KUTTAN

Inhabitants of a small rural town in South India recount different versions of a murder.

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CHAPTER ONE: KUTTAN

Kuttan has a habit of staring. Not particularly at someone, but just about anything. He would often catch himself staring at his palms. A fact he was unaware of, until his friend Anjali pointed it out. He hated her for it. He stares at it as if the lines that were formed by him clutching his hands as a baby would tell him a story, or give him an answer. Even as a ten year old he wondered why he needed answers. It should be, he thought, the norm if he could just simply ignore answering hard questions.

Can you please stop eating the paint off the wall?

Did you set the rat free from the trap?

What are we going to do with you?

On this particularly sunny Sunday while the neighboring kids had gone to the Alappuzha beach for a swim, he decided to stay back home and not answer his friends knocking on the door or his Amma shouting from the kitchen “Eda, nee naalatheku olle homework theertho?” Instead he thought sitting on his bed, eating kappa chips and staring at the sun through the thick saffron curtains would be better than sitting on the beach with hot sand in his toes and squint. He hated the sun because he couldn’t stare at it long enough.  

The previous night he had gone grocery shopping with his Appachan to the Saturday night kavala while Amma and Ashwathi, his older sister, prepared kappa and meen curry. The pungent aroma of the steamed tapioca in turmeric and ginger with Mackerel in dark red chilly and tamarind gravy consumed their house and lingered around the neighborhood like an uninvited friend, welcome but unwanted.

Having grown up in Kanjiramchira, a coastal province, he could always gauge distance from his home by the amount of salt he could taste off his upper lip. The saltier his upper lip the closer he is to home. Shopping with Appachan had become a ritual, as they would walk three miles from Kanjiramchira to Mullakal to a not so salty upper lip, where he would get his favorite kappa chips, visit the same shops in the same sequence each Saturday night and then visit the beach on the way back home. The only thing that he found different recently was that his Appachan’s grip over his wrists had become less painful and frustrating. Thanks to the humid July air and Appachan’s sweaty hands, he could occasionally let himself free and walk alongside without being pulled in the same way his dog Jackie would, when he tried to take it on a walk.

Kuttan walked with the pink bigshopper bag hanging by his shoulders and Appachan would keep putting light vegetables in it and carry the heavy stuff himself. On reaching the chips shop, they would always be welcomed by a shopkeeper who would ask Kuttan questions about him like he really cared. Kuttan’s least favorite was “Kuttan nalle pole padikanondallo?” Kuttan would stand there and nod his head, silently cursing the shopkeeper for reminding Appachan about his grades. He wished he didn’t have to answer. But then again, he loved his kappa chips.  

Everything seemed ordinary and mechanical that day as well till they reached the meat shop. As usual, Appachan asked Kuttan to stay outside and play with his best friend, the butcher’s son Yusuf. Yusuf was four years older to Kuttan. He was always oiled from head to toe and had a resting sly face. Sly grinned shiny skinned Yusuf. Their common love for staring brought them closer. Kuttan stared into nowhere and Yusuf stared at older girls and sometimes the bellies of Sari clad women who walked past his father’s shop.

While Appachan went inside the shop to buy meat, Yusuf and Kuttan played their favorite game - Kuttiyum Kolum, which his mother referred to as the poor man’s cricket. On an unfortunate strike by Yusuf, Kuttan had to retrieve the small piece of peg back from the window ledge of the meat shop. And it is through this window that Kuttan saw Yusuf’s father Ismail grab a chicken by its wings, hold its neck to it’s spine and slit its throat with a single smooth cut.

He overheard Ismail and Appachan talking about the upcoming elections as Ismail grabbed the chicken, headless but more alive than ever, and put it in a blue container and closed the lid. He watched the blue container as it rocked vigorously next to the cage, which kept the rest of the chicken (the less alive ones). Born and raised to be killed over a debate of communism over right wing extremism. He watched as the blue container slowly rocked, more like a cradle now.

