A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA
Nobody knew how Swamy came
to live with us.
He was discovered one
morning by my grandfather when he woke up at five as usual and opened the main
door of the house to step out. In the blur of the setting moon, he noticed the
human figure lying on the floor at the far end of the open verandah. He went
in, fetched a lantern and came back to find out who the uninvited guest was.
Deep asleep was a man in
his mid-fifties. The lanky frame was clad in nothing except a thorth (thin
white bath-towel used in Kerala). He had not shaved for a month and it looked as
though he had not had a square meal for several days. Grandpa's first reaction
was to wake him up and interrogate him. He overcame the instinct and decided to
allow him to sleep for as long as he wanted to.
In thirty minutes, grandpa
was back, after his bath and coffee. He sat in the easy chair in the verandah
and bridged its arms with the writing plank. After lighting the kerosene table
lamp on the table beside, he carefully placed the inkpot and the steel pen (or
dip pen - how many of us remember this predecessor to the fountain pen?)
somewhere in the right half of the plank. Soon he was engrossed in his work.
The project on hand was the 'vrittaaanuvritta, padaanupada tarjima' -
metre-to-metre, word-to-word translation - of Kalidasa's Abhijnaana Shaakuntalam
into Malayalam. (This work would be published later with an introduction by the
redoubtable Sardar K M Panicker and paid rich encomiums by none less than
Vallathol Narayana Menon, the Titan of Malayalam literature.)
In a little over an hour,
the rays of the rising sun woke up our guest. He opened his eyes, sat up and
smiled at my grandfather, who smiled back. His answers to grandpa's queries
about him were vague or philosophical, depending on how one looked at it. What
is your name? 'People call me Swamy because I sport a beard and recite stotras
and shlokas. They think I am a saint,' he replied. Where did he belong to?
Sagely, he replied, 'One belongs to a place this moment and to another the
next. Can anyone say with certainty that he belongs to a particular place?' Any
relatives? Saying 'Everyone in this world is related to me,' Swamy walked
towards the pond for a bath.
When he returned, he was in
the same thorth, only, it was wet. Grandpa asked grandma to get a mundu (dhoti)
for Swamy, but he declined. Get me another thorth, he said. I wear only a
thorth. He demanded a cup of tea. He sipped it, visibly enjoying the beverage,
humming some folk song.
Around half past seven,
grandpa got up and went to the vegetable garden where he used to grow brinjals and
okras, chillies and string beans, flat peas and tapioca, plantains and the
like. Making the beds for the plants, removing the weeds, plucking the dead
leaves and watering them was his idea of exercise. He would spend an hour each
in the morning and the evening every day in the kitchen garden.
Swamy followed him and
helped him fetch water from the pond to water the plants. Neither spoke a word,
but they co-ordinated their moves very well. When both returned after the job
was done, it was beyond half past eight.
We were served breakfast in
the dining room (called 'antaraaalam' perhaps because it connected the main
building and the unit consisting of the kitchen, store-room, the work area and
the allied facilities) and the kitchen. It being a joint family, the brood was
quite big, you see. Meanwhile, Swamy, sitting in the verandah, was given his
breakfast on a plantain leaf.
Breakfast done, Swamy
borrowed a knife from the Kalyani, our cook, and, unasked, proceeded to the
'estate' where he pruned the plantain trees, tied the pepper vines to the trees
they clutched at for support, and did a lot of odd jobs till it was time for
lunch.
Post lunch, when the older
members of the family withdrew to their rooms for a siesta, he too lay on the
floor of the verandah. After the evening tea, he watered the kitchen garden
after which he had a dip in the pond. Then Swamy went for a stroll to the
village market beyond the unending stretch of paddy fields, to return in time
for dinner and sleep.
This routine continued for
a few days. My grandfather found in him a helping hand. My grandmother would at
times request him to fetch some provisions on his way back after the evening
walk which he would gladly do. As he had no major use for money, he never
demanded payment for his services - nor was he offered any remuneration. Swamy
marked his attendance regularly for all meals. That was all he needed.
