranda,my prayers were answered.

The first miracle was the return of the mango tree named after Sankaran, my forefather. I don’t even understand how it could have traversed the distance from its former position at the remote corner of the old compound to where it is standing now, so close to the house, inside the newly-built wall. But the fact is that one morning it was there, struggling to fit its old, gnarled trunk and its sprawling branches within the small space available. Rajettan was perplexed when I told him about the tree being back,all decked up with the first blooms of the season, resembling  twinkling sparklers.

Then they were all back. One after the other. Slowly, but steadily.

First, the trees came back from all corners of the old compound and lined up in the narrow strip of land around the house – the banyan tree, the jackfruit tree, the star-studded Asoka tree and even the laburnum tree bursting into laughing bunches of yellow blossoms.

The birds and all the other animals were back within hours of the arrival of the trees. Even the shifty mongoose was back, darting behind the trees, constantly on the lookout for the yellow snake, its enemy. I was delighted to see that it had a family which trailed after him wherever he went. Fascinated by the arrivals I did not move from the verandah. Through agonisingly slow days and nights the arrivals continued. The family goddess came next. It was a blazing afternoon when she appeared in all her glory above the wall. The temple manifested itself in the eastern corner of the new compound on a tiny square patch. The snake gods came together as a slithering, fluid mass andthen solidified into stone statues on a low platform near the temple.

My almost-complete home sang in newfound, effervescent tones which were echoed by the koels in the trees around it. Tremulous with excitement, I awaited the moment the house would call to me directly. But there was something missing. Though I couldn’t quite comprehend what it was, I was sure of its arrival sometime. I realised what it was only when it started tumbling in yesterday.

It was the pond that came last. How could it stay back when everything else had come back tobe with the house? It just came pouring down from the high wall splattering into sparkling green droplets. Then it calmly flowed into a depression which had appeared miraculously near the mango tree.It brought the fish and the herons and kingfishers with it.

Now I am sitting by the pond looking at my own reflection. I can see my serene face framed by   silvery wisps of hair in the water. The water also mirrors Rajettan standing right behind, his troubled gaze fixed on me. He is almost a stranger now. He doesn’t understand  both of us –neither my home, nor me.

I smile encouragingly at a bunch of water lilies peeping out cautiously from the green depths. I know the blue lotuses will be right behind them.

Pic from Google Images

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