The House of Blue Mangoes (20 page)

33

Long before the grey husk of day filled with light, Charity was up and about. Normally, she would have completed much of the cleaning and cooking by the time the rest of the household awoke, but today she felt strangely listless and enervated. Daniel was to leave for Melur the next day.

She sank into the comfortable cane-backed planter’s chair on the tiny veranda of the cottage, Daniel’s favourite spot until his life had been taken over by the clinic, and looked out into the little garden. In the breaking day, the contours of the plants and trees sharpened. A blue mango dominated the garden. It grew tall and beautiful beside the path that led from the gate to the front door. Tiger-striped crotons surrounded it with an explosion of colour. Charity had brought the mango seedling from Chevathar on her first visit home after her marriage and it had taken well. But it hadn’t fruited even once. Every season, tiny mangoes, pale and shiny like lapis lazuli, would form, but would drop off the stalk before they ripened – living proof of the saying that the Chevathar Neelam would only fruit by the red river. For a while she had been afraid that Daniel too would be permanently affected by exile. He had taken a long time to recover, and she had suffered with him, his pain overwhelming and banishing her own. When he had begun to enjoy his work, she had rejoiced. And now he could hardly contain his excitement at the prospect of studying Western medicine! She had tried to be happy for him, and hoped that the sadness she felt deep down did not show.

The household was stirring as Charity made her way to the minuscule kitchen at the back of the house. She had promised to make Daniel paal kolukattai, his favourite sweet. As the milk began to warm, she mixed and kneaded the sweetened dough, and began to pinch off and shape the dumplings. The fire wasn’t catching, and she turned her attention to the stove. Smoke billowed into her face as she blew into it, and her eyes grew teary. She thought: It’s the tragedy of a mother to lose her sons. First Aaron, consumed by his father’s passion that had spat him out, broken and bitter and full of hate for his surviving family, and now her favourite, Daniel, who was poised to disappear into a world where she could not follow. Charity wept, as the sadness of the present and the past fused and swept over her.

Solomon had died of his injuries a few days after the great battle, and she hadn’t been able to reach the village in time for the funeral. When she did get to Chevathar with Daniel (her father had insisted she leave the girls behind in Nagercoil until things were more settled), she found it changed beyond recognition in the short time she had been away. A detachment of policemen was stationed in one of the houses. Three Vedhar families, Muthu Vedhar’s among them, had been permanently banished, leading to a minor exodus of Vedhar villagers. The church by the sea, which had been set on fire while the battle was raging, was a smoke-blackened ruin. The Christian villagers now had to trek all the way to town to worship.

Abraham Dorai, who had lived in his older brother’s shadow all his life, had become thalaivar and his wife Kaveri ran the Big House. At first, Abraham and his wife tried to be conciliatory, but as the weeks went by Kaveri began to take over the household, elbowing Charity aside. Most of the servants were dismissed, and those who remained were told that Kaveri was now mistress of the house. Drained and depleted, Charity watched her powers being eroded. However, her brother-in-law and his wife were not unkind to them, partly because they were terrified of Aaron. The death of his father and uncle had affected her younger son badly. Charity’s heart went out to him, but there was little she could do, for he blamed her and Daniel as much as he did the rest of the world for having taken Solomon and Joshua from him. He loathed his uncle and aunt as well. Abraham and Kaveri were careful around the scowling boy with the limp (the only external scar he bore of the battle); there was no telling when he would do something unpredictable.

A few months later, Aaron got into a fight with Abraham. Everyone knew he spent his days and most of his nights in Meenakshikoil playing cards, picking fights and loafing around but nobody dared question him. Abraham usually gave him money whenever Aaron demanded it but on this occasion he refused to pay the ten rupees his nephew wanted. Aaron exploded, and when Abraham held out he abused him and rushed out of the house.

Five days later he hadn’t returned. Charity persuaded her brother-in-law to look for him but it was clear that Aaron had left the area. Charity was devastated and even Abraham was concerned. The only one who was delighted was Kaveri, for she had feared the angry boy more than anyone else. When it was clear that he was not coming back, she was quick to consolidate her control over the Big House.

