SHORT STORIES: ‘The Tithe’

The ceiling fan in the living room did its best to lessen the stuffy air lingering that sultry afternoon. However, the buzz of the ceiling fan couldn’t down the voices from the animated conversation that was on. The topic was undoubtedly – kashtaanubhavaycha  . After all, the most revered week in the Syrian Orthodox Christian calendar had just commenced, that Sunday being Hosanna perunnal  as it was known in Kerala.

Kerala is home to the ancient Syrian Christian community, called Nasranis , that traces its origins to St Thomas. In every Nasrani home, inevitably discussions were around the 50 day noyambu , prayer meetings, preparations & incessant claims of the vicar’s efficiency; directly proportionate to how quickly the vicar concluded each day’s special prayers. All Nasranis were patronizing about their churches and activities.

Sneha had come to celebrate Easter with her parents; one of the two times in a year she travelled to Kerala. Abel and she had an unspoken agreement about these trips. Abel had no immediate close family in Kerala to necessitate any trips; his parents had migrated to Canada in the mid-eighties. He identified himself as a Canadian, even as his family chose to seek a bride from Kerala. He accompanied her sometimes, to mellow his parents’ nagging about his detachment from his origins and culture, and ignorance of his native land. In these rare trips, he won over every relative from both their sides with his unassuming nature, melting away their complaints into smiles by recollecting and enquiring about their simplest cares. During the brief period, he would also pack in an itinerary to a tourist destination dragging her, her parents and his SLR along. When she travelled to Kerala at this time of the year, she would come alone. Considering the demands of the holy week with rigorous services and lent, which translated into an entertainment shut-down, he chose not to accompany her. On Easter, he would join his parents and extended family for an annual get-together, which comprised of a traditional Nasrani lunch and outdoor activities, to bond the various generations.

“Service started at 6 am sharp. By 10 am, service is over. 10:40 am, we are at home. Of course, after having breakfast in church. Three hundred people were served at the church hall. Appam, ishtew and coffee. From Vincent’s”, said George uncle; Appa’s  youngest cousin was church secretary for the year and excitedly accounting the details of the day.

Appam and Ishtew, a regular on the average Nasrani menu! Ishtew is made using vegetables – potatoes, carrots, green peas – during lent season to accommodate the food restrictions. The dish, slow cooked in coconut milk flavored with spices, is served with appam, which is made of fermented rice batter and coconut milk. Vincent’s was known for its appam-ishtew combination.

Vincent’s is a local catering business. It had started off in the namesake’s house as a modest business twenty years back, mainly thriving on orders from neighbors and church members, sincerely trying to help out even when there were other options. Those days, in a small locale like Kuravankonam, business usually came through by word of mouth. Well, the food was worth it! Five years since, the business had grown steadily, with an office right at the junction, boasting a niche clientele and a varied cuisine, making time for TV cookery shows as well. Nowadays, orders needed to be placed well in advance. But Vincent hadn’t forgotten his early days; he always accommodated requests from the old faithful and doled out some special offers for old times’ sake.

“kollaamallo!  In our church, it was the usual – Achan  on a fast express. Bun and kattan kaapi. We got home by 9:45 am. This would have been a memorable experience for you, being the secretary. You definitely did a great job organizing everything”, Amma said as she servedchai and kumbilappam  to George uncle. My parents went to a different church than George uncle. Though they had sold the ancestral land and house, they still went to the church her grandparents used to attend.

“Athe  it was a lot of effort. We spent five hours yesterday evening setting up everything and overseeing arrangements. Today, another four hours after the service. We needed to change the curtains and clean up before today’s namaskaaram . We don’t have a designated kapiyaar, so the committee members themselves have to do everything”, George uncle went on in between sips of chai.

“Yes. Especially with you being the secretary. What a responsibility! Really it must have been a great effort!”, commended Amma. Appalooked on beaming.

“Yesterday we went all the way up to Chalai market to purchase flowers at wholesale rate for today’s service.”, George uncle was unstoppable now.
“Bought flowers? You have eighty families as members, most of who have their own houses with courtyards and gardens”, Appa was surprised.
On Hosanna, a day Christians all over the world commemorate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, it is believed that people welcomed Him with carpets of palm leaves. Keeping in tradition, families would contribute palm leaves to their parishes and churches, which would in turn be distributed to the believers. Children would pool their flower collections and shower flowers in praise during the service.  The main cross that was blessed by the priest was fashioned out of a few palm leaves and decorated with flowers.

