The House of Blue Mangoes (24 page)

Two days after they had returned to Meenakshikoil they found Iyer waiting for them in the tea shop. He ordered three speshul teas and then grilled them about the Tuticorin action. His eyes grew ferocious when they told him about Ashe giving the order to fire. ‘These English dogs will have to pay a heavy price,’ he muttered. ‘Who are they to come to our country and fire on our people? What sins have we committed in our past lives that we have to suffer the curse of the white man?’

They waited for Iyer to calm down, before proceeding. Once their tale was done, Iyer said they would soon be assigned new jobs. Meanwhile, they should spend their time educating themselves about the evils perpetuated upon the land by the imperialists.

‘Are you aware how badly they’ve crippled us?’

‘Only what you’ve told us, anna,’ Aaron said.

A furrow, like a bird in flight, appeared between Iyer’s eyebrows. ‘Don’t you read the papers?’

‘No.’

‘
India
?’

‘No.’

‘
Swadeshimitran
?’

‘No.’

‘The
Hindu
?’

‘No.’

‘The
Indian Patriot
?’

‘No.’

‘
Vijaya
?’

‘No.’

‘No, no, no! Is that all you can say?’

‘Yes. I mean, no,’ Aaron said. He felt foolish, and was starting to lose his temper just as it was clear that Iyer was beginning to lose his. Perhaps realizing that this was getting them nowhere, the older man said, ‘To be effective revolutionaries, you need to read our newspapers and magazines, keep abreast of events; it’s the only way to raise the consciousness of the brothers and sisters you’ll be working with . . .’ A thought struck him: ‘You can read, can’t you?’

‘Yes, anna,’ Aaron said with some pride, ‘I’m a fourth-form pass and even Nambi has studied up to the third form.’

‘Very well then, put your education to some use. You’ll hear from me soon.’

For some weeks after that Aaron and Nambi scoured the newspapers that came to Meenakshikoil, laboriously working their way through rhetoric, reportage, theory and fact. But as the days passed and there was no word from Iyer, they soon tired of reading and cogitation. The familiar feelings of frustration and ill temper took hold. Aaron had received several postcards from his mother at the time of Rachel’s marriage, none of which he had bothered to acknowledge. He had been glad for his sister. He remembered her with affection and hoped she would be happy, but his anger towards his mother and brother had corkscrewed too deep within for him to even consider replying. His mother’s latest letter, which had arrived a couple of days after Iyer’s visit, had infuriated him, for she had asked whether she could look for a bride for him. This time he was tempted to reply. Why, he wanted to write, this sudden solicitude, this show of concern? When my father and I really needed you, where were you? And my precious brother Daniel, the big Nagercoil doctor! Why can’t you get that treacherous little coward married off? That’s what you really want to do, isn’t it? Why isn’t he married yet? Is there something terribly wrong with him? He didn’t write the letter, of course, but that evening he rounded up a few friends and they drank so much cheap toddy that he was sick for the next three days.

Soon afterwards, his friends and he went back to the old ways – terrorizing women on their way to market, thieving from shopkeepers, getting into fights. Most of the money they pilfered went on poisonous arrack and home-brewed toddy. The money soon ran out, and the gang went in search of more. One morning Aaron and Nambi headed for Swami’s grocery store. He was always good for a rupee or two. As they neared the open-fronted shop, Nambi said, ‘The old fool has got himself some protection.’ Six men who had been lounging around in the shade of the shop’s awning got to their feet and arranged themselves across the shop’s frontage.

‘Come on, Aaron, let’s go.’

‘Are you afraid of these fellows? They’ll soon learn not to interfere with me.’

‘We can’t fight six of them. They’ll kill us.’

‘I’m not afraid, Nambi, and neither should you be. When you could face armed policemen, what are these sons of prostitutes to you?’

‘That was different, I got carried away by the excitement and the crowd’s anger.’

‘Well, here you’re going to be carried away by my anger. How dare that eunuch Swami do this? I remember him bowing before my father.’

