White Man Falling (6 page)

“Just some dumb hippy,” Murugesan answers, deflecting it again. “Who knows, he could be any western dopehead.”

“Papers?”

“Papers I’m not knowing about,” says Murugesan. “Maybe papers, maybe not papers. All I’m knowing is this, I’m not knowing anything about papers.”

“Oh,” Swami says. “Slike that,” he says, offended that he is not trusted enough to be in the loop.

“It’s like that,” Murugesan repeats; there is an unavoidable little cover-up going on that Swami, with all his experience, ought to sense and understand; but Swami just
doesn’t get it. For Swami, all this cloak-and-dagger stuff is just another indication that he is no longer regarded as a worthwhile human being.

A door opens and a technician jumps out.

“Okay, come.” Behind him is a brief flash of grey-white leg on a metal trolley.

* * *

Amma is determined that the second pre-engagement meeting will be considerably more successful than the first. For starters, to guarantee Swami’s presence at the great
event and to ensure that nothing spectacular happens to him, it has been decided that he will not be allowed out of the house beforehand. Granddaddy, on the contrary, is to be respectfully banished
– which will not be difficult, since his attendance last time had been so against his will as to necessitate abduction. As for the general tone of the affair, Amma is being much more rigorous
about the number and quality of participants; after all, a house bursting at the seams, a disastrously behaved youngest daughter, a husband turning up not merely late but half-brained by a white
man… such indignities cannot be risked again. So there are to be fewer relatives from both sides and no hangers-on, there are to be better-drilled daughters, there is to be a new sari for
Jodhi, there are to be extra special titbits for Mrs P, there is to be a stately, dignified Swami sitting underneath the photo of himself in full ceremonial uniform and nodding sagely at every word
which the mighty sire of Mohan P might utter… With such techniques is Amma hoping to convince her guests that Jodhi is a good girl from a good family, a girl more than deserving of
Mohan.

* * *

“A drug-addled Indian who fell out of a hotel window would be ashes in the river by now,” Murugesan says. “Why should this fellow get different treatment? What
is so important about him, the dirty rapist?”

“Heh?”

“Ah well,” Murugesan says, apparently annoyed with himself as he waves an arm ineffectually, “you might as well know, there are rumours about this fellow.”

Rapist? Swami feels shock. He looks at his friend reproachfully, assuming the admission is accidental, as Murugesan prowls around the aluminium trolley. He can see he will get no further
explanation. And here is the corpse. Shivering, Swami looks down at the frozen matter that had once enfolded a human life. Poor fellow, Swami tut-tuts to himself automatically, taking in the
details. The eyes are closed and will never open again, unless some boffin peels the lids back. Wherever the body has escaped the dark hues of injury and trauma, death has given the deeply tanned
skin a grisly lustre, as though a faint grey matt varnish has been applied. But much of the skin surface is obscured by livid contusions and abrasions, and the face itself is very badly beaten.
Swami can hardly recognize him, which goes to show that tiffin cans, when full of rice and sambar, and when wielded by mothers protecting their tiny precious sons, make effective weapons. Swami
tries to see beyond the purple swellings and the dried black blood, through to the face of the man he had seen alive, when life was animating him for a few final seconds.
Poor fellow,
he
repeats, automatically, but his sympathy is shallow and merely going through the motions, because it is difficult to link this frozen slab of beaten body to the living-dying man with whom Swami had
connected.
Yes
, Swami realizes,
it’s not his humanity I was granted access to, not the rapist of this world, but the spirit beyond it – and what does his spirit have to do
with this bag of cutlets?
He stands over the corpse. Murugesan, looking on a little nervously, thinks he is scrutinizing it closely, but Swami is somewhere else, reliving the strange
communication between his spirit and the white man’s spirit, more vividly now than any time since it happened, and an inscrutable expression descends on his face as he stares unseeing at the
corpse.
What did he want from me?

“Don’t worry about all that business,” Murugesan says uneasily, after a few moments, “it’s nothing important.”

Swami jolts out of his reverie: “What?”

“Not our business,” Murugesan says, pointing vaguely to the chest. Swami peers intently and sees three cigarette burns, two on the left side of the left nipple, and one almost fully
on the nipple itself, half-obscured by the bruised and bloody condition of the corpse. He hadn’t noticed them before, but now that Murugesan has pointed them out, there they are.

