Of Marriageable Age (42 page)

Gopal had won a contract with a film production company in Bombay. His first novel,
Ocean of Tears,
had been published, and had been a great success with middle- and upper-class Indian housewives. He had been 'discovered' by the rapidly developing Indian film industry, and had developed a screenplay from the novel. In the process the studio had discovered his great talent for directing. The film was bound to be a hit. He told Savitri the story with much enthusiasm: it was a tragedy, the story of twins, violently separated from each other and from their mother at birth, and finally reunited at their mother's death-bed in a dramatic, tear-jerking climax. He had thousands of ideas for further screenplays, and stood, it seemed, on the verge of fame and prosperity.

Proudly he introduced Savitri to the fabulous fantasy world of film, to be discovered sitting in the very best seats at the Wellington Talkies on Mount Road. It was the first time Savitri had been to the cinema. She watched fascinated the story unravelling before her, the story of a beautiful heroine facing untold dangers, heart-wrenching sorrows and a ruthless villain until finally rescued by the miraculous hand of God and a brave and handsome hero, and everything ended happily.

But it is not so in real life, Savitri said to herself. In real life there is no end to the sorrows, and all we can do is learn to bear them bravely and patiently, that we may leave this world of misery worthy of bliss in the afterlife.

They went to the beach and walked along the sand together, wading on at the water's edge, in silence, each lost in memories. The water was tepid, washing forward in gentle sheets over their bare feet, and pulling back again. Savitri's sari, a fine pink one, quite new, which Gopal had bought for her, was wet up to her knees. Oh, the wideness, the greatness, the grandeur, she thought, and her heart stretched out and beyond the horizon.
If I
reach out far enough, over the ocean, all around the curve of the globe, then I will meet
him
. Maybe right now, at just this minute, he is also reaching out to me. I will never forget him. I will never forget running into this very same ocean with him, and laughing with joy, our hearts full to bursting! Whatever happens, that is always there! I will never forget, for he is the air I breathe!

Gopal interrupted her thoughts. 'Savitri, can you keep a secret?' he said.

She looked up at him. 'A secret? But of course, Gopal, you know I can! What is it?'

'I have a wife in Bombay!'

'A wife! Gopal, you are secretly married?' Savitri exclaimed, in Tamil.

Gopal replied darkly lowering his voice. 'You must keep this secret, Savitri. I have married Fiona!'

'Fiona!' cried Savitri. 'I thought Fiona was…’

'No. Fiona came to me, her only refuge, and her one true love. We were lovers over the years even after our thwarted elopement. We used to meet secretly at the home of a modern-minded actor friend in Madras, till tragedy struck in the shape of my very own brother.'

He paused. Savitri looked up at his profile and saw a pulse beating at his temple. She waited for him to continue.

'I never stopped loving Fiona,' Gopal said then. 'That is why I never married another. I still loved her, in spite of the great shame our own brother brought on her.' Savitri looked up at him sharply, but the words were flowing fast now and he could not stop them.

'Mani raped her. My own brother.'

'Gopal! Wasn't it proven that Mani wasn't…?'

Gopal stepped away from her and clasped a hand to his heart dramatically. 'Oh, what do I care about proof! Even if his was not the male organ that sullied her, still it was his command that the deed was done. Of course it was! Who else! He was too clever for the authorities and got his cronies to do the dirty work. But he was getting even at us both, at you and me. He even so much as admitted it to me.
Your little English harlot,
he said to me smirking.
She deserved no better for whoring around.'

'So he knew about you and her?'

'He knew everything. Mani has spies all over Madras. He knows what all the English are doing everywhere. He hates them and he hates us.'

'But why, Gopal, why? Why does he hate the English, and the two of us, his own brother and sister? He has always hated me especially, even before I ran away with David. Why, Gopal? What did I ever do to him?'

