The Gypsy Goddess (26 page)

Over a glass of tea, you let the men know where you are from and what you do for a living and why you are here and when you plan to leave. You tell them of your fascination with the history of their village, you tell them where your sympathies lie, you make it clear that you have been heartbroken ever since you learnt of the Madras High Court judgment that absolved all the landlords. You share the people's anger, you make it known, in no uncertain terms, that the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence. Even if you may not stand with the red flag, you tell them that you stand with the oppressed people, that you salute their struggle. You tell them that women and children didn't deserve to die. In turn, Ramalingam tells you that killing of children is a caste-Hindu specialty. He talks of the time when the people of the
cheri
built a hut where they met at night and learnt to read and write; of the witch hunt that followed, of a one-year-old child who was trampled to death by the landlords and the police because they could not find her father who was the Communist Party's first point of contact in that
cheri
. Even running away did not help, he says, because when the man came back from Burma or Singapore or wherever, he was
dragged to the landlord's place and beaten to death. When Ramalingam's uncle returned in disguise he was identified. They pounded him to a pulp, poured kerosene over him and set him on fire. The police obliged the landlord by covering up the case and attributing his death to a fire that destroyed all the haystacks in that farm.

Ramalingam speaks non-stop, his sentences sprout without an end in sight –
you see
, ingadhaan
, you know
, ayyayyo,
what can I say
, adhu mattuma,
of course
, enna nadanthadhu,
you will agree with me
, indha aniyayathukku oru alavae illa – so you hear about how the mother-fucker
mirasdars
played the people of the
cheri
one against the other, Pallars versus the Paraiyars, even as you hear about the cinematic rivalry between MGR and Sivaji Ganesan. You hear about barbers desisting from offering their services to the people of the
cheri
; you are shown how the men fashioned shaving devices by inserting blades into flattened metal cylinders that held incense sticks; you learn that the only recourse to medicine was the
Anjal Aluppu Marundhu
, a cheap, herbal powder for pain and fever and chills and cold. You learn that his life's ambition was to be in the army, that, in his time, studying up to the fifth standard enabled men to join the military, but that became impossible because he had dropped out of school for two whole years when his teacher started calling him ‘Danger' for daring to wear red to class one day. You are told that it
was forbidden for the people of the
cheri
to catch the eye of any caste-Hindu: they were made to hold their gaze to the ground. You see a demonstration of how prostration had perfected itself over the years, how men and women and children of the
cheri
were made to fall at the
mirasdar
's feet, until the practice ingrained itself and people fell without hesitation, like palm trees severed at their roots. He goes on and on.

You listen carefully, you ask the appropriate questions. As an extravagant witness who has observed marital discord and military disasters with an air of appreciable nonchalance, you lend an atmosphere of everyday, even as you try to prise information from one of my old informants. You talk about a triple murder elsewhere in Tamil Nadu where unknown assailants killed a landlord and his two sons and left their three heads on the doorsteps of his bungalow. Your questions follow: ‘
Is there Naxalite activity here, have they talked of eliminating their class enemies? Annihilation? Assassination? Do they spread their propaganda through their secret meetings? Did they compile a charter of rapes and murders and lawlessness to show why a landlord is an enemy of the poor and landless peasants? Have they held a people's assembly in your village?
' How can you falter in this fashion, dear reader? Are you not aware that the more you ask, the less they will speak, and that sometimes you have to shut up in order to prevent rousing people's suspicions?
You might speak their language, stay in their homes, sleep on their mats, but people keep their secrets wrapped up. We might share this page, but beyond the careless chatter, I don't know what your political affiliations are. Who knows who you work for, to whom you owe allegiance? Maybe you work for the Q Branch, the state intelligence. Maybe you work for Naxalites, harping on about a new democratic revolution, a dictatorship of the proletariat and driving out the class enemies from the countryside by means of liquidating landlords and sustaining the guerrilla struggle, and all this questioning is simply a charade to hide your identity. In any case, the people will not help you in combing out the truth.

Now an uncomfortable silence prevails, everyone dismisses your suggestion of people taking the law into their own hands; they pooh-pooh your suspicions of Naxalite activity.

