The House of Blue Mangoes (59 page)

‘Of course not,’ Kannan said. ‘I hope you’re enjoying the parties.’

‘They’re not what I’m used to but I’m having quite a good time.’

‘If they get a bit too much, you’ll tell me, won’t you? I don’t want to be accused of dragging my best friend all the way to Pulimed just to torture him,’ Kannan said with a laugh.

‘You know me better than that. If I have a problem you’ll know immediately,’ Murthy said, breaking off a piece of his dosai and dipping it into the sambhar on his plate.

They ate in silence for a while, Murthy with his fingers, Kannan manipulating a knife and fork. Determined not to repeat the mistakes that had attended his mother’s visit, he had instructed Manickam to serve dosais, idlis and uppuma instead of his regular breakfast of eggs, toast and marmalade.

‘If you think it’s none of my business I know you’ll tell me, but why did Helen leave?’ Murthy asked after a while.

‘There’s not a great deal to say. We weren’t right for each other, but you don’t see that when you’re in love.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I think so. I go out as much as I can. Can’t stand the empty house. It’ll get better.’

‘These things always do,’ Murthy said wisely.

‘What do you know about these things?’ Kannan said with a laugh. ‘You’re not even married.’

Murthy looked nonplussed for a moment, then he smiled. The talk grew lighter, the years dropped away and they laughed and joked as they had in college. Finally Murthy asked, ‘Why are you eating your dosai with a knife and fork?’

‘Oh, just got used to it,’ Kannan replied.

His friend said nothing and went back to eating his dosai. Just then, Manickam came in with a fresh supply. Kannan waited till he left, then asked, ‘What did you mean by that question?’

‘Nothing, nothing. I just found it a bit odd, that’s all.’

‘Come on, Murthy. Tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘No, really, I just found it unusual. I’ve never seen anyone do it before.’

‘It keeps the fingers clean,’ Kannan said as he raised a forkful of dosai and sambhar to his mouth.

Abruptly Murthy said, ‘You’ve changed. You’re not the Kannan I used to know.’

Kannan put his knife and fork down on his plate. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, you know. Small things, like eating dosais with a knife and fork. Big things, like the way you behave around your English colleagues. You’re not the Kannan I used to know.’

‘We all change, don’t we? You’ve changed. Why, you’ve even grown a beard!’

Murthy laughed and Kannan said, ‘Enough about me. Tell me what’s going on down in the plains.’

‘A lot of action. Now that the war is almost over, I think it’ll be only a matter of time before the Mahatma, Nehru, Patel and everyone else goes on the attack once again. I think the British are finished, Kannan. Three years, five years. That’s all it’s going to take before we’re free.’

‘Will that be a good thing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Won’t there be chaos when the British leave?’

‘It’s easy to see why the British would think that. Things won’t be easy. Jinnah is adamant about a separate nation for the Muslims. And the others are dead against it. Their positions are hardening. I fear it will delay independence, you know, give the British reasons to stay on.’

‘What’s the solution?’ Kannan asked.

‘I don’t know. Rajaji fell out with the Mahatma and Nehru for suggesting that they accept Jinnah’s demand in the larger interest of achieving independence, so that’s a real stalemate. It’s getting very messy. Every second day, some new party is formed, with neither accountability nor agenda, solely in order to take advantage of the uncertainty . . . Sometimes politics makes you sick, all the cynical manoeuvring and opportunistic alliances and . . .’

‘So why do we want to get rid of the British? At least they keep it all in check!’

Murthy looked aghast. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’

‘What’s wrong with what I said?’

‘Let me spell it out for you. If I sound dramatic, so be it. I don’t know about you but I would rather die in poverty as a free man than be a prosperous slave.’

‘That is rather a dramatic view, you know.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Murthy said excitedly. ‘Do you know how disparaging Churchill is about the Mahatma? After the Quit India movement, he called him a miserable old man who had always been the enemy. Deep down, they despise us, all of us.’

‘Political talk, Murthy. I’m sure our leaders have said bad things about them. I’m sure Churchill isn’t racist.’