'Ha!' said Gopal. 'You don't know that? Well, little sister, I'll tell you. He hates the English because they took his mother away from him. Because his mother had to obey them and desert him, and go and live in the big house and give suckle to an English boy. He hates you because you were the cause of it all; you put the milk in Amma's breasts, you were with her in the big house and not he. That is the simple reason. He hated you the moment you were born, but you were too young to know. I knew. I saw it in his eyes. And I saw in his eyes how he hated me, when I joined Mr Baldwin's class. And now his heart is black with hate, Savitri. And I fear there will be worse, if we are not careful.'

'No. He has had his revenge. He has torn me from David and sent me into hell, and he has driven Mrs Lindsay away who was so kind to us and he has ruined Fiona's life. What can be worse than that?'

'Who knows, Savitri? Our brother has the devil in his heart. Beware.'

But Savitri only shook her head and smiled to herself.
Gopal sounds like one of those film heroes, she thought. The cinema has taken hold of him. He has seen too many Talkies. He is being melodramatic. Mani has done his worst. He has given me in marriage to Ayyar. I have lost David, and my daughters and my son. Mani has had his revenge.

36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

NAT

Madras City; A Bus Ride into Nowhere; A Village in Madras State, 1969

N
AT AND
H
ENRY
had to wade through black, stinking water at Parry's Corner to get to their bus. They had bought umbrellas and raincoats and large plastic sheets; they had wrapped up their luggage in plastic, they had taken off their shoes and wore shorts and the water was far above their ankles. All of Madras was under siege. Rain fell in one solid sheet of water. Traffic was reduced to a trickle and it had seemed a miracle to even find a rickshaw willing to take them to the bus station.

They hauled themselves into the 122 bus. It was already full, but on the back seat the Indians pressed together to make room for them and they squeezed in, and very soon after that the bus rolled off.

'This is bad. Really bad,' said Henry, and his brow was wrinkled, anxiety written into every line and into the downturned corners of his lips. 'The village will be under water; those poor people!'

Nat rubbed behind his neck. He was thinking less of the poor people, more of his own poor self, because obviously, if the village was under water, there might be some difficulties in getting away, getting to Town to find a bus to Bangalore. And by the look of things he'd want to leave as soon as possible because obviously his father's house was no place of refuge in this weather. He fleetingly considered defecting here and now, while he still had a chance: excusing himself, jumping down into the black water, getting the boy to retrieve his plastic-wrapped suitcase from the bus's roof, taking a rickshaw or a taxi to the airport and the next plane to Bangalore.

However, he stayed put. Maybe it was an innate laziness, a disinclination to plunge back into the deluge after having found this temporary haven of dryness. Maybe it was lack of courage; he didn't relish Henry's barely concealed disapproval at yet another change of plans. Irresolute, Henry would call him, weak, wet and watery.

Maybe, though, it was something else. Whatever it was, he stayed put.

T
HAT
SOMETHING
else
in Nat began to stir, like the tiniest seedling nudging itself from its bonds, as the bus plunged through the countryside, through sheets of water falling from above and sheets of water covering the earth, water as far as the eye could see, water above and below, water, water, water. The bus lurched through an endless lake, for no road was visible, no roadside, only water. Water, collecting in some unseen pocket in the bus's ceiling, and released at intervals, gushed down on them in urgent, violent bursts, showering those passengers crouched on the back seat. Henry opened his umbrella and he and Nat took shelter beneath it. He removed a plastic sheet from his carry-all and passed it to the other back-seat passengers who thanked him and huddled, miserable, silent, beneath it. Nat saw their lips moving. They were praying.

Nat found himself praying too. It was not an act of will. It first stirred in him as they drove through a village Nat remembered, back then in another life. Driving to Madras in this same bus, and the rest-pause here in this very village, right here outside the Bombay Lodge. He recalled ragged ladies with baskets on their heads
screeching 'Vadai-vadai-vadai-vadai,'
pushing those baskets filled with sorry little round orange
vadais
up to the bus windows in the hope of a sale, little half-naked urchins loaded with banana bunches pushing through the bus aisles selling a banana here, a banana there, half-grown girls calling out,
'Chai-chai-chai-chai,'
balancing trays of grubby thick-glassed tumblers half-filled with a brownish liquid on spindly, splayed-finger arms, strands of greasy black hair falling into their faces, looking up out of pleading great black eyes. Toddlers shitting in the dusty roadsides. Stray dogs, cows, goats,
sadhus,
cyclists, cripples, rich men, poor men, beggarmen, thieves, walking, running, screaming, calling, creeping, crawling all together in one huge mosaic of colour, sound and smell.

