“Your father is a greedy coolie whose education has gone to his head,” Uncle Mohan said.
“You shouldn’t talk like that to teenagers; it makes them disrespect their parents,” Uncles Parsad and Lokhun told him in unison.
Uncle Mohan ignored them. I felt beads of sweat wetting my brow.
Mama had just begun serving snacks and tea when Auntie Ranee arrived—not alone, as everyone had expected, but accompanied by Uncle Surya. This was a major coup engineered by Auntie Ranee, I thought. Uncle Surya was in a different league in the eyes of the Bhushan clan: he worked for the British Admiralty; his eldest son was in medical school in Scotland; his eldest daughter was an acclaimed actress, the first Hindu girl on the island to perform on the stage; and he owned more land than everybody else in the room combined. He was of the clan but beyond its norms.
Uncle Surya, the urban sophisticate living in the Plateau, and my father, the primary school teacher, liked and respected each other. Papa enjoyed visiting him, for he was the only relative with whom he could have an intellectual conversation, and that, too, over a glass of the finest Scotch bought duty-free at the Admiralty store. They were close. The fact that Surya’s mother and Papa’s father were siblings was not lost on those on the veranda. Was Auntie Ranee going to drive a wedge between the two?
Uncle Surya proposed a deal: that the land under dispute be divided equally between Auntie Ranee and my father. Auntie Ranee nodded her assent. Dad responded that he had no time for negotiations and he would take whatever the law gave him.
Uncle Mohan thundered: “Shiv, you dirty pig, you’re using your education and knowledge of law to deprive an illiterate woman and your nieces of their due!”
Uncle Mohan lunged towards my father.
I sprang between them.
Uncle Mohan went on: “Who do you think you are? Richard the Third? Dispatching Ram’s kids to the tower?”
“Mohan, you’ve got your Shakespeare right but your history wrong,” my father said. “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
The exchange was lost on the uncles and aunts, except for Uncle Surya, who struggled to hide his smirk. Uncle Mohan was disarmed.
Uncle Neeraj adjusted his sunglasses. “I don’t understand this fight. Why are you at each other’s throats for a few miserable acres of barren soil that the white sugar barons dumped on Indian coolies at a good price?”
“Neeraj, all you can see is dirt and stones. You just confirmed what Surya and I agree on: small islands breed small minds,” Papa said. He looked over the room and addressed everyone: “Ten years ago, the sugar estate dug an irrigation canal through that land. Were we compensated for that? Ram sat on his fat ass, instead of standing up to the white man. We can’t even use the water that flows through. I’ll sue the sugar estate for damages once I get ownership of the land.”
“Papa, what about Auntie Ranee’s rights? The fairness you talk about? All that stuff about the Bhagavad Gita and Mahatma Gandhi?”
My father raised his voice: “Vishnu, how do you hope to achieve your dreams of attending Oxford or Cambridge? On my monthly five hundred rupees’ salary?”
“I don’t understand you. You dish out banknotes to every beggar who knocks on our door, and you don’t give a damn for Auntie Ranee and her children!” By this time, my shirt was damp with perspiration.
Uncles Parsad and Lokhun muttered about clan unity, and how it had helped the Bhushans progress from coolies living like slaves on the sugar estate to being small independent planters. No one was paying attention.
My mother’s voice exploded: “You domineering man. You want to control everyone, just as you’ve controlled me all these years.”
There was a collective gasp among the women.
This was the first time I had heard Mama raise her voice with my father.
Uncles Neeraj and Surya looked at each other, stupefied.
The traveling barbers shook their heads. In a rare moment of un-meekness, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum exclaimed, “That’s what happens when the new generation doesn’t heed the lessons of our Scriptures. In the house of Ram there now is come the Mahabharata, the epic war. We now face our own battle of Kurukshetra and the annihilation of the Bhushans. Prepare for the Kali Yuga, the age of evil.”
Papa looked at my mother. “So,” he said, “you organized this goonda sabha!”
He shouted at the others. “That’s what you are: a bunch of goondas. A conclave of goons. Get out of my house.”
* * *
—
Within minutes the veranda was empty. I went to my bedroom and slumped against the headboard. Shankar came in, a look of concern on his face. “This brawl over land is exhausting,” I said. “All this going and coming, when will it end?”
I reached out for my history textbook and opened it. “Shankar, I read two pages of this and I can’t continue. Concentration gone. I’m tired.”
“The solution is simple: you need sex. You’re old enough now. You need a good fuck. There are two new girls at Rekha’s. Come with me tomorrow.”
“And catch syphilis—”
I had barely completed the word when we heard shattering glass.
We returned to the veranda. Uncle Mohan was back. He had thrown a stone at the windows and was challenging my father to come out and fight like a man.
My father emerged from the kitchen with a machete and, with an agility that astounded us, he ran outside, ready for Uncle Mohan.
By then a small crowd of neighbors and passersby had gathered on the street. The spectacle of a quiet schoolteacher wielding a machete was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and there was no doubt where their sympathies lay: Papa had taught many of them and, with his average build, he was the underdog.
“Give it to him!” the crowd shouted. I hoped that my father would control himself: he was no match for Uncle Mohan.
