CHAPTER 19

I got up and looked at the bathroom. The bathroom was closed and there was no light inside. Then where is Indira. Suddenly I had a feeling she has gone down, but what for? Did anything happen to her? A very strong fear gripped me.

"Nandetta, you got up?"

I felt relieved. Indira was sitting on the mat inspecting the bags of ornaments one by one. Whatever she has opened she had kept them in separate places.

"You haven't slept? You said you could open all that bags in the morning?"

"I didn't feel sleepy, Nandetta. So I thought of taking out all these ornaments and see. Look, what a variety of ornaments!"

I got up and went to her. True. Some of them are really excellent. The dexterity of the artisans who had made these ornaments is showing on each piece. There was a time when people were not satisfied with second rate. Only the first rate got approval.

Indira took out a necklace and wore it around her neck. It looked quite good on her neck.

"How's it? Does it match my neck?"

"Any ornaments will suit you, dear."

"Oh, don't flatter me....." She said smiling. But she was already flattered from the looks of her.

I was, for a moment dazzled by the glitter of the yellow metal lying in front of me. These are ornaments that I could never buy for her, that are lying in heaps on the mat. There are very tiny bags in between, and I opened one of it. Two thin bangles, a ring and a thin necklace with a wedding locket on it in the shape of a tiny heart.

Somehow my heart sank. It was then that I started thinking about the source of these bags of ornaments. How come the Old Man came to possess all these ornaments? I remembered our visit to Nani Muthassi to know more about this house and ancestry. She had said that Ittiraman Menon had money lending business. It was through this business that he came to possess all these ornaments. There must have been a lot of families who couldn't pay back and lost their valuables. There is the deep sigh of a lot of families lying inside each and every tiny bag. Miserable lives that lead them even to pawn their wedding ring and wedding necklace! I felt the deep sigh of souls on my shoulder. I had a similar feeling when once I went to the attic.

I remembered when once I had to go to a jewelry shop with sister Radhedathi to pawn mother’s necklace and two bangles. And on that day I decided not to go to a shop to pawn anything. So much of self prestige and self esteem had to be pawned in the shop. It was only 10 years old then.

Now looking at these ornaments I remembered all that. These ornaments are cursed.

Indira looked at me holding the wedding chain, with a question in her eyes.

"What happened, Nandetta?"

"Indira......" I said calmly. "We don’t want this treasure."

She looked at me with unbelievable eyes. For a moment she might have thought that I was joking. But the expression in my face did not warrant any doubt.

"What are you talking about, Nandetta?"

"This is filled with sin and curse. Come to think of it, you are watching the remnants of so many families ruined. These ornaments...... How do you think the Old Man got hold of all these?"

"I don't know....."

Remember once we went to Nani Muthassi and talked to her? You went with Valliamma to the kitchen."

Indira nodded.

"Muthassi was telling that this man had money lending business. He might have got all these ornaments in that business. These must be the ornaments the poor families had pawned but could not reclaim because they just couldn't pay back the money with heavy interest. Look at this thin bangles and the wedding necklace. Even the wedding locket was pawned may be because other ornaments were not enough to get money. In the olden days women never remove the wedding necklace and locket from their body until the death of their husbands. These could be that when the husband died they had no means of living they had to pawn everything in their hand to meet both ends together. Many of the families might be related to us also. We never know. They also might have borrowed from the Old Man. Why do we take this entire curse on our head as well as our daughter life? We don't want this money."

Indira was silent for a while.

"Why do you keep silence?"

"Whatever you say may be correct. But then how much trouble we had taken just to get this treasure, and how much we had yearned for this? And when it is finally in our hands, I feel bad to forgo it."

"I'll tell you another thing. Once I went with Kuttettan to the astrologer, Panikkar uncle, to get a horoscope checked, yeah, you know that horoscope. At that time we didn't know it belonged to the Old Man, or rather we did not know such a person existed. It was Panikkar uncle who told us about him. He also said that this man died some sixty years ago, but that his life or his janmam isn't over yet. He is still wandering carrying the huge burden of sin and curse on his back. He has to unload it on somebody to get salvation. Why should we take such a burden in our hands?

"It is true, but........" She was lost in silence. Vandana woke up and came to us. She immediately knew something was amiss.

"What happened, Dad?"

Indira is still in silence. I explained to Vandana my dilemma. After listening to the whole thing she said.

"Right you are, Dad. We don't want it."

For her, renunciation is easy. May be it is due to her age. The challenge of finding a treasure hidden with so much secrecy was all that mattered to her. Not that how you manage that money. Or it may be that she hasn't gone through the hardship we had faced in life. By the time she knew what is what plenty of money was around.

"Let's do one thing." Indira finally spoke. "All this treasure was not amassed through lending business. There was plenty of paddy and coconut to sell, because there were vast stretches of land belonging to our family those days. What's wrong that that money. Of course we can't segregate the good money and bad money, but then we can do one thing. How much we had to pay to get ourselves free from bank loan and other loans?"

"That’s around two hundred or two hundred fifty thousand."

"We will take that much from this. And what are you going to do with the remaining?"

"We could donate to charity. Give to many orphanages. That way the curse won't affect us, since we are giving it for a good cause."

"Okay, so how many coins should we keep?"

"Very little of it, say about seventy, or eighty only."

“I’ll do one thing.” Indira said. “I will keep a hundred coins. Okay?”

"That's fair enough Dad." Even Vandana was agreeable to that. She continued. "Should we now ring up Kuttanmama to tell him about this?"

"Yes, sure."

I started dialing Kuttettan's number.