The House of Blue Mangoes (8 page)

The gathering went completely silent. The palm trees rustled in the darkness. A couple of minutes passed and then Solomon began to speak again. ‘As you all know, this morning the ultimate indignity was visited on the soon-to-be-married daughter of our brother Kuppan. It’s a cruel irony that this tragedy took place on a day we celebrate the marriage of the Gods.’ The father of the girl sat as if carved from granite, not a feature of his face moving. ‘Valli was attacked near Anaikal. The girl who was with her didn’t recognize the attackers but thought they were strangers. But the matter became even more serious when we discovered an obscene message written on Anaikal. Someone here is trying to destroy the peace and brotherhood of our village by besmirching the honour of our sisters, mothers and daughters.’

As Solomon said this he looked straight at Muthu Vedhar. The implication was not lost on anyone at the meeting. Muthu was quick to react. Getting to his feet with an agility that belied his vast size, he spat, ‘Am I being accused of something?’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Muthu, please sit down.’

‘No, I will not sit down, nor will I be insulted by you.’

‘I haven’t insulted you.’ Solomon’s voice was cold.

‘Am I imagining things then?’ Muthu said dramatically. His gigantic frame and the anger that lit his eyes made him a terrifying figure to behold. ‘You may not have accused me by name, but not everything needs to be said to be understood. Enough, I will not be part of these ridiculous proceedings.’ Without looking at anyone, he walked off into the night. A couple of the Vedhar farmers who were present followed their leader.

After a long, long pause, Solomon spoke into the silence that had descended. ‘This is truly Kaliyuga, the age of degeneration, when dharma limps along on one leg, and wickedness and evil walk the earth.’ He paused, then spoke again with a new firmness in his voice. ‘But let this be known. As one born on this soil, and as the representative of Government in this village, I pledge that whoever has committed this atrocity will not be spared. I have discussed the matter with the esteemed deputy tahsildar, and he has said that the culprit will be punished with the utmost severity.’

Having delivered himself of this, Solomon called on the deputy tahsildar to speak. Dipty Vedhar spoke briefly and gravely about the seriousness with which the Government viewed any outbreak of caste and communal violence. He said if there was any further escalation of violence, he would be forced to requisition a detachment of special riot police which the villagers would have to pay for. In addition, there would be a punitive tax on the whole area if the matter were allowed to get out of hand. The police were investigating the molestation of the girl, and when the culprits were apprehended they would be dealt with severely. For the sake of the villagers, he hoped it was outsiders who had perpetrated this outrage.

The proceedings dragged on as the other elders spoke and voiced their concern, but the outraged departure of Muthu Vedhar cast a shadow over the meeting. The suspicion would grow that he was the victim of gross injustice at the hands of the thalaivar. Where was it going to end, Father Ashworth thought with dismay. Where was trouble going to erupt next?

11

After the meeting concluded, a sombre Solomon Dorai once again ate his wife’s delicious fish biryani without savouring it. Once again, he refused a second helping although his manner was not brusque. When Charity pressed him, he said, ‘I have no appetite tonight.’

‘Can I get you anything?’

When he shook his head, she made to go, but he asked her to stay. This was most unusual, for he rarely wanted her around when he ate. After she had disposed of the plantain leaf he had eaten from, and Solomon had washed his hands, she settled herself on a mat. For a moment, she wondered whether to mention her afternoon excursion, then dismissed the thought. They sat in silence for a while, then Solomon spoke. ‘The meeting went badly. Muthu left in a rage. He thought I was accusing him of the crime.’

He looked tired and harassed. ‘I can’t allow this matter to get out of hand. It will be the end of Chevathar if I do.’

‘Perhaps you should speak to Muthu-anna,’ she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Solomon glanced sharply at her, then, to her amazement, nodded slowly.

‘Yes, I’ll go and see him soon.’

They sat a while longer in silence, and then Solomon said unexpectedly, ‘You don’t wear jasmine in your hair any longer.’

Charity looked away, her eyes shining.

For the past two years, ever since he had built the new front room, he had slept alone, while she had shared a room with their daughters. She couldn’t even remember the last time they had talked at night.

‘Are you sure you have everything you need? I must go and serve food to the others.’

Solomon said nothing but as he watched her leave his worries seemed to lift away.

