The House of Blue Mangoes (25 page)

‘Excellently done, thambi. No physician ever learned his skills from books alone. A good doctor needs instinct, experience and common sense.’ With that he was gone. Daniel realized he was still holding the leech in his fingers and hastily disposed of it.

In the months that followed, Dr Pillai taught Daniel how to use metals like mercury and cinnabar to avert the corruption of cells; he showed him how poisons like arsenic and datura could be used to cure and not to kill; and he even allowed him a glimpse into the dangerous therapy called varma where the physician manipulated the life centres of afflicted patients directly, a proscribed procedure for all but the most skilled, for it could lead to death or permanent disability.

Dr Pillai began to disappear more frequently from the clinic now. Some of these trips, he told Daniel, were to prospect for rare herbs in the ancient Palani hills where he had received his own training as a physician. With every absence, Daniel grew more confident about managing on his own, but he was totally unprepared for Dr Pillai’s announcement that he was turning the clinic over to him.

It had rained heavily all day. After the last patient had left, Daniel had sat for a while listening to the rain dripping outside his window, trying to summon up the energy to go home, when Dr Pillai had walked into his room. He said without ceremony, ‘It is the duty of every practitioner of siddha to devote himself, when the time is right, to the single-minded quest for perfection – in siddha, in our lives, in our quest for the Lord, in our pursuit of kaya kalpa. It is time I freed myself from distraction . . . It is time for me to go.’

‘But what about your practice, aiyah, everything you’ve built up?’ Daniel interrupted in alarm.

‘The ancient physicians were wandering ascetics. They owned nothing and they wanted for nothing. Not all of us are called, but when we receive the call . . . My time has come. My patients will not suffer at your hands, thambi. You were always an excellent pharmacist, but I’m really impressed by how good your diagnostic skills have become.’

Weeks passed, and Dr Pillai remained at the vaidyasalai. Daniel’s initial panic relaxed. But he knew that when his mentor decided to go he would leave as suddenly as he had made his announcement. There was little Daniel could do but prepare himself as best he could.

Without telling Charity that the clinic would soon be in his charge, he said that he was ready to be married. Charity wasted no time in writing to her brother Stephen in Nuwara Eliya in Ceylon. They had agreed, when his second daughter Lily was born, that she would be Daniel’s bride but it had been touch and go as to whether the marriage would take place. When Lily turned eighteen, Stephen had agreed to wait for just one more year.

Charity’s brother arrived with his family a fortnight before the wedding, bearing all manner of gifts and gold to pay for the festivities. Charity cried when she welcomed Lily, a tall, slim girl with a delightfully tip-tilted nose. But this time they were tears of joy. At the church, as Daniel tied the thali around his bride’s neck, Charity sniffled into her handkerchief in the approved manner.

Rachel was unable to attend the wedding as she was by then pregnant. Charity’s first grandchild was born three days after Christmas. He was a large, unlovely baby, but in the eyes of his mother and grandmother he was the most beautiful creature in the world. On the forty-first day after his birth, Jason was blessed in the family church at Tinnevelly. Charity travelled to her son-in-law’s house bearing gifts for the child: a silver belt, a gold chain and a gold ring. Just after the church ceremony she quietly put a large spot of kohl on the baby’s cheek to absorb the effects of the evil eye.

39

‘Which is the most dangerous caste among us, more dangerous than the cobra, more destructive than a cyclone?’ Neelakantha Brahmachari asked the fifty or so villagers who gathered under a pipal tree.

There was no response, so the speaker began to work the audience. ‘Could it be the Brahmin? I’m a Brahmin and you know how deadly we can be!’ The crowd laughed at this and Aaron thought it was marvellous that a member of a community that had been accused of oppression and discrimination for centuries could poke fun at his own. Truly this revolution was a wonderful thing! The speaker, a compactly built young man in his mid-twenties, smiled fiercely. ‘I’m waiting for an answer! I’ve heard about the great wisdom that is supposed to repose in this village!’

‘Andavars,’ someone shouted.

‘No, no, Vedhars,’ objected another.

‘Tamasiks,’ a voice yelled.