His gaze was broken by Yusuf who was shouting “Endu Patti da?” (What happened?). He didn’t answer. This time not because he didn’t want to. But because didn’t know the answer to experiencing death for the first time. A minute earlier he did think he was immortal.

And this is what Kuttan was thinking about that day, staring at the sun through the saffron curtains. He felt more confused than that time he had opened this book from his Father’s bookshelf “Critique of pure reason – Immanuel Kant” and tried to read a couple of lines from it. He couldn’t purely reason what he saw last night. But he knew the definition of a lot of things had changed. He wasn’t scared and neither was he feeling guilty for eating that same chicken for dinner next night. But he knew something was bothering him. A question to himself that he couldn’t begin to comprehend. A question that he would try to understand and fail, but quietly laugh at pseudo-intellectuals and college hippies who question life and death. He would too, privately.

Little did he know that one day he would find himself ignorant to the questions he was trying to answer that day. And little did he know that in fourteen years he would kill someone. In fourteen years, on the day the political riots at Alappuzha break out, he would kill his best friend Yusuf. Sly grinned shiny skinned.

CHAPTER TWO: ANJALI PADMANABHAN NAIR

“Pha!! Alavalaadi”, grunts Padmanabhan Nair as Kuttan rode a motorcycle past the Nair estate. It sounds like a chainsaw struggling to cut through a rock. The loud sound of a 100cc two-stroke Yamaha RX100. Nair, who’s sitting at the front courtyard of his house, stares intently at the now empty road. His hands holding a hot cup of kattan kaapi right below his nose, the steam from the black coffee condensing at the tip of his gray moustache which he wears proudly over his now barely visible lips. 

“Who’s that?” asks Anjali, leaning by the courtyard fence. Anjali has a fringe, which sits curled over her thin eyebrows and large black eyes that are permanently watery. Her brownish black hair starts off straight at the scalp and then suddenly breaks into thick curls, like waves hitting a rock. “Him? That’s Ashwin” grunts Nair once again. Upon not receiving an acknowledgement, he raises his tone higher in attempts of articulation. “Ashwin. That Bastian’s son.” Anjali’s large eyes become larger at the thought of her childhood friend who loved staring at his hands. “Kuttan?” “Yes yes. That only. He just got out of jail. Rascal! Like father like son”

Kuttan’s appachan - Kunjacchan Bastian and Padmanabhan Nair used to be the closest of friends, like plaid hair. When Kunjacchan, a member of the CPI(M) (Communist Party of India Marxist) won the Lok Sabha elections seven years ago, he decided to build a road connecting Kanjiramchira directly with Ettumanoor, a major town in the district of Kottayam. This required Nair to sell a tiny corner of his immodest rice fields to the state government. When Kunjacchan put forward the proposition, Nair took that as a personal insult and accused Kunjacchan of being jealous of Nair’s wealth. An accusation that Kunjacchan’s communist belly couldn’t digest and Nair was forced to sell the corner of his property to the government at an unfair price. The road never got cut till Ettumanoor because of the losses incurred by the state during the riots an year later. The only two things that got cut were Nair’s perfectly rectangular rice field and the Bastian Nair friendship.

The atmosphere in post riot Kanjiramchira was thick. A cloud of uncertainty floated below the humid air and above the regretful yet unapologetic land. Friends became enemies and enemies stayed enemies. This is what Anjali came back to. 

She was in London doing her masters in human rights when she got pregnant with her Swedish ex boyfriend Oscar Hansson. Anjali hinted at a possible marriage and Oscar fled and never looked back. When Padmanabhan Nair heard the news of his daughter’s British adventures, he withdrew the funds from Anjali’s account and successfully forced her to come back to Kerala with her three year old kid Maximilian Nair, who only speaks Atlas. Oscar had gifted him a Globe for his third birthday and ever since he cries out names of countries whenever he wants something. “Japaaaaan” is for food. “Russiaaaaa” is for toys. “Chinaaaaa” is for Urine. “Americaaaa” is for shit. He caught Padmanabhan Nair and Anjali by complete storm when he shouted “Koreaaaaa” the other day as they have now spent over a month trying to figure out the incessant cries of a mad young boy. 