Suddenly Io, a tall neighbor with a massive frame, who in his youth had spent some years in jail, emerged from the crowd, walked calmly to Uncle Mohan, and asked him to cool it. A few years earlier, Papa had helped Io get a grounds maintenance job at the local primary school.
Mama pulled my father back inside.
* * *
—
The crowd quickly dispersed. It was midday. I needed fresh air. I asked Shankar to accompany me to the public fountain near the house, under the sprawling shade of a flamboyant tree. At the time I was born here, fifteen years earlier, this fountain had been the main source of drinking water for the neighborhood. Now that everyone had running water at home, it had become a meeting place for relaxation, a game of dominoes or cards, or for gossip. As I leaned against the tree, I sensed that a circular band clamp squeezed my skull tighter and tighter. My brain alternately throbbing, pounding, splitting. I felt the pain behind my forehead, on the left side, on the right, in the back, around the eyes.
My headache was the kind for which an American doctor today would immediately order an MRI or CT scan. But this was 1964, in the middle of summer, and medical options in those days were limited in the village of Mon Désert, to which my parents had returned after living in various places on the island. On the veranda, my mother touched my brow to feel my temperature—no fever—and gave me two aspirin tablets.
“He’s never complained of headaches before,” she told Shankar, and asked him to help me to my bed while she went to fetch some Tiger Balm ointment. That’s when I lost consciousness.
What happened over the next few months is a blur, the events confused in my memory. Over the years, most of my recollections have been confirmed by Shankar; a few have been contradicted.
* * *
—
When Mama returns with the Tiger Balm, I’m crooning, “I’ve just kissed a girl named Maria.” Natalie Wood hovers over the bed and sings, “One Hand, One Heart.” I press a pillow to my chest and we launch into
the West Side Story duet. Natalie comes closer, grabs my pillow, and throws it on the floor.
Mama wears a faint smile.
“Mocking me, aren’t you, Mama? And you too, Shankar, you son of a bitch? Jealous?”
I start crying, I beg for pardon. I’m ashamed I swore in front of my mother.
Natalie floats away.
My books are scattered on the floor. Who threw them there?
I hear my mother, almost as an echo: “Shankar, bring Uncle Shiv here. Take the bicycle and go get a taxi.”
A taxi? That’s expensive. We must be going to Hollywood to meet my beloved Natalie. Papa is in his trademark suit, tie, and felt hat. Mama and Shankar come along for the ride.
The car levitates to its destination. The Department of Public Works must have read my letters of complaint to the newspapers: the potholes and bumps have disappeared.
The airplane overhead roars its approval. I shout, “It sucks away our sins.”
* * *
—
We reach Natalie Wood’s Beverly Hills mansion.
Dr. Maurice Curé’s nurse assistant opens the door, takes me down a corridor. It’s the exam room.
“Where’s Natalie?”
“Vishnu, you’ve come in for a chat,” the doctor says.
On the walls, a diploma from the Sorbonne Faculty of Medicine. “Doctor, I thought you studied at Trinity College in Dublin. That’s what you told me last time we spoke about your student days in Europe.”
Whispers. Papa and Dr. Curé leave the room.
“Doctor, you must renew that medical certificate exempting me from Mr. Steele’s physical education class. That martinet thinks he’s still in the Royal Navy.”
Papa returns with another doctor. The Labour Party leader who won the hearts of Creoles, Hindus, Muslims, and Chinese alike has been transformed: he’s shorter, his white skin has turned brown. He is Dr. Seegobin, Papa’s doctor.
“Are you prescribing suppositories for my father’s constipation?”
The doctor extends his hand. “How’s your headache?” His posture is upright, his tone avuncular.
“Headache? What headache?”
I walk up to the wall behind him and examine the anatomical chart. I can’t figure it out. I pick up the model skull on his desk.
“You love Hamlet?” the doctor says.
“I prefer Othello.”
The doctor smiles. “At your age, I enjoyed As You Like It.”
Your dad took you to both Doctors Curé and Seegobin during your illness, but not on the same day. He said your topsy-turvy brain was making a biryani out of Shakespeare. You mouthed stuff like “The arithmetic of memory is smooth as monumental alabaster, and equals the sum of the seven ages of man.”
The doctor sits me down and presses his stethoscope to my chest. I knock it away.
“I’m tired, Doctor.”
“Don’t cry. Have you been studying a lot?”
“Of course not.”
“Girlfriend problem?”
“He’s too young to have a girlfriend,” someone says.
* * *
—
“Along with the tablets I’ve prescribed, he’ll need a complete rest at home for a month…maybe more,” the doctor says. “Here’s a medical certificate for the school.”
The doctor and Papa lower their voices. I hear “Brown Sequard.” Brown Sequard…where they administer electric shocks to patients and put them in straitjackets.
“Are you sending me to the lunatic asylum? I don’t want to see Dr. Raman, dokter fou, Dr. Madman.”
Papa shows me the medical certificate. Acute pneumonia.
* * *
—
Stuck at home. As the days go by, the church bells sound louder, the calls to prayer from the mosque more frequent.
