A Restaurant That Serves More Than a Free Meal

Jeyamohan

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The Meal Tally by Jeyamohan, translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar

Kethel Sahib is not a name you would have heard of. Back in the day, he ran an eatery at Thiruvananthapuram’s Chalai Bazaar, near the place where Sree Padmanabha Theatre is located today. During the sixties and seventies, if there was anyone in Thiruvananthapuram who had not eaten there, they must have been vegetarians.

The eatery ran until Kethel Sahib’s passing in 1978. At present, his son operates several restaurants across the city, and his relatives run another shop at the very same place. Even today, the eatery’s fish curry and kozhi kuzhambu taste just the same. Hotel Mubarak is what the restaurant’s called now. People still throng the place and brave long waits to eat there. Kerala teems with meat lovers who believe that a trip to Thiruvananthapuram counts only if they’ve dined at Hotel Mubarak. Even so, Kethel Sahib’s eatery was something else. You’ll understand only if I tell you about it.

Located in a narrow alley, Hotel Mubarak is a mere tin-roofed shed even now. Back in the day, it was just a stall with a thatched roof and measured no more than fifteen feet by eight feet. Open on all sides, the stall had a bench and table made by securing bamboo poles together. While it was pleasant and breezy during the summer months, when it rained the wind would drive in a generous drizzle. Doesn’t it rain most of the time in Kerala? Nevertheless, Kethel Sahib’s eatery was crowded all the time.

Did I say all the time? When did Kethel Sahib ever keep the shop open all the time? He would open at noon and close at three in the afternoon. Then he would reopen at seven in the evening and close by ten at night. Right from eleven in the morning, in the narrow veranda in front of the eatery, at Rahmat Vilas—­the tailoring shop on the opposite side—­and in the yard in front of the godown of K. P. Arunachalam Chettiar & Sons Wholesale Departmental Store, a crowd would queue up in wait. Half of them would buy a newspaper, either the Mathrubhumi or the Kerala Kaumudi, and read while they waited. Debates would follow about Kaumudi’s editor K. Balakrishnan’s fiery political columns. At times, they would turn into heated arguments too.

All that lasted only until the gunny purdah that hung at the entrance was rolled up as a sign that Sahib was about to open the eatery. At once, the crowd would squeeze in and seat themselves. Kethel Sahib looked like a demon. Towering over seven feet, he had pillar-­like arms and legs, and a face ridden with pockmarks. One eye, rendered cloudy by the pox, resembled a cowrie shell. The other eye was small and red, like a burning cinder. He wore a white knitted cap, and his mustache-­less curved beard was dyed red with henna. Held in place by a broad green belt, a checkered lungi hung from his waist. Though he was a Malayali, Kethel Sahib could barely speak the language. Arabi-­Malayalam was what he spoke. However, to hear his voice was a rare event in itself. If you did happen to hear it, it would be no more than a couple of sentences. The moment he uttered “Fareen”—­that lone word of welcome—­in his deep voice and turned into the shop, the crowd would line the benches.

But there really was no need for a welcome. The aromas of chicken fry, kozhi kuzhambu, roasted prawns, charred karimeen, and mathi-­fish stew would have coalesced into an invitation already. I swear I’ve tried every restaurant there is in the city, but the aroma of Kethel Sahib’s food is not to be found anywhere else. “There’s an arithmetic to it, boy,” Vasudevan Nair would say. “If one man buys the produce, another delivers it, and so on, the food will have neither flavor nor fragrance. Kethel Sahib would handpick not just the fish and chicken, but the rice and other ingredients too. If there was even a grain of deficiency in their quality, he would reject them. The prawns were delivered all the way from the backwaters of Chirayinkeezh, just for him. A Mappila named Paapi would arrive in his boat, dragging the net of fresh catch along, making sure to keep it in the water. Sahib would haul the entire catch straight to the kitchen . . . Son, honesty adds its own flavor to the food, all right?”

