Silent Winds, Dry Seas

by Vinod Busjeet

  “Of course you know.” He gently pinched my nose and pulled it. “You’ve jumped over two grades; at ten, you’re already in sixth grade. You’re ambitious without even knowing it.”

  We arrived in Coromandel at one in the afternoon. As we walked to the house of Auntie Ranee’s parents, I could smell the burnt offerings of fragrant sandalwood, grains, nuts, spices, and aromatic medicinal herbs and hear the chanted mantra “Om swaha, Om swaha.” Garlands of marigolds decorated the porch, swaying left and right in the wind. On the open veranda, two priests, the family, and adult relatives sat on the floor cross-legged, in yoga-like lotus posture. Auntie Ranee and her two sisters, whom everyone referred to as the Regal Sisters because of their statuesque features and royal deportment, sat in a semicircle around the pandits. In the two rooms behind were kids and those too old and frail to sit cross-legged. Each time the Regal Sisters poured the offerings into the copper receptacle for the sacrificial fire, the priests added ghee, using the sacred betel leaf as a spoon. The flames rose high, the dry twigs in the receptacle crackled, and a smell of simmering butter filled the room. When the gusts of wind blew in harder, it was spooky: the flames shot up dangerously, almost touching the wooden frames of the house. But the priests’ dexterity was astounding. With a 180-degree sweep of their arms and hands, they calmed the flames and the kids at the back clapped.

  About fifteen minutes later, Uncle Ram sneezed. He addressed the priests: “Panditji, how many more hours?”

  The older pandit looked at his watch and replied, “About three.”

  “Three more hours of swaha, swaha?”

  The pandit frowned. “In India, a yaj can last months, even years.”

  Auntie Ranee and her two sisters turned and shot Uncle Ram a look that could qualify as a royal reprimand. Mama looked at me and smiled. Some of the men snickered. Uncle Ram took me by the arm, turned towards the porch, and motioned these men to follow him. Papa had made me read The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Uncle Ram looked very much like the Piper except that he was leading a dozen grown men, not children, out of the house and into the street. As I walked out, I turned my head and saw my cousins in the back room: bored by Sanskrit prayers they couldn’t understand, they watched my departure with envious eyes.

  “Let’s go to la boutique Dokter,” said Uncle Ram.

  The “Doctor’s Shop” was an establishment whose business license was prominently summarized on a hand-painted black tin plate above the door:

  Aman Lim

  General Retailer and Dry Goods

  Liquor On & Off

  Known throughout the Mauritian countryside, the village bar was a special room in a general retailer store, often owned by a Chinese family who lived in the back rooms of the building. Aman Lim’s bar was full. Creole fishermen who couldn’t venture to sea because of the weather and Indian laborers back from the fields kept Aman busy. He called his wife, and after they exchanged a few words of the southern Chinese language of Hakka, she led us to their back garden. She brought out two kitchen tables and a few chairs and arranged them under a flamboyant tree. She handed me a sardine-and-tomato sandwich and a Pepsi. Her two children continued playing in the garden as she opened two bottles of rum.

  Uncle Neeraj, the younger uncle who emulated Bombay film stars, sprinkled a few drops from each bottle on the ground before Aman served the drink. Then everyone sprinkled two drops from their glass.

  “Why do you do that?” I asked.

  “It’s for God. He gets thirsty, too,” said Uncle Neeraj.

  “God is a shriveled eggplant,” said Uncle Ram. “I do it to quench the thirst of those who loved me.”

  “Big words today, Ram! You need to pour the whole glass!” exclaimed the others.

  Aman Lim brought in plates of curried mutton, steaming with the aromas of cardamom and coriander.

  “We Hindus aren’t supposed to eat meat on prayer days, not even eggs or fish,” said one of the men as he plunged his fingers into the choicest piece.

  “Maja karo,” said Uncle Neeraj, showing off his limited Hindi. “As the English proverb says, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

  The others laughed and attacked the food with delight.

