At 6:15 a.m. on Wednesday, the 7th of April, 2024, on the punishing day of summer,
Jacob M. Mathew, senior editor of a newspaper in Kochi, awoke from his troubled
dawn sleep and announced in the voice of a rector:
“I am off to my school now; I’ll be back by evening.”
This declaration, which had been simmering within him for days, brought immense
relief as soon as the words left his mouth. They carried the weight they demanded,
floating in the air for a few seconds, twirling around him before dissolving into the
morning stillness. This unusual incident did not wake Leena M. Jacob, a god-fearing
woman renowned for making the finest neyyappam for the 16th-day remembrance
ceremonies of the departed in their parish.
Had Leena heard it, she would never have allowed her husband to embark on a
journey to a school nearly 100 kilometres away from Ernakulam, especially given the
mysterious ailments her 54-year-old husband seemed to harbour. Apart from missing
non-essential letters for her trade when he was registering neyyappam orders that
incessantly arrived through the ancient landline or when he jotted down a shopping
list, she noticed nothing amiss in him. At first, the spelling mistakes he made seemed
harmless to her, but as they became more frequent, she grew worried and told their
only daughter. However, throughout the oppressive summer, she had managed to
brush aside her unease, but the weight of reality always returned when their
daughter called from Chennai, her voice heavy with concern for her father’s
inexplicable condition.
And yet, as fate would have it, she was not awake to hear the solemn announcement
he made that decisive morning.
We shall soon uncover what is truly happening with Jacob M. Mathew, born in
Palanadu on April 6, 1969, a man who once passed through the corridors of his
parish primary school without leaving a trace of remarkable ability or charm. He
migrated from the 12 Apostles & Forgotten Saints Upper Primary School in 1982,
slipping away unnoticed to a high school in the neighbouring town. His childhood,
devoid of notable events, was marked only by a mysterious toothache that, without
apparent cause, continues to plague him and perplex even the most diligent dentists
in Ernakulam.
Jacob’s life followed the predictable path of a middle-class man—ordinary career,
unremarkable family life—nothing worth mentioning at school reunions, nor anything
that might captivate his daughter or future grandchildren. Yet now, forty years after
leaving his upper primary school, Jacob M. Mathew embarks on a strange journey
back to his past, driven by a reason known only to a select few. We will seek
answers from him when he steps out of his house and begins the uneasy drive to his
old parish school shortly.
He was visibly disturbed but carried the resolve of a seasoned boatman as he
manoeuvred his decade-old car out of the garage. Even in his youth, Jacob M.
Mathew had been a reluctant driver, and now, with the knowledge of his peculiar
condition, one might argue that a solo trip with a troubled mind would do more harm
than good. Yet, as a man from an uninterrupted lineage of elite Catholics of 1972
years, his resolve to address his issues before they slipped out of control had always
been solid and unwavering.
“It all began last October, about six months ago,” Jacob murmured as his car merged
onto the main road leading to the town that guarded his village of yesteryears, some
100 kilometres away. His voice barely rose above the persistent hum of the air
conditioning, which laboured with mechanical determination to lower the cabin
temperature to a precise 22°C.
“I started missing letters when writing—at first, only occasionally, now most of the
time. Losing letters, they say, is the first sign of losing one’s soul.” This last
statement emerged with a groan from Jacob’s mouth as if the truth of it had finally
settled in the pit of his stomach.
At first, the mistakes were minor, easily corrected—a missing vowel here, a
misplaced consonant there, or forgetting a letter in a word that still sounded as
intended. Jacob would catch these mistakes almost instinctively, consulting a
dictionary or seeking the reassurance of another’s knowledge. And when working on
a computer, the errors could be swiftly remedied, hidden away before they had a
chance to betray him. But what could he do when the wrong spelling flowed
unbidden from the depths of his mind, slipping through the unnatural vigilance of
spell check, revealing itself only when it was too late?
