|
| S Rama Krishnan |
Translated from Tamil by
Saravanan Karmegam
When Robertson was
travelling to India from England by the ship ‘The Great Coast’, he avoided
conversing and drinking liquor with any of the East India Company Officers who
were accompanying him in the journey and rather spent all his days scrutinizing
the geographical maps in his chamber instead. He was busy learning, during his
ten days journey, about some enigmatic plants nurtured by some specific
communities on the slopes of Indian mountains, scripts made with coded
pictorial representations about the art of growing plants and the secret sign
language used to understand the conversations of plants during eclipses. He was
awestruck, startled learning all these. Unmindful of his bizarre interest on
plants, his fellow Company officials were busy with noisy revelry celebrating
the birth day of Jesus Christ which added up to their gaiety.
As most of them had frequented India, they were
gabbling on excitedly in inebriation about the busty dark-complexioned women,
the jungles for hunting and wondered how foolish the people were being unaware
of guns.
As he knew something about the book “The Secret
Life of Plants” written by Thandavaraya Swamigal of Thirikoodar Hills,
Robertson was busy recording his impressions sitting in his cabin where he
could avoid the noise of his merry making friends and was seriously thinking of
its manuscript which couldn’t be traced anywhere. He had prepared an exhaustive
procedure for searching the manuscript of Thandavaraya Swamigal which could
arguably prove, all western knowledge gained in the field of botany till date,
false. Recording the conversations of plants during eclipses was the
quintessence of his journey. He was surprised to see every Indian book written
about botany just looked a bundle of stories resembling parted feathers of some
fantasy.
On the next night after Christmas, he was standing
on the upper deck of the ship, his face looking pale, bearing the restiveness
of unending waves of sea birds. His mind was fully occupied with Thandavaraya
Swamigal as he was staring at the sea blankly holding his grey hat on one hand.
He was thinking of secret symbols hiding in every family in Indian lives laden
with riddles and their illusionary, enigmatic imaginations. His fellow
traveller in the ship, a lady with the name Robertson went past his room
watching it still lit. She kept on hearing the sounds of his sleepless babbling
daily. He was speaking himself as if he was speaking to someone unknown. The
Spanish servant boy who served dinner saw him lying amidst papers with swollen eyes.
His cat was sleeping upon his gun. He got treated by the doctor on the fourth
day and came to the upper deck with his cat on one hand and a black hat on the
other. His cat was staring at the sea. The fry further went deep into the water
on seeing the shadow of the cat on water surface. In his dream that night, the
gluttonous giants, about whom he had read in Indian mythological stories when
he was young, were belching out with their stuffy stomachs after swallowing up
that ship.
On the evening the ship was nearing the shore, he
kept his boxes ready and was gazing at the landscapes lay before him, with the
cat in hand. Before alighting from the ship, he drank a bottle of liquor, threw
the empty bottle away into the sea. The Sun fell into the sea. The harbour with
fishing boats was visible at the distance. The wind from that unknown land flew
across, gently stroking the back of the cat. With its eyes dizzying, his cat
travelled in the chariot along with Robertson, enjoying the semi-dark
evening.
After seven days, he reached Madras. Since it was a
holiday, there was not much crowd in the city. Only birds were sitting along
the shore. A couple of children were seen roaming around with fishing nets. On
his way to the Church located along the shore for offering prayers, a woman
with six fingers carrying a fibre basket in her hands smiled at Robertson
displaying her betel leaves stained teeth. It looked as if the whole area
full of red colour buildings, trees grown along with reeds and huts nestled in
coconut trees, had become alive from the dream. While returning from his
prayer, he met Gomathi Nayagam Pillai who had come from Welsy Bungalow,
awaiting him. Gomathi Nayagam was fifty two years old then. His wife was
carrying her eighth child.
On his way, when he met the six fingered- woman
once again, he realised that there was an irresistible strong attraction and
charm in her. He stood there, kept looking intently at her. She took no time to
tell him on his face. “Don’t search for the origins of streams, women and
trees. Leave this place”. She gave him a wooden toy while leaving him. The toy
had sex symbols of both the genders. A lot of coded languages were found carved
on its body. Unmindful of the palm sized toy he was holding in hands, Robertson
was busy enquiring Gomathi Nayagam pillai about her. When he was informed that
she was a soothsayer woman, belonging to weaver community and their words were
powerful enough to become true, he could feel that death was hiding behind the
charm found in her stained teeth.
