Mallika’s long-dead family is being resurrected. Someone somewhere is dying of something, and suddenly she must be there.
‘My half-sister’s husband’s cousin’s son,’ she says, when I ask why she must go to the hospital.
‘He’s only two,’ she keeps saying. ‘He has fits. I must go.’
The half-sister’s husband’s cousin is the head gardener at the ashram. They have organised an ambulance to take the child into the city, to the best hospital – Apollo. The ashram is bearing all costs. Mallika underlines this last fact as if to say, This is what good employers do: look after you at all costs.
‘Go if you must, but I need you back for the party tomorrow.’
Of course, she does not come back the next day and when I call, her phone has been switched off.
The first guests arrive at twelve, and nine hours later Auntie Kavitha, Praveen and I sit on the balcony smoking while Lucia rocks madly on the floor, wired on Coca-Cola and cake, her tight pink dress in disarray.
‘That went well, I thought,’ Auntie Kavitha says.
‘It was a freak show.’
‘What do you mean, Miss G? It was cool,’ Praveen interjects. ‘Everyone had a banging time. Did you see your sister on the dance floor? What a cat!’
There had been non-stop Tamil pop songs. Teacher had all the girls in a circle clapping. Valluvan’s kids monopolised the show with their film moves. Lenin, being the only boy, was particularly good with his pelvic thrusts. Before the cake-cutting, Teacher played the hokey-cokey. ‘Your mother was the one who taught us how to do this. No matter whose birthday,’ she panted, ‘we always play the hokey-cokey.’
Lucy insisted that everyone join in. By the end of it I am dizzy and sad. I look at Lucia to see whether she feels it too, but she is busy flashing her teeth.
Vik hadn’t come. I say nothing about his absence to anyone, but it feels definitive and I am ready to let it go.
The three of us look into the dark: only the dim lights of trawlers in the distance and a few milky stars.
‘It’s awesome here,’ Praveen says, a magazine in his lap, fingers expertly rolling.
‘I didn’t think it would make me feel so strange to see all those kids in one room. It made me feel somehow exposed. Does that make sense?’
‘It gets easier,’ Auntie Kavitha says. ‘Or maybe that’s not the right word. It gets normal.’
‘Teacher asked me for more money. She needs five lakhs to complete this new construction they’re doing at the centre. I don’t like the way she asked.’
‘Your mother used to donate a lot. She basically floated that place, but can you imagine if Gayatri didn’t do what she did? I mean, all those kids, she’s the one person they can depend on.’
‘So you’re saying I should give it to her, even though I’m looking after Lucy now and I’m not my mother and don’t need to siphon guilt money into that operation?’
‘If you have it, you should give it.’
‘I agree,’ Praveen says. ‘You never know how things will go.’
After they’ve gone I survey the mess. There are balloons and streamers everywhere. Millions of sparkly bits of paper from the crackers, and sand underfoot. I get Lucy to hold a big rubbish bag and stuff in the stacks of paper plates smeared with cake and bhelpuri, and anything else that might attract any mice. The caterer’s boxes I stack in the fridge, the rest I leave for morning.
‘Did you have a good birthday?’ I ask Lucy, after I’ve helped her wash up.
‘Super,’ she says, fussing with Golly, making sure she’s in her basket. ‘Goodnight kanna, goodnight kanna,’ she says to the sleeping dog.
Before going to bed I see the bulb outside Mallika’s house light up. I call her, but the recorded message still says that this phone is switched off. I call her name through the windows but she does not holler back. I put on my slippers and walk over with a torch. The dogs rush after me, their quick feet making whispery noises in the brush.
She’s squatting on the cement stoop of her house. The wicker chest I gave her has a set of vessels on top of it. The remains of a fire black in the sand. Plastic buckets, sagging clothes line, plastic bags and little silver packets of gutka, which she never admits to eating, glinting in the mud. It’s like a bloody favela.