My uncle, a banker in the
district headquarters, was quite upset on seeing Swamy when he came visiting
his parents during the weekend. He had apparently taken an instant dislike for
Swamy. No, it was not just the looks of the man who wore nothing but a thorth.
The dishevelled salt and pepper hair, the unruly beard and the hairy chest did
not help matters. He asked my grandfather, 'What do you know of this guy to
offer him shelter here? He could be a criminal on the run. He may decamp one
night after looting you. How can you trust a man who strays in?'
Grandfather, firm in his
conviction that Swamy was not up to any mischief, pacified my uncle. He helps
me, my grandfather said, in the kitchen garden in the morning and evening and
does odd jobs during the day. He is a good fellow, my grandfather added, let
him stay. My uncle did not press the point further. Thus Swamy became part of
our household.
My grandmother would hand
over a tenner to him at times and ask him to fetch a pound of sugar or green
gram or salt from Moosa's shop which he would gladly do. He would appropriate
the small change and return to my grandmother only the currency notes that
Moosa gave back. In the initial days, grandmother would ask him, 'Swamy, how
about the six and a quarter annas?' Avoiding eye contact, he would respond,
'Oh, that? I took it,' or 'Looks like I dropped it' or 'I put it in the
offertory in the temple' depending on his mood. That was the pattern.
He was not too strict with
the money, whoever it belonged to. One evening my uncle gave him a rupee and
asked him to get a packet of Passing Show cigarettes. An hour went by, two
hours went by, but there was no sign of Swamy. Finally, around nine in the
night, all of us went to sleep. Next morning, When Swamy was questioned, he
replied, 'Being Muharram, Moosa's shop was closed.' How about the money?
Without batting an eyelid, he responded, 'But Kannan's arrack shop was open!'
Swamy was outspoken to a
fault. In retrospect, I suspect that he used to take advantage of the
impression that others had about his being an oddball and an eccentric. Our
kitchen was strictly vegetarian, which Swamy was not too happy about. He would
say, 'The reason why all of you have to wear spectacles from an early age is
that all that you eat is grass and leaves. Eat fish and meat and see the
difference!'
On that point, there was
convergence of views between Swamy and my uncle. Though initially not
well-disposed towards Swamy, he and Swamy had a pact: on Saturdays, Swamy would
bring some fish from the market which he would cook in an ad hoc hearth set up
in a far corner of the large compound. The two of them would polish off the
entire stuff and both would look forward to the next weekend.
Swamy was not 'all there'.
He refused to wear anything except his thorth. He had no use for mats or
pillows or sheets: rain or shine, sick or well, he would sleep on the floor in
the verandah exactly where my grandfather had first found him.
He was a man of moods. On
certain days, he would be quiet, and would not speak even if spoken to. On
others, he would go around singing aloud, unmindful of who was around. His
repertoire was quite large - ballads, nonsense verses, prayers, astrology,
keertans, kathakalipadams, ottan thullal verses, poems, slogans used during the
freedom movement, - and his memory phenomenal. It was through the oral
tradition that the illiterate that he was had learnt all these. When my sisters
taught him 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star', 'Hickory, dickory dock' and 'Saare
jahaan se acchha Hindustaan hamaara', his range went to the next level.
Swamy would spend the small
change that he appropriated from the money given for purchase of provisions
money on beedis or a fish curry meal in Ambu's hotel, the only eatery in the
village, or an occasional drink. On days he planned to eat out or have a drink,
he would announce to nobody in particular, 'I'll be late tonight.' That is
supposed to mean that he did not need dinner that night. Nobody knew when he
returned after the revelry and slept in the usual place, but the next morning
he would act as if nothing had happened!
It was never given to us to
know more about Swamy - his background, his family, his relatives. Enquiries by
different people at different times during his twelve-year stay with us
elicited no information except that his name was Swamy.
A true awadhoot Swamy was.
One morning when my grandfather opened the main door of the house at five as
usual, he noticed that there was nobody at the far end of the open verandah.
And that was it.
Nobody
knows why Swamy left us or where he went to.
