by Adithi Rao
The rest of the holidays passed in much the same way as that first evening, except that Sri and the others started coming to our house around mid-morning to play once Christos Convent and Sacred Heart closed for the summer. They returned to their homes for lunch and then came back again in the evenings to play some more. Manju came with them on some days, and on other days he didn’t. I’m not sure what he did the rest of the time, but Ranjini said that he went off into the woods on the outskirts of town because he liked to be by himself sometimes. He’s a strange boy. I like him a lot, but he’s a strange boy.
Even Sri couldn’t play with us as much as he would have liked to because things were busy at the Nameless Shop since the ice-cream business had picked up. Narayani Aunty never asked him to stay and help her, but he did so anyway because he was worried that she would tire herself out doing everything alone. Once we realized that Sri would have to be at the shop during the busy times of the day, we shifted to the little vacant plot right next to it to play there in the evenings, so that Sri could run in and out at will. It also gave us the chance to help Narayani Aunty finish off the ice creams that hadn’t sold during the course of the week. As a rule, she never kept ice creams that were more than a week old. She preferred to make small quantities and sell them fresh. We were always happy to be of use and she was always grateful for our help. At first, I felt a bit bad about eating free ice creams. But when I offered to pay, looking down at my feet in embarrassment as I held out the money, Aunty slapped my shoulder and said, ‘When you’re out of your nappies, I’ll take your money!’
I was mortified. I started to deny the nappy allegation but she laughed and wouldn’t listen to me. Kulla, who was quite shameless in all matters, wolfed down the burfi flavour and showed up at the icebox for a helping of the Singapore cherry. The next day, when Ajja and I walked down together to the Nameless Shop to get toothpaste and rice, Narayani Aunty told Ajja about how I had offered her money for the leftover ice creams. They both threw back their heads and laughed. I confess I was defeated then. There was just no understanding grown-ups. Sometimes, though not often, I thought Ajja fell into that inscrutable category too.
It was only later that I understood that things did not work in Rudrapura the way they did in Madras. Here, people knew each other and did business with the same people that they ate with, quarrelled with, prayed and attended funerals with. Payments were made sometimes with money and sometimes with a sack of grain or an act of kindness. People rarely kept tabs, but it usually all evened out in the end. On the rare occasion that it did not, tempers flared and arguments broke out. Then Ajja or Sheshadri Uncle or Raaganna or Basava Thatha would be quickly called in to mediate, and the quarrel would end with a grunt or a handshake, or perhaps with a parting glare. The next day it would be business as usual.
When I was not playing with my friends, I spent all my time with Ajja, following him about. He was usually busy with his hands, but his mind always had time for me. What I mean is, I was always welcome to join him in whatever he was doing and work alongside, assist, interfere, question or else simply be silent. He was never too preoccupied to answer me. He allowed me to make mistakes while learning things, and afterwards showed me the right way to do them. He taught me how to sterilize syringes when I helped him in his clinic. Then he good-naturedly replaced them when I let his trusty old ones burn to a char because I forgot to switch off the gas before running out for a game of impromptu cricket with Kulla and Sri. He listened patiently to my endless chatter about school and my life in Madras. And just when I thought he wasn’t paying attention, he would ask a question or make a comment that would make it clear that he had listened to every word.
As the days went by, I watched him silently work his magic into everything he did. Everybody around turned to him, and he took care of them like the sun takes care of the flowers. I wondered how he could be so magical and never be suspected of magic. Nobody ever guessed, nobody ever even wondered.
It was an unusually warm summer that year. The previous one had been bad enough, but this one was even worse, although my friends and I barely noticed the heat as we stood out in the vacant plot with the mid-afternoon sun blazing down upon our heads, playing cricket and lagori and gili-danda. The one good thing that came of the heat was the bumper crop of mangoes that year. Everybody in Rudrapura was either selling mangoes or buying them. Certainly everybody was eating them. Ajja and I seemed to be the only ones who were immune to the charms of that fruit. Ajja preferred bananas, which he claimed were more wholesome and less fickle, being consistently sweet and available all year round. As for me, I didn’t particularly like the taste of mangoes, except for raspuris when they were both sweet and sour, not just one or the other. But Ammama and Amma lingered at the dining table after every meal eating their mangoes, declaring between gobbles that it was the king of all fruits. Ajja would watch them and shake his head.