Jacob’s words echoed with a quiet despair, rooted in the incident that had come to
define his peculiar affliction. Matters spiralled out of control on an unfortunate day
when he had carefully printed “Bored Member” on a name board, placing it with
ritualistic precision before a distinguished city doctor—a board member of the
newspaper—during a public ceremony meant to honour a classical dancer from days
long past. No one noticed the error until the photograph of the yawning doctor began
to circulate, where his name board was clearly visible:
Dr. Parmaraj Narayanan
Bored Member
The chief editor was a man born with the sharp eyes of a serpent eagle and a tongue
that lashed out like a whip. He ignored Jacob completely for sixteen days, his rage
hanging in the air like a storm cloud. Rumours spread that he had confiscated
Jacob’s parking lot access key as a daily penance and a reminder of his lapse.
Missing letters in sentences were only the first sign of a greater storm, one that
began quietly but soon enveloped Jacob’s mind like a creeping fog. What once were
simple errors became gaping voids where words should be, leaving him standing in
front of his colleagues as though searching for his reflection in a broken mirror.
His wife, Leena M. Jacob, a woman with the keen eyes of her grandmother, who
could find cures for elusive ailments that defied medicine—took matters into her own
hands, gathering the faithful of her parish in their home for a prayer meeting for
heavenly intervention, though Jacob himself was absent. The preacher, Bro. Joseph
T. C, a man known in certain circles for his uncanny ability to call lost minds back
from the edge of oblivion, led the congregation in a fervent appeal to the heavens.
His voice rose and fell like the wind that shook the shutters, begging the Holy Spirit
to return Jacob’s scattered thoughts to their rightful places, like a shepherd gathering
his wayward flock.
At the second prayer meeting, with Jacob now present, the air felt heavier than ever
with incense and anticipation. Joseph T. C., his eyes fixed on the flickering candle as
if it too bore witness, leaned in during the after-prayer meal of appam and duck
roast, his expression one of a retired investigator. His voice, calm and measured,
was meant only for Jacob’s ears.
“Your letters,” he whispered, “they’ve left you. The skill of forming sentences—the
kind you learned in class 7—has slipped away. Not to worry, it’s now waiting for you
back in that classroom, hidden among the desks and dust. You must go back to find
it, for only there can your mind be made whole again.”
As Joseph T. M. prepared to leave, having been gently persuaded by Leena to
indulge in two scoops of papaya-flavored ice cream, he offered one final piece of
advice:
“And beware, Jacob, English medicine has no cure for fleeing letters.”
Jacob hadn’t fully grasped the depth of the abyss he was sliding into until the
previous evening when he found himself unable to recall the proper spelling of his
name at a crucial moment—when he needed to reveal it to the cake maker to
engrave on his 54th birthday cake, which his wife had asked him to arrange 30
minutes before his surprise birthday party. With a subdued sense of dread, he
managed to salvage the situation by furtively checking a copy of his Aadhar card,
tucked away in the inner pocket of his khadi purse—originally intended to submit at
the Akshara office, to be linked with his homoeopathy medical records as per the
law. The irony of the moment didn’t escape him, and it lingered, troubling him
throughout the night yesterday, and depriving him of sleep as he tried to remember
the spellings of trivial words such as pencil and fruit, lying face up on the bed, and
then getting confused while consulting the Merriam-Webster Dictionary app on his
phone for affirmation. The most baffling thing, which he continued testing that
decisive night, was that he could still vividly recall everything else—the minutiae of
his past, even the name of the black rooster, also named Jacob, that had been
slaughtered to prepare the Syrian Christian chicken curry for his First Holy
Communion when he was 8 years old.
Jacob, of course, had secretly visited every kind of doctor since the ordeal began—
neurosurgeons, heart specialists, even the old dentist who once suggested this
might be connected to his constant toothache. But none found anything wrong.