All what he was talking the whole next day with
Pillai was nothing except the Thirikoodar Hills. Pillai thought that he was
also as fascinated as other English men who were having an unrelenting thirst
for hunting. But hearing his frequent references to Swamigal and some enigmatic
plants, he told himself that he must be under the spell of an invisible
madness. Robertson roamed around the city of Madras and could succeed in
procuring some copies of botanical treatises and history of jungle anecdotes
that were hiding in some old book shops that had been still thriving since
Mogul period. He understood that some plants nurtured in some families for
generations had grown up as extended branches of time and acquired some super
natural power. That, they are the ones which teach all the secrets of man-woman
relationship and as they are carrying the hereditary memories of families, they
tend to acquire the power of shining, he thought. When he came across stories
related to shrubs used as narcotic substances, creepers inducing secret
passions, flower plants kept in bath room blossoming in dreams at the sight of
nude young virgin, the lonely tree radiating the smell of animosity and the
branches of trees where the spirits were hiding etc, his interest on the
subject increased many fold. Robertson’s cat was getting accustomed with the
surroundings. The women walked away from the area where the black cat with
green eyes was roaming, went by other small paths, and hid themselves instead.
Gomathi Nayagam had made all the arrangements for
the journey to Thirikoodar Hills. Robertson was writing a letter to his wife.
Before he completed the letter with the last line, he heard someone knocking at
the door. He stepped out of the house, and saw the six fingered woman walking
at a distance. A head of a rooster with blood streaking out was found lying at
his door.
Countless number of water falls were found in
Thirikoodar Hills. There found stone statues of lions, stone halls with water
sprayers, trees whose names were unknown, monkeys, stone beds of ascetics and
Siddhars in the caves, water springs, long tailed dragon flies, bushes full of
heart shaped leaves, rocks, black rocks, sleeping trees, the lonely house of
Neeli, wood leaches, wild squirrels, skulls of dead hunters, heaps of elephant
dung, army of flies, scabby flowers, white cloths of people who died falling
into the springs that looked like dried honey comb, drunkards roaming around
seeking sexual pleasure, illicit gamblers, a statue of Amman without breasts,
an altar stone with the stains of pig’s blood, pebbles reminding breasts and
grey ducks. When Robertson arrived in there, the rainy season was still not
over. Despite it post winter season, it was still raining. He reached the
foothills in one morning when the hill witnessed simultaneously sunny light on
its one side and rain on another side. His cat, staring at the trees till then,
raised its head as it sniffed the odour of meat.
The verdant expanse of the Thirikoodar hills
covered his body and made it look greenish. His body was just physically
standing in front of the Thirikoodar hills, which he till then had seen only in
geographical maps and fantasies, with all its senses surrendered muttering with
itself. A big empty space where the sound of humans became almost non-existent
was lying beneath the hills. The game of sun light’s arrival and the rain’s
disappearance went on concomitantly. All rocks became alert at the sound of
human presence. Robertson let his cat go from his hands slowly and walked along
the twin falls. The red flowers were strewn on along the path. It looked as if
frozen with the spread of dense mosses. The day time was lengthening itself.
The remains of hunters’ foot prints could be seen. The wind was throwing the
noise of falls at the hills. The foot prints were found erased on the
boulders which stood obstructing the paths. Small caves were visible all
through the way. Since they were small caves he could sense them badly
stinking with broken mud pots scattered all around. He saw all the caves having
inevitable scent of women in them. The bats were sleeping in the warmth found
inside the caves. He found that some caves had springs and eye- shaped boulders
were placed on them to obstruct it. Behind the twin falls, the trees were
thickly grown all through the way. Some trees that shed its leaves were staring
at the sky. It was looking like a forest area without much of human activity.
The cat came back shaking its head after roaming around somewhere, with
wild flies sticking all over its body. Robertson lit a fire to get rid of the
wild flies. The cat curled its tongue towards the flames of fire. Till the
evening of his first day of expedition, Robertson was roaming along the hill
tracks found behind the twin falls, but returned in vain. All his maps had
become like toy boards. He saw all paths were either found closed or half of
them were cut off.