Why did he have to speak just then?
Swami asks himself, scowling, resentful at having his attention diverted to these small strange circles;
for a moment, just for a moment, I was
close…

“Fashion thing,” Murugesan says, improbably, of the burns. “Who knows why these hippies do this kind of thing?” He is shaking his head rather too theatrically. “You
know, once in Goa I saw a hippy who had piercings
on the back of his neck!
These westerners, they roam around pretending to be as natural as trees, but all they do is drink beer and take
drugs for three months, then go home on a jumbo jet when it gets too hot.”

Swami can’t help smiling at the caricature.

“Anyway you’d better sign the form,” says Murugesan, sighing. “I know this is the fellow, you know this is the fellow, everyone knows this is the fellow, there has never
been any doubt that this is the fellow, nor are there any other dead white fellows within one hundred miles of here, but you’d better sign the form all the same to say that this is the
fellow.”

Yes give me the form and I’ll sign it. That is my role.

On the drive back to Mullaipuram little is said. Murugesan is sure that Swami is wondering about the cigarette burns, while Swami is thinking about the dowries of his six daughters, and vaguely
hoping for an immediate fatal collision. He has life insurance. They would be better off without him.

What a contrast, what a relief, what a godsend! – so Amma is thinking, a couple of weeks later, as she plays host to the boy’s family for a second time. She
radiates smiles around the stalwarts of the boy’s immediate party, as Mr P regales them all with one of his most fascinating railway anecdotes.

“That was in the days when one could thrash the porters,” he is saying, by way of explanation.

“Those were the days,” Anand murmurs, looking at all Amma’s daughters with an expressionless face, hoping he’ll force an involuntary smile out of one of them. Jodhi and
Leela come close.

“Five billion passenger journeys every year! 1.6 million employees! 39,000 miles of track! Our state-owned Indian Railways is still the glory of India!” Mr P affirms.

“Ah yes,” says Swami gravely, in a deep and reassuring voice, with a slowly nodding head, his greying temples freshly clippered, his shirt collar starched and ironed into a flawless
graceful plane, his moustache trimmed and shaped and – yes – subtly enhanced with black dye, at Amma’s request.

Who could have foreseen this, Amma is asking herself. One week her husband ruins everything by offering himself as a landing strip for a death-wish foreigner, while the next he is this dignified
presence who seems to be impressing the formidable P family. She looks around the room in a state of nervous satisfaction. Kamala is taking an empty dish into the kitchen for replenishing, while
Leela and Pushpa are paragons of daughterly obedience, with not even a hint of any whispering or joking or fidgeting. Amma has finally made the girls understand how desperate their situation is. We
are poverty-stricken, she had pleaded, we can only just afford to eat, we pay for your education in debts, we are going to the wall, and if Jodhi bags a boy then that is one daughter who
won’t end up on the street, so you MUST behave… The two girls had ended up whimpering in self-pity and shame.

Amma nods and smiles at Mrs P, who is reciting impressive biodata not just for Mohan – surely that prodigy will be earning in excess of 300,000 rupees per annum in no time at all? –
but for Anand as well. But although Amma’s “most wonderful”s and “very excellent”s sound animated, it is difficult for her to simulate interest in that haircut-shy
college drop-out. Her true focus is on Mohan. She catches him glancing repeatedly at her Jodhi. From the way his hungry, tongue-like glances flick all over her daughter, she can see he is besotted.
Is this our future son-in-law? Amma wonders dreamily. She looks over to Swami, as if he might know. Seated like this in his best clothes, quiet and serious and smiling, he looks almost as
impressive as the fine figure of a man he’d been before the stroke. Amma watches in amazement as everyone directs conversation to him respectfully. Everyone except Mohan. He has been mugging
up on the web for titbits about English Literature, for Jodhi’s benefit, and now, excited, he lets rip:

“How many plays did William Shakespeare write?”

A roomful of synchronized eyeballs swivel around to him and then swivel across to Jodhi. Jodhi flushes. The burden of being engaging and interesting lies heavily upon her, but what is to be done
with such a question, one that kills conversation stone-dead and diverts everyone’s attention to her slightly quivering chin?