Jacob was lightly sweating in the car, his brow damp with the weight of thoughts that
had simmered since dawn. He reached over to turn off the music just as the singer’s
voice began to climb the steep pitch of a traditional Malayalam song, the notes too
sharp for the delicate stillness of the morning. The road ahead softened under the
golden dew of the rising sun. Jacob noticed, with a faint sense of unease, that
everyone walking along the roadside was moving in the same direction as him. It
was as if they were drawn by an unseen current, all at an identical, unhurried pace.
As he neared the village of his childhood, the road narrowed and grew rougher, the
smooth asphalt slowly yielding to the worn paths of memory. The village, nestled
among the great rubber plantations, had once been known for producing both
benediction priests whose prayers could calm storms and diligent nurses whose
sweet, elongated accents could heal wounds with a word. The place seemed to
breathe with a quiet, ancient rhythm, where time moved differently, and Jacob could
feel its pull, drawing him back to a world that had lingered on the edge of his
consciousness for far too long.
The verdant rubber plantations on both sides of the road stirred memories of walking
to school on misty mornings, hoping for an unexpected holiday due to some
impromptu reason. He recalled two such unexpected but reverent events: the death
of a senior priest at the parish one day without any omens, followed by the passing
of the Pope the next day. These memories suddenly put him at ease, and this sense
of calm brought with it the childhood hunger—a unique craving that had always
been for a specific food. Today, after the long journey from the city to his village
school, Jacob felt that same hunger again, and he immediately recognized it: the
longing for rice with blue cassava and dried pallathy fish.
Jacob recognized the St. George Hotel and Tea Shop, still standing as it had for
generations, open for all those burdened with hunger or time. The humble
establishment had stood there since before India’s independence. It had been a
gathering place for local freedom fighters, a night refuge for those on the run, and,
during the day, a spot where retired fighters engaged in intense chess matches
during the peak years of the independence struggle. Jacob had always loved the
evening snacks served here and would often find ways to skip the last period of
class to visit the hotel—whenever he had enough money to indulge.
Jacob parked his car a few meters ahead and got out like a bear emerging from
hibernation. He was in his best mood so far, though he still looked a bit shaken,
perhaps from the torment of the past few days and the word games he had played
with himself throughout last night, as sleep evaded him like fortune without a
destination. The thatched-roof structure looked like a smouldering barn with smoke
from the burning rubberwood firewood, shimmering under the 8 a.m. sun. As he
entered the eatery through an open front, he was flooded with memories of coming
here on his grandfather’s shoulders fifty years ago. The smoke curled into shapes
Jacob had known well from his childhood, though he failed to notice the subtle gaps
forming in the billowing clouds—an omen his grandfather would have recognised
instantly.
As Jacob stepped into the seating area, it felt as if his feet were carrying him back in
time to when he had first come here with his grandfather. His grandfather’s laughter
still seemed to echo faintly through the walls, mingling with the scent of the potent
waters that always came in blue glass bottles, which he would pull from the least
expected places—sometimes from beneath the bench where Jacob had been set
down, or from the glass shelf filled with an array of local sweets in different colours
and sizes. His grandfather would pour the water, still smelling like rotten egg, into
clear glasses mixed with coconut water, and drink it with the expression of someone
swallowing bitter medicine as if he were doing a favour for someone else.
One day, when Jacob asked why he drank it with such difficulty, his grandfather, who
had long been the keeper of many secrets, replied with the voice of a rooster ready
for a fight:
“This water reveals forgotten truths.”
The eatery, named after St. George, the patron saint of those who fear snakes, had
only one room to receive, seat, and bill its guests at the three wooden tables and
benches that had borne the weight and appetites of many generations. The room
was dimly lit by sunlight peeking through gaps in the dilapidated thatched roof, and it
was filled with smoke carrying the scent of forgotten pickles and reused rice. Jacob
recognized everything immediately, even recalling an unpaid balance owed to the
proprietor for a hidden meal he had consumed clandestinely on Good Friday the
year he turned 10.