  The men talked a lot. They talked about the horses that would win the following week’s races, about how their wives wasted their hard-earned money on pandits and religious ceremonies, even about apartheid in South Africa and the capture of Adolf Eichmann by Israel’s Mossad. They were arguing about Mauritian politics when the wind blew a papaya at Uncle Neeraj’s feet, its seeds and pink flesh splashing on his shiny two-toned shoes.

  Uncle Ram reacted: “It looks like Carol is serious. I hope she changes course.”

  “If it comes, we can say good-bye to our sugar crop,” Uncle Neeraj replied as he wiped his shoes with his cologne-soaked handkerchief. “We already lost twenty percent of the cane after Cyclone Alix six weeks ago.”

  A third bottle was ordered and consumed. Uncle Neeraj reminded everyone that Mauritius had had a long streak of good fortune—no cyclone from 1946 to 1959. The men argued about cyclones with the passion and energy of schoolchildren fighting over Mauritian and English football teams.

  “The 1892 cyclone was the worst in Mauritian history. Winds of 135 miles an hour at a time when most houses were huts of thatched cane leaves,” said Uncle Neeraj. “Even the Illustrated London News wrote a whole page about the devastation.”

  Uncle Ram’s face reddened. Since he had the lightest complexion of all the Bhushan men, I thought it was from too much rum flowing to his face. But then he abruptly grew somber, in a way I had never seen.

  “Nineteen forty-five was the worst,” he said. “It was the year of three cyclones. Three.”

  He banged the table with his fists with such force that the younger Chinese child began crying and ran inside the shop. There was complete silence. We could hear the wind and feel its warmth on our faces.

  Uncle Neeraj lowered his voice: “Ram, we all know you’re the most educated and best-informed one here. But I’ve read that the strongest of the 1945 cyclones was only ninety-seven miles an hour.”

  Uncle Ram slapped at his watch. “It’s four o’clock; let’s go back to the yaj.”

  Uncle Neeraj attempted to lighten the atmosphere: “We better get there while there’s still some ganja and bhang left.” Ganja was the marijuana our ancestors had brought from India as a meditative herb, and bhang was a concoction of marijuana, milk, and spices served at Hindu weddings and other festivities in the rural areas.

  The sky had changed to red. A strange, dark, menacing red.

  As we came out through the shop, the rum drinkers were now outnumbered by customers seeking plywood, nails, canned food, and candles. Aman, now helped by a white-haired Chinese woman counting on an abacus, told us that a Class 2 cyclone warning had just been issued. “Do you want to take a bottle home? If we get a Class 3 warning tomorrow, shops will be closed.” Uncle Ram ordered one. “Let the boy carry it, sir,” said Aman. He had noticed Uncle Ram’s unsteady walk.

  When we reached the yaj, the ceremony was winding down. The guests were gently throwing flowers on one another—a gesture of benediction—and singing the concluding mantra of peace and harmony, “Om Shantee Shantee Shantee.”

  Uncle Ram had a final question for the priests before Auntie Ranee could say “You’re stinking of rum” and drag him away:

  “Panditji, what does the Panchang say about Carol? Will she swerve to Madagascar?”

  * * *

  —

  That evening, Uncle Neeraj and his wife gave Mama, Auntie Ranee, and her baby a ride back home in their brand-new Morris Minor. Uncle Ram and I hopped on a bus. On the first leg of the return journey, Uncle Ram took a nap. “For the rum to wear off,” he said. The bus windows shook and rattled. Sometimes the wind gusts suddenly changed direction
and it felt like the bodywork would fly apart. But the Bedford bus, with its prominent made in england insignia, stood its ground. The younger passengers were thrilled, and the driver was eager to demonstrate his superior driving skills. At each bus stop, we could hear the whistling of the wind.

  On the Curepipe–Mahébourg leg of the journey, Uncle Ram stayed awake. The road ran downhill all the way, and the bus suspension system wasn’t working properly. At times it felt as though we were on a soft-bounce trampoline. I was fascinated by the sky, which now resembled a red dome rimmed by dark clouds, but I was also perturbed by the argument between Uncles Neeraj and Ram at Aman’s bar.

  “Uncle, why did you insist the 1945 cyclones were the worst?”

