It had been raining for the past five days, and Masilamani, standing under the asbestos awning of Pandi’s tea shop, the racket of rain above his head like a thousand wala on Diwali, was not a happy man. He could hear the muffled sniggers behind him; their voices stuck to him like wet clothes.
‘This rain reminds of the rains last year. How right that thambi was. If not for his warning...’
‘If not what? We would have listened to that old man and perished. Even the snake throws away its old skin, machan.’
‘Shhh, he can hear you.’
‘Dei, we can only worry about ourselves....’
Masilamani sipped his tea in silence, allowing the welcome steam to gently twirl around his thick beard like morning mist. It was 7 am and the fishermen had returned, the nets had been pulled in, and the women had taken over. The fish were thrown into baskets or laid out on slabs of stone in the makeshift market near the kuppam, now covered haphazardly with blue and yellow rubber sheets flapping in the wind like angry birds. Masilamani could hear faint echoes of the women haggling.
He looked at the skies, his eyes betraying none of the emptiness he felt. Twelve years ago, he had done just this – looked at the skies and heard the message of the sea as she slowly went inward, like a snail disappearing into its shell. He had felt the sea’s restraint, so silent and taut, that he had known the release would be merciless. He had run through the kuppam brandishing a rusted sickle – his body still agile and able then, his feet gliding across rough sand – asking everyone to grab whatever they could and leave immediately. Barely ten minutes later, when the thirty families – 150 of them in total – stumbled past the Marina beach lighthouse, they heard the sea roar and rush forward like a bloodthirsty war elephant crushing into oblivion anything that dared cross its path, leaving behind just one word etched on their minds – Tsunami.
Masilamani, the kuppam’s murder convict recently released from jail, had become an overnight hero. None of them, not even Kuppu Thatha, had ever known the sea to behave like that. It was only the sky that threw tantrums, he had said, never the sea. And for Masilamani, not even a fisherman, to have read the signs – it was unheard of. To have him belong to their kuppam was nothing short of a miracle. What was one measly murder in exchange for the lives of 150 of them? For the next ten years, as they tried to build their livelihoods again, none of the fishermen left for the sea without checking with Masilamani first. And Masilamani, who had ambled along in the fringes till then, welcomed this change and charged enough of a ‘protection fee’ to be able to afford a brand new motor boat. No rickety kattu-marams for him.
He spent long hours out at sea, not fishing – he didn’t need to – but just trying to feel the rhythm of the sea. He may be a murderer, but that did not stop him from being conscientious. He learnt to discern her moods – the harmless silence, the playful vibes, the menacing quiet, the sulking short waves, her fatigue and her energy – and almost felt like a married man. Not that he would know what that really meant – he had gone to jail a young man at twenty and come out an old man at forty-five. But the sea was his. She had claimed him – as Kuppu Thatha had said one drunken evening on the beach under the stars, his voice rolling out like waves, ebbing and flowing with the arrack in his blood. ‘Dei, Mani, the sea is yours now. And you are hers. Listen to her and she will tell you her secrets. When I was just this high, my grandfather told me about Kabali. Not the idiot in our kuppam, but the brave Kabali who could ride a storm with not a tear in his net. It was because the sea had claimed him too. He never had a want in his life. Never married. Died peacefully in his sleep. When they took his ashes to the water, my thatha told me the sea was so rough that it felt exactly like a woman beating her chest. And now, it is your turn. We may not know how she chooses her people, but we do know she keeps them well. Be true to her, Mani, be true.’
And he had been. He had listened well, he had been obedient. Yet, she had betrayed him. For a younger man.
He left his tea cup on the bench with a five rupee note underneath and walked away. His hut was on the far side of the kuppam, beyond the well they shared for water and the Mariamman temple, built after the Tsunami. He stopped some distance away from his house when he saw a figure standing at the door. Instinct made him wary, but as he inched closer and saw who it was, his muscles relaxed.
’Aiyya, my phone....’
Masilamani did not even wait for him to finish speaking. He went straight into his house and banged the metal sheet for a door shut. He could hear the boy’s plaintive voice, the words falling into dirty mud puddles outside.
‘No network on my phone, Aiyya. Am not able to check the weather. We need your help. Please, Aiyya, listen to me for five minutes. Only five minutes.'