“I think it was thirty-seven…”

The eyeballs rotate back to Mohan, as everyone anticipates a fascinating rejoinder to Jodhi’s remark.

“Correct,” says Mohan.

There is a long and uncomfortable pause. Just as Amma and Mrs P are on the cusp of ending it with some chat, he sputters into action again.

“Which are your favourites, the Tragedies, the Comedies, or the Histories?” he blurts. He’s doing his best. Yesterday he even got hold of a western self-help book called
How to Attract Women
.

“The Tragedies,” Jodhi half speaks and half whispers, almost incapacitated by the fathomless depths of her embarrassment.

“What is,” says Mohan, screwing his eyes up in fierce concentration as he strains for something interesting to say, “what is,” he repeats, now roaming the outermost
boundaries of conversational desolation, “what is… what is the best play that Shakespeare ever wrote…”

Anand stifles a snort of laughter.

“…
and
,” Mohan adds, suddenly inspired, “what are three main reasons why it—”

“But – what are you
doing
?!” Mr P interrupts.

“Mohan is crazy about Shakespeare!” Anand announces, grinning.

“Shut up you little idiot,” Devan says.

“Now now,” trills Mrs P to all her menfolk in a brittle tone, while a few aunties and uncles from both sides make a hearty chortling show of pretending not to be embarrassed.

Swami looks across at Mr P approvingly:
if this was my boy, that’s exactly what I’d say to the little idiot, if I could speak
. Then he directs a forbidding stare at Pushpa
and Leela; despite everything that has been bellowed at them, they look to be on the point of a giggling fit. It’s the boy Anand’s fault – he has charm, and a naughty streak.

“The youngsters are a little nervous, it’s only to be expected,” Amma offers.

“They should have a few moments alone,” suggests Mrs P, “get to know each other…”

“No no, not necessary,” Jodhi yelps.

“Yes yes,” Amma says, “that is very wonderful idea, and anyway I was just about to send Jodhi out for milk – Jodhi, Jodhi, please go and buy milk for more tea for our
honoured guests.”

“Oh no, no no no,” says Mrs P, “please don’t worry about tea for us, not necessary.” She rather fancies a glass. She stands up and pulls Mohan to his feet.
“We don’t want any tea, but you go with her, my son, accompany her as she goes to the shop and carry the milk back for her.”

“Yes, why not get to know each other a little,” says Mr P, also standing up, slightly angry with himself for his outburst, “but please,” he adds, “please, no need
for any more tea for us.”

“No tea,” Mrs P confirms politely. She’s gasping for it.

“Eighty-two,” Swami says, while Amma is saying, “You must have tea, you must have tea!”

“What what?” asks Mr P, puzzled.

“Eighty-two,” Kamala repeats. “Appa knows
The Sacred Couplets
– off by heart,” she admits, with a dash of pride.

The visitors gaze at the head of the household with supplementary respect; anyone who memorizes
The Sacred Couplets
is special.

“Eighty-two!” Mr P breathes, “eighty-two is it? Well let us see it, let us see couplet eighty-two! Off by heart, you say…”

“No no no,” Amma is fretting, “there is no need to have a look, it’s just his little game—” but it’s too late. Kamala already has
The Sacred
Couplets
down from the shelf and is passing it over. Amma takes the book in her hands and tries to glare at Swami in such a way as will be interpreted as a gaze of loving admiration to
everyone but him – a skill one acquires little by little, after about fifteen years of marriage. “Well then,” she says, thumbing the pages, “now then,
eighty-two…”

Mr P is highly excited by this turn of events. He loves a bit of tension. He once lost 30,000 rupees on a bet. “Off by heart, is it?” he keeps saying, “off by heart!”

Silence steals over the little living area as Amma finds the page. Jodhi, Kamala, Pushpa and Leela watch in apprehension; what if it’s another Nine Hundred and Thirteen, Pushpa is thinking
in horror? Who knows what Appa is capable of at the moment?

“Sacred couplet Eighty-Two is in section nine of Part One of
The Sacred Couplets
,” Amma recites in a quiet voice – is that the
pada-pada-pada
of her heart
that everyone can hear? She scans the lines slowly. Her face relaxes: