by Adithi Rao
The kitchen was just beyond the sitting area, so she could speak with us as she made coffee.
‘My husband has gone down to the market. He will return any moment now. You must wait for him. He will be so happy to meet you both. What are your names?’
‘She’s Sharada and I’m Janani,’ I said, slightly overwhelmed by the kindness of our hostess, and the memories embedded in the walls of the old, old house. Sharu was quiet, but I could see that she was affected in the same way.
‘You must also meet my elder son,’ continued the old lady. ‘He is upstairs, getting ready for work.’
‘Oh, does your son live with you?’ I asked, seeing that she was waiting for a chance to talk about him.
Beaming with pride, the old lady replied, ‘Both our sons live with us. Our elder son runs the Udupi Bhavan restaurant on the main road, and the second one is the postmaster. He’s not at home; he has already left for work. All the other young men of our village moved to the city to find jobs, but my sons said, “If everybody leaves, who will be left to take care of Murudeshwara, Amma? We will find work here itself.” Both of them have grown-up children who are married and live in Bangalore, but they themselves stayed on.’
The gate opened and the old lady peeped out of the kitchen window to see who it was. ‘Aah, avaru bandidare,’ she said. He has come. We got to our feet, preparing to greet him.
Moments later, he walked in, a tall gentleman well into his eighties, but in the pink of health. Over six feet in height, he was broad-shouldered, had thick, silver hair, a regal moustache, and bushy eyebrows that loomed over steel-grey eyes. Before Sharu and I could get over our shock, the elder son came downstairs, dressed for work. His mother hurried forward to introduce us. He was the spitting image of his father. Just like Eldest Uncle was.
As we walked away from the house in stunned silence, unbidden came Amma’s voice from that distant day Venkatachalam had called for his money. You and the others have given away everything to Anna…
‘Oh my god!’ I gasped suddenly, the pieces falling suddenly into place. ‘They knew all along!’
Sharu looked at me, startled. ‘Who knew?’
‘Appa knew! Appa and Subbu Doddappa and Srini Doddappa and Lakshmi Atte! They knew all along that Eldest Uncle is a—’
‘That’s enough!’ Sharu snapped. This sharp reprimand from my gentle sister struck me dumb. I kept glancing at her grim, averted face as we walked in silence.
Memories of all the times Eldest Uncle had belittled us, terrorized us and dominated our lives, churned in my head. Slow fury began to build within me. By the time we reached the post office, I could keep silent no longer.
‘The whole world should be told of this! He deserves no less!’
‘No.’
‘But why not? Have you forgotten all the—’
‘I’ve forgotten nothing,’ said Sharu quietly. ‘But Appa sacrificed a lot to keep this secret.’
My heart ached. So many years of poverty, humiliation, of struggling and getting nothing in return.
‘Does Eldest Uncle matter that much?’ I asked.
‘No. But Appa does. Lakshmi Atte and our uncles do. And that is enough. Promise me you won’t tell anyone, Janu.’
I hesitated, not quite ready to relinquish this last hope of retribution. ‘Not even Amma?’ I asked.
‘Especially not Amma. She has suffered the most in this, with the possible exception of Radhika Doddamma. She’ll want her revenge, and it won’t be her fault. Promise me.’ I sensed the urgency in her voice, her anxiety, and so I nodded.
After a lifetime of fearing him, hating him, being nearly incapacitated in his presence, I suddenly saw Eldest Uncle for what he was – a frightened man whose whole identity lay in the hands of his four half-siblings. Three men and one woman who had, through a generous conspiracy, constructed his sense of self and handed it to him on a platter. When my father died, Eldest Uncle’s life had tottered. If he had the misfortune of outliving the others, it would totter again and yet again, until it collapsed from its very foundations. In that moment of realization, I felt my hatred for him slip quietly away. Sharu was right. We would never speak of what we had found out in Murudeshwara that day. This was a secret we would carry to our graves.
Our silence would make us co-conspirators along with those four upon whom Eldest Uncle’s dignity had rested for close to sixty-five years.
12
The Story of Rain
When Srinivasa Pattabhiram the water conservationist arrived in Rudrapura, he parked his jeep beside the low stone wall and stared up at the mineshafts in morbid fascination. He later told Sheshadri that he had felt frightened of them. They looked, he said, like ghosts from a bygone era that might, at any moment, come crashing down upon the cowering present.
