Appu: Tale of a Villager

Appu

Tale of a Villager

A Novel By

SUGUNAN NJEKKAD

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

APPU

Tale of a Villager

Copyright © 2010, 2012 by Sugunan Njekkad.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-4016-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-4017-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-4018-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012900866

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 01/16/2012

Contents

Acknowledgment

Author’s note

Appu—Tale of a Villager

A Critique By Harold Raley

Kingley Literary Services

Texas

The Hindu

The National Indian News Paper

By K. Kunhikrishnan

Prelude

Part I

One

Two

Three

Four

Five4

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

PART II

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Dedicated to my mother

Who grew me up

Who taught me the meanings of love and compassion.

Acknowledgment

My gratitude to:

Lal Lucose who initiated the translation.

My all time loving friend-Thampy Kakanadan for editing.

The cover page designer artist K.P. Upendran.

Harold Raley of Kingsley Literary Service of Texas for critique.

K. Kunhikrishnan for the Book Review in The Hindu An Indian National Newspaper.

K. Surendran, Attorney-at-Law for Legal Advice.

Special thanks to:

My wife Bhavani,

Our children, Geeta, Sajeev, Jamuna

and their spouses Anil, Mona and Shine.

Author’s note

SUGUNAN NJEKKAD born in a village in Kerala State, India. Graduated from the University of Kerala. Administrative services with the Government of India, New Delhi. Migrated to United States in the seventies. Higher studies in Laboratory Science. Editor of News Paper and periodicals. This is the author’s first Novel originally published in Malayalam,a regional language in India. The novel catched media attention in India which inspired the author to translate and being published in the United States.

Appu—Tale of a Villager

A Critique By Harold Raley

Kingley Literary Services

Texas

"T he book has a certain elliptical quality about it. Scenes, people, relationships, and social appear momentarily and then somewhat abruptly disappear, only to reappear in altered circumstances later in the narrative. This gives the book a freshness and healthy vitality.

The author does not bog down the reader in endless psychological or ideological analyses that were so prevalent in Western novels during much of the past century, especially the first half. Though arising from a very different cultural context, this novel has a certain kinship-perhaps unintended-with more recent writers who return to the classical belief that art consists in not telling everything. Hemmingway and Cela, from the US and Spain respectively, come to mind. But the author does not fall into the trap of what was once called the new novel of Robbe-Grillet(French) who discourses endlessly on small movements and inanimate colors, angles, and poses in which the living personbecomes an anomaly in a static and stationary world. Thus, instead of literarily dissecting Appu down to the last detail, the author allows him a spontaneity that alternately puzzles and interests the reader.

He presents Appu as a person, and like a person he has hidden dimensions of character that we cannot, or should not, violate. It is a form of authorial respect.

This reader found the rhythm and pacing of the story to be among its most admirable characteristics. How much of this is rooted in the language and literary traditions of the author I can only speculate.

Finally, one must read this novel with a certain openness of spirit, dispensing insofar as possible with the common cultural element that is the background of most narratives. For those who can summon such transcultural generosity, this book can be a delightful experience, for instead of racing to the trite cliché that all people are really and easily the same, they are encouraged to appreciate humanity’s vast, rich range of differences. Seen from this point of view, Appu becomes a metaphor of a world that begins as pure exoticism for Americans but which unfolds as new planes of love, sorrow, and achievement in the universal human story."

The Hindu

The National Indian News Paper

By K. Kunhikrishnan

"T his is the story of Appu and of his transformation from a coastal south Karala village boy to a senior executive in U.S.

His reflections on life, and his trials and tribulations, and his pangs of conscience are narrated in a remarkably lucid style. His characterisation evokes powerful empathy of the reader."

The story promotes national integration and transcends Geographical barriers across continents"

Prelude

A ppu was originally published in Malayalam, a regional Indian language with the title Oru Gramathinte Kadha Chila Nagarangaludeyum which got many commendable write-ups in newspapers and periodicals that inspired the author to translate the novel to English.