Now there was nothing. Just water.

The roadside stalls stood in water. The entrance to the Bombay Lodge was barred by a large metal gridwork before its wooden door, and the gridwork stood in water. The tea and coffee shops stood in water, and the coconut-frond roof of one shop lay collapsed over the counter, over the large metal vat used for boiling water. Not a living soul was to be seen.

The bus stopped for an instant somewhere in the sheet of water that replaced the main street and a few sorry sodden figures descended and melted into the grey wetness. The bus lurched off again, into the water.

Another bus lay on its side, abandoned, in what must have been a roadside ditch, in another age, before the water came and rendered it indistinguishable from the rest of the earth's surface. By some sixth sense their own driver wove his way through abandoned, waterlogged ruins of buildings, homes, shops, businesses, by some miracle keeping to the road, invisible beneath the water, by some miracle keeping his ark afloat.

Where are the people?
Nat cried in his heart, and inside him he felt a constriction as if he could hardly breathe.

Where are the people? Where are they?

He closed his eyes so as not to see and not to know, but his heart knew and sent tears out from beneath his eyelids and he opened his eyes and he saw people. A small family, beneath a tree, doing nothing, waiting, a woman with a baby in her arms, a man, two small children, almost knee-deep in the water, under their tree. The man held a piece of sodden cardboard over the woman's head. The rain fell on the tree and its leaves moved in an up-and-down rhythm, bouncing almost merrily, while the family just stood there in the wetness, waiting.

Nat knew what this deluge meant for the people of his village, and of all the villages around. Not only were their huts built trustingly on ground level; they also contained no furniture. People slept not on beds, but on the earthen floor, simply spreading one thin cloth to lie on and covering themselves with another. They cooked on the ground, using dried cow-dung or twigs as fuel. They had no sanitation; they went out into the fields to relieve themselves. They could not afford raincoats or umbrellas; they usually had only one change of clothing, which when washed was laid on the ground or over a bush to dry.

What happens, then, he asked himself, when all their clothes are wet, and there's no sun to dry them? When there is no dry cow-dung or twigs to cook with; when the earth on which they sleep and cook and into which they defecate is no longer earth, but a sheet of water? When the dried mud with which their houses are built grows soggy and starts to dissolve, and their thatched roofs first leak and then cave in, and the rain won't stop? And the water keeps rising?
Oh Lord, help then!

Six hours of water: collapsed mud huts, collapsed roofs; a world collapsed and abandoned. Nat was speechless.

W
HEN THEY ARRIVED
in Town they found more water, falling from above and rising from below, and no rickshaws running. Henry hired two boys to help with their luggage, Nat's, his, and the supplies they had bought in Madras, and the four of them set off through the abandoned streets of Town, out into the open countryside, through sheets of water and pouring rain, to the village.

They arrived at Doctor's long after nightfall, plodding through the water only by the light of Henry's torch, for the streetlights were not working. Henry called out but there was no answer except the whimpering of children, so he shone his torch around and they found the entire floor, inside the two rooms and around three sides of the verandah, covered with women and children; some of them lying, sleeping, covered with damp sheets, but a few mothers still up and comforting small weeping children.

'Where's Doctor ?' Henry asked one of the mothers. She was the only woman on her feet, walking up and down between the slumbering bodies, jostling a tiny living form clasped to her bosom; covered with the shawl of her sari, it was emitting weary whimpering noises. The woman was crying, but she looked up when Henry addressed her. Although he had spoken Tamil, out of the few Tamil words Henry had mastered, she replied in English, probably for Nat's benefit, for she was looking at him, and he realised she didn't know him, nor he her, and that he was home but he knew not his home and home did not know him.