The year: 1964. Place: Cochin Marine Drive. My heart was going pit-a-pat as I was about to take my maiden boat ride in the Kerala backwaters. There she was, a sprightly little thing, painted afresh in maroon, swaying gently in the swishing waters, tied to a bollard with a rope. The tireless sun was setting. A bright amber ball a moment ago, it turned deep crimson and then blood red. Soon it was swallowed by the horizon, where the backwaters hugged the blue sky. In the dreamy twilight, her colour stood out. Her nose perfectly shaped was in my direction. I could resist no longer. I moved towards her.
Someone touched my shoulder. A brawny, benign Keralite was by my side like an obliging genie. He flashed a smile and spoke to me in sing-song Malayalam. The only word I could make out was ‘saa-re’. The amount he mentioned was reasonable. I stepped into the boat and together we set off in that boat towards Willingdon island. As the boat cruised towards the island, I travelled back to my student days. I remembered the poem by Christina Rosseti, Ferry me across the water. It is in a conversational form between a boatman and a traveller. The boatman says he would ferry the traveller across if she had a penny in her purse. But the prospective traveller quips she has indeed a penny in her purse, and her eyes are blue. The ferryman, ostensibly a staunch non-believer in the exalted status sanctioned by the colour of the eyes, has the last word. “Step into my ferry boat. Be they black or blue. And for the penny in your purse, I’ll ferry you.”
This poem is interpreted as metaphorical. In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman, who carries souls of the dead to Hades, the realm of the dead, across the river Styx. The fare is not a penny, but the coin in vogue in those days, placed on the eyelids or the mouth of the dead person. Interestingly, certain communities in India fix a coin on the forehead of the dead, as a prepaid fare for the land of hereafter.
The literate Keralites, a motley mixture of believers, non-believers and fence sitters, may not come to a consensus on the boat-boatmen-travel in water allegory, but would agree that death is a great leveller, like a giant bulldozer steered by an invisible hand.
J S RAGHAVAN
Email: jsraghavan@yahoo.com