The author believes in women’s rights which are far behind in India. At one part of the novel the author writes some women live like slaves of men and sacrifice their lives to men’s needs and pleasures. The justification given for that is each woman is created with a rib of a man and she should live and die like a rib of man.

The author ridicules the prevailing traditions in some Hindu Temples in India specially author’s own state where entry to non Hindus is still barred. In another part of the novel the author sarcastically criticizes an ardent Communist through the mouth of his own daughter when she says what do you know about Bengalis? My Papa is a big time Communist. He is also a big business man and filthy rich too. Is it seems a glaring contradiction. In short, in this book the author tried to question the socio-economic and political injustices that have prevailed in the past and present in author’s own state and overall in India. The author tried to portray different levels of love and lust in human life starting in a remote village to sophisticated cities like New Delhi and New York, in hopes of bringing clarity to a topic not openly or freely discussed.

Author:Sugunan Njekkad

Title: Appu-Tale of a Villager

Copyright: 2010

Part I

One

Appu was born. He doesn’t remember when. Upon en tering into the world he felt like crying. How com fortable it had been in the warmth of his mother’s womb! The thunderstorm of the monsoon pounded outside. The floor had a thick coating of cow dung mixed with carbon and the walls were sooty. Grownups fussed around. How could he not help crying! Appu came to the world crying louder and louder. He tried to open his eyes, but something slimy kept the lids closed. What a clamor all around him! He cursed them all. He cried without a stop. Someone cut something off his navel. He felt a sharp pain.

Slowly he blinked his eyes open. There was a faint light from a hurricane lamp at the corner. He spent most of the time looking up at the ceiling, though sometimes he slept. Appu identified his mother and loved the sweet, tasty juice she fed him with from both her breasts.

Two

On the west rumbles the sea. Far in the east lie huddled the Sahya ranges. Striding over the wee hours of morn ing, the village springs into action. Bullock carts laden with jackfruits, tapioca, plantain, tubers and other hill crops from the east begin to trundle along the metalled road in a convoy. The hurricane lamps hung beneath the yoke of carts sway and flash. The bulls exhausted from the long, grueling ride stagger and froth, yet know that hey have to drag on for a few more hours before the next halt.

The village wakes up to the clattering of bullock carts over the rough road. Waking up, women fasten their dhotis, bundle up their hair, tighten their bras and let the poultry loose into the courtyard. Those who keep cows or goats milk them and collect cattle dung to fertilize plants later. Young wives gently slip out of their husbands that hold them tight and begin their morning ablutions and wash their dhotis, blouses and undergarments. Afterwards, they go to the public bathing pond and come back with their clothes still wet and clinging to their body, permeating the scent of coconut hair oil. It is believed that a good day is ahead of you, if you’re fortunate enough to behold this spectacle first thing in the morning.

Tea shops set their copper pots with a copper coin dropped to the bottom of the water. The clinking of the coin at the bottom of the pot indicates that the water is boiling. In the shack behind, appam, a bread made of rice batter, is being cooked in earthen pans. Puttu is being made by steaming wet rice flour with grated coconut stuffed into bamboo hollows. Green gram, a type of lentil, is boiled and sautéed with mustard, onion and curry leaves. Big pappads, thin, crisp flatbreads find their way to glass shelves.

The tea Janakiyamma makes has a special taste. Tea is brewed in a brass or aluminum cup using a traditional tea bag with an open mouth, made by twisting a piece of wire into a circle, attaching both its ends to a wooden handle, and a cotton bag sewn around the string. Meanwhile milk boils in another vessel placed on top of the copper pot.

Tea, milk and sugar are mixed in another cup and then poured into glasses from a height to make it frothy. The bag is squeezed a bit to make the tea stronger. The process continues replenishing the bag with more tea.

Janakiyamma’s, Shekharettan’s and Sabbilu’s were the three tea shops in the village.

Farmhands and workmen occupy the wooden benches in tea shops from very early in the morning. They gobble down puttu that they’ve rolled into large balls together with fried green gram and pappad. They drink their tea blowing on it between each sip in order to expedite cooling. Then the farmhands move off with their ploughs, yoke and bulls. Another group goes off in another direction with spades, shovels and other implements.

