Kerala Redux

Once upon a time in Kerala

My story stood peeking around a corner.

It waited on tiptoes behind the curtains, waiting for an audience

It hid in dark rooms, waiting to be rescued

And it crept through long corridors on stormy nights

To ambush me

And you.

This is the story of a God that resides in coconut trees

And is sometimes benevolent and sometimes not.

It is a story of a fisherman's song

That matches the ebb and flow of the tides.

It is a story of men with red and green faces whose dance

Chases away hobgoblins.

It is a story of food that makes you weep

With its aroma of love, loss and longing.

It is a story of food that makes you love

With the memories that it evokes.

It is a story of a thousand tinkling laughs in a thousand glass bottles.

It is a story often meandering, and often tall,

Dear reader, do not judge me, for I might just trip and fall.

A strange three-headed monster on certain full moon nights

And a lesser god on the other days of the year

This tree gave birth to a hundred coconuts

That went forth and conquered the world.

And one fine day,

A hundred coconuts dropped all at once and were scattered over the land.

Riven from the sheltered boughs and protective fronds.

These orphan spheres appeared on the horizon

Like a hundred fallen moons from some distant galaxy,

The hundred coconuts came of age under the sun and by the sea.

The hundred coconuts oozed their sweet milk over the land.

The hundred coconuts nourished the daughters of the soil with their succulent meat.

The hundred coconuts were transformed into the mysterious quintessence

Of fish curries, pot roasts, avials, and custards.

The hundred coconuts cracked open

to reveal a glimpse of a colonized world of the future.  

Of kitchens in thrall of this alien fruit

Of cooks offering deep obeisance to this grand oval of green

Of mothers using the hard brown nut.

As a charm against all evil.

Of little children sucking the last drop of sweet coconut water

Through neon-green plastic pipes.

Of big corporations marketing its coconut products

To divas with Gucci sunglasses perched on their delicately powdered noses

Carrying retro jute bags and eating organic tofu.

The hundred coconuts changed the destinies of men.

The hundred coconuts created food fit for kings

The hundred coconuts desiccated the swamps and turned them into plantations

The hundred coconuts became signifiers of health, wealth and prosperity

And many years later

The hundred coconuts blew away in a gale

Leaving behind a seed of doubt and possibility

In the minds of men who had lived through these times.

Many moons passed

And many a child grew into the pink of youth

In the midst of political turbulence

And economic upheavals.

Young men left the land in search of greener pastures 

In the desert land across the world.

They built double-storey homes with pink walls and bathroom tiles 

Perched precariously on their picturesque village greens.

They came home two weeks in a year,

An army of haggard men,

An army of bent men

An army of hollow men

Lugging their broken spirits and slipped discs along with the new 21-inch colour tvs.

The coconut crops had been failing

The water wasn't as sweet anymore.

The people forgot the lesser gods

Who presided over domestic corners. 

An amnesiac race poured gallons of milk 

Over the Creators and Destroyers of the world.

Only a handful of ancient, toothless women would go hunting for a coconut tree

On the hottest summer afternoon of the year.

"We must find him. The God of all our Small Things," they would mutter and hobble away into the distance. 

One spring morning, 

A young bride dressed herself in her day-old wedding finery

She tied her vermillion smeared hair 

Into a loose knot

And walked hesitantly

To the bullock cart which would carry her toward adulthood

In a matter of a few hours. 

She swayed from side to side 

Her shoulders grazing those of her husband of a few hours.

She shed a silent tear 

Of love, loss and longing 

As the trees and fields of her childhood games 

Filtered through the flimsy gold gauze of her wedding veil

Disappeared into the horizon 

With the suddenness of a magic trick.

A random stone 

Crippled the bull

And punctuated the doleful ride

With a much-needed stop.

The swollen-eyed bride peeked out from under her veil 

And looked skywards on a whim.

And a few feet away, she saw it for the first time.

The strange three-headed monster

That was growing out of the soil.

A hundred baby coconuts hung ponderously from its delicate limbs.

The bride looked up in awe forgetting her veil and her husband of a few hours

She simply pointed and muttered a half remembered phrase from her grandmother’s tales,

“This is the God of Small Things.  

He has returned to our land again 

And now we will live happily ever after, she said with a watery smile."