Book Title: The Second Marriage of Kunju Namboodiri and Other Classic Malayalam Stories
Author: Mini Krishnan, Venugopal Menon
Publisher: Harper Perennial India
Number of Pages: 272
ISBN: 978-9365698428
Date Published: Mar. 18, 2025
Price: INR 332
Book Excerpt
1919 Thachatte Devaki Nethyaramma: An Ideal Wife
Pages 136 – 139
THE IMPACT OF the assault sent her to the floor. As she hit the floor, her forehead struck the edge of the table and bruised badly. At the start of wedded life, it is impossible to envisage whether or not such incidents would occur later. But so soon! Even a year hadn’t passed … That monster of a man stood staring at her with a smug expression. A ruthless smile played on his lips.
The overseer of their lands had found a way to wring dry some hapless tenant. He reached just in time to ask for the approval of his master. He was certain that he would get permission. Still, ought he not to ask?
When he saw the overseer approaching, the master quickly went to the door. He was worried that the man might have seen his wife lying on the floor. ‘Govinda! A diamond in Janaki’s trinket somewhere on the floor. She is looking under the table for it. Don’t step in here. Go fetch a broom. We must sweep the floor to find it.’
After two minutes, Janakiamma stood up.
‘She has found it! No need for a broom,’ shouted Raghava Kaimal to his servant.
The freedom she enjoyed before she was married to him, the happiness and joy she dreamt would be hers after she married him … Instead, the frequent insults she had to endure in that house after she entered as a wife—above all, the assault just now—passed through her mind in a flash. She felt anger, disgust, a longing for vengeance and whatever else all at the same time. She thought no woman had ever faced so much indignity in her life.
‘You have no right to hit me just because I went to a neighbour’s house.’
‘Better keep silent. Else you will get some more. Who is to question me?’
‘I will pay you back for this,’ she said, walking into her bedroom.
With a sarcastic smile, the man watched her walk away.
A well-appointed bedroom, decorated with expensive articles. She fell on a couch and lay there crying for an hour with all kinds of emotions smothering her. Her forehead hurt badly. Suddenly, she jumped up. She picked up an earthenware jug full of water from the table and washed her face. She stood in front of the mirror, gathered her hair and tied it into a knot behind her head. She erased all signs of weeping from her face.
‘I will wreak vengeance on this evil man. God has shown me the way,’ she laughed.
This is when the servant maid Ammu stepped in. While she wept, Janakiamma had not noticed the passing of time. She looked at Ammu to ask what she wanted.
‘Kochammae Young Mistress! The time is half past five. You said you were going to the chorunu. Grain of rice given to a baby auspiciously—its first solid meal. At the Madhom Brahminical residence.of Mannil. Isn’t it scheduled for seven? It is time to get ready for your bath. The house is two hours away.’
‘Oh, I completely forgot. Good you came in. Have you prepared my bath?’
‘Yes. I placed warm water and soap in the bathhouse.’
Janakiamma was the only daughter of her parents. She had lost her mother when she was just fourteen. Her father doted on her and had brought her up with great affection. Few were the girls who could manage a household as Janaki could. That was an accepted fact. Four years after her mother’s death, her father decided to remarry. It occurred to her mind that her father was planning to remarry because her own management of the house was not good enough. It was no use telling her that he, her father, and his bride wanted Janakiamma to continue to stay with them. The day her stepmother arrived, she shifted to her mother’s elder sister’s residence. The father set apart a portion of his property for Janakiamma.
It was while staying with her aunt that she met Raghava Kaimal. He was related to her aunt’s husband and immensely rich. When the wedding was decided and her father was informed, he had not approved of it. He knew Kaimal’s nature very well and 139 An Ideal Wife had said so to his daughter. Father’s disapproval only hardened the daughter’s resolve to marry that very man. The wedding took place. Within the first month, Janakiamma began to understand Kaimal’s attitude. He was very unkind to his servants, because of which no one liked to work for him. When he was in a bad mood, he would treat her like a servant maid.
‘Why did you marry me?’ Janakiamma asked her husband one day, summoning all her courage.
‘Is that what you want to know? You thought you were more exalted in status than all of us. I had a strong desire to pull you down from that perch and trample you underfoot and squash your conceit. There was no other way to do this, except through marriage.’
Both the husband and wife entered the carriage to attend the chorunu. It was their first meeting after the ugly scene that morning. They pretended everything was normal; only the tell-tale bruise on the swollen forehead remained.
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Excerpted with permission from The Second Marriage of Kunju Namboodiri & Other Classic Malayalam Stories by Mini Krishnan, published by Harper Perennial India.
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