‘He’s certainly an old-style imperialist who believes he was created superior to all the subject races. It’s no surprise his attitude rubbed off on people like Linlithgow, the worst Viceroy we’ve ever had! Think of the way he handled the Bengal famine! And do you know what he said about Gandhiji’s fast? He said that if the Mahatma died, all that would happen would be six months of unpleasantness that would steadily decline in intensity after which things would go on as before. And Wavell is worse. He calls himself a simple soldier but he hasn’t won a battle in years. And if he’s a great general, tell me what he’s doing here instead of fighting somewhere? And this man has the nerve to poke fun at the Mahatma. I read a poem he wrote about Gandhiji. It made me so angry I can still remember it word for word. It’s a version of “Jabberwocky”. Do you know the poem?’

‘You know I was never much of a reader.’

‘Well, it’s from
Alice in Wonderland
and Wavell spoofed it like this:

“
Beware the Gandhiji, my son

The satyagrahah, the bogey fast
,

Beware the Djinnarit, and shun

The frustrious scheduled caste
.”’

Kannan laughed.

‘You find that funny?’

‘Steady, Murthy, I’m not the enemy,’ Kannan said with a smile.

‘Sorry,’ Murthy said a little sheepishly, ‘I do tend to get carried away. But their attitude makes me really angry. Do you know that Britain fought a hundred and eleven wars in the last century and they were all funded by India? They are who they are because of us. Do you still think they’re doing us a favour by giving us the crumbs from their table? They’re bleeding us dry, and we’re expected to take it? Sorry, Kannan. I’m no friend of the white man. I was surprised at how much you seemed to want to emulate them.’

‘Michael Fraser is a good man, and Freddie is a friend.’

‘Yes, he’s a nice man,’ Murthy admitted.

‘And Major Stevenson and the others are not bad sorts. There are bastards, like Martin and Patrick, but you find them everywhere.’

‘It’s not that I hate the whites. Think of all our profs at MCC. What I cannot accept is imperialism.’

For a while they ate without speaking, then Murthy began again. ‘You know, I find it a bit hard to accept that someone like you is not participating in the most exciting time of our lives.’

‘There you go again. Flogging your pet peeve,’ Kannan said with a smile.

‘But can’t you see it?’ Murthy said passionately. ‘We are living at this great moment in our history, offered an opportunity to transcend ourselves, be part of something that’s bigger than us. The independence movement, Kannan, the greatest mobilization of people in recorded history, it’s reaching its climax and you’re not part of it!’

‘I grant you it’s very exciting. But do you think your own part in it makes any difference? The big decisions, the things that have an impact, are being made by people like Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Rajaji . . . How are we part of it?’

‘Every one of us has a stake in what’s going on. If the Viceroy takes a decision, if the Mahatma announces a programme, they are because of the actions of all of us. It’s exciting to be an Indian, Kannan, more now than at any other time in the past or in the future . . .’

‘Am I less of an Indian for not being part of the struggle?’ Kannan asked.

‘You do seem proud to be a brown-skinned Englishman.’

‘Because my boss said I spoke English as well as an Englishman?’

‘I wasn’t thinking of that, it was . . .’

‘I’m just trying to be good at my job, Murthy. Your father didn’t throw you out of the house,’ Kannan said, a trace of irritation in his voice.

‘I wasn’t trying to annoy you. It’s just that I’m so caught up with the idea of the independence struggle that I’m a bit oblivious to everything else.’

Kannan accepted the apology. They sat for a while longer at the breakfast table finishing their coffee. Then Kannan said, ‘Fancy a walk? It’s a lovely day.’

‘Excellent idea,’ Murthy said and they got up to go. As they were leaving the dining room, Kannan said, ‘I don’t measure up?’

‘It’s hateful to be a subject race, Kannan. And that’s what we are right now. It’s something no one with a hint of pride in themselves could accept.’

‘Are you telling me that I’m without pride, a toady of the British?’

Murthy hesitated, then said, ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. When I first got to Pulimed I was amazed how little you or anyone else thought about the independence struggle. All the talk was of war, war, war. It was as though India never existed. Or if it did, only as an adjunct to the British cause . . .’ He broke off suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m haranguing you. Let’s just go for that walk.’

Kannan smiled. ‘I’m sure you’ll go far in politics.’

‘No more politics today. Okay. Not while I’m in Pulimed.’ They walked as far as the fork in the road that led from the bungalow to the factory. And then, because the day was so beautiful, they walked some more. Everything the sun touched shone like polished glass: the blazing emerald of the tea, the water-wet hills and distant waterfalls, the silver-backed leaves of the grevillea trees as they turned in the breeze. Murthy said with a laugh, ‘Long may you prosper in this place, Kannan. I know I’d want to come here whenever I needed to rest.’