The hues of the evening pervade the house.
Shankar comes by.
I fling books out the window. He runs outside, brings them back.
Mama serves me crab curry—“your favorite,” she says—but I’m not hungry.
* * *
—
Knocks on the front door. I hear school friends. Someone answers the door. No one comes in. Do they think I have a contagious disease? Is that what Mama told them? Or Papa?
* * *
—
The olive white-eye bird trills on the window ledge.
I want to go outside. I’m not coughing or sneezing.
“Mama, I don’t have pneumonia.”
* * *
—
Mama’s kitchen beckons.
I open the glass and mason jars: the spices never looked so colorful.
I sprinkle yellow turmeric on paper, some red chili powder, and brown cinnamon and smear them all over.
“Vishnu, are you making masala? Let me to show you.”
“I’m making art, Mama, art.”
“Is that a mountain?”
“Modern art, Mama. Ultramodern.”
“Why are you tossing the jars in the sink?”
Mama beats her forehead.
“My God, what have you done?”
* * *
—
I open the newspaper. “Shankar, look what’s playing—Splendor in the Grass, with Natalie Wood.”
Papa walks in. I turn the page. “Dad, look what Hindi movies are playing—Junglee, Pyaar Ka Saagar.” I thrust it in his hand: “Come on. Read it.”
He is baffled. I smile: I don’t have to lie to him anymore about going to the cinema. “Cinema is a vice. All about robbing banks, murder, and adultery,” he always said. Now I won’t have to tell him there’s a play at school—Shakespeare, Molière, Racine, or Marivaux. “No, Papa, I’ve been going to the movies. Isn’t that right, Shankar?”
Cousin Shankar blushes. He’s the one who introduced me to cinema.
It wasn’t a newspaper. You took out a handkerchief from your trouser pocket and read from it as if it was a newspaper.
* * *
—
I rub my eyes and feel drops of water on my cheeks. An artist stands next to my bed: long hair, gold earrings and necklace, saffron scarf, loose white pants, barefoot. He moves his hands over my body in circular motions, clockwise and counterclockwise, closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and mumbles mantra-like words. I smell camphor and incense. He dips a bundle of leaves into water and sprinkles me: scents of lemongrass, mango, and betel. Another round of circular hand motions.
I grab his scarf and pull him towards me.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Shankar says, “Oja.”
“I can see the animal now,” the oja exclaims.
“Get out, you quack doctor, fake magician.”
The oja turns away and makes a portentous announcement: a close relative has practiced witchcraft, and I’m suffering because of it. A rooster has been sacrificed. That’s the animal he sees. Does the family have reason to suspect anyone?
Papa asks me: “Have you seen Auntie Ranee doing anything peculiar with roosters during your visits to her since Uncle Ram’s death?”
Visits that Papa had frowned upon and Mama encouraged.
“I saw her once taking a black rooster to the Hanuman shrine in her garden. I thought it was just another offering to the monkey god, an improvement on the banana and coconut Auntie usually gives him.”
“Don’t talk like that about Hanuman,” Papa says.
“What’s the big deal? Catholics offer flowers and candles. Hindu women pour milk and water on Shiva’s lingam during the Shivratri festival. It’s all the same superstitious nonsense: candles and flowers for Christ, milk for Shiva’s penis, and roosters for Hanuman’s stomach.”
Shankar smiles. I release the oja’s scarf.
“Why wo
uld Auntie Ranee want to harm me?” I ask the oja. “I’m on her side.”
He does not dispute that. “Witchcraft by amateurs can work like a boomerang: it can boomerang back to hurt the inexperienced practitioner, or boomerang sideways and harm those who are close or related to the intended target. You’re a sideways victim, your father was the main target.”
* * *
—
The taxi is back. The tall neighbor walks up to us.
“Io, how come you, a Creole adopted by a Telugu Catholic family, got a female name from Greek mythology? Are you the princess seduced by Jupiter?” My questions puzzle him. With two or three years of primary school, the poor fellow probably never heard of Jupiter and Greek mythology. I don’t expect an answer.
“I’ll pray to the Virgin Mary for him, Mr. Bhushan. We all need to pray.”
Papa thanks him.
“Don’t waste your time praying, Io.”
He ignores me and hugs Papa. “If you want me to, I’ll speak to the sacristan of the church. He can perform an exorcism. Too much reading has worn out his brain.”
* * *
—
The taxi passes Mare d’Albert, about five miles from Mon Désert. Across the harvested cane fields, mounds of stones bulldozed out of the soil by the sugar estates and shaped into pyramids stare at me.
Napoleon rides in on his white horse, resplendent in red-and-gold uniform, and declaims, “Soldats, du haut de ces pyramides quarante siècles vous contemplent.”
I grab Papa’s felt hat and put it on my head. “Let’s march on to victory.”
There are no mameluke warriors to vanquish.
We leave the sunny south and drive to the Plateau. Sugarcane fields and mango trees flush with blossoms become sparse. Eucalyptus trees disappear, tea plantations and fir come into view, covered with a shroud of mist and fog. I ask Shankar for pen and paper.
Silent Winds, Dry Seas Page 10