Sheshadri didn’t know what Pattabhiram was going on about and didn’t care. It sounded like poetic twaddle to him. But he nodded politely and offered the man a cup of coffee before accompanying him to the Chandana Palace Kalyana Mandapa, the venue for the lecture Pattabhiram was to deliver.
A few weeks earlier, Sheshadri Saab had been introduced to Pattabhiram at the home of a wealthy client in Bangalore. Over dinner, the water conservationist had spoken at length about his work. Sheshadri, meanwhile, had struggled to keep his food down. It was shocking to find himself surrounded by chicken bones and the cloying smell of fried fish. His own plate, of course, was populated by lemon rice, kosambari, saaru and palya, all of which had been cooked in ‘puu…re vegetarian vessels’, his smiling hostess had assured him. Still, the ignominy of sharing a table with meat and summarily chewed-up bones! The client and his wife did not appear to have done this deliberately to humiliate him. Still, they should have known better than to invite a Brahmin to such a table! Still, who knows what goes on in restaurant kitchens behind smooth-talking waiters and shining cutlery? And could he afford to kiss away a whopping business deal on grounds of religious niceties? Still…
‘So what do you say, Sheshadri Saab?’ asked the client.
‘Umm? Say what?’ muttered Sheshadri, trying not to look at his client directly on account of the chicken bones on his plate.
‘About Pattabhi’s proposition?’ the client urged.
‘Yes-yes. Good one, good one,’ replied Sheshadri. And, so saying, committed himself to organizing a lecture on rainwater harvesting for Pattabhiram in his native town of Rudrapura, without the slightest idea of having done so. At the moment, however, he only thought that he must have said the right thing, because a smile went around the table like sunshine. A smile that held the promise of contracts worth lakhs of rupees. So Sheshadri also smiled. Regrets would come later. Now was the time for smiling.
Now, there was Sheshadri Saab twenty-three days later, sitting across from Pattabhiram in the living room of his mansion on Wadiyar Street, sipping freshly brewed coffee and thinking what a waste of time this whole talk was going to be. Certainly the water woes of Rudrapura were legendary – in Rudrapura. Few on the outside knew that the town existed, and if they did, they never bothered to talk about it. But the town had survived the shortage of water for a few hundred years and would continue to do so without the man’s help. Sheshadri could hardly imagine the townspeople being able to implement Pattabhi’s hare-brained ideas. Who had the money to build receptacles and tanks and install motor pumps? Trapping and storing water was the earth’s job, not theirs. And certainly not his.
At Chandana Palace, Sheshadri was honoured by the Lion’s Club of Rudrapura & Chithalli that had so kindly agreed to host the event. There was a heavy rose garland for him, and a noticeably slimmer one for Pattabhiram. Then, after many pompous remarks by the chairman of the club and a few terse ones by Sheshadri, Pattabhiram had the floor. By this time, seven or eight people had silently left the hall to return to their business, the time budgeted for lectures in the middle of a busy working day having run out somewhere during the chairman’s speech extolling Sheshadri as a ‘business magnet’ of spellbinding ‘
acument’.
Brother Abranches in the audience, accompanied by a few of his students, was quite shocked at this promiscuous abuse of the English language. His eyes inadvertently caught those of Pattabhiram on the stage, and both looked away hastily. The ‘business magnet’ himself looked bored to death.
But that moment of eye contact established a sort of camaraderie. And while the Rudrapuraians gossiped, laughed and dozed their way through the lecture, Pattabhi found himself chiefly addressing the priest and his boys – the only ones in the room, probably, who listened to and understood him.
‘I met a man today who spoke of rain …’ Brother Abranches told James that night while they served dinner together to the residents of the old age home. He trailed off in a thoughtful way. The next morning, as they were tending to the vegetable garden, Brother Abranches continued as if he had never left off.
‘He said that every drop of rainwater should be collected. Apparently, there are ways to do this.’ The priest had shed his habit and rolled the sleeves of his shirt all the way up past his elbows to keep them out of the red soil that he was turning vigorously with a fork.
‘For drinking?’ asked James, curious.