“Why?” asks Anjali, trying to figure out what Kuttan went to jail for. The best she could think of was vandalism, as kuttan had once convinced her that he was Banksy when he returned from a holiday to the United Kingdom with his parents. “Kolapaathakam” sings Padmanabhan Nair like a boxing ring announcer declaring the next fighter. Kola-paaaaaathakammm. 

“No” dismisses Anjali, not wanting to believe what she had just heard. She tries again “Murder?” “Yes yes, that only”. “But did he do it?” asks Anjali, still thinking of the curly haired boy who refused to step on anthills despite being called a “kocchu pennu” (little girl) by his classmates, which at the time he thought was an insult to call little boys. And for some reason, grown men hated it even more. “Naayinte mone” (son of a bitch) was more acceptable than being called a girl. His ears were more accustomed to it. Like a garbage truck driver’s nose. Like a drunk Malayali father’s tongue.

“Yes of course he did. But they couldn’t prove it in court” spits Padmanabhan Nair. “But how do you know that accha?” Silence. She had crossed a line. She had questioned the all-knowing mind of a stubborn father. After all the truth is just one fact away from an assumption. And facts rarely matter. 

Nair stands up from his inclined long-arm wooden chair where he lay like a sea lion. Long whiskers, shiny baldhead and a bare belly. He picks up his mundu and walks to the front yard and pours out his remaining coffee on the ground with a grunt. He walks back into the house mumbling something and Anjali stands there with her head bent till her father goes out of sight. She lifts her head and stares at the street where Kuttan’s loud motorbike had left a long unanswered silence.

“Americaaaaaa!!!”

CHAPTER THREE: ASHWATI BASTIAN

Death is not the ultimate equalizer. Death is a romanticized dignity that is unearned and frugal. Ashwati found it ludicrous how her wife-beater uncle transformed into a “noble man” after his face got smashed in by a cow’s hind legs when he pressed it’s utters too hard for his warm morning milk. His salsa-esque  head lay covered in blood, milk and cowdung until his wife found him and spewed up previous night’s jackfruit pudding on top of it. The icing on the world’s most repulsive farewell cake. “A poetic sendoff”, Ashwati thought.

Only at our most vulnerable self - like pooping or sex, are we truly equal. Elevated to our true self, devoid of shame and class. At the age of fifteen, Ashwati was one part shame, one part class and equal parts doubt. The shame – proudly taught by her mother and her catholic school upbringing. The class – a Bastian family act which they have collectively put on since Ashwati’s grandfather fought in the second world war for the British Indian Army. How Captain Joseph Bastian of the 8th infantry division crossed several Italian rivers to fight in the battle of Monte Cassino is a tale that very few brick walls and straw roofs in Kanjiramchira are unaware of.

When the cannibalistic forces of shame and class ate away at her self, the leftovers were usually masticated bones of doubt. Although her spine was unswerving and her stride calculated, her eyes looked where she was stepping and not where she was going. Hence her spirit never went with her. It stayed within the grey walls and red tiled roof of the Bastian house, tied between giant marble pillars of shame and class, with only an invisible rope of doubt keeping her there.

Like any funeral in a small town, her uncle’s funeral had half the town in attendance. Most came for the payasam and the rest to assist the family members with tears, in case they had exhausted their own. As scavengers of pain lined up on one side to exchange hugs and handkerchiefs, the scavengers of semolina in sweet coconut milk lined up on the other.