Matters came to a head less than a week later. One afternoon Kaveri slapped Kamalambal for not scrubbing the floors to her satisfaction. Charity was quick to remonstrate, and Kaveri turned on her in a fury.

That evening Abraham told Charity and Daniel that it would be best if they left Chevathar. He was willing to settle a small sum of money on them, all that he was able to scrape together, for times were hard – the punitive taxes imposed on the villagers on account of the riot, and yet another crop failure had left very little to go round. If they gave no trouble, he was willing to pay them an annual rent in kind – mangoes and rice. Before the year was out, Charity and Daniel took a bullock cart across the border and headed back to Charity’s home town of Nagercoil.

She heard footsteps outside the kitchen. Charity brushed away her tears and greeted Rachel, her older daughter, now a pretty seventeen-year-old with huge grave eyes like her own. ‘Ma, Miriam is refusing to get up.’ Charity could picture the scene all too well. Miriam, her youngest, spoiled and cosseted, refusing to do anything unless coaxed into it. Fortunately, Rachel was patient and slow to irritation. ‘Never mind, kannu, we’ll wake her up later,’ she said, smiling at Rachel. She would need to get her married soon; a couple of years more and she would be deemed too old to find a good match. But she would make a beautiful bride. How Solomon would have enjoyed giving her away. Charity could feel the tears coming on again, and hastily began to get the morning meal ready.

Later that morning, she hovered around her son as he sat in his customary place on the veranda eating the paal kolukattai. The sun had not yet acquired the punishing heat of day and the garden pulsed with colour and sound. In the dry leaves under the mango tree, sparrows and babblers rustled and chattered. On the low stone wall that enclosed the grounds, a garden lizard made its slow and trembling way, while two squirrels chased each other up and down the mango tree. In the lee of the wall, Jacob had planted a row of hibiscus bushes and their flashy flowers had attracted a pair of exotic visitors.

‘Look, amma, sunbirds, I haven’t seen them in a long time,’ Daniel said. Why is the world so full of enchantment, and yet so sad, Charity thought, as they watched the birds that morning, iridescent drops of gold and emerald motionless under the great bank of flowers that had drawn them to this magic garden.

34

Anniversaries of failed revolutions are nerve-racking occasions for rulers and the state. The embered ashes of defeat begin to glow, preparatory to bursting into flame, the unquiet spirits of martyrs walk the land, instilling the fire of revolution in those who would rise up again, and everywhere the tension heightens. As the fiftieth anniversary of the 1857 War of Independence drew near, the rulers in unified India watched its approach with trepidation.

The war had served to emphasize several things: the differences between ruler and ruled, the latent hostility and mistrust that existed between both sides, and the vulnerability of Empire in the subcontinent. The Crown had always been aware that should there be a mass uprising it might well mean the loss of its most prized possession. It simply did not have the numbers or the resources to control India’s millions if they decided to sink their differences and unite against their masters. The 1857 revolt, ill-managed and short-lived though it was, could never be repeated.

Consequently, in the summer of 1907, as the anniversary approached, the British grew more vigilant. From the Sub-divisional Magistrate in his lonely posting on the banks of the shining Irrawaddy in Burma to the tea-planter in remote Assam, from the Governors in their mansions in the great Presidencies of Bombay, Bengal and Madras to the enlisted men in the cantonments, every one of the hundred thousand or so white subjects of His Majesty the King Emperor wondered how three hundred million Indians would react to the memory of the uprising.

Chris Cooke was among those who watched the gathering storm with deep foreboding. He had seen at first hand how quickly the seemingly submissive people of this land could explode out of control, and he often worried about the new horrors the anniversary could unleash.

But he wasn’t fretting about the Mutiny now. For the past hour Cooke had been stuck in the main concourse of the Madras Central Station with practically every Briton in the city. In one of the pointless displays of sycophancy which the capital of the Presidency was prone to, pretty much everyone who counted was expected to be present at the station to dance attendance on the Governor whenever he left or returned to the city. Cooke looked grumpily at the people milling around dressed in their best suits or uniforms. What a complete waste of time, he thought; you would think all these important people had no work to do, and that their lives depended on getting to shake Governor Lawley’s hand. And all this in the hope of promotion or a couple more letters after their names.