Whatever Sahib’s methods were, in the fifteen years that I ate at his joint, not once did a dish fall short of the benchmark of “outstanding taste.” How do I make you see what I mean? It wasn’t just honesty that imparted this quality to the food. There was certainly some arithmetic to it. At Sahib’s eatery, the kuzhambu and fry were served piping hot, straight off the stove. Sahib would estimate beforehand the crowd that was to arrive, and accordingly mount the ingredients. Apart from Sahib, his bibi, their two sons, and a couple of helpers were the ones who cooked, all of whom accepted his authority implicitly. Sahib, on his part, could judge the taste of the food with just the smell. Anyway, this is all mere talk. What I should say is, there was a fairy inhabiting the place. All right, not a fairy, a djinn. Not a djinn from Arabia, but from a Malabar village. A djinn that had drunk from the waters of the Kallayi.

Kethel Sahib’s forefathers were from Malabar. Once, when the song “Kallayi puzha oru manavaati,” penned by Yusufali Kechery, eulogizing the bride-­like beauty of the Kallayi, was playing on the radio, his son remarked, “Isn’t that Father’s river?” But for that, I know nothing about him. He never did talk. Someone would’ve had to hypnotize him to make him talk. His family had migrated to escape the clutches of poverty, and Sahib was rendered homeless at a very early age. Till he turned twenty, he sold tea from a big kettle that he carried by hand. And that is how he got his name. Before long, he started selling fried fish at a street corner and set up the food stall in due course. “I haven’t had a good cup of chaya ever since the man stopped selling tea,” Nair once remarked. Kaumudi Balakrishnan—­the man himself—­would come all the way to Chalai Bazaar from Kazhakkuttam to drink Kethel Sahib’s tea, they said.

Sahib did not lack for anything. He had a big house in Ambalamukku. A joint family. Seven or eight shops in the city. He had married away three of his daughters. He had set up shop for his three new sons-­in-­law, too. You won’t be surprised if I tell you that he had earned it all from his eatery. But if I tell you about his business model, you’re sure to be wonderstruck. Sahib did not charge for the food—­a practice he’d held to right from the days when he sold tea. There was a tin donation box in a corner at the front of the shop concealed by a small reed screen. Once you had finished your meal, you could deposit whatever amount you wished to in the box. Or not. No one would keep an eye on you. No matter how many days you skipped paying, no matter how much you ate, Kethel Sahib never paid any attention to it.

That’s how he had been, even when he had roamed the streets as a shirtless tea boy, clad in khaki shorts and a round cap. He kept a small box next to himself, where you could drop in some change, if you so wished. You couldn’t ask for the price, nor would he tell. Some rogues and ruffians did make mischief with him, at first. They deposited folded paper in the box. They took away the box itself. They drank tea for months together, for years together, without ever paying up. It didn’t seem like Kethel Sahib so much as even remembered their faces.

Though, there was this one time when Kethel Sahib did slap a man. A poor woman, who looked like she had migrated from some village in Tamil Nadu, was eking out a living by winnowing spices on the streets. She had stopped to drink tea that day. At the same time, the notorious ruffian Karamana Kochu Kuttanpillai, an upper-­caste Nair, had also ordered a glass of tea, and his gaze fell upon the woman. Goodness knows what went through his mind, but he grabbed the woman’s breast and started squeezing it. Incited by her screams, he tried to carry her away into a side street. Kethel Sahib got to his feet and, without saying a word, slapped Kochu Kuttanpillai right across his face. The whole street would have heard that sound. As blood oozed from his ears, nose, and mouth, Kuttanpillai collapsed to the ground and lay there like a corpse. Kethel Sahib went back to selling tea, as though nothing had happened.

Kuttanpillai’s men carried him away. He spent eighteen days in the hospital but never walked again. He went deaf and his head trembled all the time. He had frequent bouts of the fits too. Seven months later, while he was bathing in the river Karamana, he succumbed to one such attack and disappeared into the waters. They could retrieve only his bloated corpse. A faction emerged, questioning how a lowly Mappila could strike a pristine Nair. The Chalai Mahadevar Temple trustee Ananthan Nair let them have it: “Piss off and mind your own rotten business. If you forsake what’s just, you could well be fated to die by the hands of a Muslim, or from the bite of an ant too . . .” No one in Chalai Bazaar dared speak to the contrary once Ananthan Nair had declared his view.