I am confident that you are capable of salvaging any situation, dear reader. You break the impasse by bringing up talk of the Gypsy Goddess. They attest to the legend, they repeat the story of seven mothers who were burnt to death, along with their many children; they tactfully point out that the temple exists in Pudukkottai, which is a part of Tanjore, but much farther away. They reassure you that their village has its own guardian deity. They take you there.

At the Kali temple, there is a feast of
sakkarai pongal
cooking. You ask the people for the occasion, for any reason for this celebration, and they laugh an open, whole-mouthed, belly laugh, and tell you that this day is special because you have come to their village. The more you infantilize them, the more they treat you like a child. Some conversations are closed on cue, and knowing that there is no point in probing further, you make it known to the people that you want to go to Irinjiyur, Gopalakrishna Naidu's village.

Feigning interest in the cause of dear old balance and self-screwed neutrality, and the latest fad of ethical journalism, you reveal that it is solely in your professional interest to secure his interview. ‘My visit would be pointless otherwise,' you say, and everybody understands that the amateurs always have it hard. Dear reader, they also understand – given the timing of your visit and the circumstances under which it has been facilitated – that this is one of those ‘anniversary special' stories that you are working on, that, twelve years on, Kilvenmani is a season-ticket for journalists who want to make a pilgrimage into people's memory, that writing an annual one-page article salves not only your conscience, but also everyone else's. You are allowed the privilege of being seen as progressive, the system is allowed the pitfall of being problematic, and the people – potent enough to pay back – are promised paradise for staying pathetic. (Forgive the former alliterative sentence.)
Back to you, dear reader, dear reader. Back in the village of Kilvenmani, back on the fourteenth day of December 1980, back on that lazy Sunday, when you express your intent to meet Gopalakrishna Naidu with the most honourable of motives. The villagers smirk and laugh, they elbow one another and tell you that, yes, yes, you should go, that today is the perfect day to see the head of the PPA.

You are taken to his Irinjiyur residence, where you are informed that today being the day of harvest, he is now at Anakkudi. You see his Alsatian on the last leg of its life, and for whose sudden ill-health suspicion has now fallen upon the cook – you do not catch his name, but he is the one who appears earlier in this novel – and he, fearing dismissal any moment, is too eager to please, so you press upon him the need to meet his master, you brandish your credentials, and, learning how well-connected you are – and knowing nothing about six degrees of separation – the cook sends word.

You impatiently wait in that house of many, many rooms when word reaches you that Gopalakrishna Naidu has been killed. At first, you do not believe the news of his death. You go to Kilvenmani to personally ascertain the facts of the assassination. You hear rumours of beheading. You hear rumours of forty-four parcels, each wrapped in palm fronds, sent to the people. But you shouldn't believe all that you hear and you shouldn't tell all that you believe.

You watch the women sing of the landlord's perverse lust, his bloodthirst and this red harvest. You hear the men say, with a sigh, ‘
Mudivu kandachu
,' which can be variously translated as ‘It has been completed' or ‘We have seen the end.' You join the people of Kilvenmani – on the village streets, in their paddy fields, in their toddy shops – as they rejoice in the revenge. You know, more than anyone else, of how they have waited every day for this day.

Mudivu kandachu
. It has been completed. We have seen the end.

Acknowledgements

A long list of thank-yous to:

Amma, for putting up with a moody rascal who happens to be her daughter. So far, she has only received heartache in exchange for her love for me. Appa, for listening to my never-ending outrage, for talking to me about the hunger and poverty of his childhood with a pain in his eyes that my words cannot capture, for taking me back to a reality that he had struggled hard to escape, for travelling with me on every trip to Tanjore, for sleeping with my manuscript by his pillow, for his secret pride. Thenral, for hugs and massive financial helping-out and sisterly motivation that involves constantly teasing me for having these dream projects, and for promising to read this novel only when it is finally, properly, decently published. Cédric Gérôme, for being the love in my life.

The many places, apart from home, where this book was written. The International Writing Program in 2009 at the University of Iowa that afforded me the time and space
to do my mandatory reading. The Charles Wallace Trust (CWIT) Fellowship in 2011 at the Department of English, University of Kent, where the first draft of this book was written. Alex Padamsee, for being kind enough to make time to allay my first-time novelist fears over cups of coffee. Richard Alford who runs the CWIT for selecting me for the grant, and to the British Council in Chennai for their help with this residency. Uma Alladi and Dr Sridhar for offering me a fortnight-long residency at the University of Hyderabad when I needed it the most.