‘So, what happened?’ I say. ‘You said you’d come back. We had the party. Thirty people came. I had to do all the cleaning up. No joke.’
She doesn’t answer.
I ask, gentler, ‘What happened, Mallika?’
‘The child died,’ she says, her lips spread in a mean scowl. ‘I need to sleep.’
17
I wonder what stops them from rising up. From bringing hatchets and sickles and knives. If they stormed in, how would I stop them?
Villages surround us. Disorderly and overcrowded. To the right, further down the coast, are the areas under Valluvan’s jurisdiction. With him I believe we are safe. But spreading beyond and behind us, all along the canal that runs parallel to the sea and further inland, behind the Odiyur Lake, jammed between fields of paddy, are rows and rows of flimsy huts that get demolished every time there are heavy rains. I don’t know anything about those people and their lives.
Our closest neighbours are a rich industrial family who have built a solid orange-coloured five-bedroom house with a swimming pool. They visit a few times a year, but to ensure things are as they should be in their absence, they employ a convoy of servants. The house is a fortress. High cement walls, alarm systems, a Dobermann to keep guard. The wife visited me soon after the construction was completed. I took her around our rooms and she seemed charmed by the spartan nature of them. ‘We should have made our house like yours,’ she said. ‘So open and nice. You’re not planning to put in any AC? And you manage everything with only one woman?’
I was happy for her friendship. Whenever her staff dumped rubbish on the beach I’d text to alert her. I’ll inform my husband, she would write back. And with this promise I felt sure things would change. I’d never met her husband, but when they started building the house I looked through binoculars to see what kind of people they were. I thought he might be a politician because of the speed with which the house had sprung out of the sand, and because there were always men in safari suits attached to him like barnacles, ready to do his bidding. It turns out he owns a factory where they make bicycles.
‘Any time you want to use the pool, you should,’ my friend had said. And I did, just once, with Lucia. The staff circled around, offering us soft beach towels and lime juice. Lucia jumped tirelessly in and out of the water, and in the end, I had to bribe her to leave with the promise of lunch in Pondicherry. I hadn’t been able to relax. The dogs kept trying to get in and the watchman kept throwing stones at them even though I’d told him they weren’t strays, that they belonged to us. Something I’m sure he already knew, as we walked past him every day.
I felt I’d transgressed some neighbourly line. The correct way to exist when you lived so far from the hordes was to observe each other across walls, not lie in full view in your bathing suit. By entering their territory I had made Lucia and myself susceptible. Instead of assuring me of human contact, it had made me feel defenceless. I left wondering whether the staff ever used the pool. If they slept in their master’s beds. And if not, why not?
Before I left home for America, I went camping with Blake and his parents. I had lied, saying I was going on an overnight excursion with my science club. If my parents knew I was lying, they didn’t reveal it. The Hendersons picked me up at the end of the Kurinji Temple Road. It was early in the morning, still dark, and I remember sliding into the seat next to Blake, resting a knee against his, understanding that between us there was some kind of longing. I can’t remember the name of the place we went to, but we drove almost halfway down the ghats to get there. The vegetation was lush, a tract of land surrounded by terraced fields. Things that wouldn’t have survived a few thousand feet higher in Kodai thrived there. Coffee, avocados,
shiny tree tomatoes. There was a small wooden room on stilts that we might have used, but we were determined to experience the elements in their entirety.
Blake’s father, Thomas, was a patient, deep-voiced man, a dentist by profession. If pushed he could tell the most beautiful stories of a childhood growing up on a farm in North Carolina. His wife, Molly, was the more exuberant of the pair. She was blonde and everything about her was healthy-looking. She had flawless teeth, as did Blake, but it was the strength of her arms and legs that I admired most. She started setting up the tents at once, all sinew and power. ‘Y’all go forage for some fruit,’ she said. ‘And, Tom, go see if that stream water is good enough to drink.’ When we returned, both tents were up, at a distance from one another. ‘One for us and one for you guys, to give everyone a little privacy,’ she said.