Robertson was looking very much disappointed and
his heart was filled with the springs of bitterness when Gomathi Naygam Pillai
met him that night. He was unable to find out any way. Next day, Gomathi
Nayagam took Robertson to a village called Koodankaavu. The sun light descended
upon that village of which all houses were thatched with tiles. They were
walking through the village where one could see cows and children everywhere,
went directly to Thaan Thondriya Pillai’s house. Thaan Thondriya Pillai, a
stout frame possibly due to excess water content and blackened foot welcomed
them and offered them seats. Following their lengthy conversation all through
the day, Pillai brought some science books and manuscripts from the inner rack
of his house, showed them to Robertson.
Robertson asked him, “Are plants capable of
speaking? Are there any enigmatic plants around here?”
Thaan Thondriya Pillai walked up to the inner hall
of his house, ensured that there was no woman in the house. He, then, lowered
his voice and told, “Yes. It is most likely. They do speak. As the women
in the house shouldn’t hear this, I am telling this secretly. The plants are
capable of speaking. They are aware of secrets. Thandavaraya Swamigal even told
that they have flesh like humans”
Pricked by the reference of Thandavaraya Swamigal’s
name, Robertson asked him to provide more details about him. Pillai told
him that he hadn’t known about him much; he would roam around the jungle half
nude; women would close their doors whenever he entered the village; no woman
would ever cross his way. Sufficient amounts of grains would be dispatched to
him. Along with these details, when Pillai added up one more information that
Swamigal died of syphilis, Robertson understood that it were all nothing but
exaggerated fantasies.
Robertson spent the whole of rainy season in
meeting a lot of persons. Even those who knew about Thandavaraya Swamigal
repeated the same stories. Some more anecdotes were also added in the stories
about him and it got extended into different narratives such as he was capable
of bringing the trees along with him while coming down the hills, he could make
the trees know young women’s bodies so as to satiate their mysterious desires;
he himself was a magician and he knew about coital techniques. But the
manuscript of “The secret Life of Plants” was not available with anyone. Every
one showed him the picture of Thadavaraya Swamigal with his six fingers, long
matted hair and thin frame, instead.
Once the rainy season was over, the paths to
Thirikoodar Hills opened up. Robertson started walking deep inside the hills
till midnight, carrying ration along with him sufficient for a week. The dark
paths of the hills became clear as they received the sun light. The yellow
insects stuck to the rocks had started falling down. The trees with heavy roots
were heaving sigh. Passing through the slits found in the rocks, Robertson reached
the inner layers of the jungle. The jungle looked like a green cup. All the
components of it seemed to have lost their shapes. Other than rocks and trees,
he couldn’t see anything. He felt that nights in the jungle were colder and
greener than they were during the day. He could hear whispers and the sound of
flutters of wings raising and dropping somewhere. The bodies of twin trees
intertwining with each other became visible. Darkness had descended upon tall
trees where snakes were hiding. Seeing the trees hit by broken arrows, he was
walking past further deep into the jungle. Now, the trees looked standing alone
and unruly. The trees resembling stones were sucking up the moisture.
On the third day, his cat was seemingly frightened
at the shrubs found around. At the touch of his cat, some plants closed their
leaves. The only butterflies flying above the cat gazed at it. When he
followed his cat which fell down after a failed attempt of jumping from a
boulder, Robertson came across a falls which no one had ever seen.
It was a falls falling from a great height. The
magnificence of that falls falling from the edges of rocks was not known as
yet. It was further more surprising to see that the falls didn’t make noise
despite falling from such a height. It appeared that a sort of superlative
silence was descending. For the first time, he saw a falls which didn’t make
any noise. Even the burbling of water was also absent. He was lying there for
two full days amidst the wet rocks through which the water flowed, watching the
falls like an animal. No sound anywhere. He couldn’t understand where the sound
of falls was hiding itself. Even his cat which was lying on the rock, full of
flowers grown on it, could not remove its eyes from the marvelous scenery
unfolded in front of it. On the third day, he went near to the falls, stood
under it. The falls with its speed, chillness and fragrance swept him away. He
was lying there watching the white flowers blossomed everywhere on the right
side of the falls. Those flowers looked like a tube with eight petals. He
uprooted one white flower plant along with earth. He completed drawing the
layout of falls during the day time. Unable to withstand the 'laughter' of the
Silent Falls, he got himself withdrawn from it, crawled along the rocks and
reached his home after six days, only to be found that he had been infected
with water born fever, and was too feeble to talk. He was treated by Gomathi
Nayagam Pillai and got cured. The very thought of the Silent Falls caused him
immense pain in his heart. There were some conspicuous changes in his behaviour
too after his return from the jungle. In one of his dreams on a night, he found
his body becoming a big hill and his body parts turning into trees. The blood
was gushing out of his heart like silent falls and flowing from head to toe.