They walked a while longer, letting the peace and enchantment of the place seep into them, then Murthy said, ‘I’m sorry I never met your father, Kannan.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry too, he was a great man. I regret now that I didn’t get to know him better.’ He smiled as a memory surfaced. ‘He could be quite delightful, you know. Remember the Blue Mango Festival? I’m sure I told you about it in college. I was seven or eight and I was determined to win the children’s competition. I’d eaten about ten mangoes and I desperately had to go to the lavatory, you know how it is when you eat too many mangoes. My father who was watching got so alarmed that he rushed up to me, caught me up and almost ran with me all the way to the house so that my mother and grandmother wouldn’t find out . . . That was the last one. There were no more festivals after my grandmother died.’ Kannan was quiet for a while, then he said, ‘I have so few memories of him.’

‘We realize these things only when it’s too late,’ Murthy said.

‘After he was gone, I found myself thinking of him all the time and I know that I will always regret that I wasn’t able to mend fences with him before he died.’

‘You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Kannan. There wasn’t anything you could have done, not really. Both of you were right in your own way . . .’

‘I’m glad he didn’t live to see the marriage break up,’ Kannan said sombrely. He slashed suddenly at a nearby tea bush, then walked on. By and by he said, ‘Do you think you will continue in politics, Murthy? After India becomes free and all that?’

‘I might, I might not. I know my father would like it if I went back. There’s more work than he and my brothers can cope with. But I find politics a very exciting place to be in. What I’m most afraid of is that the seamy side of politics will gain the upper hand once the excitement is over. Corruption, nepotism, communalism.’

‘You mean the sort of thing Jinnah is involved in.’

‘I thought you didn’t know anything about politics, Kannan.’

‘I’m not a complete ignoramus.’

‘Well, not only Jinnah, the Hindu right is as bad. They admire the Nazi drive for racial purity and that’s just one of the distasteful things about them. All we need are some Christian, Sikh and Parsi fanatics to make things really interesting. No wonder the British think we can’t rule ourselves.’

‘You left out the Buddhists, the Jains and the animists,’ Kannan said with a wry smile.

‘Sorry, getting serious again,’ Murthy said. ‘Do you think you’ll stay on here?’

‘My mother and my uncle say I should go back to Doraipuram. But it’s so hard to decide. I have a job here. And if the British start leaving in droves, there’ll be opportunities.’

‘Do you want to go back to Doraipuram?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think I should, at other times I think I’d be a burden. I have no interest in medicine or the business.’

‘But you like planting,’ Murthy pointed out. ‘You’d still be involved with agriculture and you could help with herbal formulations and suchlike.’

‘I’m not sure what I want. For now, I’m just waiting.’

On the walk back to the bungalow they didn’t talk much. It occurred to Kannan that they had barely discussed Helen. Perhaps that was the way it was meant to be – loss and unhappiness were sometimes best addressed indirectly.

In the four days that Murthy had left of his holiday they absented themselves entirely from Pulimed’s social life. They spent the evenings and nights chatting and laughing and rediscovering their friendship. They had both changed, but they were relieved to discover that at heart their bond remained as strong as ever. In college, Kannan had been without doubt the stronger of the two, but Murthy had caught up. The fact did not discompose either of them.

On Murthy’s last night they stayed up so late that they had difficulty getting up in the morning. The weather, unreliable as ever, had turned and they made the journey to the station through a grey and wet day.

94

A fortnight after Murthy’s departure, the killings began.

The first victim died near the coolie lines on Kannan’s division.

Kannan had just sat down to dinner, when Manickam, who was about to serve him, frowned. The kitchen boy, who normally never ventured into the rest of the bungalow after the morning’s cleaning, was beckoning to him from just beyond the door of the dining room. Manickam continued to ladle out the corn. His frown deepened. But the kitchen boy didn’t go away. Having served Kannan, the butler withdrew with great dignity. Kannan affected not to notice the sound of the cuff and the yelp that followed. There was some urgent whispering and then Manickam reappeared, this time with the boy, who was actually a middle-aged man, in tow. This was so unusual that Kannan stopped eating.