I can’t remember what Blake and I whispered to each other at night. I know only that I didn’t sleep well. The ground was stony and damp, making me cleave to Blake in his sleeping bag for warmth.
It was early when the noises started, because out of the tent I could see a slit of pink dawn. The noises were guttural, shouts and screams that seemed to come from behind us. Blake and I crawled out to see Tom and Molly crouching in the dirt. They wore matching flannel pyjamas, a show of domesticity that at the time excited me. It was difficult to understand what was happening because there were men running past us with weapons. They were running barefoot in lungis and shirts with these instruments forged from metal in their hands. Some were sabre-like, others had heavy metal tops that could bludgeon a head, still others resembled tridents. All of it looked medieval and impossible. Molly suddenly ran towards the wooden room on stilts, jiggling with the lock, bashing in the door. ‘Okay, kids, we’re going to make a run for it!’ Tom shouted, slowly and calmly. ‘Follow me.’ Blake grabbed hold of me and we ran. Once inside, Molly padlocked the door, and we watched as more and more men kept coming, holding their weapons firm, charging over the hill. It was as if they hadn’t seen us. The object of their anger lay elsewhere, in the direction they were running.
When the last of them had run past us, we quickly dismantled the tents and drove home. Because Molly and Tom were religious people, and because they were Christian in the best possible way, they made only measured statements about what we might have witnessed.
Papi would have called them savages. ‘And we put up with it,’ he would have said. ‘We put up with it because this is the kind of backward country we live in.’
The Hendersons dropped me off at the end of my street. ‘Are you going to be okay, honey?’ Molly asked. She gave my shoulder a little squeeze. Blake mouthed ‘I love you’ from the back seat, and I turned away from him, annoyed by the inappropriateness of his utterance. We had just witnessed something frightening and this boy was talking of love.
The next morning I scanned the newspaper looking for an explanation. Buried in the local news was a small paragraph about caste violence in the Perumalmalai district. A high-caste girl had eloped with a Dalit boy. Members of the girl’s village, led by her father, ransacked the other village, hacking the boy to death, burning several houses and injuring thirty people. The girl killed herself by drinking poison. It was a story so common, told so matter-of-factly, I might have missed it had I not been looking for it. I remember thinking then, as I still think, how strange that what they were most indignant about was that this boy dared to fuck one of their girls. How strange that they did not think to truncheon all the other forces that conspired to keep them down. That they could bear those indignities as though they were creatures made entirely of wounds.
A man is at the front door. I can see a sliver of him as I walk to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Who knows how long he’s been standing there? The dogs had not barked. They must have disappeared further down the beach to make trouble.
I’m in shorts and a singlet, unshowered, slightly muddy from a morning swim.
‘Yes?’ I say.
He has a wide, uneven face. There’s something scurrilous about the largeness of his mouth. A moustache creeps heavily over it, overshadowing his nose and eyes which are chiselled and keen. For a man he is wearing too much jewellery. Rings on five fingers and several gold chains that cut into the veins of his neck.
‘Madam, I hope I’m not disturbing you? I wanted to enquire about land in this area.’
‘Who are you? Haven’t you come here before?’
‘My name is Jiva,’ he said. ‘I’m a broker. I have clients who are interested in buying land here. Would you be interested in selling?’
He’s still standing outside the door, and I am facing him from inside the house, looking past him to the motorbike he has parked in the garage.
‘Who told you to come here?’
‘As I said, my clients are interested in buying fifty acres for a project. They will be able to offer very good prices.’
‘I’m not interested,’ I say. ‘I’ve already told you this. Please leave. And please don’t come back here. This is private property.’
He’s about to say something but I shout over him, ‘Mallika, Mallika!’ And he can obviously hear the fear in my voice because he says, ‘Sorry, madam, please don’t be misunderstanding.’
He turns to go, and I can see there are sweat stains on the back of his shirt. There is something graceful about the way his body moves. He slithers, and before Mallika can get to me, he is already halfway down the drive, the bike puttering and roaring.
