The House of Blue Mangoes (11 page)

At irregular intervals among the palms, fires winked red; those would be the women boiling the sap to get jaggery. All across his acres, this would be the scene that met the observer’s eye: ill-clad men ascending trees and women assisting them on the ground. Climbing the giant palmyra palm was hard and dangerous work, and falls that resulted in severe injuries were common. Sometimes the climbers were killed outright. Indeed, these were the most wretched of Solomon’s constituents, living far from their villages in little makeshift shacks of mud and thatch during the harvest season, but now it appeared that they were the ones who would see him through what promised to be another lean season.

Solomon spent a couple of hours in the palmyra forest; then he set off for the northernmost of his properties that lay more than half a day away. At noon, the convoy’s route again ran along the river. At this point the Chevathar pooled under tall rocks that soared out of the stony ground. A rough country dam that Solomon had had constructed about ten years ago created an elongated pool in which there was at least six feet of water. A group of laburnum trees leaned over the water, their pendent blooms a blaze of golden yellow.

A herd of skinny cattle had settled down in the shade of the trees, placidly chewing their cud. The boys in charge of them were swimming in the pool like big brown tadpoles. Without pausing to think, Solomon ordered his carts to stop, stripped off his shirt and lungi and ran down to the water’s edge, where he jumped with a huge splash into the deepest part of the pool. The boys showed some alarm at the arrival of this large stranger in their midst; then, all unknowing of his exalted stature, they splashed water in his face, giggled and swam away. Solomon paddled around the pool, feeling his worries evaporate under the strong sun and the cool touch of water. Memories of his childhood flooded him – of swimming in the wells and ponds with the other village boys, trying to catch the little quicksilver fish with his bare hands, wrestling and stick-fighting in the months after the harvest. All it needed, he thought with a deep sense of contentment, was the right set of circumstances for this middle-aged body to dance to the tune of a young child. He got out of the water after a little while, and let the sun dry him. His carters had spread a mat for him under the trees, a little away from the cattle. Solomon was about to begin eating when a thought struck him and he yelled to the chief carter, who had been with him for twenty years, to bring him some of their food in exchange for his. He handed over the mutton curry, rice and thoran that Charity had packed in exchange for their day-old rice and mango pickle. It was the food he had enjoyed in his youth, when caste, class and position hadn’t distanced him from this earth from which he had sprung.

The great magic of the afternoon enveloped him as they continued their journey northward. The bullocks were rested and they kept up a decent pace. A couple of hours across a rough boulder- and scree-strewn wilderness and they were within sight of civilization again, heralded as always by the challenge of fierce village dogs. Doves flitted across their path, the dun of their feathers scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding landscape. Reaching back into the cart for the shotgun he always carried with him on these journeys, Solomon loosed off a couple of barrels. The three doves he potted would make a nice accompaniment to the evening meal.

In the late evening, they hit black-soil country. Another half-hour or so and they would be at their destination. The cart-men clicked their tongues and twisted the tails of the bullocks and the animals increased their speed. The countryside around them was flat and cotton fields spread out in every direction. A flight of crows flew past, rough black tracks on the burnished shield of the sky. A few minutes later they were driving through the village: sixteen mud-and-palm-thatch huts on either side of a deeply rutted cart-track. The headman’s house was slightly larger than the others and brick-built but not even as grand as the small house Solomon owned in the village, a three-roomed structure of brick and mortar. The prosperity that the cotton boom had left in its wake had not yet changed the face of the village, for its harvests had continued to be poor due to lack of rain. Their arrival was clearly unexpected and a comet’s tail of runny-nosed children, dogs and idlers formed behind their convoy. Solomon drove straight to the headman’s house. Appa Andavar was clearly not expecting his landlord and was dressed casually in a dirty lungi. He leaped up from the mat on which he was sitting, simultaneously discarding his beedi, when he saw Solomon.