‘Just like fruit flies!’ he would chuckle as he went to wash his plate in the sink. I would stick around for a little while longer to watch them in fascination, then lose interest and go off to lie down beside Ajja and read my book while he took his afternoon nap. I found his gentle, rumbling snores reassuring.
But then one afternoon, I happened upon the perfect raspuri mango. It was not too sweet, nor too sour, amber-coloured and juicy. So I ate it. Then I gnawed on the seed until it was quite bald.
‘Why don’t you plant it?’ suggested my grandfather.
‘I can do that?’ I asked, wide-eyed.
‘Why not? There is an empty patch in the garden. Just dig up the earth, put it in and cover it up. If we water it every day, we’ll have a mango tree in no time.’
‘You should,’ urged Ammama, her mouth full of mango. ‘Your ajja will look after it for you when you are away at school. I don’t know how he does it, but most things he plants start to fruit in a year. It’s some kind of fertilizer he uses, I think.’
‘Ma, what rubbish!’ exclaimed my mother. ‘How is that possible? No tree will give fruit in a year unless you use magic!’
Outside, Ajja and I got the spade and dug a hole. I will never forget that day, working quietly out in the back garden with my grandfather, my fingernails stained with the red Rudrapura soil, the sun warm on our backs. When I got it right, he nodded at me and smiled. He always smiled with his eyes. His smile is another reason I remember that day. That, and because it was my last summer with him.
At the end of May, Amma and I returned to Madras, and I went back to school. Seventh standard was a lot harder than the sixth, and I had a terrible time with algebra, which I didn’t like. Anyway, the year passed quickly enough. Our house won the cup on sports day, and the final exams were now less than two months away. After that there would be Ajja and the summer holidays to look forward to again.
But two nights ago, the phone rang. It was just after dinner, and the family was gathered around the television set. Amma hurried to the next room to pick up the phone. I heard her speak for a moment, and then she gave a cry. Appa rushed to her and there was a flurry of voices. When they returned to the TV room, my mother was crying bitterly and my father’s arm was around her. He looked upset too.
‘If you hurry, you can catch the night train, Shailu. It leaves in an hour. I’ll arrange for leave from work and from Avi’s school and bring him later tomorrow. Anyway, he doesn’t need to see … you know.’
Amma nodded, and they went off to pack her bag.
I don’t really know how I was feeling at that moment. Looking back, I think I wasn’t feeling anything at all. Amma left by the night train, Appa made all the arrangements, locked up the house and took me with him to the Madras Central Station the next morning. By the time we stepped off the train in Rudrapura, it was twenty-three minutes past four in the afternoon, the day after the phone call had come. I automatically looked up and down the station platform out of habit, expecting to see Ajja waiting for me with his cheery smile and his arms wide open. Instead, Appa and I made our way to the
gate. Kamaraj Uncle, the station guard, tried to say something nice to me, but I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to hear the words, so he said nothing. Outside, my father and I climbed into an auto.
When we reached Five Lights, the shutter was down on Hesarillada Angadi, and the house behind it was quiet. The auto took a left from the Nameless Shop, turned into our lane, and a minute later we were home.
The little brown cottage looked serene as ever. The flowers in the front garden were in full bloom, as if the magician who looked after them was sitting just in the next room. Only, this time Ammama wasn’t waiting for me on the veranda. This time I had to go inside to her. The house looked freshly scrubbed. My mother and grandmother and some other people were sitting around in the drawing room. Narayani Aunty and Basavaraj Thatha were there too. They all looked so sad.
When Ammama saw me, she clung to me. There were no tears in her eyes, but I could tell that her heart was crying. They began to talk about how Chikoo had squeezed himself though the bars of the garden gate of Kulla’s house and run behind Ajja’s hearse. Suresh Uncle, the car mechanic, had caught the dog and put him back inside the house so he wouldn’t hurt himself.