The first time I ate at Kethel Sahib’s eatery was in 1968. I am from Osaravilai, near Kanyakumari. My father was an accountant at a rice mill in Kottaram. I was a good student. After I passed my eleventh grade, I was advised to enroll in college. With Appa’s income being what it was, I shouldn’t have even dreamt of it. But a maternal uncle of mine lived in Pettah, in Thiruvananthapuram. He ran a mediocre printing press. His wife was from Thazhakudy. Needless to say, they were related to each other even before they were married. Appa held my hand all the way as we boarded a bus, alighted at Thampanoor, and walked to Pettah. It was the first city that I laid eyes on. With coconut oil oozing from my hair and mingling with the sweat on my face, clad in a half-­length vaetti that stopped short of my shin, a shirt crumpled from having been stored in a pot, and with feet unshod, I walked in a trance.

Mama had no choice, for Appa had looked after him when he was a child. I enrolled for English literature at University College, and Appa left with a full heart. Before leaving, he pressed one rupee into my hand and said, “Hold on to it, don’t spend it. Mama will take care of everything.” Turning to my mami, he said, “Subbamma, from now on, he’s not just a nephew to you, but a son too.” To this day I wonder if Mama’s heart was ever in it. That my mami wanted none of it became evident that very evening, at dinner. When all of them sat down to have a meal of appalam, poriyal, and sambhar, they did not invite me. After they were done, they left some food for me in the kitchen, in an aluminum vessel. It was rice doused with water and sambhar.

I was only too familiar with shame and starvation, so I put up with it all. The more I bore Mama and Mami without complaint, the worse they became. All the chores around the house fell on my shoulders. I had to draw pot after pot of water from the well and carry it to the house, sweep and mop the house every day, and escort the two daughters to school. The elder one, Ramalakshmi, was in the eighth grade. I had to teach her mathematics and complete her homework too. After all that, I had to wash the kitchen before I could turn in. In return, they accorded me some space in their veranda and provided me soaked rice and pickle, twice a day. Mami was a perennially disgruntled woman. She grumbled about me to anyone who paid a visit to their house. They were being reduced to debtors thanks to the food I was eating, she would complain. Whenever she saw me open a book, she would fly into a rage and scream her head off.

I did not write about any of this to Appa. My two younger brothers and a younger sister were still at home. On most days, a kanji brewed with the broken black rice separated out by the winnowers at the rice mill had formed our meal. As far as I can remember, the daily kuzhambu was but a broth made from koduppaikeerai, a variety of spinach that grew by the stream. With not even a whiff of coconut it was a plain broth made by blanching spinach and churning it well in tamarind-­soaked water along with some green chilis. But in the throes of hunger, that aroma was enough to make me salivate. If, some day, Amma drummed up enough courage to buy twenty-­five paise worth of mathi-­fish, every corner of the house would be filled with its fragrance. She would make an exception that day and cook good-­quality rice too. The whole day the thought of the mathi-­kuzhambu would possess us, as though it were a meditation of sorts. No matter how hard we tried, we could not divert our minds from it. At the end of the meal, Amma would soak up the kuzhambu that remained at the bottom of the vessel with some rice, clean it out, and roll it into a ball. Just as she’d be about to drop it into her mouth, my little brother would stretch his hand, asking for a share of that too.

The college fee was overdue. I tried telling Mama about it discreetly at first, but after many failed attempts, I had to ask him straight up. “Write to your father . . . I’ve only promised food and lodging,” he said. I knew it was useless to write to Appa. After a week had passed, the college administration demanded that I drop out. I could attend classes after paying the fee, they said. I roamed around like a madman. I went to the Thampanoor railway station and sat there all day, listening to the rattle of iron. I died many deaths on that railway track. That is when Kumara Pillai, a fellow student, showed me a way out. He took me along to the K. Nagaraja Panickar Rice Mandi in Chalai and signed me up for the job of accounting for rice bags. I had to report there only by five in the evening, but I was to keep tally until midnight. One rupee a day was the salary. I obtained an advance of forty rupees and used that to pay the fee.

It would be one, or maybe two past midnight by the time I reached home. I couldn’t wake up before seven in the morning. The recess during college hours was the only time I had to study. Even so, I did well. I had developed the practice of paying keen attention in class. All the same, there was never enough time. It would take me forty-­five minutes to get from University College to Chalai Bazaar, even if I cut across the secretariat and hastened through Karamana. If the last class of the day happened to be Shanmugam Pillai’s, it would go on until four thirty. And then, if I reached the godown late, Paramasivam would’ve already arrived to keep tab, defeating the very purpose of my getting there. Goods arrived at the shop four days a week. Dropping a day meant losing a fourth of the week’s wages.

