CHAPTER 74

Summary

• The chapter takes place in 1976 in Parambil, where the editor of the Ordinary Man attends a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new hospital before visiting Mariamma.
• The editor, much older and more elegant than Mariamma's father, recalls the circumstances surrounding her father's abrupt departure for Madras and how little he understood of his motivation or true condition.
• Mariamma tells the editor about her father's lifelong feud with water and reveals the secret condition that runs in her family which led to her father's death, surprising and stunning him.
• Despite the editor's promise of silence, Mariamma expresses a desire for him to share her family's story and her father's silent battle with their condition in order to raise awareness and potentially save lives.
• Mariamma reveals her mission moving forward to understand and combat the family condition as she plans to train as a neurosurgeon in Vellore.
• Since the publication of the feature article detailing her father's condition, Mariamma has been communicating with more family members and conducting her own research.
• Mariamma begins to hypothesize that the aversion to water and physical ailments related to acoustic neuromas that her father and other relatives faced might be connected to a "tumor of thought" or a mental counterpart.
• Through poring over her father's journals, Mariamma hopes to find evidence of this "tumor of thought", but the task of deciphering his writing and sifting through his many entries proves daunting.
• Mariamma contemplates her cousin Lenin, wondering about his wellbeing and yearning to share her findings with him.
• Mariamma is spurred on by the excitement Uma shows towards her "tumor of thought" hypothesis, and though the work is exhausting, she perseveres in indexing and analyzing her father's entries.
• She comes across entries where her father wrote affectionately about her mother, Elsie, and others where he raved and rambled about their struggles following Ninan's death, highlighting his struggle with addiction.
• Mariamma pleads not to end up loathing her father as she delves deeper into his thoughts and fears.
• Mariamma shares her realizations and contemplations with the statue of her mother, the Stone Woman, admitting that perhaps she's trying to connect with and understand her as much as she is her father and their condition.