A House Called Askival

by Merryn Glover

  Going to Askival with just one servant was a relief, therefore, especially for Leota, who often felt her chief duty in India had been reduced to the management of household staff. Aziz was not only a superior khansamma, but resourceful, cheerful and, most remarkable of all, not too superior to perform the other jobs. As this was also true of Stanley & Leota, they covered the work between them.

  And James, as soon as he got out of boarding, was also given a share of the chores. It added to his mixed feelings about being a ‘dayski’. While he gained the freedom of wandering the hillside after school and on weekends, he lost the solidarity with those still enduring internment; while he felt the ache of home-sickness dissolve in his mother’s embrace, he missed the camaraderie of the neighbouring bunks; and while he escaped the strict regime of the dorm, he became captive again to his father’s rule, which was even stricter. All things weighed up, though, the greatest benefit of being out of boarding, was the food. After the stolid fare of the dorm, Aziz’ cooking was manna from heaven and James ate like one starved.

  On one Saturday in August 1942, James’ rapturous eating was shared by his best friend, Paul Verghese. The boys were both ten, skinny and worm-riddled, their hair cut brutally short, knees rough as cheese rind. They polished off Aziz’ masala dosas like a pair of locusts, while Leota clucked at James over his belching and his elbows that were either resting on the table or poking out at right angles. Verghese seemed able to keep his neatly by his side, and did not get sauce all over his face. Matters only worsened for James when the mangoes were served. There was, in his opinion and experience, no decorous way of eating a mango; in fact, any effort to do so spoiled the pleasure. On this rare point, he and his father were agreed, and because of it, Leota turned a blind eye.

  But Verghese proved them all wrong. While James sucked and slurped – an orange aureole widening around his mouth – Verghese made a series of cuts across his mango till it resembled one of the wooden Chinese puzzles sold in the bazaar. He then drew out the pieces, one at a time, and ate the plump flesh with such precision and delicacy that he was left with no more damage than glistening finger-tips and a sheen on his lips.

  ‘May I lick, Aunty,’ he asked Leota, lifting his hands to her.

  ‘Why, sure you can, hon,’ she chuckled. ‘James here is slobbering all the way down to his elbows, so why not you.’

  Verghese slipped each fingertip into his mouth, then licked his lips with a flicker.

  ‘Where’d you learn to cut a mango like that, anyway?’ she went on. ‘Ammachi teach you?’

  He nodded, his brown eyes huge and luminous in his solemn face.

  ‘Well you’re gonna have to teach me. That was real special.’ Leota grinned and rubbed his bony shoulder. ‘Now, you boys go wash and give those mango stones to your beetles.’

  ‘Hooray!’ cried James as their faces lit up and Verghese clapped his hands.

  Beetle collecting was the foremost passion for Oaklands boys, ignited in one’s first weeks in the dorm when older lads paraded their trophies, then fanned by the thrill of catching one’s first – ideally in lower kindergarten – then pursued with religious fervour throughout elementary and on into the early years of high school. After age fourteen or so there was only a faithful remnant that carried on, while everyone else gradually converted to the more virile hunting of wild game (if you were lucky enough to have a gun) or, more commonly – but arguably with greater danger – the opposite sex.

  For devotees, monsoon was the high point in the beetle calendar, and for those who had eyes to see, the creatures were everywhere. Just the night before at dusk, James and Verghese had slipped quietly along the chakkar road from Askival with bamboo poles in their hands and milk powder tins clinking in James’ pack. The road that curved through the dark forest on the north side of the mountain was ghostly with mist. It led to the graveyard and was haunted with stories of headless riders and women in white. The boys giggled nervously, skin prickling as they crept towards a lamppost, the bulb a floating blur in the cloud. They could hear the humming of the beetles and saw throngs of them massed on the metal shade and flying around the light in a wildness. The boys lifted their poles and on a whispered one, two, three from James, brought them down in a mighty whacking on the lamppost, shrieking and laughing. A cloud of beetles buzzed about the light in panic while others landed on the ground at the boys’ feet. James snapped on his torch and crowed at the sight of dozens of helpless creatures on their backs, legs scrabbling in the air.

