Baby Kochamma was holding on to the back of the front seat with her arms. When the car moved, her armfat swung like heavy washing in the wind. Now it hung down like a fleshy curtain, blocking Estha from Rahel.
On Estha’s side of the road was a tea shack that sold tea and stale glucose biscuits in dim glass cases with flies. There was lemon soda in thick bottles with blue marble stoppers to keep the fizz in. And a red icebox that said rather sadly
Things Go Better with Coca-Cola
Murlidharan, the level-crossing lunatic, perched cross-legged and perfectly balanced on the milestone. His balls and penis dangled down, pointing towards the sign which said
COCHIN
23 KM
Murlidharan was naked except for the tall plastic bag that somebody had fitted onto his head like a transparent chef’s cap, through which the view of the landscape continued-dimmed, chef- shaped, but uninterrupted. He couldn’t remove his cap even if he had wanted to, because he had no arms. They had been blown off in Singapore in ‘42, within the first week of his running away from home to join the fighting ranks of the Indian National Army. After Independence he had himself registered as a Grade I Freedom Fighter and had been allotted a free first-class railway pass for life. This too he had lost (along with his mind), so he could no longer live on trains or in refreshment rooms in railway stations. Murlidharan had no home, no doors to lock, but he had his old keys tied carefully around his waist. In a shining bunch. His mind was full of cupboards, cluttered with secret pleasures.
An alarm clock. A red car with a musical horn. A red mug for the bathroom. A wife with a diamond. A briefcase with important papers. A coming home from the office. An I’m sorry Colonel Sabhapathy, but I’m afraid I’ve said my say. And crisp banana chips for the children.
He watched the trains come and go. He counted his keys.
He watched governments rise and fall. He counted his keys.
He watched cloudy children at car windows with yearning marshmallow noses.
The homeless, the helpless, the sick, the small and lost, all filed past his window. Still he counted his keys.
He was never sure which cupboard he might have to open, or when. He sat on the burning milestone with his matted hair and eyes like windows, and was glad to be able to look away sometimes. To have his keys to count and countercheck.
Numbers would do.
Numbness would be fine.
Murlidharan moved his mouth when he counted, and made well-formed words.
Onner.
Runter.
Moonner.
Estha noticed that the hair on his head was curly gray, the hair in his windy, armless armpits was wispy black, and the hair in his crotch was black and springy. One man with three kinds of hair. Estha wondered how that could be. He tried to think of whom to ask.
The Waiting filled Rahel until she was ready to burst. She looked at her watch. It was ten to two. She thought of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer kissing each other sideways so that their noses didn’t collide. She wondered whether people always kissed each other sideways. She tried to think of whom to ask.
Then, from a distance, a hum approached the held-up traffic and covered it like a cloak. The drivers who’d been stretching their legs got back into their vehicles and slammed doors. The beggars and vendors disappeared. Within minutes there was no one on the road. Except Murlidharan. Perched with his bum on the burning milestone. Unperturbed and only mildly curious.
There was hustle-bustle. And Police whistles.
From behind the line of waiting, oncoming traffic, a column of men appeared, with red flags and banners and a hum that grew and grew.
“Put up your windows,” Chacko said. “And stay calm. They’re not going to hurt us.”
“Why not join them, comrade?” Ammu said to Chacko. “I’ll drive.”
Chacko said nothing. A muscle tensed below the wad of fat on his jaw. He tossed away his cigarette and rolled up his window.
Chacko was a self-proclaimed Marxist. He would call pretty women who worked in the factory to his room, and on the pretext of lecturing them on labor rights and trade union law, flirt with them outrageously. He would call them Comrade, and insist that they call him Comrade back (which made them giggle). Much to their embarrassment and Mammachi’s dismay, he forced them to sit at table with him and drink tea.
Once he even took a group of them to attend Trade Union classes that were held in Alleppey. They went by bus and returned by boat. They came back happy, with glass bangles and flowers in their hair.
Ammu said it was all hogwash. Just a case of a spoiled princeling playing Comrade. Comrade! An Oxford avatar of the old zamindar mentality-a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him for their livelihood.
As the marchers approached, Ammu put up her window. Estha his. Rahel hers. (Effortfully, because the black knob on the handle had fallen off.)
Suddenly the skyblue Plymouth looked absurdly opulent on the narrow, pitted road. Like a wide lady squeezing down a narrow corridor Like Baby Kochamma in church, on her way to the bread and wine.
“Look down!” Baby Kochamma said, as the front ranks of the procession approached the car. “Avoid eye contact. That’s what really provokes them”
On the side of her neck, her pulse was. pounding. Within minutes, the road was swamped by thousands of marching people. Automobile islands in a river of people. The air was red with flags, which dipped and lifted as the marchers ducked under the level-crossing gate and swept across the railway tracks in a red wave.
The sound of a thousand voices spread over the frozen traffic like a Noise Umbrella.
Inquilab Zindabad!
Thozhilali Ekta Zindabad!
“Long Live the Revolution!” they shouted. “Workers of the World Unite!”
Even Chacko had no really complete explanation for why the Communist Party was so much more successful in Kerala than it had been almost anywhere else in India, except perhaps in West Bengal.
There were several competing theories. One was that it had to do with the large population of Christians in the state. Twenty percent of Kerala’s population were Syrian Christians, who believed that they were descendants of the one hundred Brahmins whom St. Thomas the Apostle converted to Christianity when he traveled East after the Resurrection. Structurally-this somewhat rudimentary argument went-Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society the Church with the Party, and the form and purpose of the journey remained similar. An obstacle race, with a prize at the end. Whereas the Hindu mind had to make more complex adjustments.
The trouble with this theory was that in Kerala the Syrian Christians were, by and large, the wealthy, estate-owning (picklefactory-running), feudal lords, for whom communism represented a fate worse than death. They had always voted for the Congress Party.
A second theory claimed that it had to do with the comparatively high level of literacy in the state. Perhaps. Except that the high literacy level was largely because of the Communist movement.
The real secret was that communism crept into Kerala insidiously. As a reformist movement that never overtly questioned the traditional values of a caste-ridden, extremely traditional community. The Marxists worked from within the communal divides, never challenging them, never appearing not to. They offered a cocktail revolution. A heady mix of Eastern Marxism and orthodox Hinduism, spiked with a shot of democracy.