They did not pay me at the end of the first month. Panickar credited the entire fifteen rupees that was due to me against my advance. When I woke up in the morning the following day, Mami placed a notebook in front of me and disappeared inside. It was an old notebook. I turned the pages over. It contained a running tally of every meal I had had there, since the day I arrived. At the rate of two annas a meal, a sum of forty-eight rupees was debited against my name. My head spun. I willed myself to go up to the kitchen. “Mami, what’s this?” I asked.

“As though we can feed you for free . . . you’re earning now, aren’t you? It’ll be honorable if you pay. For you and for me,” she said. “If there’s something wrong with the accounts, let me know. I’ve kept a meticulous tally from the very first day.”

Tears welled up in my eyes and a lump formed in my throat as I stood there wordlessly. After some seconds had passed, “I didn’t know of this, Mami . . .” I ventured. “I don’t make all that much. I have fees to pay. Books to buy . . .”

“Look here, why should I feed you for free? I have two daughters. If I’ve to get them married off tomorrow, I’ll have to cough up enough cash and gold, don’t you know? A tally is a tally. Only then will it protect your dignity. And mine.”

“I don’t have the money now, Mami. I’ll pay you back, little by little,” I said in a feeble voice.

“How do I trust that you’ll pay?” she questioned.

I said nothing. That very evening I left their house. I went straight to Panickar’s godown and stayed there. Panickar, too, was happy that he had found an unpaid watchman. Mami held back some important books of mine as collateral for the dues.

I was happy enough at Chalai. I would take a dip in the river Karamana and follow it up with four idlis at Elisaamma’s idli shop. Then straight to college. I would skip lunch. In the evening, after I was done with work, I would have a toast biscuit or tea and then lie down for a while. My calculations allowed for only one meal a day. Hunger was a constant. Whenever I pondered over something, it would eventually end with the thought of food. I could never take my eyes off a fat person. How much they must be eating, I’d wonder. A whiff of sweet payasam was enough to make me enter the Chalai Mahadevar temple. The fruit and the payasam they’d offer to devotees on a strip of leaf would save me the day’s spend on idlis. More often than not, I’d find something to feed myself—­like sundal from the Sastha temple or turmeric rice from Goddess Isakkiammai’s. And yet the money I made was not enough for me. Before I could return the advance, the next term’s fee fell due. Then again, I had to save five rupees a month to give to Mami. I needed to retrieve my books from her before the exams.

My eyes began to look sunken. I became frail and turned into this person who could barely walk. My head would swim while drawing up the accounts, and I’d plummet to unknown depths before surfacing again. There was always a bitter taste in my mouth and a shivering in my limbs. To walk up to Pettah in order to attend college would take me around an hour. My dreams were filled with food. A wounded dog lay dead on the road one day. My plight was such, you see, that I imagined lighting up a stone fire behind the godown, cooking the dog meat, and eating it. My mouth watered and I drooled all over my shirt.

That was when Coolie Narayanan told me about Kethel Sahib’s eatery. That one did not have to pay sounded incredible to me. I asked around, and everyone said it was true. Don’t worry about paying, they said. I was unable to summon the courage to go there, but the thought of Kethel­ Sahib’s shop was ever present in my head. Four or five times I had gone and stood outside, simply stared at it, and headed back quietly. The aromas that wafted from the shop drove me crazy. I had had fried fish only twice until then, on both occasions at the house of a well-­off relative. A week later, when I had scraped together three rupees, I went to Kethel Sahib’s eatery with the money in hand.

My body was all aflutter until Sahib opened the shop, as though I were up to some mischief. I went in with the crowd and sat in a corner where no one would catch sight of me. There was such a din. Sahib was serving rice at gale force on overturned lotus leaves that served as plates. He ladled out steaming red samba rice with a big colander and poured rich-­red fish curry over it. Some of us got kozhi kuzhambu, and others fried kozhi kuzhambu. It did seem as though he took no note of anyone. But on a closer look, it became obvious that he knew everyone. He didn’t stop to ask anybody for their preferences. He himself decided how much fish and meat to serve, and went about it without uttering a word of hospitality. He served all the food himself. It was only for the second helpings of kuzhambu that a boy assisted him.