There was only one other customer in the room at the time of Jacob’s arrival, holding
a glass of milk tea without foam and reading the obituary page of a local daily. This
newspaper had been popular among those who believed in collective fate and the
immense power of the Kerala Congress party on the matters of emancipation of
farmers from their struggles. The man looked familiar, though Jacob had not been to
this place in 40 years. Jacob took a seat on a bench behind the customer, facing the
opposite direction, toward the road.
Moments later, a steel plate was placed in front of him with items that stirred
memories of the place, though he had not uttered a word. The man who served the
food appeared before Jacob, wearing a locally made dothi and a cotton towel
wrapped around his waist, and said in a steady voice,
“This is ideal for feeding memories.”
Jacob immediately recognised the man who had brought the food to his table.
Mathai Malanamattom looked the same as he had 40 years ago. Jacob, with a
journalist’s curiosity, asked,
“Mathai, you haven’t aged at all.”
The man paused and replied in the tone of a postman delivering unwelcome news,
“Connecting wrong names to unknown faces demands immediate panacea.”
Jacob M. Mathew transformed back into Jacob Mathew of 7B as his car slipped
through the nostalgic gates of his beloved Upper Primary school, a collection of
quaint wooden structures still exuding the quiet majesty of the great Syrian Christian
migration to this area and their immaculate beliefs. The lingering presence of
hundreds of little souls, who once wandered through with starry-eyed innocence and
overflowing purity, seemed to hang in the air, accompanied by the gentle murmur of
untouched dreams and the tender, watchful love of long-gone teachers.
He parked his car under the gulmohar tree, which seemed shorter than the one in his
memory but still bloomed with the same vibrant flowers as on the day he fought with
Avirachan from 6A on the emerald-coloured rooster feather. Jacob felt the familiar
weight of trepidation he had experienced when he was summoned by the
headmistress for interrogation and inevitable punishment. Castigation for
misdemeanours outside the classroom had been one of the few things that always
reached home before the offender did. Such early arrivals of bad news gave parents
ample time to prepare for a second round of reprimands, leaving no room for
absolution. Worse still, sometimes the news would return to school the next day,
embellished with exaggerated tales of brutality by the offender, setting the stage for
an even harsher punishment by the class teacher.
When he glanced at the headmistress’s room, the ivory-painted walls with black-and-
white photos of memories—walls that had absorbed many decades of fear that was
familiar to Jacob—stood like mute sentinels to countless tests of pain, though now
they appeared slightly more inviting than expected. The room, with its enormous
table, the headmistress’s authoritative mahogany chair engraved with the school’s
name in Latin, and two visitors’ chairs, was visible even from outside the door. Jacob
knew that time had forgotten this room, leaving behind decades of expired moments
of forgotten faces. Nobody—not even the most senior teacher of the school or the
parish manager, who held the sacred keys to the church and controlled the parish’s
finances—dared approach Sr. Ornita, the headmistress from Jacob’s time, even
during her rare, saintly moods.
Sr. Ornita was, in truth, just a normal nun, with the misconceptions of a stepmother
about the facts of life.
In a moment of impulse, Jacob stepped into the headmistress’s office, summoning
the strength he had accumulated over the past 42 years—just enough to enter
without being called. He felt more uneasy than the situation seemed to warrant, as
there was no sign of life in the compound, except for a pair of silver owls that had
just flown in to roost on the upper ledge of the building, and Sr. Ornita, the
headmistress who had overseen his departure from the upper primary school in
1982, seated quietly, reading a file, seemingly untouched by the passing years.
The setting in the room was familiar to Jacob’s ailing memory; the table in front of the
headmistress’s chair still held the figurine of St. Dymphna, the patron saint of
calmness, alongside her favourite prayer book, Prayer Book of Peaceful Hearts,
whose contents were known to all living creatures in the compound for ages, and a
copy of the Teacher’s Handbook, co-written by Sr. Ornita and her sister from another
life, titled Thirty-Two Ways of Controlling Improper Thoughts in Innocent Souls.