I felt that the lump in my throat was getting too tight to bear. So I got up and wandered off by myself. I had never seen the house messy or found anything out of place. Today was no different. I went into Ajja’s room. I was afraid it would make me cry, but it didn’t. His bed was neatly made and his clothes were hung up on the clothes stand just as always. I sat on the bed for a while and then leaned forward and buried my face in his pillow. It smelt of him, and the sheets smelt of cotton and summertime and all the things that made me happy. I got up, crossed over to his cupboard and opened it. His wallet was there, along with his watch, his comb, the stethoscope with which he had taught me to listen to people’s hearts. I found an old black-and-white photo of his mother whom he had loved very much. Then I found an envelope addressed to me.
Curious, I picked it up and returned to sit on the bed with it. Inside was a letter. It read:
Dear Avi,
I never told you this before, but you’re a magician too. You don’t know it yet, but as time goes by, you’ll see. Now all you have to do is believe it. It is something I have given to you. You will do many wonderful things with your gift, I know. I can think of nobody better to pass it on to. Use it well. Someday you’ll be an even better magician than I ever was.
Love,
Ajja
Clutching the letter close to my chest, I began to pace the room. My heart was singing. Suddenly I felt like my grandfather had come back to me. Like as if he had come to live inside me!
This morning, I woke to the sound of birds chirping in the backyard. Suddenly, I remembered something I had forgotten to check yesterday. I jumped out of bed, ran through the house, out the back door and into the garden where Ajja and I had planted the mango seed the previous summer. Ammama was right. It was full of mangoes! Now I stand under it and look up into its branches above.
It is the tallest tree in the world.
11
Genetic Conspiracy
Memories of my childhood recall the feel of warm, dusty breeze upon dry, itchy skin, and the startling sight of gargantuan mineshafts vertically interrupting the horizontal landscapes of my hometown, Rudrapura. In my mind’s eye looms a mansion with numerous cousins, playing and fighting and growing up all over it. An oil lamp burning anywhere takes me back to the sight of flames flickering across the benevolent clay visage of the elephant-headed god we brought home each year on Ganesh Chaturthi day. Festivals in our family home were about the smell of raw banana bajjis frying in hot oil, and laddoos pilfered from under the myopic eyes of Narasimha the cook. They must have been about other things too, but I’m not sure what. Strange is the nature of recollection. A single image, a shadow, a play of light in places thousands of miles away can bring back a rush of memories – incidents, thoughts, sometimes mere sensations. But undeniably powerful just the same.
Perhaps the most significant memory of my childhood is the terror we shared of our eldest uncle, Sheshadri Doddappa. It was a fear so acerbic that it pervaded the food and you could taste it on your tongue at meal times.
Eldest Uncle never glared. It was really just an imperceptible flicker of his dense, pendulous eyebrows looming over flashing steel-grey eyes. He had an all-seeing, all-knowing quality that compelled everybody from Ajji, our old grandmother, to Thuppa, the family dog, to be at their best behaviour. Thuppa had got his name from the fact that he adored ghee. He ate idlis only when they were smeared with it, otherwise he rejected them outright. However, when Eldest Uncle was around, even Thuppa became docile and ate what was placed in front of him, with or without his namesake mixed into it.
Only in recent times, ever since Ajji became too senile to process the daily happenings of the household, did she cease to fear and dote upon her oldest son. Now she lives for food alone. Her toothless gums take so long to work their way through each meal that one mealtime usually runs into the next. As a result, she rarely leaves the dining table, and only Lakshmi Atte (my appa’s sister), has the heart to attend to her with unflagging patience anymore.