When he reached where I was sitting, he looked up. “Here for the first time, Pillecha?” he asked. I was tongue-­tied, in awe of how he’d guessed that I belonged to the Vellalar caste. He pushed a mound of rice onto my leaf and poured the kuzhambu over it. A big leg of fried chicken. Two pieces of fried fish. “Eat,” he roared, and turned away. I had no doubt that it would cost me more than three rupees. My limbs began to shudder. The rice choked in my throat. All of a sudden, Sahib turned around. ‘What’re you doing there?! Eat, Pillecha!’ he thundered, admonishing me. I gulped down many fistfuls. The flavor seeped into every pore of my body. Flavor! God, I had forgotten that such a thing existed in this world. Tears fell from my eyes and streamed into my mouth.

Kethel Sahib approached me with a melted ghee–like substance in a small cup. He poured it over my rice and served me some more kuzhambu. “Mix it up and eat, stupid . . . it’s fish fat,” he said. It was the fat extracted from a river fish. A yellow liquid rendered by making a cut in its gill. It lent a unique flavor to the curry. Soon enough, unaccustomed to such quantities of food, my stomach felt clogged. But before I could think, Sahib had served another colander of rice on my leaf. “Aiyo, no!” I exclaimed. His colander came down hard on the hand I had stretched out to stop him. “Saying no to food, you cadaver! Eat, bloody Iblees,” he scolded. My hand radiated with genuine pain. When I looked into his bloodshot eyes, I thought Sahib might beat me if I were to get up. I knew he wouldn’t like it if food went to waste. When I finished eating, I was unable to rise. Holding on to the table for support, I walked out, threw the leaf away, and washed my hands.

As I neared the box, I went weak in the knees. I felt that Kethel Sahib was keeping an eye on it from somewhere, from some unknown angle. In reality, he was attending to others in the crowd. I noticed that many of them left without depositing any cash while others who did looked unperturbed as they dropped in the money. With trembling hands, I took out the three rupees I had and dropped it inside. Eyes and ears sprouted on my back, expecting to hear a voice. As I made my way out quietly, my body began to shed its heaviness. It felt as though a cool breeze was sweeping through the street. Covered in gooseflesh, I walked in a daze, oblivious to everyone and everything around me.

I did not dare to venture near the area for the next four or five days. When I managed to rustle up two more rupees, emboldened, I went to Kethel Sahib’s eatery. It was only when he brought the fat and poured it on my food, just like the previous time, that I knew he had recognized me. The same stern voice, the same curses, the same body-­bursting amount of food. This time around, I was quite calm when I deposited the money. When I went again three days later, I had seven rupees on me. I was due to hand it over to Mami that evening. My plan was to eat two rupees’ worth of food. To eat more than that was, according to me, the height of wantonness. But the flavor did not allow me to stop. Kethel Sahib’s fish curry and chicken fry had invaded even my dreams in those days. Why, I’d even penned a poem on them on the back of my notebook. When I finished my meal, the question of leaving without paying reared its head.

However, the very thought of not paying turned my stomach, and I could not eat any further. As though I were submerging a ball in water, I had to push the food down my throat. I began to feel faint. I got to my feet, washed my hands, and walked away, lifting my cold, heavy legs with effort. Was my head spinning or my bladder full or my chest seizing? I couldn’t tell. Better pay up, said my mind’s voice. I neared the box. I could not walk past it. There was a ringing in my ears. When I reached the box, I dropped all seven rupees inside and walked out. It was only when a draft of air hit me as I stepped outside the shop that I realized what I had done. Half of a month’s earnings had evaporated in a flash. How many debts I owed! There were only eight days to go, to pay the college fee. What had I done? It was the height of stupidity.

My heart sank and relentless tears rolled down my face. It felt like a terrible disillusionment, or a death too near. I went to the godown and sat down. As there was enough work to take hold of my mind and body until midnight, I survived. Otherwise, in the delirium of the moment, I might well have thrown myself on some railway track. It occurred to me later that night—­why should I cry? I can keep eating at Kethel Sahib’s till I exhaust my money’s worth. Comforted by that thought, I fell asleep.