The speaker called for silence. ‘No, my friends. The deadliest among us is the white man who has come from over the seas in the name of a distant king to take away our wealth, our well-being, our very essence. To them, we are less than the pariah dog that you kick out of the way.’

The young man was warming to his theme now. ‘This is what every white man believes: that you and you and you, all of us, are inferior to him from birth.’ He paused dramatically. ‘And it gets worse. There was once an exalted white man called Macaulay who, after spending exactly three and a half years in India, had this to say about our medicine, literature and language which were flourishing when Europe was still a place of savages – that we had “medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in the girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet tall and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter’’.’ Aaron had heard dozens of speakers, and he had often wondered why they persisted in using references that made little sense to a rural audience. But this speaker was quick to recover.

‘If this is their opinion of us, what are they here for? The answer is simple, brothers and sisters: To take the rice from our mouths, to take the gold thalis from our daughters’ necks, to eat our cows and bullocks, so that their children may fatten at the expense of ours. They are a blight on our lives, brothers and sisters, and it is the duty of every one of you to join the great battle.’

Later that night, Aaron, Iyer and Neelakantha Brahmachari ate together at a supporter’s house. They had all congregated at this anonymous village to discuss future strategies for the region, far from the prying eyes of the authorities, who were now seriously worried by the upsurge of nationalist activity in the hitherto placid Presidency. After they had finished a simple meal of sambhar and rice with a single raw onion and two green chillies apiece, Iyer drew Aaron aside.

‘The time has come for a parting of the ways, Aaron,’ he said without preamble. ‘You are ready for the next step. You will work with Neelakantha from now on.’ Aaron hadn’t been prepared for this. Iyer had been his one support during every moment of crisis over the past year and a half. As if sensing his thoughts, Iyer reached across and gripped him by the shoulder. ‘The revolution does not encourage the forging of attachments, Aaron. It’s greater than we are. We must be prepared for every sacrifice it demands.’ Then, to mitigate the blow, he added, ‘But you’ll like Neelakantha. I’ve chosen carefully.’

Iyer had indeed picked his replacement with care. As they made their way to the railway station in the next town, Aaron traded notes with Neelakantha Brahmachari. His initial admiration deepened. He discovered that he was a journalist from Madras who had been sucked into the movement by a Bengali revolutionary. He belonged to a group called the Satya Vrata Sangam, but was thinking of starting his own organization, to which Iyer had recommended he recruit Aaron.

‘I’ll get in touch with you soon,’ his new friend said as they parted.

All through 1909 Aaron criss-crossed the Presidency, along with dozens of other young idealists like himself, raising the nationalist consciousness of the people. A small stipend of twenty-five rupees a month paid by the organization took care of all his physical needs, and frequent meetings with a host of inspiring leaders kept his revolutionary instincts well primed.

He was exhilarated by the travelling, especially at night – the great black locomotives hissing and snorting out of dimly lit stations, expelling steam from every joint, their fiery hearts driving them through the endless dark. He loved arriving at dusty country stations – Maniyachi, Kovilpatti, Tenkasi, Rajapalaiyam, Sirivilliputtur, Shencottah – and towns that he might never see again but that nevertheless left their mark on him. He devised a mnemonic device to remember each of them, usually a local landmark or event that lodged itself in his memory – an avenue of enormous tamarind trees in Tenkasi, an ornate temple in Palani, a brilliantly coloured fair in Kumbakonam. He often thought of Joshua-chithappa and his travelling ways – what had driven him? Aaron could now understand at least a part of it: the excitement of new places opening up his mind, the sense of freedom that anonymity provided . . .