Without making any slightest movement, Sr. Ornita, the headmistress from Jacob’s
school years, broke the thick silence with a mellow voice, but with the authority of a
commander,
“At ease, Jacob Mathew. You may proceed to your class now.”
Jacob silently obeyed, with the familiar childhood relief of avoiding eye contact. As
instructed, he left the room, pausing briefly on the verandah before turning left and
taking short, hesitant steps, as though someone had bound his legs with the loose
rope of organizational discipline. He stopped for a moment in front of class 7B, the
third room down from the headmistress’s office—his lagging mind needed time to
catch up with his body. An immense pull of swirling memories, along with the smell of
chalk dust and dampened books, gripped him. The faint humming of 32 innocent
souls—his classmates from 42 years ago—echoed in his mind, those who had
endured the harshness of school life alongside him. His heart seemed to beat in
reverse, with his mind tucked behind it, carrying a sense of anticipation he had never
imagined.
The classroom had not changed since he last sat on the third bench, second from
the left, on the 26th of March, 1982, alongside his best friend from that time, whose
face and name had faded from his memory, along with many other things buried in
this place. He was surprised to see 32 heaps of abandoned books, surely belonging
to the 32 friends—20 girls and 12 boys—who had shared those uncorrupted years of
bright dreams and light hearts with him.
Jacob drifted toward his old seat in the classroom, like a man who had forgotten the
art of purposeful walking, and settled in the same spot where he had once
contemplated his future—wondering where he would be at the age of 50, and how
he would have overcome the perpetual miseries of his childhood. He scanned the
room for familiarity, slowly starting to see the shadows of his classmates in their
rightful places on the benches. He sat motionless, feeling that the slightest
movement might disturb them. Then, like a monsoon wind brushing unfamiliar trees,
a child appeared from behind him, pulled a book from the textbook stack on the
desk in front of him, and placed it on the desk. Jacob read the title with the anxiety
known only to journalists who have lost the ability to write:
A Handbook of Escaping Spellings and Missing Words.
The child stood like a reluctant spectator beside Jacob for a while, as if there to
emancipate him from the unknown in case divine forces refused to assist—before
disappearing into the background. Jacob opened the book, which looked ancient by
its feel and smell, and he sensed the dampness caused by the passage of time. It
felt as though the pages were struggling to release an unknown energy, having been
buried for ages. Slowly, the letters loosened their grip on the pages and started
fluttering upward, changing to a silver-white color. Drifting upward, the twirling letters
joined in the air with a faint knuckling sound, and a brief flame appeared as the
words formed, turning gold once completed. Gradually, the classroom filled with
these glowing, gliding, twirling words, drifting toward each other at a slow pace.
Jacob could read and understand each of them.
The letters and words caused no harm to the air, but the room was filled with
glittering golden flying letters, each producing a low-pitched buzz. Then, the
decades-old markings and carved images on the benches and desks—
documentations by many generations, of innocent frustrations, stifled desires, and
dreams never fulfilled—began to emerge from their secret places. These markings
also turned golden, forming into unbelievable words, then sentences, and finally
stories. In a rare moment, all the words, stories, and accompanying lights and
sounds funnelled toward Jacob, forming an imaginary river with a formidable current,
which gusted out into the floor through his body. Suddenly, everything became silent
and present.
Jacob stepped out of the classroom with great solace in his heart, feeling as though
it had now regained its familiar rhythm. The compound was still wrapped in the
blanket of pre-opening silence typical of any school. Suddenly, the silence was
broken by a voice from class 7B:
“Your name?” It was the child he had met in the classroom.
Jacob did not feel the need to turn back to the call from the past. He replied with the
confidence of a student who had mastered the art of letters:
“J.a.c.o.b. M.a.r.u.p.u.r.a.t.h.u M.a.t.h.e.w.”
1
-End-
Neyyappam: A traditional sweet made of wheat and jaggery, popular in Nasrani Christian families, used as a
snack.
Pallathy: A small freshwater fish available in streams in central Kerala.