In 1960, Lenin Evermore arrives unannounced at Parambil, welcomed by Big Ammachi and neighbors who remember his mother, Lizzi. Lenin vividly recounts the smallpox that killed his parents and baby sister, his father’s contrition, and his own rescue by BeeYay Achen’s monks. On the way, he confronted a landowner who claimed Kora’s plot and boasted of expelling the pulayi couple who fed Lenin; Lenin vowed to right that wrong. A letter soon confirms Lenin slipped his escort and engineered a humiliating escape.

Lenin quickly adapts yet provokes trouble: he replaces Decency Kochamma’s censored Mandrake pages with obscene sketches, triggering a chase and his “straight path” compulsion that ends with the young goldsmith thrashing him. By night Lenin loses his swagger. During a storm he climbs a roof seeking “grace”—really lightning powers—and is hurled off by a nearby strike, wearing his cast like a medal.

Mariamma resents and tracks Lenin while her friend Podi idolizes him. After school complaints about Lenin starting a Communist chapter, Philipose considers boarding school. Mariamma dreams of Shamuel warning obedience, recalls his sudden death and grand funeral, and at dawn breaks rules to swim the canal with Podi. Convinced Philipose knows their secret, she tries and fails to confess.

Philipose remembers the days after Shamuel’s funeral: Big Ammachi handed Joppan Shamuel’s savings, house, and a connecting strip of land, calling them family. He recalls how Shamuel and Joppan helped drag him to Damo’s jungle hut, where Shamuel nursed him through withdrawal, binding Philipose to a straighter path.

Sobered by loss, Philipose offered Joppan the Parambil managership for a profit share; Joppan declined, arguing that “kind” beneficence can mask systemic exploitation rooted in caste. A second offer—twenty acres in his name after a decade—was also refused. Joppan chose his motorized barge vision and the Communist Party, predicting a democratically elected Communist government in Kerala, a forecast soon realized.