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Were you certain of the tribesman’s mantra, there’s still terror in your limbs; you never know where you’ll emerge. But were you to land in a ditch, or be transported to another world and to another life, you know that for a moment you’ve beheld Bhavani as she falls into the sheer silence of the valley, and water foams in frolicsome splendour. Happiness is so simple. You just have to know footpaths. I ask you, does the waterfall ever change?

But sometimes sickness may come, and that’s another matter. For that’s what happened to me.

That year, the year 1941, you remember the summer came in early. It was hardly February when the heat began to rise, and people wondered where it was all going to end. The grasses grew corrugated, people were afraid cattle fodder would go dearer. The rice fields were getting baked up. For four months we had no rains. People said of course it’s the wars; what is there to be done? You cannot commit such crimes and expect the rains to fall as usual. Man must pay for his sins in slow death. There must be some balance in heaven. When opposites are equalled that is peace. If you kill you get killed, that is the law of nature. Hitler and the British brought about the drought.

Many persons in Trivandrum fell ill with this or that disease. Our Revenue Board Third Member, Kunni Kutta Nair, fell with a thud into his courtyard, and blood came out of his nose. It was diagnosed as one thing, and he died of another. People also died of cholera. Some had, like me, strange boils. It started one morning as I began to scratch my feet. The red of my scratch began to swell up. It became round and then yellow. With difficulty I took my bath and limped to the office. From Puttenchantai, as you know, to the Secretariat is just about twelve minutes’ walk. It took me twenty-five but the bubo grew and grew. When my boss suddenly came in around eleven-thirty, asking for some file, I jumped up, and the bubo burst under my feet. The fluid just spilled over the floor. I gave my boss the file and went into the bathroom (on the way I asked Krishna, the peon, to call the sweeper woman and have the floor cleaned). Once in the bathroom, I found another red spot rising on my thigh. This time there was no question. It almost grew big under my eyes. It was like a guava in a few minutes. But because it gave me no pain, I just went back to my table. In a few hours my whole body except my face had nothing but boils. They rose, grew red and then yellow, añd burst like country eggs. I went to the chemists’ and they gave me an ointment and bandages. I walked home with four bandages. I could not touch anything except coffee, I had such disgust. What’s the use of having a wife if she cannot take care of one — for when boils come, do they say, Dear Sir, I am coming, may I come, like a mother-in-law? No, they come just like that, and occupy your house. They’re of British make, and like everything British, it works without your knowing. Govindan Nair has a simple definition: ‘Britain has no secret service — Britain is secret service. Hitler has bombs; the British have boils. But of the two, which one works, dear sir, great sir? Of course the boils.’

Yes, the British boils worked. Some even said the infection was carried back by soldiers from Benghazi. (Where there’s no water in the air, the skin swells, avid for any available humidity, is the immediate explanation of Govindan Nair. He has an explanation, as you see, for everything. And every occasion is Serious, intelligible, and final). That night, to come back to my British boils, I was up and hunting my boils as one hunts lice in a girl’s hair. I must tell you frankly: I liked it all — just as the girls like lice being killed, there’s an acute sense of pleasure when the two nails rub against each other, and the chit sound emerges. The louse is well and happily dead. As a child I also liked the sound of lice being killed in my hair. It made you feel life was worth something. So that when the British boils came, I just lay down and counted all of them towards the early morning. There were some forty-four — small and big, red, pink, and white. When they burst I took away the pus, carefully folded it all up in cotton wool, and put it in a corner. When I woke towards morning ants and lizards were both at it. They were having a feast.

I could hardly walk now. When I sat up (for this happened constantly with me, whenever I needed him but never asked for him, there would be Govindan Nair), there he was jumping over the wall. His son Modhu had a cough, and this had kept Govindan Nair awake the whole night; so, as he could not go to sleep, he came for a chat. ‘My son will bring my coffee here. Meanwhile let’s bark some nonsense.’ That’s how he always talks.

‘Ah,’ I said, and showed him the British boils. He looked at the lizards and their feed and said, ‘Chee-chee, get away,’ as if they were dogs. For him the whole world was one living organism. Everybody — every thing — understood speech. For him every thing was in masculine gender. He had no verbs in his tongue.

So the British boils came in for close scrutiny. He knew immediately what it was. He knew every thing for he was so concerned with every thing. Once he talked so much on manure that an agricultural expert asked if he was a professor at the local college. Just the same way he talked of the twenty-three types of Enfield guns. Or for that matter of boils. Two cups of coffee were handed down the wall. You just saw hair and hand and Govindan Nair brought in the coffee. The sun was up and the light played on his head. ‘Ah, you big British boil,’ he said, and laughed.

‘Let’s drive the British out,’ he declared, and after a quarter of an hour’s silence — during which he did nothing but play with his toenails — he added: ‘And now for the fight.’ In half an hour he had been to Narayan Pandita Vaidyan. The medicine smelled disgusting, like horse dung. ‘To fight evil you must use evil,’ he assured me. I swallowed the paste and fell on the bed exhausted. The Lord knows how much pus must have eked itself out. Shridhar, Govindan Nair’s second son, came in again and again, to inquire if Uncle wanted anything.

Then I woke up so long afterward. Where was I? The definition of Truth is simple — you wake up and you are in front of Truth.

For when I woke up I thought I saw someone. But actually it was nobody. It was as if Govindan Nair was there when he was not there but yet he was truly there: one can be and not be but be, and where one is one cannot be seen, for light cannot see light and much less can light see the sun.

So when I woke up and, frightened, said: ‘Who’s there?’ I wanted to see something on the chair in front of me. But actually I saw Govindan Nair hiding behind the door. He went to the window (for he was munching tobacco) to spit out and said: ‘I am Govindan Nair.’ His son Shridhar stood by him brave and well protected. But what had happened in all truth? What, I ask of you?

The facts are there. Shridhar had not been very well, and Narayan Pandita Vaidyan had ordered complete rest, with an oil bath towards noon. So that when Govindan Nair returned for his midday meal (his office was between the Secretariat and the General Hospital, on the Statue Road — a low-down-looking shed with sacks and a huge red-coloured scale in the middle, and men at the desk examining ration cards — and above was his august office), Shridhar usually woke up, held his father’s coat and hung it on the rack. Then he took a towel and held it forth for his father to wipe his feet. Meanwhile his brother Modhu would return. Modhu preferred to eat in the kitchen and to have the meal quickly finished and over — so he could run back to school and have a bout of football. Today, however, he did not return — he had some schoolwork. (At such times he usually ate something in the coffee shop opposite). Shridhar took the towel back to the bathroom and went and lay down on his bed.