They were at the shop now but the men barred their way. Aaron vaguely recognized a couple of them. Fishermen from the next village, bound to be savage fighters. He felt a twinge of apprehension. He was about to push past them when he heard Swami’s voice from within the shop. ‘I don’t want any trouble, Aaron-thambi, I’m a man of peace, and I have nothing but respect for the Dorais. Your father Solomon was a great man.’

‘And you’re nothing but dung, Swami.’

A crowd had begun gathering, sensing a fight. A crow cawed, a dusty sound on that hot day. Aaron looked around. Nambi had started backing away.

‘Thambi, don’t do this, we should live in peace . . .’

‘No, we won’t . . .’ Aaron screamed, driving at the man nearest to him. The man sidestepped adroitly and the rest were upon him, ferociously punching and swinging. He went down, and kicks and blows began thudding into his body.

Aaron lay in bed for eight days. The moment he was able to hobble, he left the house. The first day, his aching body could carry him only as far as the veranda, but soon he was taking short walks into the coconut topes. He never went in the direction of town.

About a month after he had been beaten up, Aaron went down to the beach. The air wobbled in the white heat of day, and the distant fishing boats could scarcely be distinguished in the hard light that streamed off the sea. How easy it would be to end it all, Aaron thought, all he needed to do was walk into the warm ocean, keep going until he could no longer feel solid ground under him. It would all be over so quickly. No one would miss him. His uncle and aunt would simply think he had run away from home, and they wouldn’t even bother to inform his mother and Daniel. And his mother’s letters, those neat postcards that she had written to him every week for nearly eight years now, how long would it be before they stopped? Probably not until her own death, for although he hadn’t replied to a single one, she had kept them coming. Anger flared within him once more as he remembered her latest. Kaveri had read it out to him with something approaching glee, for in it Charity had reiterated her wish to see him settled. When his aunt had asked with feigned concern whether she should reply to the postcard, he had glared and turned his back on her. But he couldn’t hold on to his anger for too long. The heat and the unhappiness within him rose up, blotting out everything. He thought again of how easy it would be to finish it, put an end to the twenty-four depressing years that he had lived.

Further up the beach, mirages moved in the shimmering heat haze, stirred dormant memories of battle. Joshua-chithappa, his father Solomon, how often had he replayed in his mind the way they had fought! He remembered the day he had jumped the well, the strength of his uncle freeing him from his own limitations. Neither his father nor his uncle would approve, he decided, were he to kill himself. He saw himself battling the Marudar chief, avenging his uncle’s death, and something occurred to him: How long had it been since he’d handled a silambu? If he’d had one in his hands, he would have thrashed those rowdies so badly that Swami would have given him free run of his shop for the rest of his days. He picked up a fallen coconut frond and stripped away the dried leaves. It was an awkward staff, with neither the weight nor the symmetry to give it any sort of balance, but he twirled it around experimentally, and then with greater concentration, trying hard to keep it under control. He was so absorbed in the endeavour that it was a while before he heard the sound of clapping, a feeble sound against the great expanse of sea and sky.

Iyer walked out of the fringe of palms that led down to the beach.

‘Nambi told me about your little problem in town,’ he said, after the initial pleasantries were over.

‘I don’t see Nambi any more,’ Aaron said stiffly.

‘Yes, I know that . . .’ A pause, and then Iyer said, ‘What you did was wrong. The revolution does not prey on poor shopkeepers.’

‘You do not tell me what I should or shouldn’t do,’ Aaron said furiously.

‘The revolution is bigger than any of us, Aaron,’ Iyer said quietly.

‘I do not care about your stupid revolution,’ Aaron said, still angry.

‘I can see that. I’m wasting my time here,’ Iyer said. He was making to go when Aaron stopped him, his mind racing. Minutes ago, he’d been thinking of killing himself . . . his brief entanglement with Iyer’s organization had been the only time in his life he had ever felt he was doing something worthwhile, and now he was throwing it all away. Trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, he said, ‘Wait, wait, anna, I’d like to try again . . . What would you like me to do?’

Iyer told him that volunteers were needed to participate in a risky game – the smuggling of banned or proscribed revolutionary literature printed in the French territory of Pondicherry into British India. Aaron didn’t hesitate – he would be glad to take part.