‘No. But for lots of other things. Gardening, floor cleaning, washing vehicles and the cowshed … Think how much easier things would become at the old age home.’
James put down his spade and squinted at the priest interestedly. ‘It would cost a lot to do this thing?’
‘Probably. We’d have to build tanks, install a motor pump. It would be expensive. I don’t know where we’d get the money from.’
‘Father Gomez …’ suggested James, then felt silly under Brother Abranches’ withering look. James shrugged and went back to weeding the tomato bed. Suddenly he looked up again and said, ‘So there’s no other way then?’
Abranches shrugged impatiently. ‘Who knows? Hand me the seeds, James. I think this soil is ready.’
The social studies lesson that Wednesday began the usual way, with the reading of the news.
‘Okay, boys, who will read first?’ asked Pashupati sir, sorting through his betel leaves. Immediately, about twenty hands shot into the air and a babble of voices cried, ‘Me!’ ‘Me-me-me!’ ‘Me, sir, pleeeeease!’
‘Ay, shhh! All of you, shuttup shouting!’
The boys fell silent but half-raised themselves frantically out of their chairs, waving their hands in what could only be described as a noisy silence, so close were they to exploding with it. The teacher had gone back to his betel leaves and so did not immediately notice the show of hands. When he did, he quelled the boys’ ardour by hurling the duster in their general direction. It was done as a matter of routine and without ill-feeling. None was taken. Being used to sudden missile attacks of this nature, the boys closest to the trajectory of the flying duster ducked, and Manju interposed hastily, ‘Thomas, you read.’
‘Theprimeminister’svisittotheBangaloreisscheduled totakeplacenextmonthforwhichpreparationsareunderway.’ Thomas let out his breath in a whoosh and sat back down, pleased. The other boys looked puzzled, having caught none of it. Pashupati, deeply immersed in smearing chuna onto his betel leaf, mumbled, ‘Good. Now Vadiraja.’
Vadiraja pronounced dramatically, ‘Husband and wife murder their two sons, then commit suicide!’
The teacher looked up sharply. ‘Bloody fool! What nonsense news you are bringing to class? Shuttup and sit down!’ Vadiraja was deflated.
Pashupati continued to grumble under his breath as he tucked his handiwork securely into his cheek. ‘Shtuppid fellow,’ he said, spraying his desk with a few speckles of spit. Seconds later, the tobacco from the paan gently extricated itself from its green confines to mingle with his saliva and melt away his irritation. He sat back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction, and now, from old habit, the boys knew the lesson would proceed more pleasantly.
‘Srikanth,’ said Pashupati, smiling indulgently at his favourite, ‘you read.’
Srikanth stood up. ‘Met Department Predicts Poor Monsoon this Year. The Meteorological Department warns of a poor monsoon, resulting in severe water shortage and drought conditions in large parts of the country including Maharashtra, Karnataka and the Deccan Plateau region. It has issued a statement cautioning people to use water judiciously and to harvest rainwater whenever possi—’
‘Okay-okay, only headline is enough,’ said Pashupati, keen to begin the lesson. Srikanth sat down slowly. From across the classroom, Manju watched him quietly.
When the lunch bell rang, boys overflowed from classrooms, labs, the library and playground like a river released from a dam. Pamban skipped across to Hope Wing – the new wing that housed poor and orphaned students, located at the western corner of the school campus. He needed to collect his lunch that had been packed and labelled with his name on it. By the time he rejoined his mates, Srikanth and the others had already opened their lunch boxes.
‘Eeyn tandidiya?’ asked Putta.
‘Chitranna,’ replied Chetan with distaste, revealing the lemon rice inside his tiffin box. Seeing Putta eye it lovingly, he peeked quickly into the other boy’s dabba. Sambar-rice and beans palya. Not a favourite, but preferable to the detested chitranna. He nodded and, without a word, the boys swapped boxes. The others proceeded to share their food.
‘Sri? What was that article you were reading out in class?’ said Manju, thoughtfully chewing on a bit of onion bajji.
Srikanth put down his food and groped inside his school bag with his left hand till he found his Chetak notebook. Flipping it open to the right page, he handed it to Manju. Aditya peeked over Manju’s shoulder and his eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘You wrote the whole article down? We were only supposed to bring headlines!’