The headman was full of concern about another rainless year – how would he provide for his villagers and for himself if the crop was meagre? Solomon tried to reassure him as best he could. It was an Andavar village and the headman had heard about the attack on the Andavar girl, except in his version seventeen women had been attacked by a gang of Vedhars and Marudars. Solomon said that he was taking a personal interest in the matter and that there was no cause for worry. A goat was slaughtered before Solomon could even protest – the villagers had to provide the requisite hospitality to an honoured guest. After a while he sat down with the headman and the other elders to a meal of rice and a thin goat curry that was too heavily spiced with turmeric. The doves he’d bagged had been roasted but were inedible, and his estimation of the culinary ability of Appa Andavar’s household dropped even further. He politely refused an offer of toddy, despite knowing that that would mean the others couldn’t drink too, because he was suddenly very tired and wanted to wake up with a clear head.

He went to bed quite early. The inside of the house was hot and stifling, so he dragged his mat out on to the brick stoop and lay down. The moon, almost perfectly round, was pinned to a velvety sky; he turned over on his side and looked beyond its glare to the high reaches of the night where the stars frothed like glittering surf; every so often a slash of silver would scar the faintly glowing onyx backdrop, soundless and swift. He had not felt as relaxed as this for a long, long time. He fell asleep dreaming of rows of laburnum flowers lighting up the church by the sea. The padre had Vakeel Perumal’s face and was trying to tell him something urgently but he was too tired to pay attention. He slept.

17

His work done, Father Ashworth would usually try to get down to the beach at sunset to watch the sand crabs at play. They would scuttle ahead of the incoming swells, frail and disembodied as wraiths, then pause as the sea ebbed away, waiting for the next surge of water. The waves paid no heed to the dance of the sand crabs. Gathering themselves up, they would advance upon the beach, cover the dull white gleam of the sand for a brief while, and then retreat, fast or slow, depending on time, tide and weather.

This evening as he watched the crabs flirting with the waves, the priest grew reflective. His eyes followed the movement of the tide as it flowed over the beach and ebbed away. Invaders were like that, he thought. Just as the waves altered the shoreline, so too did conquerors. They might remain for a short while or overstay their welcome, but long after they had disappeared traces of their presence remained. He had no idea how much longer his own kind were likely to remain in this country; he didn’t think they would stay for ever, but they had certainly made an impact. One of the things they had had an effect on was the concept of time.

He had been fascinated when he had first arrived to learn about the Hindu way of ordering time – the belief that the universe went through an unending cycle of creation and destruction. Each cycle was equal to a hundred years in the life of Brahma, the Creator, and at the end of each cycle the entire universe was destroyed, along with Brahma, in a cataclysm. A hundred years of chaos ensued, then a new Brahma arose and the cycle began again. Within this main cycle were many sub-divisions. One of these related to a day in the life of Brahma, which was equal to 4,320 million years on earth. As soon as he awoke, the world was created; when he lay down to sleep, it was destroyed. Each day of Brahma was further divided into a thousand Mahayugas or Great Ages, which were in turn further divided into Yugas – the Krita, Treta, Dwapara and Kali. Kaliyuga had begun on 18 February 3102
BC
and would last 432,000 years. The concept had given him a real insight into the capacious nature of time in his adoptive country.

But things were changing. The cyclical nature of time now had to contend with the linear and the solar. And sometimes it seemed to him that the old way of regarding time was losing out. How else would you explain the fact that 1899 was being greeted with as much foreboding and hysteria in many parts of this country as it was elsewhere on the planet?

Father Ashworth’s ruminations had substance to them. In the subcontinent, where irritable Gods and rogue planets were a fact of daily life, it didn’t take too long for alien superstitions to take root. The end of the nineteenth century, as measured by the Gregorian calendar, began to weigh unbearably on the conscious and subconscious minds of large numbers of people. What malefic influences were about to be unloaded in the twentieth century?

Rituals and festivals were carried out with extra punctiliousness and fervour as the new century approached. Though priests and astrologers profited, few others did. The spirit of the land turned dry and brittle. All it needed was a match. In the end there was more than one. Riots raced across the south, flaring up in black-soil country, up around the great granaries of the Cauvery and the Vaigai, and in the lee of the blue mountains that hemmed in the Presidency. Kilanad and the neighbouring district of Tinnevelly were the two worst-hit areas. There had already been a riot between Andavars and Thevars in a village close to Melur, the capital of Kilanad. As the summer heat intensified, reports came in that one of the biggest conflagrations the region had ever seen would take place in Sivakasi where the Nadars and the Maravars, who had been skirmishing for decades, were preparing for a final showdown.

