Having read Verghese’s other novels (Cutting for Stone, The Tennis Partner, and My Own Country), I was fairly confident I would enjoy his latest, The Covenant of Water. However, I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. I was charmed from the first page, all the way past the 700th page and beyond. It is an incredible feat to unfalteringly sustain the enchantment for the reader across such a long story, from page to page and paragraph to paragraph and sentence to sentence; Verghese’s writing has become masterful. Every single character leapt off the pages, every single character was endearing and delightful, and many were just exceptional. I could have gone on reading this book forever, and wished it would never end. I could have stayed with all the wonderful people of Parambil and never wish to leave. If asked to sum up what this book spanning 3 generations and much more is all about….well, I think I would have to say it is about love. Love and learning wisdom. And the beguiling culture and community of St Thomas Christians and Malayalis of Southern India.
The novel begins with one of our chief protagonists – there are so many wonderful protagonists in this novel – Big Ammachi, though when we first meet her in Travancore, in 1900, she is not yet known by that title, she is just Mariamma, a fatherless, 12 year old child-bride. But this is not the usual story of villainy and abuse, no indeed, in fact, Mariamma goes on to be much cherished by her gentle, very silent, but very understanding and loving husband. From the very start, her husband’s sister treats her exceptionally well,
Thankamma insists a bride should do nothing but let herself be spoilt (p22).
Scared and far from home, missing her mother, the little bride nevertheless very quickly finds happiness in her new home. She mothers her husband’s son, whose mother has died, she makes friends with the people on her husband’s estate, she makes herself useful and productive, she is understanding and kind and wise, matured beyond her years. Throughout the book, this diminutive woman bestrides the story like a colossus, taking so many waifs and strays under her wing, healing those who are damaged in spirit or otherwise, growing in her own understanding and kindness and wisdom. She is completely without artifice and yet so spirited and sure of herself; Big Ammachi, as she becomes, is so exceptionally generous in spirit that it seems every person she comes in contact with becomes a better version of themselves too.
When Big Ammachi and her husband have a baby girl of their own, Baby Mol as she will always be called, they are delighted and see nothing wrong in their beautiful daughter, until one day a chance remark opens Big Ammachi’s eyes – she takes her daughter to a doctor in Cochin. The doctor, Rune Orqvist, is another larger-than-life character whom Verghese sketches very swiftly, and makes so immediate and vivid to the reader. He is a gifted doctor, and immediately diagnoses that Baby Mol has cretinism, but just as immediately, assures Big Ammachi it was nothing she did, not her fault, and that Baby Mol was born this way. Hie breaking of the news is kindness itself:
‘She’ll always be a child. That’s what I have to tell you. She’ll never grow up, I’m sorry to say.’ He smiles at Baby Mol. ‘But what a happy child. A child of God. A blessed child. I wish I had some other news for you. I wish I did,’ he says, his face grave, those kind eyes now full of sorrow” (p192).
Baby Mol is a truly blessed child because she is never made to feel less because of her condition, instead, she is doted on and loved and cherished every day of her life, and nothing is asked of her except to live and be happy. Her parents are as generous in spirit as the doctor who breaks the news to them: When Big Ammachi tells her husband,
The big chest heaves. He sighs, hangs his head. After a long, long while he speaks, his voice hoarse. ‘If you are saying she’’ll always be Baby Mol, a child, a happy child…that’s not such a bad thing.’ ‘No,’ she says through tears. ‘Not such a bad thing. An angel forever’ (p193).
This simple, generous acceptance extends seemingly to everyone in Parambil, and perhaps beyond. Many of the Malayalis in this story are quirk and eccentric, but their quirks and eccentricities are given space, even embraced. Relatives are loved or at least tolerated, friends and neighbours become relatives, secrets both divide and protect, and this book is endlessly conjures up the cycle of life’s joys and sorrows. It is beyond the scope of the review to provide a synopsis of this magnificent saga, particularly as the Parambil story and cast of characters is but one of the two storylines of this novel. The other starts with Digby Kilgour, a Glaswegian from the wrong side of the tracks (Dr Rune Orqvist jokes with Digby, “I’ve been to Glasgow. Is there a right side?” (p264)) who comes to Madras as a surgeon. Through Digby we meet a whole host of other characters, including Europeans and Anglo-Indians, and Dr Rune Orqvist of course, who sets up St Bridget’s as a sanctuary for lepers. The novel contains so many varied characters, men and women, old and young, Asians and Europeans, and all are brought to life touchingly and tenderly by Verghese.
