Monsoon Diary by Shoba Narayan Page B

brothers and three sisters, spread out all over India, knit closely by a love of their native land.
    I am from Kerala, which means that regardless of where I live at any other point in my life, I will love coconuts in any form, I will habitually douse my hair with warm coconut oil and wash it off with ground herbs during a weekly “oil bath,” I will be enchanted by the sight of large expanses of water, and the smell of the rain will transport me back to my childhood.
    We took the train to Ernakulam or Kottayam, then hired a taxi to take us to Vaikom, our ancestral village on the banks of sprawling Vembanad Lake. Vaikom didn’t have the kisses and caresses of the Indian Ocean to soothe and calm its people. Yet with its three religious groups—Christians, Muslims, and Hindus—coexisting in sporadic harmony over the years, it produced a handsome, distinctive race of people.
    The women had long, curly black hair, and the salubrious soil and water endowed them with golden skin. Their flashing eyes, flaring skirts, tight blouses exposing bare midriffs, and swaying, sensual walk would all seem openly erotic were they not so casually displayed.
    The men were hirsute and stocky, with eyes that were permanently hooded from the potent
kallu
liquor that they imbibed in large quantities. They sported a certain machismo, with bare torsos and broad moustaches displayed like badges of honor. A Kerala man would be lost without his moustache, or his
mundu,
which every man in the state wears like a uniform.
    The
mundu
is a remarkably versatile garment, considering that it is but two meters of white cotton cloth, sans tailoring or texture. Kerala politicians wear sarong-style starched white
mundus
that fairly crackle with every step. Men working on the farm or going to the temple wear the
mundu
without a matching shirt, simply draping the towel like a shawl around their upper body. When involved in menial jobs like shelling coconuts by the hundreds, they tie the upper cloth into a turban to rid themselves of its constraining embrace. During summer months the stifling length of the
mundu
is cut in half by lifting it off the ground and doubling it around itself to resemble a pair of shorts. This works equally well when men have to wade through the knee-deep water that is the blessing and the bane of the southwest monsoon.
    Although it’s a small state, Kerala has the highest literacy rate in all of India. It is the only one of two Indian states that sporadically supports a Marxist government—the source of equal parts affection and denouncement. Kerala men will stand on culverts and street corners chewing tobacco and arguing for hours about Marxism. Every so often, like the coming of a cyclone, they will take up their knives to settle a quarrel.
    The volatile tempers and simmering passions of Vaikom were good business for my grandfather, a criminal lawyer, and a superb one at that. The entire village called him Swami, which meant God. My grandmother was referred to in a less grandiose fashion as Subbe-Akka, which meant “elder sister.” Legend had it that men in drunken brawls would yell that they had Swami on their side—“
Ennikku enda
Swami undadoi
”—before sinking a knife into another man’s throat.
    My grandparents were an odd couple. My grandfather was a tall, imposing man, with penetrating eyes and a sharp nose. He was fair for an Indian, to the point where people sometimes mistook him for an English sahib. A stern disciplinarian who followed an unwavering routine all his life, he rarely smiled, and spoke only when it was necessary.
    My grandmother, on the other hand, was short, gentle, and garrulous. She had the cheerful fatalism of someone who had given up trying to control her world. She was always busy, fussing over people, feeding them, taking in strays, hovering over projects that never seemed to get done, and holding multiple conversations, all at the same time. Her activities intensified in the summer, when the