‘I know, but it was interesting. I thought I would share it with the class. Pashupati sir didn’t let me finish reading it out, though.’
‘He would have, if it had been about betel nuts!’ scowled Putta, and everyone laughed.
Meanwhile, Manju took the book and read the article through to the end. Putting the last of the bajji into his mouth, he asked, ‘Do you think it is true what the man at the rainwater harvesting lecture was saying the other day about wars being fought over water in the future?’
Pamban bit into a green chilli by mistake. He hissed, grabbed his water bottle and noisily gulped large mouthfuls from it. The others stared at him with their mouths slightly open. Perhaps the heat and the food in their stomachs were making them sleepy.
‘Imagine …’ said Manju.
‘What?’ asked Pamban, eyeing his mates uneasily.
‘Not being able to drink water whenever you need to,’ said Manju, pointing to the bottle in Pamban’s hand.
Gayathri’s husband’s death anniversary was approaching. According to the panchanga, it would fall on the third day of the coming month. With the aim of speaking to the priest Raghuvir Dixit about the shraadha ceremony, she went to the temple that Sunday, taking her son Manju with her.
The boy had been studying his Kannada prose when she called to him to get ready. As they walked together towards Five Lights, she glanced at Manju’s curly head and serene face, and wondered for the hundredth time whether he knew that she had not loved his father. That this yearly ceremony she organized at great strain on her meagre purse was really an atonement for the sheer relief she had felt when she came home from work to find him dead, a half-finished bottle of country liquor lolling beside him on the kitchen floor.
Gayathri and Manju made a left from the Nameless Shop and walked on past Vishnu Talkies. As they passed the Rudrapura Only Mechanics, Manju looked up and saw his mother avert her eyes quickly. A few minutes later, they boarded the 303 bus for the Prasanna Parvati Temple.
Sometime later, having received the prasada, Gayathri came out of the temple to wait for the priest to lock up for the afternoon. She stood on the temple steps, watching her son wander about the premises. The sound of the heavy bolt shooting into place behind her made her turn quick
ly.
Manju, disinterested because the scant memories he had of his father were neither lucid nor pleasant, climbed the temple platform to peer towards the north. It was a high platform and afforded an uninterrupted view of the surrounding area for miles and miles. There in the distance was the Chithalli Mosque, its slim white-and-green minarets just visible from behind Chandana Palace Kalyana Mandapa that dominated Rudrapaura’s northern skyline. Some days, depending on the direction of the wind, the azaan could be heard, faint but melodious.
On the east side, in the shade of the temple, stood Ganga, Raghuvir’s cow, peacefully chewing on something yellow. Manju moved closer and saw that it was lemon rice. ‘She’s almost smiling!’ chuckled Manju. ‘I must tell Putta that he has a competitor.’
He approached the animal and stroked her head. Although usually wary of strangers, Ganga did not shy away. Raghuvir observed this with mild surprise as he discussed the details of the puja with Gayathri. Meanwhile, Manju got off the platform and walked about a bit more, stopping to gaze at the tall shoots of corn in the field beyond the temple premises. Then he turned around and looked at the temple. From where he was standing, he noticed that it had a flat roof, except for the delicately painted dome above the sanctum sanctorum. To one side was a hole to keep water from stagnating. Down below, a few yards away from the temple structure, stood a well. Manju walked over and peeked inside. There was his face reflected back at him by the dark, cool waters.
He dropped a pebble inside. The hollow, metallic plop took a long time coming. The reflection of his boyish features fractured to pieces on the rippling waters, then gradually regrouped itself, stilled and blinked back at Manju calmly. It was so far away, that reflection of his. He frowned thoughtfully.
Lakshmi settled herself on the front steps of Sheshadri Mansion with the sharp, slanting rays of the late afternoon sun in her eyes and a winnow in hand. Her mother sat in the easy chair close by, dozing, reassured by her daughter’s presence. The glass bangles on Lakshmi’s wrist tinkled busily as she picked her way through the rice, looking for stones that might have made their way into it. From time to time, she glanced at her mother to check for any tears or signs of distress, but there were none. Maybe she doesn’t even remember that Partha is gone, thought Lakshmi, her heart aching at the thought of that gentle and most beloved of her brothers, now dead.