Summary
When Lenin is nine years old, his family dies of smallpox, leaving him alone and starving. Following his father's final warning to "follow the straight path," Lenin walks directly down the road and arrives at a barricaded house belonging to a wealthy Christian family. Though the homeowners reject him, their housekeeper, a generous pulayi woman named Acca, provides Lenin with comfort and food. Lenin vows to repay her one day and considers her an apparition of Mary sent to guide him towards a religious life. Later, Lenin is kicked out of seminary school for giving his classmates' food away to beggars, which he considers his Christian duty. He is taken in at Parambil and continues his religiously motivated mischief, sowing discord in the community and even standing on the roof during the monsoon to absorb energy from the lightning. Big Ammachi reluctantly agrees to send the boy to boarding school.
Mariamma, also nine, enjoys a close and supportive relationship with Big Ammachi, who encourages her to pursue her own dreams and career, secretly hoping Mariamma will become a doctor and cure the Condition. Each day in secret, Mariamma swims in the river with Joppan's daughter, Podi, though she knows the risks of the Condition. To maintain his sobriety, Philipose creates rigid routines and devotes himself to Christianity, though he is not a true believer. The family's dynamic changes again when Shamuel passes away. Despite his insistence on caste distinctions during his life, mourners from all backgrounds attend the caretaker's funeral, and Philipose pays to have a plaque memorializing Shamuel placed on the local burden stone.
After the funeral, Big Ammachi reveals that Shamuel saved most of his salary for Joppan, leaving his son with a small fortune. Philipose attempts to honor Shamuel's contributions to Parambil by offering Joppan a salaried position and more land. However, Joppan rejects the offer and explains that though the family considered Shamuel a beloved relative, they still exploited him because of his caste. He explains that if Shamuel had been given land and income like a "true" member of the family, like the feckless Kora, Shamuel would have been extremely successful. Philipose is shocked and shamed, but accepts Joppan's argument, seeing its truth. Joppan devotes himself to his barge business and Communist Party meetings, correctly predicting that Kerala will have the first democratically elected Communist government.
In 1964, the family arrives for the Maramon Convention, a huge gathering of Saint Thomas Christians. An American preacher, Rory McGillicuty, hires Uplift Master to translate his sermon. Uplift Master, honored by the job, promises to convey Rory's "passion." However, as the sermon begins, Uplift Master quickly realizes the preacher's focus on fornication and vice will not go over well with the crowd. Mimicking Rory's gestures and movements, Uplift Master seizes the opportunity to call for a hospital to be built in Kerala, arguing that true Christians need to attend to the sick members of their community. He calls attention to the disabled children in the front row, bringing them up on stage and using them as examples of the community's failure. Finally, Uplift Master begins a collection, pleading with the crowd to fund the hospital. Rory is moved by the community's generosity, never knowing that none of his messages were received.
On the bus home from the convention, Mariamma discusses disability and sickness with her grandmother, observing that she never considered the sick and disabled before Uplift Master called attention to them. This experience, to Big Ammachi's delight, solidifies Mariamma's interest in studying medicine. After Mariamma leaves for school, Baby Mol experiences severe edema and has to travel far to receive treatment, confirming Big Ammachi's belief that the new hospital must be built at Parambil, which has developed into a small town. At night, Big Ammachi asks Baby Mol if it is "the" night, meaning her final night on earth. For the first time, Baby Mol avoids answering, confirming that Big Ammachi will not survive the night. Rather than being afraid, Big Ammachi feels comfort, and walks through the house, recounting her memories and saying cryptic goodbyes to her surviving family members. Though she is unable to submerge herself in the river as she used to, she takes a final, purifying bath, feeling renewed and ready to die. She curls up with Baby Mol, and during the night, both mother and daughter pass peacefully. The next day, a heartbroken Philipose finds them together and considers Big Ammachi's final request that he "forgive" her for any unintentional wounds she caused him.
Analysis
Lenin's origin story is written in the style of a parable or hagiography, alluding to the fabled origin stories of communist leaders like his namesake, Vladimir Lenin, and the saints after whom he models his early life and spiritual aspirations. One example of this language is the phrase "follow the straight path," repeated like a mantra throughout the text. Lenin originally misinterprets his father's dying advice and simply walks in a straight line, where he encounters people and experiences that feel serendipitous and divinely ordained. He also prays for "an angel" to come to his rescue, and he feels one appears to him in the form of Acca, his neighbor. Lenin is precocious and often misunderstood, his seemingly disobedient but ultimately mystic pursuits similar to those of the child Jesus. This change in tone sets the scene for Lenin's tumultuous spiritual and political development.