Later, when Charity had finished her work in the kitchen, she slipped out into the backyard. By the wall stood a few jasmine bushes, the fragrance of their flowers infiltrating the cool air. Deftly, she plucked the little white malligai orbs and began threading them into a garland for her hair.

12

Two days after the attack, Valli hanged herself from a tree at the edge of the Andavar quarter. The women in the village grieved. For a brief moment, each one of them experienced afresh the deep sadness of being born a woman. They were sorry that the girl had taken her life and they prayed that in her next birth she would be born with a luckier alignment of planets. But their sorrow was tempered by the hope that her passing would ease tensions a little, make all their lives a bit easier. In a land where everyday realities were harsh, what did the death of a tenant farmer’s daughter signify anyhow? As it turned out, quite a lot, much to everyone’s surprise.

Happening as it did in an anxious time, in an idle time before the fields could be prepared, in a desperate time when the entire land simmered with frustration and hate, her death transformed her from an insignificant girl without affiliation (not quite married, on the point of leaving her natal home) into a weapon that would deepen the division and rancour within the village.

When news of the suicide reached him, Solomon abandoned any idea he might have had of going to see Muthu Vedhar. He went to see the deputy tahsildar instead, and persuaded him to post a couple of policemen in the village, armed with the long Snider carbines that were brought out only in emergencies. One was stationed in the Andavar quarter and the second near the Vedhar houses. This brought an immediate and furious response from Muthu Vedhar, still smarting under the insult he had received at the meeting. ‘Either you control that man or I will,’ he roared at his kinsman, the deputy tahsildar.

Dipty Vedhar did not flinch. ‘I have my instructions, Muthu-aiyah,’ he said courteously. ‘Law and order is the top priority at the moment and I cannot allow any disturbance in the village.’

‘So you believe I was responsible for the attack?’

‘Not at all,’ Dipty Vedhar replied smoothly. ‘And to show my good faith I’m removing the policeman posted near your house. Why should I fear any trouble when I have a powerful leader such as you to keep the peace?’ This piece of flattery, which fooled neither man, nevertheless had the effect of mollifying Muthu, and he returned to the village, bad-tempered as before, but not inclined to violence and destruction.

His temper did not improve that night when his wife passed on some gossip picked up during the day. Saraswati Vedhar had heard versions of the episode at the various points of her morning round – the tank where she and a couple of high-ranking Vedhar women bathed, the backyard where her servants and relatives gossiped and fought. Apparently, a close ally (as always unspecified) of the thalaivar had said that Solomon himself had hired the four loafers to molest the girl and to write the slogan on the rock in order to provoke Muthu to action so he would have cause to have him arrested, or maybe even banished from the village. Muthu, who would normally have rejected this fantastical scheme out of hand, spent some time mulling over it. Gradually, he dismissed it from his mind. He had known Solomon for a long time, and while he disliked him, he didn’t think he was capable of such machinations. That slimy Salem lawyer, yes, but Solomon, no. This exoneration of his great enemy did not in any way lessen his antipathy towards him.

13

Muthu Vedhar and Solomon Dorai had been pitted against each other from the time they were young. Even though at eighteen Muthu was eight inches taller than Solomon at seventeen, he had never managed to beat him at silambu-attam, the art of stick-fighting, which was the skill by which all young men in the village were judged. Solomon made up for his lack of inches with speed and ferocity, and time and time again Muthu had to accept defeat at the hands of his younger rival.

They had married within a year of each other and to Muthu’s chagrin, his wife had produced daughters to Solomon’s sons. His third child was a son, but once again his rival had the advantage. Muthu had been delighted when Solomon’s first son displayed none of his father’s toughness but was soon disappointed when his second son, Aaron, had proved to be an even better athlete than his father.

This rivalry extended to land and village. Unlike Solomon Dorai’s family, Muthu Vedhar’s claim to the soil of the Chevathar was relatively new. His family had come from the upcountry town of Korkai. His great-grandfather, a second son, had left the ancestral property and wandered south in search of a place to raise his own family. He had eventually landed in the service of a big zamindar in neighbouring Tinnevelly district. Amassing enough wealth, he migrated to Kilanad, bought land and built a house in the small Vedhar settlement on the outskirts of Meenakshikoil.

