Maria, Just Maria Seeks To Understand What Really Is Normal In This World

Following the death of her grandfather, Maria has stopped speaking – not because she can’t, but because she doesn’t want to. 

Now in a psychiatric hospital, as she begins the process of ‘reconnecting with reality’, Maria recalls her journey of being ‘just Maria’ – a girl born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, whose companions were a grandfather who took her along to wander around the village and its toddy shops, a great-aunt with dementia who challenged Maria’s position as the youngest in the family, a dog with a penchant for philosophy, various long-dead family members including a great-grandmother with a knack for prophecies, a patron saint who insisted on interfering in people’s affairs, and Karthav Eesho Mishiha with whom Maria has regular conversations.

Sandhya Mary’s novel Maria, Just Maria – translated by the award-winning Jayasree Kalathil – is an insightful and humorous take on ideas like normal-abnormal, natural-human, love-hate, etc. that define contemporary society, and the exuberant and moving story of a woman trying to find her place in this world.

Here's an excerpt from Sandhya Mary’s novel Maria, Just Maria

I was the one who taught Valyammachi, over a period of time, to read and write. Ammachi did not like it one bit. ‘Already the old hag is crazy,’ she muttered several times a day, ‘and now that she is literate, who knows what all will happen.’ The day she was able to write the word ‘Mathiri’, Valyammachi made payasam all by herself. Well, I say payasam, but it was more like ... let’s just say that Valyammachi was never too keen on cooking. Then one day, she declared that she didn’t like the name Mathiri and that henceforth her name would be Ursula. I don’t know where she came up with that wacky name. Is that even a name? In any case, no one really cared except poor Valyappachan. 

Every now and then, Valyammachi would put her foot down and succeed in making him call her Ursula, and each time he uttered the name, Valyappachan would be mortified and turn red. But the person who was most affected by this change of name was Ammini. She became utterly confused and began calling Valyammachi ‘Uthiri’ and ‘Moorsula’. If you ask me, she did it on purpose, devious little thing that she was. Thankfully, though, Valyammachi lost interest in the name quite quickly. She was like that, you know, never could keep her interest in anything for too long. Maria is just like her.

Once she learned the letters, Valyammachi began writing all over the walls of the house with pieces of coal. I asked her what she was writing. ‘I am rewriting the Bible,’ she replied, but she didn’t look as though she was engaged in such a responsible task. She clambered up a ladder and began at the top of the walls. When she had scribbled all over the walls of two rooms, Appan got involved. By then, Valyappachan had been dead for years. Appan summoned Eenashu, the man who looked after our household, sent him up on a ladder and ordered him to wash the rewritten Bible off the walls.

As Eenashu picked up a broom and began climbing up the ladder, Valyammachi declared: ‘Eenashu, if you step on that ladder, you won’t come down with your feet on the ground.’ Eenashu ignored her and climbed up. But just as he was about to splash water all over the new scripture on the wall, there he was! Sprawled on the floor! It took three months of daily massages to return his injured back to normal while the new Bible escaped with not even one of its letters erased. And Appan, who anyway was scared of Valyammachi’s prophecies, never again attempted to cause it harm.

For years to come, that Bible was a miracle in our land. I still remember our countryfolk bringing their visiting relatives to see the Bible and how they stood before it dumbstruck. After Valyammachi’s death, Appan waited only a few days before demolishing the walls, new Bible and all, and building an altogether new house in its place. I regret, deeply, that I was in no position to preserve that revised version of the Bible for the edification of generations to come.

Valyammachi was excellent at making up odd, confounding stories, mixing up tales from the Bible, the Ramayanam, the Mahabharatham and folklore. I was her one and only audience.

Here’s one story:

Once upon a time, there was a king named Kumbhakarnan. He was as big as an elephant and slept all the time. All he did was eat and sleep. The moment he woke up, he would shout, ‘Who’s there? Bring us something to eat!’ One time, the king was travelling in a boat, and of course, he promptly fell asleep. The boat began to keel over because of the king’s weight, and the boatmen, scared for their own lives, picked up the king and threw him in the water. A blue whale spotted the king floating in the water. ‘Oh, an elephant! If I eat this elephant, I won’t have to eat anything for at least another year,’ it thought, and swallowed the king. For the whale, anything that big had to be an elephant.

After all, it didn’t know about kings and all, did it? But the moment it swallowed its meal, the whale realized it had swallowed more than it could stomach. Its tummy began to ache. And what an ache it was too! Every time the king twisted and turned in its tummy, the whale suffered indescribable pain.

And then one day, the king woke up and roared: ‘Who’s there? Bring us our food!’ The pain was one thing, and now this racket from its own tummy ... The whale was truly confounded. Meanwhile, since no one brought him anything to eat, the hungry king began to take bites of the whale’s stomach wall.

Unable to stand the pain any longer, the whale began to beat its head against a rock. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ asked the rock, because the rock was really a turtle. When the weeping whale told the turtle everything, the turtle took it to a doctor in its acquaintance. And the doctor, assisted ably by two hundred junior doctors, cut its tummy open, and out came a man in tears!

It was not the king, but a prophet. He told them that his name was Jonah, that he had become King Kumbhakarnan because of a curse, and that he had finally been released from the curse as a result of being swallowed by a fish. The whale heard the mention of its part in the tale. ‘I am not a fish,’ it said from the operation table where they were stitching up its tummy. ‘I am a whale, a blue whale.’ Jonah, meanwhile, could not decide whether he was supposed to go back to his life as Jonah or as Kumbhakarnan. In the end, he decided to spend the rest of his life with the doctor as his helper.

And here is another of Valyammachi’s stories...

One time, Ravanan’s sister, Soorpanakha, went all the way to Israel to marry Abraham’s son, Isahaq. You must have heard of such princesses, the type who fall in love the moment they hear a story about someone ... Soorpanakha was such a princess. When she was little, she had heard stories of Abraham’s sacrifice. What she felt at first towards Isahaq was pity and empathy – ‘Oh, the poor dear!’ – but gradually it turned into love, and that’s when she decided to go to Israel and become his wife. But by the time she got there, after years and years of journeying by sea, Soorpanakha had become an old woman, and Isahaq had already married Rebecca.

Valyammachi was like that – ending stories abruptly, abrasively! ‘The Ramayanam and the Mahabharatham were written by people who had creative sensibilities, but the Bible lacks such artistic flair,’ she would declare. Perhaps that was the reason she decided to rewrite the Bible.

Extracted with permission from Sandhya Mary’s Maria, Just Maria, translated by Jayasree Kalathil; published by HarperCollins