As Ashwati, who couldn’t care less for the funeral, lined up for the dessert, she was unapologetically cut off by Kuttan and Yusuf, who effortlessly laughed their way into the queue in front of her. Yusuf who was more her age than Kuttan’s, had sprouts of facial hair that was hardly noticeable on his brilliant black skin. When he spoke, his pink big lips gave way to a low-pitched croaky voice that sounded like it belonged to a conductor on a KSRTC bus. Ashwati could have sworn that Yusuf looked five years younger when she saw him two months earlier on Christmas day. He had come over to have some of her Amma’s famous rum cake. She noticed him then and she noticed him now.

Ashwati’s maternal aunt – Tracy Kutty, queued up behind her. Her sore eyes that were rubbed far too hard in quest for tears, like a dried out well, were scanning the hall for people who might see her enjoy a warm cup of payasam on the day of her brother’s funeral. She spotted a couple of curious faces turn her way and alas! Like a forgetful actor who was fed lines by a prompter, she re-entered character without the slightest trace of charm and let out a loud wail while beating her chest like a Gorilla’s warning sign. Ende ponnu chetaaa!!!

On orders from her mother, Ashwati spent the rest of the evening consoling her aunt to not shout “oh my sweet brother” anymore and eventually helping her walk home. It was a short walk back to the Bastian house and it was shorter because it was getting dark and the pace of her walk was directly proportional to the darkness. She didn’t disapprove since she managed to reach her house with still half an hour left to her before the family arrived.

She liked listening to her father’s tape recorder while taking a shower and such opportunities didn’t come often, as she wasn’t allowed to touch it. She put on “The Smiths – Pretty in Pink” and played side B. Please, please, please comes on and Morrissey’s ethereal voice fills the blue tiled bathroom.

She takes off her petticoat and blouse, lets her hair down and looks at herself in the mirror. Fuzzy black hair on a dark brown oval face which rested atop a slender smooth frame.

♫ Good times for a change..

Still staring at herself, she takes off her underwear and bra that her mother chose and bought for her. The bra didn’t fit her properly but she didn’t know it was meant to. She was told that she had to wear it all times, that it was a part of her skin. One part shame, one part class, one part bra, equal parts doubt.

♫ see, the luck I’ve had

can make a good man turn bad ..

As she looked at her naked grown up self, she scanned for the tiniest blemishes. A pimple on her left cheek, a scratch on her left calf from her fight with Kuttan, a faded brown birthmark under her right breast, a narrow bruise line on her butt from her father’s jute belt - a purple reminder that homework is not to be forgotten.

She fills up a bucket with fresh cold underground water and pours a mug-full over herself. The ice cold water sends a sharp shiver through her body, her lungs shocked by the sudden change in temperature confusedly gasp for breath, her hair follicles curiously awakened by the commotion that is she. The shiver leaves her body through her brown nipples.

♫ so please, please, please

let me, let me, let me…

She runs her hands over her torso in panic, brushing off the cold. She works downwards, like a frenzied artist. And like almost all things always do, her hands culminate on her vagina.

♫ let me get what I want

this time…

As she touches her short and rough pubic hair, it reminds her of the facial hair on top of Yusuf’s upper lip. The thought consumes her till her muscles contract, her eyes close, her breath becomes irregular.

♫ Haven't had a dream in a long time

see, the life I've had

can make a good man bad…

Her fingers scout the surface of her pink vagina, over Yusuf’s lips.

♫ So for once in my life

let me get what I want…

The pillars of class and shame start shaking, the chains of doubt rattle vigorously. As she explores deeper, she is surprised at the sudden warmth and softness of boundaries. Every inch she she explored, she slowly broke free of the boundaries in her mind.

♫ Lord knows it would be the first time…

It was the first time.

The pillars and chains crumble down with titanic might as her fingers set her pelvic in motion to the world’s most formidable force.

♫ Lord knows it would be the first time.

Morrissey’s voice fades into the chirping of crickets and rustling of leaves. Shame and her friends return soon enough. Yusuf’s warm skin swims through her hands and into the cold water, leaving her with a bittersweet understanding - That she knew things about her body that no one else did. That it was hers and only hers.