The following day my classes finished by noon. I went straight to Kethel Sahib’s eatery, sat down, and ate, savoring the food as though I had all the time in the world. The man kept serving more and more food on my plate. “Dei, eat up, you donkey!” he’d shout if I paused even a little, assuming that I was about to get up. As I washed my hands and walked out, I found myself converting plausible excuses into words, should Kethel Sahib question me. But he paid no attention to me. I felt cheated when I stepped out of the place. All of a sudden, I felt annoyed with him. The man thinks no end of himself, I thought. That everyone pays out of their own sense of morality makes him appear like a large-­hearted person. After all, he survives only because of those who deposit zakat in the box, for Ramzan. His generosity is not selfless, is it? Surely, it’s the money begotten in this manner that’s become his house and his wealth, is it not? How long will he put up with not being paid? Let’s see. I didn’t know why I was vexed, but the annoyance had permeated my body like an itch.

I was still annoyed when I went there the next day. By then, I knew that Kethel Sahib would not question me. But if I were to notice even an iota of difference in his gaze or demeanor, I resolved that that would be the last time I visited the place. If he entreated me a little more than usual, that too was a sign that he did notice, that he did keep tally. But Kethel Sahib went on serving me food at his usual pace. He poured me my usual share of fat. “Eat the chicken, Pillecha,” he said, placing a half-­chicken on my leaf. He followed it up with some fish. Was he really a part of this world? Was this a Mappila or a djinn? It was a bit frightening too. When I was about to have my last course of rice, he served the blackened dredges of chili powder that remained in the wok after frying, along with a charred chicken leg. I had always tried not to let on how much I enjoyed this dish. It didn’t surprise me, though, that he knew it nevertheless.

As I mixed the powder into the rice, my heart caved in. I could not hold back my tears. No one had served me food with such affection until then. Amma found it impossible to ration among all of us the kanji she made from a single cup of rice without swearing, cursing, and bristling with irritation. Here was the first human who cared if I ate to a full stomach. The first hand that served me without keeping tabs. They talk about the hand that feeds you; they talk about carrying to the grave the memory of the maternal hand. With a wrist adorned by an amulet, stubby, parched fingers, and a hairy forearm—­wasn’t this bear-­hand the true hand of a mother? From that day on, I did not pay Kethel Sahib. I swear it wasn’t because I thought of it as an expense. It was because I thought of it as my mother’s food. Not just for a day or two, but for five whole years I did not pay Kethel Sahib a single paisa.

I would have one meal at the shop every day, either lunch or dinner. That by itself was sufficient for me. Four idlis to top it, and I’d be done for the day. My limbs gained strength. My cheeks glistened. My mustache thickened. My voice deepened. My gait acquired a hint of swagger, my speech became assertive and my laughter confident. I grew into something like a manager at the shop. It became my responsibility to procure supplies and distribute them as needed. I was even able to save up and send some money home every month. Not only did I clear my BA with a first class, but I finished at the top of my class too. I enrolled in the MA program at the same college, took a room on rent at Chalai, above Arunachalam Nadar’s store, and got myself a good bicycle.

I ate at Kethel Sahib’s, every day. With every passing day, the conversation dwindled, so much so that I began to doubt if he even noticed me. But when his hefty hand stretched over my leaf to serve the food, I knew that it was a mother’s loving hand. That I was born in his lap and had suckled at his breast. The hardship at home abated when my younger brother, Chandran, finished school, got his driving license, and joined the Government Transport Corporation. I visited home once in a while. Amma would buy good-­quality rice, make some fish kuzhambu, and serve it with her own hands. But, conditioned by countless years of poverty, she didn’t really know how to serve. Her eye couldn’t help measuring the rice that was left in the pot or the kuzhambu left in the pan. While serving the rice or kuzhambu, she would always tilt back half of the contents of the ladle into the vessel. If one asked for more kuzhambu, her ladle would draw only a few drops. Either her hand or her heart had shrunk. As she heaped the salai pulimulam and samba rice on my plate, I would feel sated by the fourth mouthful. After that the very act of bringing the food to my mouth would be such an effort. “Eat, son,” Amma would offer a weak word of encouragement. With a shake of my head, I would rinse my hands over the plate.