But things were not always like this. For the first decade of my life, when we all lived together in the ‘main house’ – the bungalow on Wadiyar Street in which my father and his four siblings had grown up – Ajji’s relationship with Eldest Uncle had been inexplicable. She practically fawned over him and he practically couldn’t stand her. Her three younger sons were gentle and considerate, and her daughter took exemplary care of her, but she never used to have time for any of them. All she wanted was Eldest Uncle, and was content with even his snubs and little cruelties of speech and manner. My father and his other two brothers accepted this with equanimity, as they did all things. Weak as they appeared to be, there were probably no three gentler men in the world; and while Eldest Uncle was feared and respected by all in Rudrapura, his younger brothers were loved for their unfailing decency.
Rumour had it that my grandfather had barely spoken a word to Ajji for some time during the early years of their marriage. Why this was, nobody knew. Indeed, most dismissed it as idle gossip, since thereafter they had continued to produce children in what would imply mutual cordiality. But Thatha had died before we cousins came along, so none of us was privy to this supposedly discordant family dynamic. The only thing we did notice (because it was difficult not to) was the fact that my father and other two uncles – rational, level-headed men though they were – frequently allowed Eldest Uncle’s will to prevail over their better judgement, much to the chagrin of their wives.
At six feet two inches, Eldest Uncle was literally a pillar of Rudrapura society. He towered over his brothers, who appeared tiny and devoid of personality before him. Even when they had begun to grey and their hair had thinned out, he continued to enjoy a luxurious mane. He was truly handsome, had steel-grey eyes, sported a regal moustache, and stood out from the rest like a swan among the proverbial ducks. He inherited Thatha’s business, while the other three cheerfully worked in low-paying government jobs. Ajji had transferred the main house to Eldest Uncle’s name as soon as her husband died. Unperturbed by the unfairness of this act, her daughter and other three sons continued to live there contentedly with their families for many years to come.
It is difficult to say whether senility took my grandmother out of her senses or brought her back to them. Whatever be the case, her eyes still followed Eldest Uncle wherever he went, but no longer in the old, adoring way. Now her gaze was direct and unblinking. While he went about his business of shouting and decreeing, she watched him with the resignation of a cinema-goer at a B-grade film, who knew she would not be allowed to leave at intermission. Her gaze made Eldest Uncle feel disconcerted, but there was nothing he could do about it. When he ticked her off or snubbed her, she merely continued to stare at him, the only movement in her impassive face being the incessantly masticating lower jaw. Often, he
would shove his plate of half-eaten food aside in disgust and exclaim that the old lady had gone around the twist. Then he would get up and walk away, while the women of the household scurried about uselessly trying to placate him. Only Lakshmi Atte would calmly continue to attend to her mother on such occasions. She never dignified Eldest Uncle’s tantrums with look or word.
Suffice it to say that the lives of the residents of Sheshadri Mansion were run on the whims and commands of Eldest Uncle, who had been the patriarch of the family ever since my grandfather’s death. He was skilled in the management of the large family that consisted of a mother, a wife, a son, a cook, a dog, a younger sister, three younger brothers, three sisters-in-law and an assortment of nephews and nieces (in order of importance). He decided what the menu would be each day, how much money each brother would contribute to the running of the household, and which school we children would attend. He also decided who would get haircuts and when.
Gopal Anna, Eldest Uncle’s son, was desperate to grow his hair. My sister Sharada was desperate to cut hers. Gopal Anna ended up with the most unfortunate crew cuts, and Sharu sported a braid so long, she had to double it to keep it out of her way. She only managed to get permission to lop it off when Eldest Uncle saw lice run down the parting of her hair and disappear into the braid (‘Chee! Thoo! Cut it! Cut it all off! ’ Eldest Uncle had cried in horror) . Sharu privately confessed to me later that she had stuck her head to Suhasini’s lice-ridden one in class and paid her two erasers and a bottle of Goldspot for the privilege of doing so. Her plan, however, backfired slightly. Instead of being sent off for a fashionable haircut to the ladies’ beauty parlour in Chithalli as she had imagined (Rudrapura conspicuously lacked one of its own in those days), she had to endure Anthony Uncle cutting her hair for her. For the first two weeks after that, her head resembled a mop at the end of a long, thin stick – the kind you use to clean out cobwebs.