“They bring mostly bougainvillea and by the time service is over, ee pillerellam  will stamp and crush them on the carpet. It becomes very difficult to clean. We bought beautiful rosebuds for use during the service and Orchids to fashion the main cross.” George uncle was explaining some new generation ways which my ‘slightly more than middle-age’ parents were new to.

“Yes that’s smart planning. It’s really difficult, especially with you being the secretary…”, Amma agreed, a tad too uncertain though.
It was probably then that Sneha stopped listening to the rest of conversation. She was sitting on a chair, resting her elbow on the diwan‘s head rest. A thin layer of film had started forming in the cup of chai, balanced on her knee. Apart from this give-away, nobody would notice her thoughts had drifted away, and anyway she didn’t talk much.

The clock had wound back by many years. She was now a fifteen year old in her grandparent’s house in Murinjapalam, just five kilometres away from where she was now. It was a residential area near the city’s famed Medical College, Murinjapalam, in Malayalam, when literally translated meant ’broken bridge’. Though there was a bridge over a small canal nearby, it was by no means broken. Most of the hospital bound traffic and KSRTC (state transport) buses plied two-ways on the narrow bridge.

Dusk was fast approaching. She was walking along the pebble laden path that joined the farther end of the compound walls to the courtyard. The ground was wet; Amma had just finished watering the garden of potted anthurium, bougainvillea, rose shrubs, mehendi tree, jasmine bushes, croutons, the newly laid matt grass and the most prized of all – varieties of orchids nurtured in coconut husks. A small stream of water was still oozing from the green hose neatly piled up next to the outdoor tap. She made her way past the well, cursing and slapping the stinking mosquitoes. The incessant buzzing of the mosquitoes was drowned by the call of the mullah from the mosque at the main road.

There he was, squatting on worn out blue Bata slippers, scratching at the ground below. Full-on concentration, squinting through spectacles so big that it covered half his face, oblivious to the mosquito that had settled on his smooth bald head.
‘Ha molu vanno ‘, he acknowledged her, aware of her presence as she just delivered a death sentence to a mosquito on her arm. ‘Take thechenna  and kappa  to the kitchen. Give them to Ammachy .’

She picked up the freshly dug out chenna and two kappa roots gingerly. An earthworm was making its way across the chenna.  She flicked it off with her hand, picked up the yield, careful not to have any mud smear on her green dress. Her green dress with a big bow in the front, stitched from ’tissue material’, the in-material which Appa sent from the gulf.

She walked over to the tap and left the yield at the base of the tap, being too lazy and harassed by mosquitoes to even offer to wash them. Ammachy was there, peering through her spectacles, calling out to Appacha “kayarivaa, sandhya aayi”, waddling back into the house, bending on the way to pick up the Manorama weekly and thread work she was working on at the front door steps. That was Ammachy’s evening routine – she would perch herself there after the 4 o’clock palaharam  time, watch the activities of people in the lane, yell at the street hawkers who get too close to the gate, and would stay on until she couldn’t carry on her threadwork or reading in the faint dusk light. Sometimes, she would doze off at the steps until Appachan would come and wake her up.

Smacking her own legs for a respite from the tenacious mosquitoes, she too walked back into the house. Later, from her room which overlooked the garden, she could hear the water begin to trickle from the tap. He would have washed the mud from the blue Bata slippers, and left it inclined on the wall to dry off. He would have washed the vegetables and carried it to the kitchen, placed it on the cement slab by the grinder. By then, Ammachy would have called out to him at least three times to get back into the house. This was the routine, a signal for every transition. The 7 o’clock news broadcast would have started in Doordarshan. At this signal, dusk would have given way to night and crickets would sing away. They just had two channels on television – DD1 and DD2, DD being short for Doordarshan. DD2 was the more fun channel, but DD1 ruled the house. Dinner and prayer timings were dictated by DD1 programs and load-shedding hours.

The vegetables would turn up for dinner and lunch the following day as meyukku-varatiyathu  or thoran,  accordingly. Kappa sauteed with coconut would accompany fish; the fish would be cooked with kodombu puli , the Nasrani way. Or, it would be boiled and served plain with a spicy vinegar sauce for 4’ o clock palaharam.