  ‘Get the tins, Gheesa!’ he hissed. Verghese tugged them out of the rucksack and prised off the lids, revealing beds of limp leaves and moss.

  ‘Lots of rhinos,’ said James, carefully taking hold of a flailing beetle just behind its head and dropping it into his tin. ‘Mean looking critters, hah?’

  ‘Yeah, but useless in a fight, man. Hey look! I got a dumpy!’ Verghese whooped, holding up a black beast with its curved pincers sprung wide and threatening.

  ‘Arè yaar, no fair! Any more, man?’ Legend had it that once clamped to your finger, the dumpy stag would never let go, and that a surgeon would have to cut it off – beetle and finger. Naturally, they were the desire of every boy’s heart.

  Once the boys had gathered as many beetles as they could reasonably fit in their tins, they banged the lids back on – with holes made by a geometry compass earlier that day – and tucked them in the pack. The road home was the same, but it had been transformed, graveyards and ghoulish tales forgotten as they clattered along, hitting their bamboo sticks on railings and laughing at their loot.

  The next day after the dosa lunch, the boys opened their tins on Askival’s south veranda, lifting the lids carefully to knock down any clinging beetles, then dropping in their slimy mango stones. There was nothing the tiny beasts loved more. They would crawl across the stones, feeding on the stringy flesh for days till it finally went off, releasing a sweet-rotten smell every time the tin was opened. Sometimes the fermented flesh seemed to make them drunk and mad and when James stroked their backs, the beetles rose up in fury and waved their legs. He gave them matchsticks, which they broke in half, and some beetles, provoked enough, could even snap a pencil.

  As well as keeping his beetles as tortured pets, James had joined the fierce competition to build the largest collection. The technique was simple. He put a wad of cotton in the bottom of a jar, added a few drops of carbon tetrachloride and covered it with a piece of cardboard. He then popped the beetle on top and watched it die. When it hadn’t moved for a while, he took it out and stuck it to a board with a pin through its abdomen, taking care to spread the legs and antennae into an impression of the lively vigour it had just lost. Once stiff, he transferred it to his handsome glass-topped wooden case with a neat label giving its common name, such as ‘Swear’ and its far more impressive Latin name, xylotropes giddeon, and the date and location of discovery: 6th August 1939, Fairy Glen. James took tremendous trouble and pleasure in the task and by age ten had accumulated no less than sixty-three varieties of beetle. His science teacher and natural history guru assured him there were over 150,000 worldwide and 1600 in the Himalayas alone. James was aiming for the Oaklands record of 100.

  Even more thrilling than keeping beetles for play or display, however, was forcing them to fight. For the younger boys it was these contests that really fuelled the craze. They gathered at recess like a Roman circus around an empty desk, braying and stamping as two winged gladiators duelled to the death. For a long time, the prize fighter was Raymond Clutterbuck’s Chinese stag, a menacing black beast, five inches long, with pincers as curved and cruel as a kirpan. Having made short work of Elijah Peterson’s cherry rhino and ripped Nobby Singh’s dung roller to shreds, Raymond was casting about for fresh prey. James had with him that day a female stone carrier with speckled wing-cases and long feelers that arched down her back. He hadn’t marked her out for fighting. This was a rare variety and once he’d checked the Latin name with his science teacher, he was putting her in
his case.

  But Raymond challenged him, setting his stag into the desk and summoning the crowd.

  ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ they chanted. James felt his cheeks go hot.

  ‘Nah, I’ll bring another one tomorrow,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Coward,’ said Raymond.

  ‘Am not!’ James hissed.

  ‘Prove it,’ the other boy smirked.

  ‘FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!’ the mob shouted.

  ‘I don’t have to prove anything,’ James said, ‘but since you’re so desperate—’ and he shook his stone carrier from the box into the empty desk. Raymond ran a pencil down his stag’s back and it reared like a demon. Someone jabbed James’ stone carrier, making her whip round. Then the pencils prodded and poked till the beetles were forced to run into each other, buzzing madly, pincers snapping. They thrashed about, circling and grappling, backing up, rushing in, till suddenly Raymond’s tore off James’ feeler. The smaller beetle pulled back, but too late. The stag sunk its pincers into the stone carrier’s thorax and as her outer wings flapped helplessly, a thick brown liquid oozed from her side. When she fell limp, Raymond plucked out his champion stag and held it aloft as the crowd cheered.

