Muscat Hotel in Thiruvananthapuram fills up only after sundown. By midnight, it is packed. I was staying there for a film-script discussion. The place usually looked deserted in the morning, all the cottages appearing empty. One could take a long morning walk within the hotel without bumping into anyone. At night, however, it was impossible to sleep without stuffing one’s ears with wax, even in an air-conditioned cottage.
“These people seem to drink all night! Don’t they have jobs to go to in the morning?” I asked.
Ousepachan placed his whisky glass on the teapoy before he replied, “Do you think they are all like you, a half-Malayali, half-Tamil writer? They are highly paid and highly placed officials. They wake up only in the afternoon to wash, spruce themselves up and reach their offices by five in the evening.”
“Then?”
“They forward to their superiors all the work done by the menial bottom-feeding wretches and make a couple of phone calls. A litany of ‘Yes, Sir! Situation under control, Sir! I’ll take care, Sir! No problem, Sir! Thank you, Sir! Your greatness, Sir! Hahaha! Okay, Sir,’ and they can call it a day. They head straight here,” said Ousepachan.
“And here they carouse all night,” I said.
“Machan, what they do here is, in fact, their real job. The department heads catch up with each other’s news here. Those heads are approached by minor political figures, while businessmen, in turn, meet them at this hotel. And all of them end up entertaining high-class escorts. The place is swarmed, of course, with brokers of all kinds. Master, you tell us, has history ever played out differently anywhere else?”
‘How’s that possible?’ asked Kumaran Master.
“Back then, it was one king. Today, we have several. So there’s been a dispersal of power. Also, brokers and prostitutes in those times were from some communities only. Today, anyone with a talent for it can thrive in this business. Because – well – democracy.”
“In this same Muscat Hotel, I once encountered a case,” said Ousepachan. “At that time, I was here on deputation. I was believed to be an expert in coastal security since my mentor Afonso Rosario really was one. Since he wasn’t available, I was called in here. I too had the superstition that the women in Thiruvananthapuram were beautiful.”
“Aren’t they?”
“Machan, let me tell you a Namboodiri joke. There was once a Namboodiri who’d been soaked and stewed in the poetry of Kalidasa. He came here to Thiruvananthapuram and met a Nair girl. Stunning beauty. He fell hard for her and surrendered to her instantly.”
“Namboodiris are men of taste,” said Murali. “Listen to the story now. The morning after their wedding night, the Namboodiri picked up a rose and tapped it gently on the lips of the woman. Oozing romance, he asked her, ‘My angel, at this glorious daybreak, as the golden rays of the sun gently awaken the darling buds glistening with dew like diamonds, what tender thoughts cross your mind?’ Do you know what she said?”
“What?”
“‘I need to poop.’” Saying that, Ousepachan burst into laughter, which made the gentleman seated beside him turn around.
“Not a good joke,” I said.
“It’s the age-old conflict between romanticism and realism … like Changampuzha Krishna Pillai and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai fighting,” said Kumaran Master.
“Damn the game of the Pillais!” said Ousepachan. “The incident I mentioned happened right here, almost at this same table.”
He wanted to continue narrating, while we wanted to keep gawking at the crowd. Many faces familiar to us from television flashed before us and sent shockwaves through our brains. Ousepachan announced, “Listen to this … The story of a mass murderer. It’s a story every Nair, especially, must listen to.”
Eagerly, I enquired, “It’s to do with women?”
“Nearly,” said Ousepachan.
“Tell us,” I said.
“About twenty days ago, a civil case was changed to a murder case here … you remember?”
“Seven members of the Karamana Koodathil family were killed – the suspect was their manager, Raveendran Nair. That’s the one?”
“Yes,” said Ousepachan.
Kumaran Master took an interest in the tale and turned around to listen. From the corner of his eye he noticed someone resembling Mammootty pass by.
“The whole Koodathil clan – Gopinathan Nair, his wife Sumukhi Amma, daughter Jayasree, sons Balakrishnan and Jayaprakash, nephew Unnikrishnan Nair – died one by one under mysterious circumstances over a period of twenty years. The last to die was the nephew Jayamadhavan Nair,” said Ousepachan.
I said, “Yes, the TV reporters went to town on it for a whole month with their analysis.”
“In the end, Jayamadhavan Nair lived all alone in the ancient bungalow called Uma Mandiram in Karamana, Thiruvananthapuram. One morning, when his manager Raveendran Nair visited the bungalow, he found Jayamadhavan lying on the ground with a deep gash on his forehead. Raveendran Nair, who suspected that his master might have had a fit and fallen off his bed, tried to take him to hospital with the help of the maid Leela. But it was a far-off hospital belonging to someone known to the family. Jayamadhavan Nair died on the way.”
“True, but no proper investigation took place. Just a post-mortem,” said Sreedharan.
“Soon after Jayamadhavan died, the entire wealth of the Koodathil clan fell into the hands of Raveendran Nair. The whole property had been passed on to a gang that included the maid Leela’s son and the sons of a former manager – all legally! Jayamadhavan Nair had, as a token of gratitude, already willed away all his possessions to Raveendran , who had taken care of him all along.”
“Yeah, clearly a suspicious case,” said Sreedharan.
“Over the last twenty years, the properties belonging to the Koodathil family were already being sold for a song under the care of Raveendran Nair. As soon as the news about the will became public, Gopinathan Nair’s sister filed a complaint with the police saying that she suspected foul play. The officer who investigated the affair gave a clean chit, concluding that everything had proceeded legally. However, when the police officer retired two years later, it came to light that he had purchased one of the lands that Jayamadhavan Nair had bequeathed to Raveendran Nair at a throwaway price in his wife’s name and built a shopping complex on it. He gave press interviews stating that he had bought the land with his hard-earned money in a completely lawful manner.”
“Yes, I remember,” I said.
“Three years after the death of Jayamadhavan Nair, this case suddenly caught the attention of the press when Koodathayi Jolly killed her own family members using cyanide. At once they turned this case into a sensational story.”
“True, they said the property value would have been over fifty crore.”
“All right … Do you know the current status of the case?”
“In the enquiry stage … What else?” said Kumaran Master.
“Exactly … In the enquiry stage. This will drag on for years together. Until nobody remembers it anymore, and it’ll simply sink into oblivion. At no point will Raveendran Nair be prosecuted, but most of his property will change hands. That’s the only difference.”
“Of course, that’s obvious,” I said.
“What I was going to tell you was about a similar case. At that time, I’d come here on deputation. I was drinking, just as I’m doing now. Back in those days, my brother-in-law was not a film producer, nor was I acquainted with Paul Zachariah. So I had no friends who shared my tastes. I was always alone. But that was also the time when I was hyperactive below the waist, so I didn’t feel the want of friends too keenly.”
“True, that’s something you should never go Dutch on with anyone,” said Sreedharan.
Excerpted with permission from One Million Footsteps, Jeyamohan, translated from the Tamil by V Iswarya, Juggernaut.