‘Wait here,’ I shout at Mallika.
I go upstairs to check on Lucy. She’s sleeping on the bed and Golly has snuck up to lie at her feet. I go into my bedroom. Put on a bra and tunic, change from shorts into long pants. I grab a straw hat and my sunglasses, put on sandals.
‘Hundred fucking times I’ve said lock the bloody gate,’ I shout at Mallika, dragging her by the hand. ‘Why that’s so difficult for you to do, I don’t understand. Let’s go now.’
At her house, Mallika puts on slippers. She hitches up her sari and follows as I storm down the driveway.
‘Who was that man?’ she asks, jogging to keep pace with me.
‘Well, he wouldn’t fucking be inside here if you were locking the gate.’
The grasses in the driveway are long and unruly at this time of year. They scratch through my trousers as I walk. The path seems to go on and on in this heat. Where had Ma got the money to buy so much land? Auntie Kavitha told me that the man who sold her the land was only selling in ten-acre plots. ‘She asked my advice and I told her she was mad for thinking she could live out there by herself. But she got that land for a song.’
When we turn the corner it’s as if we’ve stumbled into someone else’s property. There is a group of people – men, women, children – rags of people, dark and bent over in the grass. A few of them straighten themselves to look at us. I turn to Mallika, bewildered. ‘Now who the hell are these people? What are they doing and where have they come from?’
‘They look like Adivasis,’ she says, walking boisterously up to them. I stay behind. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but her body language is exercising authority.
‘And?’ I ask, when she returns. The people have resumed whatever they were doing, faces turned back towards the dirt.
‘What I thought. They are Adivasis. They’re looking for mice.’
‘Mice?’
‘To eat,’ she says, simply.
As we walk past them, one of the men looks at me. His face is gutted and wrinkled, his ribs sharp as scalpels. He’s wearing a dirty dhoti, out of which two of the skinniest, bandiest legs plant themselves on the earth. He rubs his stomach and brings his fingers to his mouth in the shape of a closed flower. It is a gesture of begging or thanks, I do not know, but I cannot react to it.
‘Come,’ I say to Mallika. ‘I must speak with Valluvan.’
18
You know those sleeps when all your fears cram into the centre of your head and you’re forced to contemplate the certainty that you will not
only lose everyone you love but that you’ll grow old alone and die in a troublesome way? Despair that begins inside the body – along the byways of arms and legs, the arteries and veins pumping blood vociferously, moving haplessly in the direction of disaster. Or perhaps nothing is intuition. Perhaps it is all retroactive premonition?
The day we lose the first of our dogs, I wake to that kind of morning.
First there is the smell of burning. A sharp, rancid smell of something giving way. It comes from the west, from the shuttered windows behind my bed. I wonder whether Mallika is setting another snake on fire, or if it’s something more horrible – the house catching fire, a gas leak.
Outside it’s dark and smoky. I reach for my spectacles and torch, and make my way downstairs to check the gas. Then I come back upstairs and go across the landing to Lucia’s room. She’s sleeping on her back, the bottoms of her feet meeting in a foot Namaste, hands thrown up over her head. Watching her like that, I want to climb into the bed and fan her thin brown hair against my chest and shoulders.
Out on my balcony, where the phone signal is strongest, I call Mallika.
‘Where’s all this smoke coming from?’ I ask. ‘Are you burning another snake? How many times have I told you they’re not poisonous!’
‘No, Ma. It’s not a snake. Today is Bhogi. Everyone is burning their old things. You should close the windows.’
I’d forgotten about this tradition of people hauling all their useless things to burn in preparation for the New Year. I bolt the shutters and windows and climb back into bed to fall into a fearsome sleep, thinking only that I should remember to buy Mallika a new sari the next time I go to Madras. She’d expect it for the New Year.
A few hours later, Lucia’s at the bed, tugging at the covers. ‘Wake up, Grace, wake up.’
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