Keeping with the motif of unexpected healers, Acca, the pulayi woman, upon seeing Lenin, "diagnosis his condition in one glance," realizing that he is alone, abandoned, and starving. In this scenario, Lenin casts Acca as a spiritual and physical healer whose generosity transcends that of most humans; thus, he comes to believe that she is an apparition of Mary, the mother of Jesus. However, Acca's kindness is ordinary compassion and maternal concern; the feast she gives Lenin, a formative and incomprehensible act of service to him, has a logical basis, as the smallpox that claimed Lenin's family also made the family Acca cooks for too afraid to eat the meal she prepared. Still, Lenin's spiritual inclinations compel him to promise to improve Acca's conditions, entering him into a covenant with her caste.
The Parambil family continues to evolve and change. Throughout Mariamma's childhood, Big Ammachi brings children like Lenin into her care. Ignoring caste distinctions and conventions, Big Ammachi treats children with distant or no blood relationship to her— such as Podi and Hannah, Anna Kochamma's daughter—as grandchildren. At this stage in her life, Big Ammachi clearly articulates her ideas about gender, which shaped her fate. Encouraging Mariamma to forge her own path, she tells her granddaughter that "because you are of Parambil, and because you're a woman, you can do whatever you imagine you can do," a stark contrast to Big Ammachi's childhood and marriage. In this statement, Big Ammachi comments on fate and reverses expectations, insisting that Mariamma is capable not despite her gender, but because of it.
Philipose's narrative arc adds dimension to the theme of faith and superstition. To maintain his sobriety, Philipose adheres to strict rituals and routines that give him a sense of control over his life and fate. Though Philipose is atheistic, he incorporates religious observances into his and Mariamma's life, making sure to attend church and regularly pray. Similar to Big Ammachi's relationship to religion, Philipose's faith does not respond to a desire to find truth or redemption, but to connect with others and create a sense of control and safety. He finds essential value in the routines, structure, and social connections of the Saint Thomas community.
In death, Shamuel receives the type of adoration he refused to accept during life, because of his caste. Mariamma compares his funeral to a maharajah's, confirming the essential and massive impacts his labor and love had on the Parambil family. This comparison clarifies Joppan's rejection of Philipose's offer and his disdain for the inheritance Shamuel left behind. Though inheritance is generally associated with wealth and property, Joppan adds nuance to the theme, asserting that inheritance includes systemic oppression and poverty. As Joppan explains, Shamuel deserved more than his fate permitted. Though Shamuel was beloved and respected in his community, Joppan believes his father could have changed the world if afforded the privileges Philipose squandered. Joppan also critiques "kind" people like the Parambil family who uphold unfair systems. This conversation sets the stage for discussions of economic justice, communism, fate, and accountability. Later, Joppan correctly predicts that Kerala will have the first democratically elected communist government in the world. Unlike Baby Mol's mystical senses, Joppan's prescience is the result of thoughtfully observing social conditions and history.
At the Maramon Convention, Big Ammachi donates her earrings to fund the hospital. She received the earrings on her sixteenth birthday to mark a new stage of life with her husband. By giving the jewelry away, Big Ammachi symbolically recognizes that her stage of life as a mother is coming to an end, and that by funding the hospital, her life's purpose of finding someone who can cure the Condition will be fulfilled. This symbolic gesture suggests that Mariamma, Big Ammachi's namesake, is stepping into the life Big Ammachi's father wanted for her before his untimely death.
On her final night, Big Ammachi takes a shower before bed. She contemplates the water, feeling gratitude for "the way it nourishes body and soul." She recognizes that water, symbolizing death and rebirth, is a "covenant" with God. Big Ammachi feels at peace, embracing death with little space for regrets. The architecture of her home represents the evolution of her life and family as she wanders through the house, remembering significant events and memories in each room. She also says goodbye to the relatives and friends living in the house, whom she no longer needs to guide now that Philipose and Mariamma are in control of their respective fates. Big Ammachi and Baby Mol die peacefully together, demonstrating their inseparability. Though Baby Mol is a distinct person, she represents the childlike parts of Big Ammachi that were suppressed when she married Big Appachen. By dying together, Baby Mol and Big Ammachi complete a stage of the family's history and allow a new cycle to begin with Mariamma, Big Ammachi's namesake, as the family leader.