Once he realized that the jungle where the silent falls flowed was nothing but
human body, the plants mentioned in the “The secret Life of Plants” was nothing
but man and it was the plants that resided in the human body were capable of
talking, having secret desires, he relinquished all his clothing at once and
started roaming around Thirikoodar Hills with his black
cat.
The Paliyar women used to see the “Cat Man’ many a
times lying in the rubble. His body bore the scars of leech bites and cracks
from the scabby skin. His cat, totally changed its behaviour now, had started
screaming at everything. People had seen it scratching the trees and chasing
something invisible in the air. The face of the ‘Cat Man’ was full of thick
facial hairs. At times, he made visits to Paliyar villages, stayed there for
some time. However, the trees hiding in his body were inducing his passions
even though he avoided talking with people. On the day of eclipse, everyone
went into hiding at their houses. When the Cat Man went to the village on that
day, it stood carrying a deserted look. Paliyars told him that it was the day
the plants would talk to each other. He went down from the hills on its left
side. The shadow of eclipse started shrouding all over. The day became dark and
the jungle went into night. So dark it was through which even fly couldn't
penetrate. The trees stood with their heads down. The branches extended its
hands and hugged each other. The small shrubs became lively. The touch of
leaves and their mild scent created an inscrutable sense of lethargy. The
petals of couple of flowers blossomed, hugged the shrubs on the other side. The
roots started shaking as if there was a water current beneath. The sniff of
trees was making noise. The trees loosened their bodies and passionately
attracted to each other. The stony trees started shining, stretched out their
branches. Even trees which were sleeping till then, got up and shared their
cravings. The Cat Man felt that it was conversation of the plants in the
jungle.
From the nerves of leaves hugging each other, light
was streaking out. The trees intertwined with each other gently like snakes.
The individual trees standing on the hilly rocks stretched out their bodies,
started eating up the fruits of flower plants standing at the edges of rocks as
if they moved out of their place, coming down. Countless number of seeds fell
down. Once the eclipse was over and the streaks of sun rays came out, the
leaves released themselves from their cuddle. The trees straightened their
bodies. The fruits that were half eaten were restless. The leaves which were
unable to release themselves from the flowers were cut off. The jungle was
filled with relaxation of trees at the sun light and restiveness of lust. The
air around spread an aroma of waves. The jungle ceased its bustling and
returned to its initial calmness. Robertson was blinking with disbelief,
confused as to whether all what he saw were real or just an illusionary
representation. In case, if it was real, the secret life of plants was just
similar to humans. Wasn’t it? A myriad information had been hiding in the
layers of their memories. Hadn’t it? A botanist called Robertson who was hiding
inside the Cat Man became alive, and came out. The events he saw just a while
ago were pretty true. It was a marvellous fact that no other botanist had ever
discovered till date. After this discovery, one would be able to understand
plants only through the scientific procedures employed for studying human
behaviour. Since they have the nuances of human attributes and dreams,
trees are able to mingle with human beings easily. Having decided to go down to
register what he had seen, he went to the Paliyar village.
The Paliyar village women were walking before him
with wet clothes sticking onto their body after bathing. It was only at that
time, he noticed one thing. All women had their stomach tattooed with a long
shrub with leaves and flowers. There was a picture on their breasts as if it
was covered with green leaves like shrubs tattooed on their stomach. He
understood that the plants were some kinds of rare code languages to indicate
something important in Indian lives. Leaving his cat alone, he came down from
the hills in haste. The door which he had left closed already remained closed
as it was. The news of Robertson’s death provided by Gomathi Nayagam had also
gone to England.
He entered his room through the rear door, found a
lot of lizards sleeping in the drawer as he opened it. Just to register his
findings that there was nothing called manuscript of Thandavaraya swamigal, and
as it was nothing other than only the jungle, he picked up his diary for
jotting it down. The room was full of dusts and cob webs. Swiftly he put on his
clothes, stood in front of the mirror. When he saw himself in the mirror he
felt elated with the feel of success and laughter. He pushed the front door and
looked out whether anyone was coming. There was no human movement. He picked up
a liquor bottle from the shelf in the room. The glass tumblers kept along the
liquor bottle slid down on the floor. When he was cleaning the glass pieces
broken from the fall at the height of almirah, something went into his skull
suddenly: “Where has the sound of glass breaking gone?” Why hasn’t sound come?
