(First Published on Sulekha.com on Feb 20, 2000 - http://www.sulekha.com/blogs/blogdisplay.aspx?contributor=Desiensus%20Mobilus)
On the green helmet-top hill, overlooking the saffron-colored waters of the river sat Bhagothi1, the goddess of underclasses, the bestower of plurabilities, in the dark and damp temple to watch over the town. Compared to the temples of milder goddesses and gods, lit by oil lamps and smelling of fresh flowers and incense, Bhagothi’s temple bore the smell of dried blood and sweat. All over Valiakavu Kunnu2, People whispered in low voices about her powers and feared her proxy, Thatchan, the priest. The high caste priests shunned him and his Bhagothi in favor of smiling and fair gods with proper deportment and even temperaments. The even-tempered gods were happy with sweetened yogurt and paste of sandalwood. They wore white sheets and gold ornaments over their potbellies and listened to scriptures. The goddess shook her curvaceous bare breasts and smirked at them from her dark abode. She stuck her tongue out and irritated the twice-born3 with her raw sexuality.
Secretly, even the twice-born feared the goddess. They gave money to the workers who toiled in their fields to buy toddy and roosters for the goddess. Bhagothi received the offerings and blessed the workers who brought them in instead of the farmers who paid for it. Workers and Bhagothi kept the secret from the rich and the high-born.
Toddy4-tappers and their women placated her with songs and taught their young stories of her powers. Nubile young women hoped for breasts like her and young men longed for wives that looked like her. And they collectively kept their fantasies a secret, except during the festival when they sang obscene songs in her praise. Bhagothi was tickled by it all for she knew everything and saw everything. But when she saw decadence growing in the huts around Valiakavu Kunnu in the form of progress, she got angry. When women started to cover their breasts, when men cut their long hair and shaved off their moustaches, when Kumaran marched shirtless workers of the timber mill for higher wages under the banner of communism, when young children failed to light lamps in the turn of twilight, she showed Valiakavu Kunnu her displeasure. Thus every now and then, she threw raw seeds of feverish anger that blossomed into little red flowers of pain on the dark skin of her children. Men and women slept on straw mats in dark, unlit rooms, uncared for and unwept, in fever and delirium, seeing nightmares about the craters on their own future faces, until they were redeemed by Bhagothi in death or were allowed to survive yet another day in weakness, disfigurement and blindness. Even Kadan Pulayan5, the toughest undertaker of them all, had to get high on arrack6 before he could walk into the huts to drag the straw bundles of death out for burial.
Smell of hopelessness, death, turpentine and morbid lust permeated the whole town and even the households that were spared stayed in and submitted themselves to the will of Bhagothi.
Kadatha Pathiyan6 fell ill on the second day of the monsoon. For decades, he climbed the coconut trees early in the morning and tapped them to make toddy, as all his ancestors had done before him. He worked diligently, drank a little arrack7 at night, beat his wife and children in keeping with expectations and bought them fish fry from Kelu’s tea shop to make up for the beating. He seldom spoke; walked agile and erect, with a sickle by his side, short and ageless, with a full head of black hair. No one knew how old he was but he seemed to have been around ever since anyone could remember. He shared his toddy with Bhagothi and stayed out of her path for many, many monsoons until his luck ran out. That monsoon, Bhagothi visited him with a bouquet of red flowers that spiraled up his back and bloomed on his face.
"Oy Bhagothi, have I been good, took your name every evening in prayer, send you toddy and roosters, married my daughters off and stayed away from macrists8", he moaned in delirium, "Why are you angry with me?" Bhagothi smiled an enigmatic smile showing the trace of her teeth and touched his forehead, "need your company, my child", she said. "Need you right here by my side, you are growing tired." Kadatha looked around and saw nothing but darkness. He felt a million wet needles on his skin. Bhagothi didn’t sound malefic at all, he felt her touch on his hot dark skin until he felt light and clean.
Fourteen days passed while the rain drummed up a constant beat on the roof and floodwaters rose. Kadatha’s children went in and out of his hut in small, slender boats looking for things to do and came back empty handed. They ate rats and lizards that floated by their hut and ignored the smell of age and disease. On the fourteenth day, great thunder and lighting came from the north and felled a giant tamarind tree. Shortly thereafter Bhagothi came to Kadatha and tapped him on the shoulder, "come little boy, time to go." Kadatha looked for his bundle of belongings. Bhagothi shook her head in an indulgent smirk, "Don’t bother my child, you won’t need it." Kadatha felt stronger as if he drank from the fountain of youth, he wanted to kick, fuck and talk like he has never done before.
There wasn’t a patch of dry land around his hut, so his sons dug a big hole in their kitchen and buried him without ceremony. Then they made an oven over the mound and cooked a funeral feast of squirrels and restlessly waited for the rains to stop. There was nothing to do but to wait, so they twisted the tip of their moustaches and made small talk about the rain.
Nobody mourned his passing until the floodwaters receded. Numbness hit them just as dry ground was spotted. Kadatha, the oldest of them all, was gone to a perpetual dry land where toddy and arrack flowed. And all that left of him was an oven and empty vessels.