Aaron spoke at every town and village he visited, either to small groups at tea stalls or to larger audiences, especially if he proposed to spend a couple of days in a place. He was not a natural orator, but he spoke from the heart, and this usually masked any deficiencies in his delivery. He was glad Iyer had given him another chance to prove that he could handle reading, writing and speaking. He read slowly and laboriously and found much of what he ploughed through tedious but he kept at it. He would do anything for the revolution. He loved the sense of purpose it gave him but the sense of brotherhood it fostered was equally important. He thought less and less of his own family now; when he did so, they didn’t fill him with rage any more. He would even wonder what it would be like to meet them. On the rare occasions that he visited Chevathar, the news contained in Charity’s postcards that Kaveri had bothered to save for him was already old. Even hearing of Daniel’s marriage and professional success did not enrage him, as it would once have done. Fulfilment isn’t the best way to nurture hate and Aaron was more content than he had been in a long time. Solomon and Joshua were always present, far back in his mind, but he didn’t mourn them as fiercely as he’d once done.

Towards the end of 1909 he arrived again in Tuticorin, where he had participated in his first action. He remembered the fear and excitement of that time. And then a memory rose within him of the mysterious woman in the rundown quarter. Anthracite eyes. Jayanthi’s eyes. Suddenly he felt very alone. As the loneliness deepened, Aaron decided he would track down the mysterious woman.

That evening, his work done, he took off on his own. He wandered for hours and was finally so wretchedly tired that he decided to call off the search. He entered a dingy, near-empty tea shop and ordered tea and a vadai, then sat with his back against the wall and shut his eyes. With no surprise at all, he found that he was walking through a familiar quarter. He recognized the poor hovels lining the road and, looming out of their midst, the grand mansion. As he came up to it he saw that it must have been an imposing house in its prime, the residence of some fabulously rich Dutch merchant or English factor. It had gone to seed, its walls discoloured by monsoons and dirt, the wide stone steps leading up to the pillared veranda chipped. Some of the windows hung askew. He felt a bit apprehensive as he mounted the steps and walked across the veranda, his feet stirring the dust. The house seemed to be abandoned. He went on. Just by the front door a small bronze plaque gleamed brightly. Inscribed on it was a single word:
VIDUTHALAI
. Freedom. Release. He pulled the tasselled bell rope. Chimes sounded distantly within the house but nothing happened. He was on the point of pulling the rope again when the door opened suddenly. He was disappointed to see that it wasn’t the mysterious woman he remembered so well, but an elderly servant.

He was about to make his apologies and leave when the servant said, ‘Vanakkam aiyah, you are expected.’ He had a sense of large and luminous mysteries waiting just out of reach, and then he was following the servant down a long tiled passage. He was ushered into a magnificent drawing room. Maroon drapes shut out the view and enormous fringed punkahs kept the temperature even. At least a dozen sofas radiated like the petals of a giant flower from a highly polished granite centre table placed directly under a many-branched chandelier. There were two or three people already sitting on the sofas when Aaron walked in. The servant led him to an unoccupied sofa. Then, as if on cue, music sprang up from behind a beautifully carved wooden screen, and servants appeared carrying silver trays of sherbets, raisins and nuts. When all of them were served the servants vanished and a tiny old lady came down the marble staircase. She was dressed in a sapphire-coloured sari and her complexion was only a shade darker than her white hair.

She came up to them and said delightedly, ‘I never know what visitors each day will bring but I’m never disappointed by the rare diamonds who visit this house. Every one of you has been shaped by forces that most people would have succumbed to and you are all the more precious to me for that.’ Aaron glanced at the three other men in the room. On the adjacent sofa was an enormously corpulent man, his eyes, chin and nose pouched in fat, his vast stomach spreading the cloth of his jibba. Further down was an older man, prosperous looking but with a birthmark that disfigured half his face so that from some angles it looked as though he had been neatly sliced in half. Across the room was an impossibly handsome man, about his own age, sharp-featured, with angry eyes. The wounded of the world! Scarcely had the thought struck him than a healing fog invaded his mind, obliterating the idea even as he fought vainly to develop it.

‘All of you have spent a lifetime searching for me, making your way to me, and I will promise you that once you have passed through my hands you will never lack for that thing that everyone looks for, but few truly find. What is this thing called love? Let my girls and I show you. For only when you learn how to love do you learn how to live, and it’s only when you have loved that you know how to die.’ Taking a small crystal bell off a side table, she shook it, and four extraordinarily attractive girls appeared beside her. Light, dark, slim, voluptuous, the only things they possessed in common were large sensuous coal-black eyes.