Masilamani was listening all right. He never understood how this... this... boy at best … had managed to predict the floods that had happened a year ago. They said it was on the internet. He couldn’t understand what this new kind of net was – he had watched the boy closely to see if he went out to the sea with it, but he never even touched the water. And yet, he had known. Of course, he had not believed the boy, and, to Masilamani’s credit, many in the kuppam had not believed him either. But when the waters began to trickle into their homes and rise steadily up their legs and knees and waist, they had fled into the pre-dawn darkness like cockroaches.
‘It’s a slow Tsunami,’ they had wailed, ‘And we had faith in that murderer.’
*
On the first day of his job at Gati Couriers, Michael stood in the middle of his one-room house holding a piece of cloth, that really just looked like a string that couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to be fat or thin. His family – mother, father, grandmother, all smelling of fish, much to Michael’s distaste as he was worried it would stick to his brand new light blue shirt with GATI in red at the back and crisp black pants – sat around him like a patient audience, as the actor in front of them struggled to remember his lines.
Michael knew this had to go around his neck, one part tucked into the collar of his shirt and the other hanging loose down his chest. He had seen his favourite actor, Thala Ajith, on screen many times wearing this. It was called a ‘tie’, he knew that. But how on earth was he to wrap that thing around his neck without strangling himself?
He looked at his parents and grandmother watching him and felt momentarily annoyed that they had nothing better to do. Even though he knew this was a big moment in their lives – their son, with a proper job in a proper office in a proper city.
After the Tsunami – he was nine years old then – Michael had been terrified of the water. As he grew older, that fear turned into a promise he made to himself – he would have nothing to do with the sea and the sea would have nothing to do with him.
He folded the tie and stuffed it into his pocket. He picked up the phone the office had given him from the shelf in the house – already crammed with a comb, a small bottle of Parachute coconut oil encircled in an oil puddle, a small plastic box of hair pins and safety pins, a sachet of Cuticura powder sparsely used on the face and neck by his mother, a glow-in-the-dark statue of Mother Mary carrying Baby Jesus, the paint long worn off their faces, and Michael’s only possession, an Axe deodorant bottle that cost him one year of no movies with his friends. The black bottle looming over everything else on that shelf like a benign giant was Michael’s way of erasing his ties with the kuppam before entering the city. He was already mentally calculating a part of his salary that would be set aside for smell removal, as he called it in his head.
He walked to the bus stand near the lighthouse, careful not to turn his gaze towards the sea, but conscious nonetheless of her divine presence in his life, like an itch he couldn’t reach to make it go away. As he went about his day at work, mostly out on the road transferring packages from the main office to the airport, Michael felt surreal – to think he had come this far. Grudgingly, he knew a large part of the credit went to the Tsunami, with NGOs and corporates vying with each other to make a difference in their lives. But it was his hard work, he recognised that, and pride roared in his heart like the traffic surging forward when the light turned green. He also learnt, eventually, how to wear the tie. Inside the bathroom, one ten-minute YouTube video was all it took. The 4G on his phone was activated. Michael wasn’t unfamiliar with the internet, but he was with the world it opened up for him, and he treaded it tentatively, imitating footprints already made.
A month later, he heard about the Tamil Nadu Weatherman for the first time through a WhatsApp forward doing the rounds. He began to follow the blog because everyone was, but never took it seriously. Who needed a blog when Masilamani was in his kuppam? When the monsoons were delayed, he knew before the Weatherman because Masilamani had predicted that. And when it did start to rain, he knew it would end in a couple of days’ time because Masilamani had said so. But when the Weatherman predicted more rain because of another depression caused in the Bay of Bengal, Michael started to mirror the worry around him. The Weatherman had predicted a flood situation. The lakes and dams were overflowing.
Michael joined a volunteer group and went from house to house in different kuppams, showing them images on his phone, explaining the situation and asking them to leave for safe houses in the city. In his own kuppam, no one believed him, though a few families did leave with him, mostly just to sleep under a non-leaking roof. Michael had knocked on Masilamani’s door, too, for the first time appreciating his presence of mind of using a sickle to scare people into leaving during the Tsunami.
‘Aiyya, there is a flood coming....and...’
‘No, there isn’t. The rain will stop latest by tomorrow. Now go.’
‘No, Aiyya, they are opening up the....’
‘I said no flood. It means no flood. Now go!’
That night, after dinner, some of them packed their belongings and left the kuppam. The ones who stayed behind would do the same a few hours later. Only Masilamani would remain, using his boat to stay afloat, surveying the waters around him, his back turned to the sea.