The family had prospered and within the space of two generations owned forty-two acres of rice fields on both sides of the river, in addition to coconut and banana groves. By then the town of Meenakshikoil had grown and started encroaching upon Vedhar land. To the astonishment of his family, Muthu’s father, Parameshwara Vedhar, announced that he was going to construct a new house for himself on a vacant patch of land across the river. This was regarded as a sure sign of crankiness, if not outright madness. How could he leave the safety of the Vedhar quarter and contend alone with devils, robbers and low castes who would attack a single dwelling without hesitation? But Parameshwara was undeterred. He managed to bribe a couple of his kinsmen to accompany him, with promises of land and a remission in tribute. And, to everyone’s consternation, he invited the lower castes to build houses free of charge within sight of his own house. Within a generation, the lower castes were relocated and the bulk of the Vedhars had moved across the river, coming into direct conflict with the ruling Andavars. However, although Gnanaprakasam Andavar, Solomon’s father, and Parameshwara Vedhar were not close friends, they were bound by ties of mutual respect. It was not until Muthu’s time that the two families grew hostile. The antipathy between them was heightened when Solomon began farming seven acres of land by the river that Muthu claimed was his. Lately, the whiplash of caste wars between Andavars and Vedhars in the district had added to the tension between the two. But the peace had held. Until now.

Over the past days Muthu had brooded obsessively about ways in which he could get the better of Solomon. This morning, after his bath, he had even briefly considered seeking out Solomon and challenging him to battle, just the two of them, with the loser leaving the village for ever. The thought passed quickly; this was no longer the India of duels and heroic deeds by warriors and princes, the authorities frowned on that sort of thing. But Muthu knew that wasn’t the only reason for backing away from a fight. Deep down, he wasn’t sure he would be able to win. As he made his way to his house, his grim countenance ensuring that everyone gave him a wide berth, he continued to agonize over the situation. Like Solomon, Muthu didn’t really need to be thalaivar of Chevathar. As the second biggest mirasidar in the taluqa (the one hundred and seventeen acres he owned or rented were dwarfed only by Solomon’s two hundred and twenty-three), he had wealth and prestige to spare. He could easily have moved to one of the other villages he owned so that he didn’t come into conflict with Solomon. But their long-standing rivalry ruled out that option.

As he stalked up the steps into his house, ignoring the usual supplicants who gathered daily for favours, money or advice, he wondered, for the umpteenth time since the latest clash with Solomon, whether he or his people would ever be able to come up with something to drive the wretched Dorais from Chevathar.

Perhaps it was simply that his kinsmen were not destined to flourish on this soil as the Andavars were. Every villager knew that a man who didn’t find soil that suited his nature would not prosper. Brahmins thrived on sweet soil, like that found in the delta at the mouth of a river, which is why Subramania Sastrigal and his ambitious young son would never thrive on the astringent soil of Chevathar. They might squeak and flail away at the Dorais but one roar from Solomon would send them scurrying for cover. But surely the kunam of the Vedhars matched the soil of Chevathar, which was neither sweet nor sour, salty nor pungent but was fairly bitter – the soil of people of the earth, farmers and artisans. That is what the young priest of the Murugan temple said, but what the fool forgot was that Solomon was as much farmer and artisan as Muthu himself. He and his family had flourished on this land for generations, and what better proof that the nature of the soil was eminently compatible with the nature of his caste than this fact? No, the red earth of Chevathar was not going to be of much help in his attempt to dislodge Solomon. He would need to act boldly and decisively if ever he were to succeed.

14

Vakeel Perumal’s cleverness as a lawyer was often neutralized by his impatience. Time and time again, on the verge of victory in an important case, he would either lose interest in the proceedings or insult his opponent, or simply forget a crucial argument, thus landing his unfortunate client in jail or worse. His father had left him a modest fortune, thus increasing his irresponsibility. What had finally done him in was his casual handling of a case of armed robbery against a Marudar client. Vakeel Perumal’s defence was so brilliant that he had almost got the man off, until in his arrogance he had quite openly tried to turn a witness for the prosecution with a bribe. The English District Sessions judge was not amused and would have disbarred him, but with some brilliant legal legerdemain Vakeel Perumal had squirmed out from under. His client wasn’t as fortunate. He received the maximum possible sentence for his crime. As he was led away, the man had hissed – ‘When I have finished with the vakeel, not even the pigs of Salem will be able to make a meal of him.’ Vakeel Perumal left town with his wife and two daughters before the thug could put his threat into action. Chevathar, where his wife had a distant cousin, seemed the perfect place to wait out the storm.