The two storylines keep converging, generation after generation, with chance encounters leading to unions and strong bonds, all unfolding before the reader like a gleaming, running river. Much in the novel is linked to location, land and water, permanence and impermanence which seem to interchange states. There is also the mysterious Condition that bedevils the Parambil family, their inability to cope with water, a condition that comes to light only at the end of the novel when Mariamma pieces together the puzzle of family lore and science, finally recognising the Condition for what it is. She brings her community understanding, but she herself also gleans understanding from her own family and relationships. In many quite short chapters, this book sweeps across a century and against a political backdrop of wars and the fight for independence and caste struggles, ever going forward from generation to generation and drawing in an ever widening cast of characters, but at the end, there is a meander as sometimes there is in rivers, a loop back, which brings together the loose ends and explains the last mysteries of the saga.
This is the covenant of water. That they are all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone. She stays there, listening to the burbling mantra, the chant that never cease, repeating its message that all is one. What she thought was her life is all maya, all illusion, but it is one shared illusion. And what else can she do but go on. (p706).
There are other memorable characters, Shamuel the pulayan who is Big Ammachi’s estate manager, essentially, her husband’s right hand man, comrade in arms, “shadow”, as the novel puts it. There is Joppal, Shamuel’s son who rejects offers which sustain the status quo, rejecting the inequality his father not only lived by but embraced. Shamuel and Joppal’s families live on the Parambil estate and serve the landowning family, and have done for generations. They are the closest of friends, and yet Shamuel will always have eaten out of his own eating utensils, never with the family, for all that it is a Christian family and supposedly not part of the caste system. Joppal is also Philipose’s best friend; Philipose the son of Big Ammachi, who then marries the supremely gifted artist, Elise. All these are major characters in the novel, but this review must just mention a couple of more minor characters, who are no less enchanting, and who have attached themselves to Big Ammachi’s household.
Odat Kochamma is a distant cousin of Big Ammachi’s husband, grey haired, hooked nosed, bow legged, and an absolute force to be reckoned with. She just walks into their lives one day, and makes herself useful at once, at home at once.
Big Ammachi finds out later that the old lady wanders among the homes of her various children, staying ad few months with one, then another before moving on” (p182)
as was quite commonly done in many cultures on those days.
’In all my years I keep praying for onions to cut themselves and climb into the pot, but you know what?’ – and she squints at each of them looking deadly serious – ‘So far it has never happened.’ Then her deadpan expression cracks, the face breaks into myriad of wrinkles, and her disarming grim is followed by a cackle so unexpected and lighthearted that it banishes the dark clouds from the kitchen. (p182).
Anna Chedethi is another such wonderful character, who in her turn also becomes a pillar of the Parambil household. Much much later, more than three quarters of a century after Big Ammachi enters the household as a bride, when Big Ammachi’s granddaughter and namesake comes back from medical school in Madras, she sees the house showing its age, and brings in improvements and repairs
The grin on Anna Chedethi’s face only falters when a refrigerator is delivered. ‘Ayo, molay!’ What do I do with this? How will it listen to me? Does it know Malayalam?’ The first time Mariamma brings her a glass of sweet lime juice, frosted on the outside and with ice cubes clinking on the top, Anna Chedethi becomes a believer (609-610).
Big Ammachi’s life is enriched with these and other helpmeets. She is so rich indeed that she even has room to spare for a restless spirit in her storerooms, a ghost perhaps, whom she thinks of as her husband’s first, dead wife, keeping watch over them all, communing with this spirit in a most natural way. And yet, this saint of a woman never becomes righteous or two dimensional, because Verghese shows her with all the normal worries and vulnerabilities of a woman of her time, with the petulances and misgivings that make her so human, but with that capacity for love which renders her exceptional to everyone who knew her.
The novel is also enlivened by many wonderful little sayings and proverbs and folk wisdoms:
Aah. Why not? A daughter has an open door into a father’s heart” (p184)
Whether the thorn falls on the leaf, of the leaf falls on the thorn, the leaf suffers” (p188).
The dialogue and conversations are quite brilliant, every word so perfectly placed seemingly, lending the book its unique flavour and bringing this community to life.
I have now returned this book to the library, bidding it goodbye sadly, but returning it swiftly so that others may also enjoy it. It is one of those exceptional novels that I intend to buy a copy to have and reread. I also intend to buy copies for those whom I know will relish it and find many hours of enchantment and delight in it too. This is by far the finest of Verghese’s novels, a cut above all his previous works, a real masterpiece, as one of the blubs said, “written with a surgeon’s skill and an artist’s eye”. For once in a way, I could not agree with all the glowing blurbs more. As one sums up, “Verghese is a literary legend at the height of his extraordinary powers”. Oh I cannot wait for the next Verghese novel!
[For another take on this book, see Reeta’s review]
Lovely review, Lisa. You sent me back to Parambil 🙂