Collector Hall in Kilanad and his counterpart in Tinnevelly were worried men, as were their colleagues elsewhere in the province who feared the virus would spread to their own districts. Their concern was communicated to the Governor of the Presidency who called for a meeting of his Council. After sitting in deliberation for two days and nights in Madras, the Council issued proclamations, messages and urgent orders to representatives of Her Majesty the Queen. By telegraph, dispatch rider and post, these spread throughout the districts.

As the tension escalated the leader writer of the
Hindu
wrote: ‘It is incumbent on Her Majesty’s representative to immediately secure the situation before it gets out of hand.’ That issue of the paper reached St Paul’s mission in Chevathar a week later, where Father Ashworth read the editorial and sighed. What in heaven were things coming to? But he didn’t have much time to ponder the ills of the world for, after many delays, Peter Jesu Perumal was to be baptized the day after tomorrow, along with his family. There was something else on the priest’s mind. His newest convert had made a request, after an especially long Bible session. Over coffee and murukku, he had said that while he was mindful of the fact that Christianity prohibited idolatry, it would make him very happy if he could have a family deity to worship like most of the others in the village. However, unlike the others, who invariably worshipped the founding ancestor or some distinguished member of the family or a local deity who had been good to them, he wanted to erect a small shrine to Jesus Christ, the founding father of the universe. This was most irregular, he knew, but he was so passionately in thrall to his new faith that he wanted to proclaim it to the whole world.

The sincerity and devotion of the lawyer had gradually won the priest over. Surely there was nothing wrong with a Chevathar Christian having his own little place of worship? It was common in Europe and other Christian nations. He had given Vakeel Perumal a lithograph of Christ, and the lawyer said he would arrange to have a cross carved and placed in the shrine. He humbly asked Father Ashworth to consecrate the shrine, which he hoped would be ready in time for the baptism. The priest had agreed, thinking as he did so that Solomon would be astonished by the new convert’s fervour. If this didn’t serve to allay his reservations about the newest members of St Paul’s congregation, nothing would.

Besides the Perumal family, only the headman was present at the baptism ceremony in the church. After it was over, they set off for the lawyer’s shrine. A few people awaited them there. A small hollowed-out mud-and-stone construction, about four feet high, it stood under the shade of a towering banyan tree directly opposite the lawyer’s house. The lithograph of Jesus was carefully stuck inside and small lamps were ready to be lit in the niches. Father Ashworth realized that the edifice was little different from the hundreds of village shrines that dotted the countryside and smiled in appreciation. How beautifully the Lord had been assimilated into the soil of this ancient and devout land. He began the consecration ritual. A short while later, he brought the ceremony to an end with a brief prayer. As their bowed heads rose, the noises of the village in the morning surrounded them: squirrels and doves screeching and cooing overhead as they fought for the ripening ruby-coloured banyan fruit, a flock of crows cawing and wheeling through the air a short distance away. Father Ashworth made the sign of the cross and blessed all those present. P. J. Perumal now had his very own family shrine.

18

On the evening of the Chitra Pournami festival, the very tip of the Indian peninsula, abode of the virgin goddess, Kanya Kumari, is witness to a remarkable spectacle. Before the eyes of tens of thousands of devotees thronging the striated red, white and black sands of the beach, the sun plunges into the confluence of three seas, staining the water the colour of blood. At that precise moment, the full moon rises, cool and lambent. Fire and frost, the two sides of God. The locals say the phenomenon is unique. But in a dozen villages up the Coromandel coast, Chevathar among them, the claim is scoffed at. Villagers in these areas do not go to Cape Comorin to celebrate Chitra Pournami. They throng to their own beaches, each village boasting that theirs is the one where the sands are the cleanest and the view the best.