I came second in the university when I finished my MA. Soon enough, I got a job as a lecturer in my college. When I got the order in hand, the same afternoon, I strode to Kethel Sahib’s eatery. It wasn’t open. I went to the back, drew aside the gunny purdah, and peeped in. In a large bronze wok, Kethel Sahib was stirring some fish kuzhambu. His face, his hands, his thoughts were all centered on the kuzhambu, as though it were a kind of namaz. It did not feel right to interrupt him, so I left. Later that afternoon, as he served food on my leaf, I looked up at his face. Nothing in it said I was special. I needn’t tell him the news, I thought to myself. It held no meaning for him.

I left for my hometown that evening. I couldn’t tell if the news made Amma happy. Her face was set in such a way that everything found expression on it as worry. Appa alone asked. “How much will you get?”

“I’ll get something . . .” I replied, trying to brush off the question.

“Two hundred at most?”

Needled by the petty-­minded clerk I saw behind that question, I said, “Seven hundred rupees, including the allowance.” Until my last breath, I will not forget the malice that flickered for an instant in Appa’s eyes. He had retired without ever making more than twenty rupees a month. Only my brother pranced about with real enthusiasm. “You’ll have to teach in English, right? That means you can speak well . . . will you speak like an English dorai?” he said with effervescence. Incensed, Amma retorted, “Let the celebrations be. Better save up and find a way to marry off your sisters.”

Once she had latched on to a virtuous cause, an intense bitterness found direction through it. “Did you not see what’s become of those women who cavorted about? I saw that Thazhakudy woman at Shanmugam’s wedding. Looks like a mold-­ridden dried fish now . . . what a dance she danced, the wretch . . . God wreaks vengeance in his own time, doesn’t he?” she said.

“Woman, do you even hear yourself? That fellow over there—­your son—­he’s grown into a man on the food she parted with. You should have some gratitude, you know . . . some gratitude,” said Appa.

“Gratitude? For what? A measly bit of rice and kuzhambu? Add up the cost and throw it in her face, that’ll take care of it . . . or else she may well arrive here claiming some other kind of tally . . . the wretched wench,” said Amma.

“Shut your stinking mouth,” yelled Appa, seething with anger, and a fight ensued.

I went to Thazhakudy the following day. Two years had passed since Mama had died. He had developed a fever, all of a sudden. I had stayed with him at the hospital all through. Bacteria had seeped in from a wound in his gums and made its way to his heart. He passed away on the third night. Once the final rites were completed, we went through the press’s accounts. There were loans of close to two thousand rupees. The landlord demanded that the press be wound up. With the three thousand rupees that remained after selling all the machines, Mami returned to Thazhakudy, where she had some share in her family’s land. She rented a house against a one-time payment. Ramalakshmi had not studied beyond the eleventh grade, and the younger one was in her eighth grade. Mami was shaken. As the days went by, the panic caused by dwindling money settled on her face, and I watched her become frail, parched, and shadow-­like. Whenever I came home, I would visit them for the sake of civility, say a few words, and leave after placing a ten-­rupee note on the table.

Mami wasn’t home when I paid a visit that day, only Ramalakshmi was there. She looked rather washed out herself. A veranda, a hall, a makeshift kitchen—­that was all there was to the house. A rolled-­up straw mat hung on the clothesline. The floor had been swabbed with cow dung. A Ranimuthu novel lay on a small table. Ramalakshmi went out through the back, borrowed either tea or sugar from the neighboring house, and made me some black tea. She placed the tumbler on the table and went and stood near the door, concealing half of herself. I gazed at the parting of her hair. She was a smart girl, but mathematics had eluded her. It had taken me more than twenty days to teach her compound ­ interest back when we were in Thiruvananthapuram. I didn’t know what to talk to her about. She was a different person now.

Ten minutes passed. I got up, “I’ll take my leave,” I said.

“Amma will be here soon,” said a soft voice.

“It’s okay, I have to leave,” I repeated.

Placing a fifty-­rupee note on the table, I stepped out. While making my way out through one of the side streets, I spotted Mami coming from the opposite direction. She had rolled up an old saree, placed it on her head to form a base, and stacked a palmyra basket on top of it. She looked at me blankly at first. It took her half a second more to recognize me. “My son!” she cried. I helped her set the basket down. It contained bran. Evidently, she was pounding paddy for wages, and bran was the daily wage. She must have been on her way to sell it.

