The House of Blue Mangoes (56 page)

He thought of his mother and the day she had gone. The dream that had filled his nights came back to him: Charity, small, indomitable, dressed in a white sari, walking down that dark, threatening ravine . . .

‘I’m ready to go home now, Ramu,’ he said softly. His brother-in-law looked at him sharply, read the look in the tired eyes. He felt a powerful melancholy sweep over him.

On the way home, Daniel asked to stop in one of the blue mango topes that Solomon had laid down. It was almost too dark to see, the trees black and hulking in the poor light, the paleness of a few out-of-season mangoes only just visible. At the old man’s request, Ramdoss crunched his way over the dry and brittle leaves to the nearest tree, and felt around, plucked a mango and brought it back to the car. In the back seat, the others were growing restive and Ramdoss quietened them with a gesture.

For a while Daniel turned the mango around in his hand, then spoke, almost to himself: ‘When my son was very young, amma used to bring him down here. I remember she used to sing all sorts of lullabies to him, but his favourite was something she’d made up . . .’ He sang in a hoarse whisper:

‘
Saapudu kannu saapudu

Neela mangavai saapudu

Onaku enna kavalai
. . .’

‘He’d want it sung over and over again.’ Daniel gave a little laugh, and then nodded to Ramdoss to drive on.

When they reached the house, they carried Daniel back to his room, settled him on the bed, still clutching the mango. As Ramdoss turned to leave, Daniel said, ‘Blue mangoes, Ramu, the pride and joy of our family as far back as I can remember. I recall appa going down to the river during the harvest and filling the first basket, the fruit blue as the sky, invested with streaks of sun. The Chevathar was full of water those days, and far below the surface we could see mangoes that had dropped into the river, glimmering mysteriously like the eggs of some rare sea creature . . .’

He turned the fruit around in his hand, then said slowly: ‘It’s deserving of our commitment to it, Ramu. When I lived in Nagercoil, in my grandfather’s house, I used to sometimes spend my free time on the veranda, looking out at a Chevathar Neelam. My mother had planted it and it stood tall and proud, the focus of the small garden. But, do you know, in all the time I was there, it didn’t fruit once. Whereas here they are profligate, generous. I’m glad I’ll die in Chevathar . . .’

‘Anna, I’d like to call Kannan home . . .’

Daniel didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he said quietly, ‘Yes, he should come home . . . soon. I’ll let you know.’ Daniel rolled the mango between his palms, tilting it this way and that. Then he leaned back and shut his eyes. Thinking he had gone to sleep, Ramdoss was easing himself silently from the room when he heard him mutter, ‘The maggot in the mango.’ But he said no more. Gently, Ramdoss took the fruit from where it was loosely clenched in Daniel’s hand, examined it for a moment, placed it on the bedside table, drew a sheet across the emaciated body and switched off the light. Just before he left the room, he turned and looked at Daniel one last time. He had a sense of things passing, and suddenly was afraid. Although he was very tired, he left instructions with the servant on the night shift that he was to be awakened if there was the least cause for alarm and went to his own room.

In the early hours of the morning, Ramdoss was shifting restlessly in bed when he felt a hand shaking him. The servant he’d left on duty whispered urgently, ‘Lily amma is calling you. Aiyah . . .’ Ramdoss was instantly awake. Wrapping his lungi firmly around him, he rushed to Daniel’s room. In the grey light, he saw Lily’s sorrowful face and understood immediately. ‘Take the car and get the doctor,’ he said urgently to the servant who had followed him into the room. ‘Quickly now.’

89

The pain had been unexpected, so intense that it had driven every other sensation from his body. Daniel didn’t know if he was breathing, if he had screamed out in agony; all he could think of was that what he was experiencing was more than he could tolerate. And then, with the swiftness with which it had clutched him, it was gone, leaving behind only a feeling of great discomfort. He couldn’t speak, he could barely breathe, a mist obscured his sight, but he wasn’t afraid . . .

The news of Daniel’s decline spread rapidly through the colony. In less than an hour, the house was packed. The doctor would evict people from the sick-room, but they’d filter back. He lost his temper on one occasion and shouted, ‘Get out, get out all of you. This man is fighting for his life, he needs air, he needs peace and quiet.’ He turned to Ramdoss and said, ‘Can’t you get them to leave the room, and stay out of it! This man is too sick to be moved, otherwise I would have him taken to hospital immediately.’

