V I S H U
It's Vishu tomorrow and I have to revisit what I wrote for Vishu some years ago.
I love reading it and offering it again and again every New Year
Bangalore
It's Vishu tomorrow and I have to revisit what I wrote for Vishu some years ago.
I love reading it and offering it again and again every New Year
AN EYEFUL OF
LUCK
Kerala girls
attaining puberty are ceremoniously given the bronze looking glass for now they
are enjoined to groom themselves and always be well turned out as they are now
of marriageable age. The magical looking glass is handed down through the
generations and is a precious heirloom.
I
arrived in the evening to find Lali at the door displaying a wide grin.
“Back
in two weeks. I am surprised.” It was
said a little sardonically with a tilt of the head and a half smile that I had
missed for fifteen days.
“That was a wild goose chase, I must
admit.” I wanted to make peace.
“Did
you meet your Valiamman? How is he?”
“All in due course; for the moment I must wash, change
and wind down. But tell me how have you been?”
Journeying by air
one loses the easy transition that a train journey allows. Travelling on a land route the geography
changes gently and the people and cultures transpose in a slowly changing
matrix devoid of cliffs or precipices. The routes always remain two-dimensional. Air travel on the other hand brings about a
culture shock of some kind. The third dimension intervenes in a sudden and an
explosive way. Taking off at the
runway is a violent yank, it rapidly raises you to near stratospheric heights
in a vehement jerk that one cannot fail to notice. At the end of the journey, the suddenness of
the modern steep approach landing, changes an idyllic floating amongst clouds
into a bumpy run on the tarmac, in too short an interval to allow the psyche
room to settle the abrupt change.
From the almost indolent and leisurely ways of Kerala,
some parts steeped in medieval beliefs and rituals, I had descended suddenly
into a metropolis with cars, multistory buildings, multilane highways, 24 hour
FM radio and cable television. It leads
to a certain type of jet lag not entirely connected with the circadian rhythms
and I needed some time to acclimatise. I
went into the bedroom and unpacked my suitcase leaving only the looking-glass
inside. I wanted to surprise her with
that. I triumphantly took out the jumbo
bananas I bought at Kochi
After a refreshing bath I sat by the television to
watch the news station that I had missed for a fortnight. Lali brought me a cup of tea. Nothing much had happened in the world and I
switched off the set. There was a pile
of mail, which I thought I would deal with later. Lali, as always, had tackled the important
ones.
“Valiamman is well and still moves about in the
house. Occasionally he even has an
evening walk in the front yard. He
enquired after you and was very pleased to see the photographs I gave him. My sister’s family was also glad on seeing me
after a few years.”
“What about the Silent Valley
“That was an absolute catastrophe. The Forest Warden made the impractical
proposition of travelling as a mad scientist eager to photograph the flora and
fauna of the forests.”
“ Impractical, no.
Mad, yes. But scientist! That’s
rich.”
“Anyway I declined to go through with such a
deception. Just as well I would think.
The alternative was going with a poacher into the forests. Eventually I tried that too but it was
disastrous. We ended up being turned out
of the forest by a brigand who lives therein with his gang of thieves and is
much wanted by the police of three states. That was a lucky escape.”
“Good God, my premonitions were correct then.”
“It was Veerappan and he threatened to kill us if we
persisted in scouting the forests.”
“And your distant Aunt Ammini? Were you able to trace her or her descendants
after her disappearance so long ago?”
“I think I have a clue.”
The neighbour’s wife arrived with a whole lot of goods
and they retired into the kitchen. When
she left it was Lali’s turn to take me by surprise.
“Everything ready for Vishu,” she said. It was only then that I remembered
Valiamman’s request to stay back.
Tomorrow was Vishu, the New Year’s day.
Lali had conspired to make it really memorable, and the friendly
neighbour had procured all the goods for a proper Vishu. It was to be her first Vishu.
“It’s not only the hearty New Year’s repast that I
have considered. I am also arranging the
Kanni for the lucky look in the early morning.” Her enthusiasm about the whole thing
overflowed.
She was well prepared.
She had sprigs of the yellow laburnum flowers, the jackfruit and mango,
and the other needs for the morning ritual.
Vishu signals the New Year and tradition goes far back to make it an
occasion, which encapsulates in a single glance of fortune all the hopes and
wishes for a Happy New Year. Happiness
spelt prosperity and prosperity comes from an abundance of yield from the
earth. The Horn of Plenty overflows and
grain, fruit, vegetable, all must be represented. Prosperity, an accumulation of wealth where
the noble metal gold takes pride of place, closely followed by silver coins.
I was too tired from my travels to help her and went
to bed early. I could hear Lali
pottering about with various things arranging the spread of prosperity that we
were to view early the next day as the first thing in the morning. I even heard some voices before I dozed off
and knew that neighbours had been invoked to confirm the arrangement and to
give the final touches. I slept very
soundly but awoke at four in the morning.