This was one of the things he disliked most about Madras but there were others that ran it close – the politics at the office, the gossip at the club, the rule-bound social whirl – although he did enjoy his cricket at Chepauk and the music and amateur theatricals. But what really bothered him was the fact that he was stuck behind a desk when what he had liked about his career was the opportunity to serve in the field. In the capital, you were completely isolated from the people and their problems, and this was not what he had joined the civil service for. As a third-generation ICS man, he had been weaned on stories of the duty which members of the service owed to this land and its people. To be a part of the steel frame meant doing your best for the millions in your charge, not spending half the day waiting for one man to get on a train. He would put in for a transfer back to Kilanad as soon as was politic, or when he could take life in the capital no more, whichever happened sooner. It might not be the best career move he had made, the district he had served in was the least important in the Presidency, but Cooke didn’t care. He had just turned thirty-three and was still unencumbered by family or other commitments. He would think about serving a sentence in the capital a decade or so from now. His neighbour accidentally stepped on his foot, the soaring heat made his stiff collar and suit unendurable, and Cooke was suddenly desperate for some fresh air. He began pushing his way to the edge of the throng.

Further up the platform, which had been cleared of regular travellers and its usual chaos, were some benches, most occupied by people like him who’d grown tired of waiting. Cooke headed for an empty bench in the distance, but before he got there a prematurely balding man with an open, cheerful face hailed him. An assistant editor with the
Mail
, Nicholas was one of the first people he had met in the city. They got on well and Cooke gratefully took a seat beside him. A red-faced man with scanty eyebrows shared the bench and the journalist made the introductions. When they shook hands, Cooke noticed with distaste that the man, who was the managing agent of one of the big trading firms, had a sweaty grip. Surreptitiously he wiped his hands on his handkerchief.

‘What a dreadful waste of time this is, don’t you think?’ Nicholas said. ‘All the Governor is doing is leaving on a two-day trip to Coimbatore. Surely that doesn’t require the presence of virtually every Englishman in Madras?’

‘Protocol,’ said Cooke cautiously.

‘Protocol be damned, old boy,’ the journalist said cheerfully. ‘Shouldn’t you chaps be on your guard with all these rumblings in the city?’

‘We’re taking steps,’ Cooke said.

‘Spoken like a true bureaucrat,’ Nicholas said gleefully. ‘Taking steps, that’s rich. Did you read the report in my paper about the furore that Bengali chap Bipin Chandra Pal caused last week? Practically urged our Tamil friends to burn every Englishman alive!’

‘Surely not.’ Cooke adopted his friend’s bantering tone. ‘Just got a little excitable. Isn’t that supposed to be a Bengali trait?’

Nicholas laughed. ‘It certainly is, if you go by the commotion they’ve been causing. But I suppose they have something to shout about, the division of Bengal and all that!’

‘That’s a problem, isn’t it?’ Cooke said thoughtfully. ‘It’s often hard to damn the protesters without feeling you’re being a bit unfair.’

‘Unfair!’ the businessman sputtered. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Mr Cooke? Do you know that the natives are talking of boycotting all English products? They’re urging their countrymen to buy indigenous products. What’s the word they use?’

‘Swadeshi,’ Cooke said.

Nicholas chimed in, ‘And, my friend, you’d better print the other native word that begins with an S on your brain. Swaraj. Freedom. You’re going to be hearing it a lot in the months to come.’

‘What’s the country coming to?’ the businessman said irritably. ‘You fellows should arrest the lot. Deport them. Show no mercy if you don’t want a repeat of 1857.’

‘I don’t think there’ll be a repeat of 1857. I think we can rely on the natives . . .’ Cooke wasn’t allowed to finish.

‘Rely on the natives,’ the businessman said shrilly. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but you can’t mean that.’

‘Oh come now, without relying on them, the vast majority of them at any rate, we wouldn’t be here. Do you really think we could control India if all of them got together and decided to give us the heave-ho?’ Nicholas said, coming to Cooke’s rescue.