The room was cleared at once, but nobody went far. The hot, airless corridors and passages of the mansion were clogged with people waiting with a variety of expressions, boredom, grief or the blank, unseeing look of people who have mastered the art of patiently waiting for nothing in particular. All through the morning more and more people trekked to the House of Blue Mangoes, drawn by a shared sense of grief at the imminent passing of the man who had been the dominant presence in their world as far back as they could remember. In the room where Daniel lay, there were still too many people, but Ramdoss and the doctor had at least managed to restrict it to close family and the priest. Two large nephews blocked the door, and politely but firmly refused everyone else entry.

The fog still filled Daniel’s head, but his discomfort had lessened. He tried to use the breathing techniques enjoined by the siddha masters. Gradually his suffering eased. He sensed people around him, but couldn’t make out individual faces. Nothing but blurry images in his vision, although in his mind’s eye there was now some clarity – he saw Lily where he would have expected to see her, by his bed, her eyes shut in prayer; Ramu, tears running down his cheeks; Solomon and Charity; his sisters Rachel and Miriam, who had fought with him so vigorously; Aaron, such a beautiful youth; Thirumoolar, Dr Pillai, Father Ashworth. But why was everyone so sorrowful? He was at peace now, the pain was bearable; this passage was something he was prepared to negotiate, it was something he wished for.

He felt a pricking sensation on his skin, and then a voice that he couldn’t understand came faintly to him. He tried to open his eyes but they didn’t seem to be obeying his will. Better to concentrate on his breathing; if he could regulate that, everything else would fall into place.

The silence of the room was broken by a loud voice. Miriam, who appeared to have fallen into a trance, was shouting, sweat drenching her face and blouse, her eyes intense and bright, ‘Anna, anna, can you see him now? Can you see our Saviour the Lord who is waiting for you?’

Galvanized into activity by the commotion, the people in the room surged forward. ‘Clear the room. At once,’ the doctor and Ramdoss were shouting, pushing people away from Daniel’s bed. His grandson Daniel dropped to the floor and scrambled through the legs of the adults, an empty test tube in his hand; this he thrust under the dying man’s nostrils and held for a long moment. Trace elements inside reacted to Daniel’s breath and the inside of the test tube clouded over. The boy stoppered it swiftly and returned the way he had come. Miriam kept screaming, ‘Anna, can you see the Lord?’ Ramdoss continued to shove people out of the room, the priest murmured prayers and Lily stood by the bedside as if carved from stone.

A rumour snaked its way outside that Dr Dorai was dead, and immediately a high-pitched keening began, rising and falling in the thick humid air, setting the birds clumsily stirring in the branches of the large mango tree in front of the house.

Dr Dorai was oblivious to all this. He was walking down the beach in bright sunshine with Father Ashworth, looking not at the brittle surf, but at the sand at his feet where the shells left behind by the rushing water gleamed like polished stone. To his astonishment, the shells seemed to be moving of their own accord. Excitedly, he pointed this out to the priest. Father Ashworth picked up a shell and showed him the long fleshy feet of the mollusc, its imperceptible grip on his finger, its tenacious hold on life, amidst the thunder of the sea. A great light filled his head, an instant after the pain swamped him with an intensity he knew signalled the end . . . then he was abruptly free of it.

All we can hope for, when the time comes, Ramdoss thought, as he watched the doctors try in vain to revive the man who was the centre of his universe, is that we die well, having overcome our terror of never again walking with friends, eating fruit off the trees, anticipating surprises . . . That wasn’t the only fear to be mastered, he realized the next instant – when we prepare to die, not only do we have to be accepting of what we leave behind, we also have to be prepared for what awaits us: a good place or a bad place, rebirth or union with the Divine.

Some weeks after Daniel died, Ramdoss found a copy of the Upanishads in his room, with some passages neatly underlined in blue ink. One of these was verse 13 of chapter 3 of the second Brahmana of the
Brhad-aranyaka Upanishad
, which maintained that when a person dies:

The speech enters into fire

The breath into air

The eye into the sun

The mind into the moon

The sense of hearing into the quarters

The self into the ether

The hair on the body into herbs

The hair on the head into trees

And the blood and the semen into water
.