The toil of Appachan, truly the garden could be called “Eden’. Coconut, mango, papaya trees lined the land, in the midst of which nestled the modest house, with a chimney.
Later, part of the land had to be sold off; the part which comprised of the vegetable garden, one of the mango trees and five coconut trees. Being a child, she was a mere spectator, and little did she know about the reasons. But in the young rush of blood, she and her sister had vowed to buy the land back one day. The day they would grow up and make enough money.

Five years went by.  The sold portion of the land was left as it is; no new construction except for a new boundary wall. Hope was adrift in the youngster’s mind, but the logical mind of the adult knew the reality.

In due course, she moved to a different city for work. Ammachy had passed away. Her sister was studying post her marriage.
And one noyambu kaalam , the day before Palm Sunday, when she spoke to Amma in the morning over phone – the sold land was being cleared, the trees were being felled, Appachan had complained of a headache and stayed in bed. Sneha went through the entire day, listless. She wondered how they felt, watching it, helpless.

The next morning on the way to church, keeping in tradition fuelled with memories intact from her childhood days, she brought some bougainvillea for the service from a road-side flower seller. During the service, she wondered how so many identical looking palm leaves could be collected for the service to be given to each believer.

Later that night, when she phoned home, Amma said “They felled down all the trees. Then it struck us. We asked if we could take the palm leaves from the coconut trees. The workers agreed to do so. By evening, they loaded the white Maruti 800  with all the palm leaves. When we went for Sandhya  namaskaaram, we gave the leaves to the church. We thought it would be only one of the many offerings. Later when we talked to Achan, he told us that as it was raining for past couple days, climbers had refused to go up the coconut trees in the houses that usually provide the leaves. There was a shortage this year, until we got there. Ours was three-fourths of the supply in church this time”

For her that day, everything came to full circle. Yes, the land was not their’s anymore. But, even without the plotting of the human mind, the land had given to its creator its last product, its tithe. It was an indirect way for her family to participate in an act of gratitude to the benevolent God. Since then, the practice stuck with her.

George uncles’ s laugh jolted her out of the wishful past and into the realistic present.

“Ok anna njan pogatte.  Need to sleep for an hour and get back to church” she heard George uncle say. ‘So how was service, Sneha mole? Abel-innodu sneha-anveshanam parayanne ” The mention of their names brought her back to the moment.

‘Went on well. Sure, will do,” she answered in little more than monotones.

“Every year she comes from Canada to take flowers to our church on Palm Sunday. This time, some of our flowering plants in the balcony bloomed in time.” Amma smiled.

Everybody laughed. Sneha too smiled, grateful for giving her little something in thanks.

Glossary

kashtaanubhavaycha – In Malayalam, means Passion Week
perunnal – In Malayalam, means Palm Sunday
 noyambu – In Malayalam, means lent
ishtew – In Malayalam, means stew
Appa – In Malayalam, means father
 kollaamallo – In Malayalam, an expression to indicate something is good.
 Achan – In Malayalam, refers to Vicar of church.
kattan kaapi – In Malayalam, means black coffee.
kumbilappam – In Malayalam, refers to a dish made by steaming a mixture of jackfruit, jaggery and rice flour in bay leaves or banana leaves. This sweet dish is molded into a conical shape.
Athe – In Malayalam, means Yes.
namaskaaram – In Malayalam, means prayers
kapiyaar – In Malayalam, means deacon
ee pillerellam – In Malayalam, means ‘these children’
Ha molu vanno – In Malayalam, expression means ‘There you are, little girl’.
chenna – In Malayalam, means yam.
kappa – In Malayalam, means tapioca.
Ammachy – In Malayalam, means grandmother.
kayarivaa, sandhya aayi – In Malayalam, means ‘Come on in, dusk is approaching’
palaharam – In Malayalam, means snacks.
meyukku-varatiyathu –  In Malayalam, refers to a form of sautéing vegetables marinated with turmeric, chill and salt, garnished with onions.
thoran – In Malayalam, refers to a preparation where vegetables are cooked with a mixture of coconut gratings, garlic, green chilli and cumin.
 kodombu puli – In Malayalam, refers to a variety of tamarind, usually used by Nasranis to flavor fish curry.
noyambu kaalam – In Malayalam, means lent season.
Maruti 800 – Reference to a popular car brand.
 Sandhya – In Malayalam, means dusk
 anna njan pogatte – In Malayalam, usually said when taking leave from someone.
innodu sneha-anveshanam parayanne – In Malayalam, means ‘Give my love and regards’