DharmaKuthanur

A Review

“The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese is a sprawling multi-generational story about a family of St.Thomas Christians (Christian converts whose lineage goes back all the way to the arrival of St.Thomas on India’s shores in AD 50) in south Kerala. The story spans the period from 1900 to 1977 seamlessly moving across different parts of Kerala, Madras (Chennai) and even a brief segment in Glasgow, Scotland. It’s a moving story where bad things keep happening to good people who handle these tragedies with dignity and grace. If that’s all there is to the story, then there is not much to write about. But it is much more than that. The story is filled with memorable characters of depth, gut-wrenching emotion, powerful social commentary, vivid descriptions of various medical procedures (Verghese is a practicing physician and professor at Stanford University), humor, the redemptive power of love, and a cast of heroic female characters – all with the modern history of Kerala serving as a silent backdrop framing many events in the story. Throw in a small dose of magical realism, a medical mystery to be solved about a peculiar affliction that runs through generations in the family, and you have the makings of a story that moves you to tears on multiple occasions while leaving a deep imprint on your mind.

Big Ammachi, the matriarch of Parambil, is the beating heart of the story. While the archetype of the all-knowing, loving, wise matriarch has been covered in many stories, the arc of Big Ammachi’s journey from a 12-year old child married to a 40-year old widower who evolves into the matriarch able to handle everything that life throws her way while serving as a pillar of strength for all around her, grounded by an unshakeable faith and all-encompassing love, makes her a character that will stay in your mind long after you finish the book.

Add to that her stoic husband, a man of few words whose sweat and toil are woven into every brick and plant in Parambil, their son Phillipose, who yearns to live a life of the mind and is happy never to leave the confines of Parambil, the genius artist Elsie who perhaps is the most enigmatic of all the characters, the granddaughter Mariamma, Big Ammachi’s namesake, who combines the big-heartedness of Big Ammachi with the intellect of her parents. And a host of supporting characters like the cast of aunts, uncles and cousins, the Swedish doctor Rune who founds the Leprosarium (which plays an important part in the story), the Scottish doctor Digby from a working class background who, while being part of the British Raj, feels a more natural kinship with the Indians than his English supervisors, and the activist Lenin who joins the Naxalite insurgent movement driven by a combination of idealism and scars from his childhood.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is the relationship between the pulayar employees (pulayars were the lowest caste in Travancore) and their employers. The Parambil family are benevolent masters treating their pulayar employees with respect, kindness and even affection, while continuing to adhere to caste-based distinctions of the time (and probably continuing to this day). And pulayars, who converted to Christianity, were not immune to these caste considerations. A pulayi narrates the story of how her grandfather became a Christian naively thinking that his landowner would then invite him inside the house to eat with him. In perhaps the sharpest and funniest lines in the book, she says “No one told him that the pulayar Jesus died on a different cross. It was the short, dark cross behind the kitchen.”

The elder pulayar, Shamuel, who along with Big Ammachi’s husband helped develop Parambil, imbues the traditional way of thinking, serving the family with unquestioning loyalty bordering on worship, thinking it his duty to do so, while being content with his lot in life. His son Joppan, evolving with the times, subject to the growing influence of the Communist movement in post-independence Kerala, and developing a strong awareness of workers’ rights, is ready to question assumptions and wants more agency in his life. He has a more nuanced view of the relationship with his employer. While being well aware and appreciative of their love and respect for him, he is not afraid to challenge their assumptions of benevolence, forcing them to re-think the inherent power imbalance in the relationship and how easily wealth passes from one generation to next, from one kin to another, but never from the family to the pulayars who have toiled to build their wealth over generations.

The broader social and political context is seamlessly woven into the story, stretching from pre-independence times to almost the present – the growing popularity of the Communist party and ideology, the first instance of a Communist party democratically elected to power anywhere in the world, the ubiquitous presence of the “Party” in every town and village, the arrival of radio providing a window to the world, the growth of an active press and its hold on the minds of Keralites, and of personal interest to me, a thread of the story about the origins of the violent Naxalite insurgent movement in the Wayanad District of Kerala. Having grown up hearing stories of my Wayanad-based maternal grandfather receiving threatening letters from the Naxalites, it’s fair to say my perspective on the Naxalite movement in Wayanad has been mostly informed by accounts like these about the turbulent times and some retrospective coverage in the press. Verghese’s narrative provides other perspectives – of a movement with its origins in heinous exploitation of the powerless (in this case tribals who have lived on the land for generations), leading to hopelessness and a turn to violence with nothing to lose, aided and abetted by idealistic but naïve young outsiders with revolutionary aspirations. And like most such movements, it loses steam against the all-powerful state with nothing much to show other than disillusioned leaders who have second thoughts about their choices.

While the Parambil family saga is marked by repeated tragedies, the narrative is enlivened by Verghese’s touches of humor describing situations at home, inside surgery wards at hospitals and various social interactions – including a rib-tickling, laugh-out-loud episode about an American evangelical preacher at the Maramon Convention and the contortions that his translator had to go through to interpret his fiery sermon for the Malayali audience. Verghese also employs effective, colorful use of different accents and dialects that helps bring the characters and their conversations to life (an interesting aside – he mentioned at a recent event that he decided to audition for reading the audio version of the book himself since he didn’t want anyone else butchering the accents).

Almost all of the characters in the story are good people, acting in noble ways with good intent. If at all we see any malicious intent and action, it’s relegated to peripheral characters in the story. A critic can ask if this is a fair and realistic representation of humanity. Probably not. But then here’s a counter-perspective from Verghese in the memorable words of Big Ammachi in a passage early on in the book that’s a foretelling of the story to come: “A tale that leaves its imprint on a listener tells the truth about how the world lives….it must offer instructions for living in God’s realm, where joy never spares one from sorrow.” So in his own way, through the travails of the Parambil family and how they make their way through these challenges, he is perhaps hinting that kindness and compassion towards your fellow travelers in life is probably the most effective way to deal with adversity.

At the end of a 715-page book, I was left wanting to know more about various characters and threads in the story, and wondering where they might lead to if the story continued for another generation. At a recent literary event, Verghese mentioned he has a simple rule for writing fiction – “a good story well told”. For this reader, he has certainly passed that test.