Another passage Daniel had underlined was the reply of Yajnavalkya, the Divine Teacher, to the question of what became of the self, the life force, when a person passed away:

As a goldsmith, taking a piece of gold

Turns it into another, newer and more beautiful shape
,

Even so does this self, after having thrown away its body

And dispelled its ignorance
,

Make itself into another, newer and more beautiful shape

Like that of the fathers, or the gandharvas, or of the Gods

Or of Prajapati, or of Brahma, or of other beings
. . .

Two further passages were so heavily underlined that the ink had soaked through to the other side of the paper. They compared a dying man to a king who was about to depart. Policemen, judges, soldiers, attendants, village leaders, other dignitaries cluster around the departing potentate. Just so do the senses gather around the self when a person is on the point of dying. The powers of the senses wane and descend into the heart . . . the point of the heart lights up and by that light the self departs, either through the eyes or through the head or through the other apertures of the body. With the self go the senses, taking flight to another world. As his senses failed one by one, perhaps Dr Dorai thought of the image, as his living self fled up to the sun.

By the time Kannan arrived in Chevathar, having paused for neither sleep nor food since he received the telegram, the body of his father was washed and dressed in new clothes, and laid out on a block of ice in the great living room of the mansion. The room was filled with the smoky flame of a hundred and one candles.

It was almost twelve hours since Daniel had died, and the grief that had touched those closest to him had been replaced by a tired sadness. Ramdoss, normally an undemonstrative man, crushed Kannan in a surprisingly fierce embrace. His mother held him for a moment. Then the tears came. Kannan hadn’t cried for as long as he could remember, but now he wept.

They buried Dr Dorai after a solemn funeral service. The young priest standing in for the regular padre, who’d been overcome by recent events and was in hospital, acquitted himself rather well and gave a short, moving sermon, before Daniel was interred in the family graveyard overlooking the sea, next to his father and his uncle Joshua. As one of the pall-bearers, Kannan was surprised that what he most concentrated on was keeping his balance as they negotiated the uneven ground of the cemetery to the spot where the grave had been excavated. Even in the face of death, we have to pay attention to the small details of life, he thought. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, Kannan placed his lips against the sun-warmed wood for a moment, then drew back. The gravediggers began shouting instructions; they had seen plenty of grief in their time and there was work to be done. The family clustered silently around the open grave. The soft spill of flowers, then the clatter of sand on wood . . .

A statue fleshed in stone would rise in Meenakshikoil; three streets would be named after him. Doraipuram would remember Daniel for at least a generation. And those who knew him would remember him too for a while. Barely two decades later, sun, sand and water would begin eroding the statue. His name would survive a couple of decades longer and then he would become just a landmark with no resonance – turn right at the Dorai statue roundabout and go straight to get to the Madras Ulundu Vadai Café.

90

A house in which a death has occurred is a very busy place. Mourners and visitors have to be welcomed and fed, each new arrival must be told by a member of the family about the events leading up to the death in elaborate detail. The death itself needs to be dwelled on at length; the funeral arrangements have to be made. All this gives close members of the family little time to grieve. It’s only after the grave has been closed, and the supporting cast has begun to drift away, that the immediate family has the opportunity to be alone with memories of the one who is no longer with them. It’s only then that they can grieve properly.

After the funeral was over, Kannan spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the stifling house. Many people, several of whom he did not know, offered their commiseration, but their interest was already turning to other things and he didn’t need to make any but the most perfunctory conversation. As he went from room to room, touching a table here, brushing off a cobweb there, pausing to examine a book, a painting or a memory, it occurred to him that a man’s house resembled nothing so much as those fossil beds, in shale or sandstone, that preserve epoch upon epoch in neatly ordered layers. Here were a couple of rooms that Daniel had used as a clinic when he’d first arrived in Doraipuram. A little further on was the library from his English period, filled with rows and rows of heavy volumes: the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, Dickens and Swift, Hazlitt and Burke. Most of the books looked unopened. Kannan picked up a copy of
Bleak House
and opened it. The page was mapped and embroidered by silverfish. The dust made him sneeze and he put the book back on its shelf and moved on.