Coconut husks are being seasoned in the Anchuthengu backwaters in the South. Men make small isles of husks and leave them there to rot. Once they are piled up on the shore women come into action. One group beats the husks to extract fiber. Another group cleans them. Girls turn the wheel attached to a spindle. Others spin coir yarns, moving backwards from the spindle.

Many women in the village were engaged in this work. Their palms, especially of those who beat husk, were dark and calloused and their clothes stank of rotten husk. The palms of those who spun the yarn were chafed and of a reddish texture. The red later turned into a callus that bore the mark of their labor. Girls lost the flower-like softness of their hands at a very early age here. They ate pazhamkanji, a type of leftover rice preserved in water, with fish curry and mashed tapioca, before leaving for work early in the morning.

The students and teachers also woke early with the village as it began its day. Boys and girls attended their domestic duties before racing to the only primary-middle school in the village. Children from poor families had pazhamkanji for breakfast and went without lunch. The fortunate ones went home to have lunch. They sprinted back after having some rice gruel or tapioca. The students from rich families had coffee and other delicacies for their breakfast and went to school with packed lunches.

The students who went to the high schools in adjoining villages also took packed lunches—rice, coconut chutney, fried vegetables and fish wrapped in banana leaves. This was generally how the village began its day.

Three

The main highway connected the land from south to north. Another road branching out from it ended at the shore of the Arabian Sea in the west. This road had been metalled recently, leaving a path on either side of the road for those on foot. It could hardly accommodate two vehicles in opposite directions, but there weren’t any other roads in the village, save some bylanes, which only bullock carts and bicycles maneuvered through.

Three buses by the names Rajaram, Kamala and RKV did regular service along the main road. It is said that earlier steam buses plied these roads but now they have become stories of the past.

A car was seen on the road every day. It went from west to east in the morning and back in the evening. Both the owner and the driver of this lonely car was a doctor.

The road would become fairly crowded by eight in the morning. It was mainly students on their way to the distant high school. Girls moved along one side of the road and boys on the other. Girls wore skirts and blouses but some who had had their menstrual cycles wore half-saris, too. Boys wore dhotis and shirts. Girls held their books and packed lunch against their bosom almost like a shield. Maybe it was a strategy to hide their growing chests. They spoke to one another in hushed tones and giggled as they strolled along. Some of them even went so far as to glance slyly at the boys striding along on the other side of the road.

Boys swaggered past with their dhotis tucked up and holding just one or two books in their hands in a care-free manner. They found pleasure in passing comments on the girls who, for their part, enjoyed it and rewarded them with coy encouragements. The comments were generally innocuous. Whenever anyone went beyond the limits, the public would take matters into their own hands with regards to discipline.

Another group of women who moved in a herd with their tiffin carriers were the workers in the cashew factory at the junction. They were of two kinds. One kind beat the nuts already roasted in machines and separated seeds from shells. In time, their fingers and hands would lose all their tenderness and turn dark, scalded and cracked because of the irritant oil contained in the shell. Most of them belonged to lower castes like parayas and kuravas. They wore cheap printed dhoti, a blouse and a thin piece of cloth over the upper part of their body. Their clothes always bore the mark and smell of shell oil.

The job of the other kind—the so called white-collar workers—was to pack the cleaned seeds. They wore white dhotis, blouses of different colors and long, white, gilded shawls. They put mascara on their eyelashes, penciled in their brows, wore bindis on their foreheads and used talcum powders and cheap perfumes before they paraded to work. Young men from shops and houses from either side of the street ogled them, savoring the lithe gait of their throbbing youthfulness. The girls too proudly displayed their youthful charm and felt a tingle all over their body as men’s eyes fell on them.

But still cases of sexual abuse or rape were unheard of in those times. There were love affairs of which some culminated in marriages. Appu had also heard of the legends of heart-torn lovers who ended their lives with a piece of