David Godwin, for almost being my third parent, for helping me pick up the pieces of my life, for pulling me back into writing when I thought all was lost. On some sad nights, I kept at writing not only for myself, but because I didn't want to fail you.

James Roxburgh, patron saint of Tamil mistranslations and the 24-hour clock, for the brilliant edits, for putting up with my endless procrastination, and above all, for what seems to resemble an unending conversation. You possibly know Kilvenmani better than me by now. Belinda Jones, my copyeditor for not just spotting errors, but also politely pointing out when a village woman started appearing under another name towards the end of the book. Helen Crawford-White for coming up with a cover so retro, so flamboyant-camp-and-Tamil-and-1960s-all-at-once.

Ravi Mirchandani, for deciding to run with this book, for
not complaining about the many Camel cigarettes that I shamelessly snitched from him, for being so cool. VK Karthika, for publishing me in India, and, above all, for taking a liking to this reckless, badass writing.

My friends in the United Kingdom for opening their homes to me, for countless meals and the welcoming space to sleep: Farah Aziz, Murali Shanmugavelan and Claire Sibthorpe, Sarah Sachs-Elridge and Senan, Sabitha Satchi and Seena Praveen.

Ajit Baral, Akshay Pathak, Amanda, Anne Gorrissen, Azad Essa, Ayesha, Isai Priya, Jaisingh Amos, K. Maariappa, Keerthikkan, Lekshmy Rajeev, Millicent Graham, Nikhila Henry, Pilar Quintana, Raphael Urweider, Ronelda Kamfer, Shazia Siraj, Sumana Roy – for support and advice and love, I cannot thank you enough. To Jaison, Jolly Chechi, Uma, Thushar, Jenny, Prasanth, Ami and Thachukutti, Auswaf, Anver, Haseena, Hoda, Iza, Fatima, Diya, Noushad, Vinod, Sudhir, Asha, Tara among many, many, others, for making my visits to Kerala a home-coming.

Javed Iqbal for consoling me from far away, over GTalk, on a crazy winter night in 2009, saying that there is no story that cannot be told, and for adding, that the difficulty in telling a tale is a story by itself. S. Anand, for wildly suggesting several years ago that I should attempt to write a non-fiction history of Tamil Nadu's worst massacre of Dalits to date. I was too shy to take up that challenge. Andy
Barker, Sara Dickey and Ravi Shanker for their valuable inputs on early drafts.

Comrades in the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi for their help in making it easier for me to reach the people and, therefore, their stories. Comrades AV Murugaiyyan, District Secretary of the CPI(M); A. Kumaresan of
Theekathir
, Kaaviyan and G. Ramakrishnan, for their moral support and standing by me. Comrade Balasubramaniyam at the CPI(M)'s Nagapattinam office for the classic full-timer's dedication.

Comrade R. Nallakannu, from the Communist Party of India, for being the hero of the working classes, for embodying simplicity and struggle, for always having a kind word for me. You are the leader I look up to. Comrades D. Raja, Tha. Pandian and C. Mahendran, for their help and support, for unfailingly asking me how the writing was progressing, for sharing anecdotes and archival material whenever I sought their help.

VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan; translating his essays in the summer of 2003 first led me to read up extensively on this massacre. To him, I owe a great deal in learning about the extreme violence visited on Dalits, and the people's history of militant resistance. D. Ravikumar, whose writings have impacted the manner in which caste politics is understood, for encouraging me to write this novel.

Thevur Thangaraj for extensive interviews where we discussed the discreet perversions of Nagapattinam's landlords among other things. Chellamuthu, son-in-law of Kilvenmani's Muthusamy, for tirelessly retelling his story. Maniarasan, Kokoor Saravanan and Thangamani for taking me to villages in East Tanjore beyond the ones that concerned this particular novel. In Nagapattinam, A. A. Irudayaraj and Devadoss, for allowing me to use their offices as the unofficial point of initial contact. Justice Chandru for taking a trip down memory lane and recounting his field trips and his perception of the verdict.