“Come home, son,” she said, grabbing hold of my hand.

“No . . . I’m running late, I need to get back to Thiruvananthapuram today,” I said. “I’ve got a job . . . at the college.” She didn’t quite understand. The incessant grind of poverty does blunt one’s mind.

Then, suddenly, she grasped what I had said. “My word! Stay blessed, my son, stay blessed,” she said, grabbing hold of my hands once again. “I thought I must wait until you get a job. I don’t have anyone to go to, son. I don’t have even a few paise to give to anybody. See, we’re feeding ourselves by pounding paddy for utter strangers . . . If the bran doesn’t sell, we douse our evening hunger with the raw bran, son . . . But I did feed you during the good days. You became a man on my rice and kanji, didn’t you? For eight months, even if you say two meals a day, I’ve served you rice and curry nearly five hundred times, yes? Your mother won’t see that now. Even if she does not feel gratitude, I’m sure you do . . . Son, Ramalakshmi has no one but you. The poor thing thinks of you night and day . . . Please give her a life, my darling . . . If you don’t feel gratitude for the food you ate, know that you’ll pay for it in many, many lives to come.”

When I took leave of her and boarded the bus, my lips felt bitter, as though they had tasted neem fruit. Throughout the ride back, I kept spitting out the window, desperately trying to rid my mouth of the taste. I returned straight to Thiruvananthapuram. I’m certain the bitterness would have pervaded my body had I not let myself drown in the bustle and euphoria of a new job. When I received my first paycheck, I sent it to Amma. In response, she wrote a letter. “Subbamma was here. She spoke to your appa. Your appa’s heart is not in it either. Listen, we don’t need that. Let’s gift a hundred or a thousand for the girl’s wedding in return for whatever they’ve done for us. We need not owe anyone a debt for food. Inquiries from good families are pouring in these days. They will provide enough and more. In fact, one such alliance has come from Boothapandi. Shall I proceed?” she asked. I lay thinking all night. Fed up, I fell asleep. When I awoke, I had my decision. I wrote back to Amma saying, “Proceed. The girl should be a little educated.”

I had already registered myself in a twenty-­thousand-rupee chit fund run by Canteen Saminatha Iyer in my first month in the job. The installment was five hundred rupees a month. I bid for the pot, at a deduction of four thousand. Iyer handed me sixteen thousand rupees, rolled up in a sheet of the Mathrubhumi. Hundred-­rupee notes, all of them. Never before had I touched that much cash. A strange terror gripped me and my hands prickled. I brought the cash to my room and sat staring at it. Not even in my wildest dreams had I thought I’d make so much money. This was enough to buy a small house in the suburbs of Thiruvananthapuram. I smiled to myself, observing the wondrous ease with which my mind and my hands became accustomed to the presence of that cash.

In the afternoon, I went to Kethel Sahib’s eatery. As soon as it opened, I walked in and began depositing the cash in the donation box. When the box filled up, I asked Kethel Sahib for another one. “Dei, Hameed, change the box,” he ordered. Once his son replaced it, I started depositing the cash again. After I had finished depositing all the cash, I washed my hands and sat down to eat. Kethel Sahib spread a leaf and placed my favorite prawn fry on it. He then served the rice and poured the kuzhambu. I was certain that there’d be no change in him. He didn’t say a word. Farther away, two boys sat almost glued to each other. They were pale Nair boys, with lifeless, moldy skin and washed-­out eyes. They were gulping the meat that Kethel Sahib had served for them in vigorous mouthfuls. As Kethel Sahib served another piece of meat, one of the boys leapt up shouting, “Aiyo! Don’t!” Kethel Sahib thumped him on his head, “Eat, you son of a cadaver.” It was a lusty blow. Frightened, the boy sat down without demur. Perhaps chili powder had gotten into his eyes, for they were watering while he ate.

Kethel Sahib served the chicken, the kuzhambu, the fish, and the prawns, one after the other. I waited, expecting to catch his eye if only for a fleeting moment. Shouldn’t my mother know that I had made it? But, as was usual, his eyes did not meet mine. When he came around to serve the fish, I stared at his hefty, bear-­like hands. As though it were only his hands that belonged to me. As though they existed only to fill my stomach.

I left for my hometown that day. In the succeeding month of Aavani, I married Ramalakshmi and brought her home.