*
When Masilamani opened his door an hour later, he found Michael still standing there, a rubber sheet wrapped around him, a plastic bag covering his head.
‘Aiyya, aiyya, just ten minutes, please can you listen to me?’
Masilamani roughly pushed him aside and continued to walk towards his boat, the rain piercing his skin like sharp needles.
‘There’s no network on my phone ... it’s not picking up a signal. Maybe out in the sea? Please Aiyya, everyone wants to know...’
Masilamani stopped suddenly, turned around, his eyes bloodshot, his breath slurring around his words. ‘Go and ask the sea. She seems to have eyes only for you now. Leave me alone.’
Michael watched him walk away, and for a few seconds wondered if he should try something else. But he shook his head – most of the fishermen in the village had gone to the Corporation office to sign for flood relief. It had been delayed by a year and with elections round the corner, money was finally being distributed. For a moment, Michael wondered why he even bothered. He had had enough of the sea and the kuppam. He would just pack his stuff and leave. He would find a place to rent in the city and he would create a new life for himself, instead of standing here in the rain, dressed in full office gear, his tie soaked and whipping against his chest, watching a stubborn old man walk away. And anyway, he never really bought into his colleague Malik’s logic of better signal in the middle of the ocean. In fact, he began to wonder if it was all part of one big office joke.
He heard Masilamani’s boat splutter to life in the distance. People in the kuppam had been talking about Masilamani refusing to go into the sea and preferring to stay in his house all day – starving till someone brought him food or arrack, smoking his beedis cut in half to last longer, and staring at the sea. But for the past one week, he was back in the sea again. No one could understand what was going on; and they didn’t dare ask him, especially since they had started to rely on Michael and his smartphone for weather updates. Even Kuppu Thatha shook his head in sadness, preferring to leave Masilamani alone.
Michael saw the boat quickly become a dot in the sea, disappearing and appearing through the haze of rain, like an icon flashing on the screen of his phone.
*
Masilamani hit the sea and felt a rush of blood. His body seemed infused with an adolescent energy, brash and rebellious, and he felt he could conquer anything that came in his path.
The sea roiled around him, lashing out at his boat like a wrestler’s fist.
‘Do what you wish, you whore! I am not scared of you anymore. Do what you wish!’
Masilamani steered his boat through the waves, unmindful of the direction he was taking. He had been battling the sea for the past one week, egging her on to topple his boat and consume him, but it was as if she simply didn’t want his body to touch hers. The deeper he tried to go into the sea, the fiercer the waves and the more impossible it became to move forward. Masilamani, frustratingly, found himself back near the shore.
‘I am not scared of you, do you hear me? You cannot throw me aside as you wish!’
He steered his boat into the sea again, with the single-minded focus of a lion stalking its prey, and then jumped out, holding his breath, just in case.
*
By afternoon, the rains had stopped. It was Kuppu Thatha who found Masilamani, while he walked to the nearest TASMAC to get his arrack quota for the day. He tripped on Masilamani’s toe, raised the alarm and in less than fifteen minutes, they rushed an unconscious Masilamani, sand sticking to his body like sweat, to the government hospital. Michael was the one who sat in the auto, using his phone to map their way through the city traffic.
At the hospital, they had to use a pump to clear his stomach, filled with more sand than water. Michael had visited Masilamani for a week, but eventually stopped, because they would just sit in silence for about ten minutes, and there was only so much silence that Michael could bear.
When for more than six months Masilamani did not return to the kuppam, another family moved into his house. A few years later, when there was still no sign of him, people forgot about Masilamani; but Michael remembered him from time to time, especially Kuppu Thatha’s words one drunken evening on the beach under the stars, his voice rolling out like waves, ebbing and flowing with the arrack in his blood. ‘Dei, Michael, the sea never forgets. She claims some, yes, but discards those who forget her. We are her people first. She resides in our stomach and she keeps us well. Wherever you go, Michael, remember that. Be true to her, thambi, be true.’
*
Praveena Shivram is a writer based in Chennai, India. Over the past fifteen years, both her fiction and non-fiction have been widely published. Till recently she was the editor of Arts Illustrated, a pan-India arts and design based magazine, and currently, she curates and edits the Lockdown Journal Chennai that chronicles local lockdown experiences through fiction, verse and non-fiction essays. Her work has appeared in Out of Print. Read her writing at www.praveenashivram.com.