Withdrawing the antique magical looking-glass from my
bag I crept into the living room and closed the bedroom door. It was a wonderful picture coloured by the
nostalgia of so many similar New Years that I had seen from childhood. The furniture had been cleared to one side
and against the eastern wall I saw the kanni
arranged. There was the large bell metal
urli with its two rings hanging on
either side filled with rice grain, and in it were placed two upturned halves
of a split coconut with yellow lentils filling the hollows. On the tapered end cut from a plantain leaf
was the golden cucumber and the slice of jackfruit its rich yellow cloves
bursting out, the raw mango with its ruddy cheeks and saucy, upturned pointed
end. A bunch of small bananas in their
golden skin lay on a side. On another
side there was a necklace complementing the yellow laburnum in golden colour,
and lying on the unbleached mundu and
veshti with golden borders, a few old
silver coins, bright with the profiles of the English Emperor gorgeously
crowned. On the right was the spouted
bronze pot polished and shining golden.
I made out all that in the light of
the street lamp shining through the window. Lali had placed a box of matches
near the small rush mat in front of the ensemble. I lit up the two bronze lamps on either side
and then sat down on the mat to see my face in the mirror. I leaned over and removed the silvered glass
mirror Lali had taken from the dressing table.
In its place I stood my mother’s looking glass made of polished bronze
and leaned back sitting erect. What I
then saw was a truly golden sight, a sight to be emblazoned in my eyes for a
whole year. While I looked on from the
outside, I was also there inside that witching scene, my sleepy face framed in
that century old heirloom, its golden frame and the yellow flames of the lamps
bestowing on my visage the ageless look of a gilt mummy. There was gold all over, in the polished urli, in the laburnum flowers, in the
yellow legume, in the irregular coils of the golden chain necklace. On the burnished skin of the melon-cucumber
the gold was tempered excessively with copper.
There was the promise of gold in the colour of the mango and the
fulfilled promise in the banana. The
shining lamps were of solid gold, a liquid golden hue filled the oil in the
bowl, the dancing flames were golden in their gaseous luminance. The sandalwood paste in the silver bowl
appeared golden. Not to be out done, the
little prayer book, the Gita, had gilt letters on the cover. I was mesmerised by the sight and felt as if
a whole year was passing by as I peered at everything, one after the other,
eyes glissading from the left to the right.
My gilt faced image, my other inside the mirror, was also casting his
eyes in synchronism, taking in the picture from right to left. The prospects of a year full of fortune, an
eyeful of golden luck that I should not forget for a long, long while. It was a golden past and it premised a golden
future.
I heard the handle of the bedroom door turn and rushed
up to clasp my hand over Lali’s eyes. I
slowly guided her to the rush mat and seated her. Untrusting, like a blind man she put out her
right hand, rotating the palm, to feel her way.
“Sit down,” I said, “and keep your eyes closed.” Then wetting my fingertips from the spouted
bronze ewer, I wiped her eyes to unstick the eyelids in a symbolic washing and
bid her to open them.
“Your first view of the New Year,” I said, “Open your
eyes now.”
For all the virtues of electric lighting there is an
abrupt harshness about switching on the incandescent lamp. It imposes a rapid reaction in the eye, the
iris closing swiftly and blinding the eye in the first few microseconds of the
high wattage of electric current. On the
other hand in the mellow pleasance of the candle flame or the oil wick lamp,
the iris is dealt with more gently. It
is like a twilight between darkness and the full light of the sun. Lali’s eyes opened slowly as I watched her
face. She first saw her image and smiled
at herself. Then her eyes coursed along
the assembly of last night, taking in all that in the aura of the lighted
lamps. Finally it was only when her eyes
returned to her image in the looking glass that she gave a gasp of surprise.
“Your mother’s looking glass?”
“Yes, recovered from the attic of the old house.”
It was the magical looking glass which my mother had
often talked about and which she thought carried a palimpsest of images of all
the girls who had been ritually presented the mirror as they matured into
women.
I sat down beside her and we both peered into the
mirror. Slowly behind our two images,
more faces were being formed in the magic mirror; we could see the face of my
mother, framed for the first time in her own mirror, young and girlish, and
then, behind her in a succession of images were the mothers and mothers of
mothers, all young, queuing up one behind another, in a regressively distant
past, reaching out to us with their youthful smiles and blessing us with a
golden future in that eyeful of luck that every Vishu promises. And three places behind Mother and on a side
was a Moplah woman with the closely fitted blouse, gold ornament on the parting
of the hair, a broad gold waistband encircling her and a corner of the upper
garment raised to cover the topknot of hair, bearing the look of Amminibibi
that I had seen in the photograph framed and kept in the house of the boat
builder. Ammini my mother’s first cousin who had disappeared
in 1921, the year of the Moplah uprising.
1986 words
Dr Chandrashekhar Sastry
98 Gulmohur
16th Main , Block 4 –B
Koramangala
Tel: 91 80
41101069 E-mail: csastry@vsnl.com