  Uncle Ram clenched his right fist and looked at me. His knit brow made me wonder if I had asked a disturbing question. Slowly he unclenched the fist; I could hear him breathe out before he spoke. “All Uncle Neeraj and the others know and care about is their sugar and their money, and their prayers. They know nothing about cyclones, real cyclones.”

  Real cyclones? Were there unreal ones? Mama did say Uncle Ram liked to puzzle and challenge.

  “My geography book says…”

  “Vishnu, keep your geography book for your exams. In 1945, I buried my two women. That’s the cyclone they know but prefer to forget.”

  Earlier that morning, Uncle Ram had asked me what a kid like me knew about love, and now he was talking about his two women.

  “You…you had two women before Auntie Ranee?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the young woman on my left stretching her neck to eavesdrop.

  “My first wife I married to fulfill my duty. It was an arranged marriage. She was a very good woman. But I kept loving another.”

  “Why didn’t you marry the one you loved?”

  “She was a Creole. The Bhushans said she would make our blood impure. The local pandit warned that she had performed black magic on me.”

  “Why didn’t you go live with her?”

  “You’re a nice boy, Vishnu,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Her folks wanted me to get baptized in the Catholic Church and become Thomas Bhushan.”

  I laughed. “Uncle Thomas Bhushan! That’s funny.”

  “Her brothers threatened to chop off my eggplant. They said I dirtied their family honor.”

  As the bus windows clattered in the wind, Uncle Ram repeated, in a bitter voice, “Dirtied their family honor.”

  “Your wife let you see her?”

  “I tried to treat both equally. I rented a house for the Creole woman.”

  Uncle Ram’s jovial self was gone. He wasn’t sad, exactly. He was more like a wounded bird, trying to fly but helpless.

  “How did they die?”

  “You’re a curious kid. I told you you’re ahead for your age. You’ll win that entrance scholarship.”

  He looked out. The leaves on the trees lining the road were scattering all around. The dark rim round the red sky had grown wider.

  “My wife died giving birth a week after the first 1945 cyclone. My beautiful Creole died of malaria a month later, three weeks after the second 1945 cyclone. And your uncles were angry that I paid for her funeral.”

  At the age of ten, I’m not sure I grasped the import of all that Uncle Ram had revealed. Nonetheless, I could see the pent-up rage in him. And I realized, vaguely, that he wanted me to avoid a similar fate.

  I turned to my left and saw the eavesdropping woman dabbing her eyes with her sleeve.

  We both dozed off until we got close to Mahébourg. When Uncle Ram woke up, he leaned against me and raised his left buttock cheek.

  “Hiroshima!” he shouted as a sonorous fart trumpeted out.

  The older passengers pretended not to hear. The younger ones goaded him: “Another one, Uncle.”

  “Nagasaki,” said Uncle Ram, lifting his right buttock cheek for an even richer fart. “Mesdames, messieurs, I have an important announcement: the Americans will use atomic power to blow out cyclones.” He then intoned,

  Hawa baand, samoondar soukarey

  * * *

  —

  The Mahébourg bus terminal was five minutes’ walk from the Pointe des Régates beach. By the sea, one senses the power of an incoming cyclone through the skin, the ears, the nose. We heard the waves lashing the shore. The wind was no longer blowing through the leaves; it was groaning and howling. The fishermen and the sand diggers had moved their boats to higher ground. No one was on the road. A police car drove through town, alerting everyone through a loudspeaker that a Class 3 warning was now in effect.

  When we reached home a few minutes later, Papa was putting tools away. He had secured the windows with shutters, battens, and crossbars.

  “Great job, Shiv,” said Uncle Ram as he went around the house. “You’ve even trimmed the tree branches.”

  “If you had come a bit earlier, you could have helped. You know my rheumatism has been acting up.”

  Uncle Ram took the bottle of rum purchased in Coromandel from my hands.

  “Shiv, no need for you to get worked up. This house is made to last. It would have been okay if you had just relaxed.”