Within a second, he diverted his attention to the white flower plant kept at
the corner of the room. It had grown into a big tree, spreading its branches
booming with flowers all around. ‘Where has this sound gone? He threw out the
liquor bottle upward. It also fell down from that height without making sound.
He kept the flower plant out of the room and tossed another liquor bottle up.
It fell down with a big sound. ‘It means the plant sucks up the sound.
Doesn’t it?’ Can there be any plant that sucks up sound?’ He couldn’t
believe. He brought that plant into his room once again and was testing it
throughout the day.
Finally he concluded that the plant only sucked up
the sounds. He further understood that the same plant was reason behind the
water falls falling on surface without making noise. He preserved that plant.
He spent next whole three days, recording all his findings, and left to meet
Gomathi Nayagam Pillai.
Children were playing at his house. Gomathi
Nayagam’s wife got frightened at seeing him. When he went inside, Gomathi
Nayagam came in front, seemingly troubled as he didn’t expect him, welcomed
him. Robertson told him that he was leaving for England and he would come back
to Thirikoodar hills again. The baby in her womb turned its face after seeing
Robertson. He carried along with him the wooden toy given by the woman
soothsayer, sound-sucking plant and some notes while leaving for England by
ship. The ship was moving very slowly. He had chat with almost everyone on
board. He was spending his time either by drinking liquor or dancing, making
noise in drunken state.
On the ninth day since he started his journey, the
storm which was, till then, hiding inside the sea came out ferociously and
swayed the ship. The wind scooped up the water and threw it onto the deck. The
colour of the sea had changed. The omens portending the death, engulfing
everyone, cut short all chit chats. The ship was standing marooned in an
expanse of the sea where one couldn’t find even a sign of land. No one knew
when the ship got wrecked. When he opened his eyes last in the height of a
wave, he saw a verdant spread everywhere. After that, his body was floating
several days on the waves of the sea. When his body was washed ashore, the sun
light was crawling on his lengthy back.
The notes he kept in a leather bag which drowned in
the depth of frothing sea water were, later, eaten by fishes slowly. All his
secrets were safely dumped into the bodies of fishes. However, the sea water
broke the wooden toy into pieces.
Mr Richard Burton, a military officer having a
penchant for tiger hunting, who shared the room with Robertson, made all
Robertson’s new findings, on the secret lives of Plant and Silent Falls, known
to the world. When he came to the Thirikoodar hills later, he couldn’t find any
such place there. All what he got were just only Robertson’s notes. He compiled
them, published it in 1864. The major reason why that publication didn’t
attract much of attention was just the opinion of botanists who rejected it as
an exaggerated fantasy of a tiger hunter.
John Parker, a botany research scholar who came to
India in 1964, went to the place Robertson had mentioned in his notes after
studying extensively about the Thirikoodar hills and found out the said water
falls falling with noise. There were no white flower plants. ‘The reason behind
the plant’s delicate feelings was just their ability to absorb electro-magnetic
wave’ he reasoned. Further, he concluded that most of the Indian stories about
plants were pretty interesting ones; and the notes of Robertson were just one
of such interesting stories’. However, he couldn’t help feeling the sense of
formication on his skin- that the tattoos of leaves drawn on the skin of the
Paliyar woman with whom he had sex during his stay were actually crawling on
his body while having sex with her. He brushed it aside comforting himself that
it might be due to the effects of inebriation. But when he failed attempting to
find out the reason for the eruption of green colour patches on his skin, John
Parker did feel that he couldn’t help remembering Robertson. When Gomathi Nayagam
Pillai’s eighth baby was born with six fingers, no one knew whether there was a
relation between its six fingers and its tryst with Robertson when it was in
the womb. It was a different story anyway.
Translated from Tamil by Saravanan Karmegam
Source : (www.azhiyasudargal.blogspot.com) “Thavarangalin Uraiyadal” short story by S Rama Krishnan. (100 best short stories in Tamil, curated by S. Rama Krishnan)