"Acho9," mumbled his daughter, "stay young acho, and keep us happy." In a belated chorus all women joined in. Men morosely bonded over a bottle of transparent fire. They decided to spare the bother of digging him out to find him a more appropriate place of rest. "There is no point in messing up the kitchen floor again," pronounced the eldest son, Krishnan. That put an end to any argument to the contrary. They cooked rice and fish over him and threw the dregs down into the river. The river flowed silently by the Goddess temple and the Goddess licked her thick lips with her long, red tongue in the dark and winked at Kadatha sitting at her feet. Shortly after, his daughter ran away with her brother-in-law and somewhere in Pala or Kottayam or some such big city, her jealous husband cut them both down with a sickle.
After forty-one days of relentless destruction, the curse of red flowers and damp needles disappeared from the land and what was left of the sick crawled out of their beds and headed for the river for baths. Goddess greeted devotees who come to see her with tender coconuts and red flowers with giant petals and granted them their wishes; a new yellow dress of Veli, a tractor for Raman Pillai and high marks in the exams for Sunil Thandan, the misfit who insisted on going to school instead of helping his father in the field.
Life limped back to normal in all of Valiakunnu Kavu. Kadatha’s sons went back to toddy tapping and arrack drinking. In the evenings they beat up their wives and fucked them with great raw carnal energy while their post-pubescent daughters pretended to sleep and dreamt their own erotic excursions and longed to be wed.
"Why do you want me here?" Kadatha asked Bhagothi in half-knowledge and speculation. Bhagothi laughed and held him close to her breasts without answering. He ardently drank the warmth of nipples and felt the changing seasons. Spring has come too soon, birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, Kamadevan10 is inflicting everyone with the pain of lust. He felt an eternal spring deep in himself and he indulged in the unspoken sin of his thoughts.
"Things are changing, my boy’" she sighed, "You’ll see."
This was the last monsoon before the smallpox vaccine became mandatory and before Bhagothi lost her tremendous power. Government came to town in a big way in the form of young men in trousers and bush shirts. They sat in new offices and issued ration cards and cycle licenses. They made speeches about new beginnings and new technology. Light came at night through metal wires that came all the way from some far place and wiped the darkness. Thatchan, the dedicated servant of the goddess sat outside the government office in protest of the vaccine after the goddess lost her power and people stopped the flow of toddy and live roosters to her temple. He looked back at the old days of chicken butter roast and sweet toddy with longing and blamed the government and the vaccine for all the ills in society.
"This year the monsoon is bringing much devastation, what with each rain drop packing the punch of an elephant-trunk full of water", said Thatchan with resignation, "But what can you say? No one cares anymore."
Goddess shook her head in the dark. Kadatha watched Thatchan and his grief. Children went to school and were pricked with little needles of dried flowers that stayed in their blood and fought Bhagothi head on. Bhagothi and government fought in their bloodstream for control and government won.
Grass grew around her temple and floodwaters rose and fell. Thatchan grew frail and weak and wept for redemption. He slept at the temple, unwashed and unshaven and waited for his next lifetime. Finally, a little green live wire with a golden head came out of the foliage and pricked Thatchan gently in his sleep and allowed him his purple sleep. Bhagothi felt the sting of abandonment and invited a deep slumber upon herself and Kadatha.
Darkness fell over Valiakunnu Kavu as if a dark giant cloud had stood over it. Electric lamps were lit and devotional parodies of film songs were played over loud speakers. Fair Gods in their brightly-lit temples negotiated visas to Persia and Dubai and granted engineering college admissions for fair children in far off Manipal and Bangalore. Toddy-tappers left their coconut trees for palm trees and camels in the Persian Gulf. They returned with money to build concrete houses and played devotional songs in music systems.
Bhagothi and Kadatha woke from their deep hibernation to find the cacophony around them. People were building an approach road to her temple and painting the temple in bright yellow and white. Kadatha’s children, and grandchildren, in polyester slacks with new currency were watching over them.
"Let me see my children, let me fly over the land and watch palm flowers and tender coconuts" asked Kadatha softly, he longed for the weight of seeing and hearing upon him. He looked at Bhagothi and saw that she was aging. The sun was shining outside and the yellow flowers around the temple were in full bloom. Bhagothi shook her head sadly in consent and gave Kadatha his wings back. All the dead have wings my child, she said to herself, I apologize for keeping yours from you for so long. Kadatha rose over the temple like a butterfly over the hill, then over the green canopy of trees, over electric lines and the river, and the concrete house where his hut once stood and flew to the clouds silently.
Looking down, he saw a new priest covering Bhagothi’s face in sandalwood paste.
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1 Goddess. Corr. From Bhagawati.
2 Lit. Big temple Hill
3 Brahmin. Reference to the sacred thread ceremony.
4 Sweet fermented liquor made from tender coconuts
5 Caste name of farm workers
6 Traditional caste name of toddy-tappers
7 Distilled country liquor
8 Marxists
9 Father. Coll.
10 God of love
