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world. Suddenly the Communists found themselves in the
extraordinary– critics said absurd–position of having to govern a
people and foment revolution simultaneously. Comrade E. M. S.
Namboodiripad evolved his own theory about how he would do
this. Chacko studied his treatise on “The Peaceful Transition to
Communism” with an adolescent‟s obsessive diligence and an
ardent fan‟s unquestioning approval. It set out in detail how
Comrade E. M. S. Namtoodiripad‟s government intended to
enforce land reforms, neutralize the police, subvert the judiciary
and “Restrain the Hand of the Reactionary anti-People Congress
Government at the Center.”
Unfortunately, before the year was out, the Peaceful part of
the Peaceful Transition came to an end.
Every morning at breakfast the Imperial Entomologist
derided his argumentative Marxist son by reading out newspaper
reports of the riots, strikes and incidents of police brutality that
convulsed Kerala.
“So, Karl Marx,” Pappachi would sneer when Chacko came
to the table, “what shall we do with these bloody students flow?
The stupid goons are agitating against our People‟s Government
Shall we annihilate them? Surely students aren‟t People anymore?”
Over the next two years the political discord, fueled by the
Congress Party and the Church, slid into anarchy. By the time
Chacko finished his BA and left for Oxford to do another one,
Kerala was on the brink of civil war. Nehru dismissed the
Communist government and announced fresh elections. The
Congress Party returned to power.
It was only in 1967–almost exactly ten years after they first
came to power-that Comrade E. M. S. Namboodiripad‟s party was
re-elected. This time as part of a coalition between what had by
now become two separate parties–the Communist Party of India,
and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The CPI and the
CPI(M).
Pappachi was dead by then. Chacko divorced. Paradise
Pickles was seven years old.