  Uncle Ram had bought the house with the lump sum he received upon his retirement, a year earlier. For his more than thirty years as railway stationmaster, he had stayed in sturdy and elegant colonial-style houses provided by the British colonial government. His Mahébourg home matched these houses: built with the best wood from Indonesia, it was admired by many in this coastal town, the more so since it had a large yard with fruit trees—guava, avocado, custard apple, pomegranate. And the house had withstood the 120-mile-per-hour winds of Cyclone Alix earlier in the year.

  Papa had just changed into his pajamas when Uncle Ram shouted from his side of the house, “Shiv, you missed a great yaj. You should have seen the women seated round the two pandits with their fluttering dhotis. They could not stop gawking at their eggplants. The Regal Sisters had the best view.” Papa caught me smiling at Uncle’s words and admonished me with his index finger.

  * * *

  —

  After a night of howling winds and buffeting rain, we spent February 27, 1960, indoors, like most Mauritians. In the morning, a police car announced by loudspeaker that a Class 4 warning—the highest level of alert—had been issued. Cyclone Carol had swept Saint Brandon Island, three hundred miles northeast of Mauritius, and winds of at least 120 miles per hour would hit our island.

  We were all anxious. All the precautions that could be taken had been taken. Throughout the day, the winds grew more violent and the rain more intense.

  At dinnertime, Uncle Ram opened the bottle bought at la boutique Dokter. At eight thirty, the electricity went off. At around nine, he thundered, “Shiv, did you ask Vishnu what he thought of the Royal College?”

  “He told me he liked it,” Papa replied.

  “That boy is destined for England,” said Uncle Ram. “You wait and see: he’ll come back with an Englishwoman.”

  Mama looked at Papa in a way that clearly signaled that he should respond firmly to this.

  “Don’t talk like that. He is only ten,” Papa said.

  “He has the brain of a fourteen-year-old.”

  Auntie Ranee interjected: “Stop drinking and talking rubbish. People are worried about the cyclone.”

  “Worried about the cyclone? The Bhushans and the community are worried about their purity. Vishnu, I have a better idea. Englishwomen are too boring for you—bring back a European. Brigitte Bardot or Sophia Loren. Shiv, did you hear what I said? That will improve the Bhushan stock and defile it.”

  No one responded. The subdued light of the candles and hurricane lamps produced the mood of a vigil for Cyclone Carol, not one conducive to confrontation.

  That evening, and for the first time since I lived in
that house, Uncle Ram did not say his usual “Hawa baand, samoondar soukarey.” The last words he uttered as he went to bed were:

  1945 1945 1945.

  I don’t know if Auntee Ranee or Mama or Papa detected the same sentiment, or even paid attention, but I thought his voice was sorrowful. I went to bed feeling sad for him.

  Outside, Cyclone Carol’s ire was turning to rage. I was afraid.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, February 28, 1960, at around 8:30, we heard a loud bang. It sounded like a huge sheet of metal hitting our house. This was followed by many more such bangs, of wood beams and shingles flying in the air and crashing on the road or against the neighbors’ houses. There was the eerie sound of trees being uprooted and crashing to the earth.

  Suddenly Uncle Ram shouted, “Shiv, come here. I need your help.”

  I followed Papa to Uncle’s living room. The front door was open and the cyclonic wind was pummeling with such force that Uncle and Papa couldn’t push the door shut. They couldn’t even reach the doorknob. Mama, Auntie, and I stood behind them, hoping that the human barrier thus created would prevent, or at least reduce, the wind whipping in. We looked at each other: we were sure Uncle Ram had forgotten to close the door when he went to bed. We remembered his drunkenness.

  A loud creaking noise from above tore through my ears. I looked up. The wind blowing in through the open door was battering the gable roof from the inside. Planks were detaching from the beams.

  Uncle Ram was exhausted. It was clear we were going to lose the front roof. As rain poured into the living room, Papa, Mama, and Auntie began to move an armoire to a room at the back, which had its own gable roof. On the mirrored doors of the armoire, I caught a shadowy glimpse of Lion Mountain. I turned my head: a window had flung open, revealing the mountain on the horizon. It looked like it never had before—desolate, dreary, no longer conjuring up the stately lion of sunny days.