~Comrade Pillai~~

“Friends Roman: countrymen lend me your-?”

Lenin’s unblinking gaze remained on Chacko. Comrade Pillai tried again.

“Lend me your-?”

Lenin grabbed a handful of banana chips and bolted out of the front door. He began to race up and down the strip of front yard between the house and road, braying with an excitement that he couldn’t understand. When he had worked some of it off, his run turned into a breathless, high-kneed gallop.

“kndmeyawYERS;”

Lenin shouted from the yard, over the sound of a passing bus.

“I cometobery Caesar, not to praise him. Thee-vu that mendoo lives after them, The goodisoft interred with their bones…”

He shouted it fluently, without faltering once. Remarkable, considering he was only six and didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. Sitting inside, looking out at the little dust devil whirling in his yard (future service contractor with a baby and Bajaj scooter), Comrade Pillai smiled proudly.

“He’s standing first in class. This year he will be getting double promotion.”

There was a lot of ambition packed into that hot little room.

Whatever Comrade Pillai stored in his curtained cupboard, it wasn’t broken balsa airplanes.

Chacko, on the other hand, from the moment he had entered the house, or perhaps from the moment Comrade Pillai had arrived, had undergone a curious process of invalidation. Like a general who had been stripped of his stars, he limited his smile. Contained his expansiveness. Anybody meeting him there for the first time might have thought him reticent. Almost timid.

With a street-fighter’s unerring instincts, Comrade Pillai knew that his straitened circumstances (his small, hot house, his grunting mother, his obvious proximity to the toiling masses) gave him a power over Chacko that in those revolutionary times no amount of Oxford education could match.

He held his poverty like a gun to Chacko’s head.

Chacko brought out a crumpled piece of paper on which he had tried to sketch the rough layout for a new label that he wanted comrade K. N. M. Pillai to print. It was for a new product that Paradise Pickles & Preserves planned to launch in the spring. Synthetic Cooking Vinegar. Drawing was not one of Chacko’s strengths, but Comrade Pillai got the general gist. He was familiar with the logo of the kathakali dancer, the slogan under his skirt that said Emperors of the Realm of Taste (his idea) and the typeface they had chosen for Paradise Pickles & Preserves.

“Design is same. Only difference is in text, I suppose,” Comrade Pillai said.

“And the color of the border,” Chacko said. “Mustard instead of red.” -

Comrade Pillai pushed his spectacles up into his hair in order to read aloud the text. The -lenses immediately grew fogged with hair oil.

“Synthetic Cooking Vinegar,” he said. “This is all in caps, I suppose.”

“Prussian Blue,’ Chacko said.

“Prepared from Acetic Acid?”

“Royal blue,” Chacko said. “Like the one we did for green pepper in brine.”

“Net Contents, Batch No., Mfg date, Expiry Date, Max Rd Pr. Ri… same Royal Blue color but c and Ic?”

Chacko nodded.

“We hereby certify that the vinegar in this bottle is warranted to be of the nature and quality which it purports to be. Ingredients: Water and Acetic Acid. This will be red color, I suppose.”

Comrade Pillai used “I suppose” to disguise questions as statements. He hated asking questions unless they were personal ones. Questions signified a vulgar display of ignorance.

By the time they finished discussing the label for the vinegar, Chacko and Comrade Pillai had each acquired personal mosquito funnels.

They agreed on a delivery date.

“So yesterday’s march was a success?” Chacko said, finally broaching the real reason for his visit.

“Unless and until demands are met, comrade, we cannot say if it is Success or Non-success.”

A pamphleteering inflection crept into Comrade Pillai’s voice. “Until then, struggle must continue.”

“But Response was good,” Chacko prompted, trying to speak in the same idiom.

“That is of course there,” Comrade Pillai said. “Comrades have presented Memorandum to Party High Command. Now let us see. We have only to wait and watch.”

“We passed them on the road yesterday,” Chacko said. “The procession.”

“On the way to Cochin, I suppose,” Comrade Pillai said. “But according to Party sources Trivandrum Response was much more better.” -

“There were thousands of comrades in Cochin too,” Chacko said. “In fact my niece saw our young Velutha among them.”

“Oho. I see,” Comrade Pillai was caught off guard. Velutha was a topic he had planned to broach with Chacko. Some day. Eventually. But not this straightforwardly. His mind hummed like the table fan. He wondered whether to make use of the opening that was being offered to him, or to leave it for another day. He decided to use it now.

“Yes. He is good worker,” he said thoughtfiuly. “Highly intelligent.”

“He is,” Chacko said. “An excellent carpenter with an engineer’s mind. If it wasn’t for-”

“Not that worker, comrade,” Comrade Pillai said. “Party worker.” Comrade Pillai’s mother continued to rock and grunt. There was something reassuring about the rhythm of the grunts. Like the ticking of a clock. A sound you hardly noticed, but would miss if it stopped.

“Ah, I see. So he’s a card-holder?”

“Oh yes,” Comrade Pillai said softly “Oh yes.”

Perspiration trickled through Cha‡ko’s hair. He felt as though a company of ants was touring his scalp. He scratched his head for a long time, with both his hands. Moving his whole scalp up and down.

“Org kaaryam parayattey?” Comrade Pillai switched to Malayalam and a confiding, conspiratorial voice. “I’m speaking as a friend, keto. Off the record.”

Before he continued, Comrade Pillai studied Chacko, trying to gauge his response. Chacko was examining the gray paste of sweat and dandruff lodged under his fingernails. I

“That Paravan is going to cause trouble for you,” he said. “Take it from me… get him a job somewhere else. Send him off.”

Chacko was puzzled at the turn the conversation had taken. He had only intended to find out what was happening, where things stood. He had expected to encounter antagonism, even confrontation, and instead was being offered s1y, misguided collusion.

“Send him away? But why?! have no objections to him being a card-holder. I was just curious, that’s all… I thought perhaps you had been speaking to him,” Chacko said. “But I’m sure he’s just experimenting, testing his wings; he’s a sensible fellow, comrade. I trust him…”

“Not like that,’ Comrade Pillai said. “He may be very well okay as a person. But other workers are not happy with him. Already they are coming to me with complaints. You see, comrade, from local standpoint, these caste issues are very deep-rooted.”

Kalyani put a steel tumbler of steaming coffee on the table for her husband.

“See her, for example. Mistress of this house. Even she will never allow Paravans and all that into her house. Never. Even I cannot persuade her. My own wife. Of course inside the house she is Boss.” He turned to her with an affectionate, naughty smile. “Allay di, Kalyani?”

Kalyani looked down and smiled, coyly acknowledging her bigotry.

“You see?” Comrade Pillai said triumphantly. “She understands English very well. Only doesn’t speak.”

Chacko smiled halfheartedly.

“You say my workers are coming to you with complaints…”

“Oh yes, correct” Comrade Pillai said.

“Anything specific?”

“Nothing specifically as such,” Comrade K. N. M. Pillai said. “But see, comrade, any benefits that you give him, naturally others are resenting it. They see it as a partiality. After all, whatever job he does, carpenter or electrician or whateveritis, for them he is just a Paravan. It is a conditioning they have from birth. This I myself have told them is wrong. But frankly speaking, comrade, Change is one thing. Acceptance is another. You should be cautious. Better for him you send him off.”