Conspiracies of the Universe

Fiction

I was not surprised when I ran into Kurian in the town because I had heard from neighbours that he was back from Canada on holiday after a long gap of many years. I recognised him immediately because he had not changed at all except that his tummy had bulged a little. He rushed to me as soon as he saw me and gave me a bear’s hug.

I wriggled out of that hug telling him to be careful. “We are in a different India now. There are all sorts of spies everywhere including moral police.”

He laughed as he always used to do. Life was never a serious affair for him. We both studied in the same school, the government-aided Malayalam medium school run by the parish church of the village. Due to pressure from home, I put in my best and did fairly well in the exams while Kurian hardly managed to pass. When the teachers came with the answer sheets and made fun of Kurian’s answers, he laughed. I wondered sometimes whether he realised that the joke was upon him. Of course, he was no idiot. He knew that many a joke in the class was on him. But he didn’t mind. In his social science, Mohammed bin Tughlaq changed his capital from Delhi to Paris. He invented new theorems in geometry and new principles in science. When the class laughed at them, Kurian laughed too.  

“I am a Canadian. Indian police, moral or immoral, can do nothing to me.” He said when I hinted to him about the changes in the country.

When Kurian was about to complete school, his only dream was to go abroad and live there. “Paradise is over there, man,” he said. “Beyond the oceans.”

How would Kurian, who lived in a remote village in Kerala  and studied in a Malayalam medium school where he hardly managed to get through exams, find his place abroad? I had no answer.

But Kurian had the answer. “Simple, man. Marry a Malayali nurse who is settled there.”

Soon after school, Kurian joined the ITC in the town and pursued a certificate course in plumbing and wiring. “I cannot become an engineer or anything,” he said. Which nurse working abroad was going to marry a plumber or an electrician?

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. Paulo Coelho discovered that principle long after Kurian did. But Kurian, being nothing more than a plumber and an electrician, couldn’t put it so neatly. He said, “Life has a way, man.”

And the way did open for him. Kurian waited and dreamt about the universe’s conspiracies. Until the way did open.

This is one of the many morals that we can learn from Kurian’s story. Life has a way, man.

Katrina was the way. She was ready to marry Kurian. She was a nurse who lived and worked in Canada. She had a citizenship of that country too. A few years older than Kurian, Katrina was an unwed mother of a three-year-old child. The child was the last gift bestowed on her by Reverend Father Mathai Something, a priest from Kerala who was doing missionary work among the Syrian Catholics in Canada.

The Syrian Catholics of Kerala are very proud of their history that goes back to none less than Saint Thomas, Jesus’ disciple, who was sent personally by Jesus to convert the Namboothiri Brahmins of Kerala. It is another matter that the Namboothiris arrived in Kerala only centuries later. But we are speaking about religion, not history. Also remember the Malayalam injunction that there are no questions in a story. So, let’s get back to Rev Mathai. His mission was to help the Syrian Catholics in Canada to be loyal to their own unique religious rites and practices. Katrina happened to get a little more personal attention from the missionary than the other Syrian Catholics. That’s all. When the missionary work of Rev Mathai went beyond what Saint Thomas had asked the Syrian Catholics to do, the Syro Malabar Church transferred him to some other place. Katrina’s mother died of cardiac arrest on hearing about her daughter’s unholy liaisons with a man of God. “How did she forget that he was a man of God? How? How could my daughter do such a thing?” The woman convinced herself that her daughter was a female incarnation of the devil and she couldn’t bear it any longer. So she let her heart explode.

Kuruvilachan, Katrina’s father, was made of sterner stuff. He waited for the right time for the universe to conspire. And one fine day the waiting ended. That was the day when he discovered Kurian. Kurian had gone to Kuruvi’s (as he was known in the village) house to repair a damaged drain pipe in one of the washrooms. The rest was universal conspiracy.

People say that Katrina didn’t want to marry anyone at all, let alone a plumber whom her father happened to accost near a toilet drain. But Kuruvi threatened his daughter with the possibility of another cardiac explosion. “If you don’t marry him, I will follow your mother’s way,” he growled at his daughter. “We belong to an ancient orthodox Syrian Catholic family whose ancestors were converted by Saint Thomas himself from Namboothiris. We can’t afford to keep bringing up a bastard in the family.”

Whether it was the possibility of another cardiac explosion or the Syrian Catholic loyalty to Saint Thomas’s heritage that prompted Katrina to agree to the proposal, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter either. Let the universe keep conspiring as long as the results are good.

Years passed and the universe didn’t seem to conspire anymore in Kurian’s life. He worked in supermarkets and malls and petrol pumps and restaurants in Canada when no one called him for doing some plumbing or electric work. And he was happy. He continued to laugh as he did when the teachers and classmates made fun of him. Did Katrina make fun of him too? I never dared to ask though the characteristic Malayali urge to poke one’s nose into others’ private affairs was dominant in me too. All I know is that Katrina never had any other children. Did they, Kurian and Katrina, sleep in the same room at all? What a filthy question is that! We Indians shouldn’t think of such things at all.

Kurian must be a grandfather now though he never had his own children.

“Stop, stop.” Kurian told me. We were in my car. I had invited him to come and see our old village which had undergone many changes in the process called development. I stopped the car in the shade of a tree.

“Do you remember there was a konna tree here in those days?” Kurian asked me. A konna is an Indian laburnum which is also known very romantically as golden shower tree because of the rich yellow flowers it put out all over its branches in spring season. That tree had gone long ago when the road was widened for bringing progress to the village.

“It is under that konna that I used to stand and wait for her to appear on the veranda,” Kurian told me not without some nostalgia in his voice.

“Ganga Nair?”

“Hmm, you haven’t forgotten too?”

Kurian loved that Nair girl from a distance. The girl was aware of it too. She seemed to encourage it too because whenever Kurian appeared outside her house under the konna, Ganga would appear on the veranda pretending to be reading something and enjoying the breeze outside.

The universe didn’t conspire, however, in this case. The universe too has its own biases, it looks like. A Syrian Catholic boy marrying a Nair girl would be too much of a conspiracy even for the universe in those days.

“Do you miss Ganga?” I asked Kurian.

“No,” his response was very prompt. “I miss the konna.”

My Previous Story: When upon life’s billows