On his second assignment (each ‘mule’ was used only twice for fear that their faces might get too familiar to the frustrated authorities), Aaron entered the second-class compartment at Pondicherry to find a young woman in a blue cotton sari already occupying a seat. It was virtually unknown for a woman to travel alone, but he was even more surprised when she spoke to him. ‘Shekhar, I’m your cousin, Jayanthi. I arrived early as my classes finished sooner than I expected.’ How resourceful the Extremist leaders were, he thought admiringly. Finding a pretty young woman to take on this assignment was a master-stroke. Who would ever think her capable? But wasn’t her suitcase supposed to be checked for proscribed literature on the platform?

As if reading his mind, she said, ‘The authorities have changed their routine. Now the luggage is to be checked on the train.’ As she was saying this, he spotted two beefy European sergeants strolling up the corridor inspecting the baggage. They rummaged through their suitcases, found nothing incriminating (the incendiary literature was cleverly concealed) and moved on.

As the train picked up speed, Aaron covertly examined his travelling companion. He had never been alone with a woman outside his family, and he found the experience unsettling. She had immersed herself in a novel she had taken from her handbag as the train left the station and she hadn’t looked up from it once. He strained to read the title.
Sense and Sensibility
. He had never heard of the author. So was she the bored daughter of some rich man from the city, with a fancy English education, doing this for the thrill of it? Then he remembered that he too had joined the Extremists out of boredom. Strangely, this thought made him annoyed. He glared out of the window for a while, then his eyes slid across to where she sat. A pair of coal-black eyes was studying him coolly, and he looked away in panic. When he next dared look in her direction, she was absorbed in the book. What could he say to her, he thought, to get a conversation started, make her pay him some attention? He wished miserably that he was sophisticated and wise, that he could discuss the great movements of history with her, perhaps even the finer points of the revolution. But the revolution was never to be discussed in public.

They parted wordlessly at the station. Aaron never saw Jayanthi again. But for a while, whenever he thought of her, and he often did, he would be filled with a delicious happiness. It was unnerving and annoying but he couldn’t help himself. He would sometimes say the name, Jayanthi, out loud, before feeling foolish at uttering a false name reverentially. He would look at every young woman who resembled her as if by some alchemy she could become Jayanthi. He imagined her by his side. He thought about how his lips would feel on hers, how they would move over those smoky eyes, gently kissing them shut . . . But even the most intense fantasies need fuel. As the weeks passed, her memory grew fainter and after a while he didn’t think of her at all.

38

Dr Pillai disappeared from the vaidyasalai a few days before the onset of the monsoon. He told Daniel the day before that he would be gone for a short while, and that he would be in charge during his absence. Once he had overcome his initial apprehension, Daniel found that the first day went off rather well.

For over a week he hadn’t run into too much trouble, but the young farmer he had just spent half an hour examining mystified him. He suffered from violent headaches that no amount of medication could relieve. Daniel had tried everything he knew. He had taken the patient’s pulse, examined his tongue and eyes and found nothing abnormal. The young man’s urine smelled a bit like wild rain, which hinted at a slight kapham disorder, but that couldn’t be causing the headache. He knew he was doing all right, and the patients he’d treated seemed happy enough, but all it needed was one wrong diagnosis, one admission of ignorance, for his slender reputation to disappear. The prospect of failure didn’t bear thinking about. He examined the patient once more. The young man seemed perfectly healthy except for the way he tilted his head awkwardly to one side. Daniel helped him across to the window, held his head up to the light and smiled at what he saw.

‘Do you take snuff?’ he asked the villager.

‘Yes, aiyah,’ the patient replied, ‘but not for a few days, the pain is terrible . . .’

Daniel looked thoughtful. ‘Are you carrying any snuff with you?’

When the man nodded, Daniel asked him to take a generous pinch. He watched the patient take out the snuff, push it painfully into his nostrils. There was an explosive sneeze. Daniel called to Chandran to bring him a slim probing tool. He grasped the villager’s head firmly and carefully removed a long leech from the nostril. ‘Try not to bathe in the same tank as your cows and buffaloes,’ he said as he sent the farmer off. He was about to call for the next patient, when he realized there was someone else in the room. How long had Dr Pillai been there?