  Fighting tears, James lifted the stone carrier and rested her back in the box. That night he and Verghese buried her under the giant deodar behind Askival. Verghese read the 23rd Psalm and said a long prayer. James said nothing.

  Paul Verghese was staying with the Connors that week because his mother was in prison and his father had disappeared. They were not, by most peoples’ reckoning, criminals or low-lifes. Hailing from Kerala, his father, Thampan Verghese, had degrees from two American colleges and was professor of history at Lucknow University. His mother, Mariamma, was a vociferous campaigner against multiple social ills and had set up a school for untouchable girls. They were both Christians from the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church that traced its roots back to AD54 when the disciple Thomas himself (evidently no longer doubting) came to India and planted the faith. It would be hard to imagine a pair more worthy of admiration by the British authorities, yet these very authorities had – just two weeks’ previous – clapped Mrs Verghese in jail and were hard on the heels of the Professor. The reason was simple: the couple were long-standing activists in the freedom movement and had just stood with Mohandas Gandhi in his Quit India campaign.

  Thampan’s agitating for liberty in India went right back to his student days in Madras. It was 1919 and the British had brought in their Rowlatt Act, licence to convict suspected “terrorists” without charge, trial or appeal. It incited protest across the country and Gandhi’s call for the first national satyagraha, the “truth force” by which he intended to bend the will of the British. When troops fired into a street march in Amritsar it was a flame to the touch paper. In the burning and bloodshed that followed, five Europeans were killed and Brigadier General Dyer sent to take charge. He banned gatherings and upon hearing of a large assembly at Jallianwalla Bagh, set forth with his Gurkha and Indian troops. He did not wait to discover that the group was mainly village people come to celebrate the spring festival of Baisakhi, nor was he deterred, upon arrival at the enclosed compound, by the sight of many women and children in the crowd. Without threat from them or warning from him, he ordered his troops to fire till their ammunition was exhausted. Then he turned heel and left. Behind him, over a thousand people lay wounded, over four hundred dead.

  It was a turning point for India and for Thampan. The twenty-year-old felt his love of the Biblical Exodus story and his love of country converge in a torrent of righteous wrath that swept him to the twin protests of street march and printing press. In this latter campaign he met Mariamma, whose father was the printer. Inky pamphlets on swadeshi and the Indian National Congress were soon joined by wedding invitations as Thampan and Mariamma rapidly became a formidable and inseparable pair. All through their post-graduate studies in America, when they shared a single bed and lived off scraps from an Indian restaurant, they remained in close contact with the freedom movement back home, corresponding furiously, raising support and sympathy in America, and sending articles to Gandhi’s Young India publication. They returned in time to join him on the Salt March of 1930 and were among the 90,000 arrested in the Civil Disobedience actions of that year.

  Leota first met Mariamma in the queue for the toilets at the All-India Christian Conference for the Upliftment of National Women in Patna in 1937 and the pair struck up a firm friendship. Mariamma followed Leota’s recommendation of Oaklands School for her son, as it A) was run by American missionaries rather than the British, and B) had always welcomed Indians. Whenever Mariamma came to Landour she stayed with the Connors at Askival, adding Indian authors to their library and South Indian recipes to Aziz’ repertoire. She suspected the books were never touched, but knew the food was consumed with enthusiasm. India, she understood, conquered the foreigner first through the senses, and only later claimed the mind.

  In the August of 1942, India’s battle to claim its sovereignty from the foreigner’s rule reached a new pitch. Gandhi had lost patience with the British for taking India’s people and resources for their war whilst dragging their feet over a commitment to freedom. In a fiery speech, he demanded immediate independence and brought the wrath of the British upon his head. Within twenty-four hours, the entire Congress leadership and many supporters were arrested. India responded with greater wrath in a wave of violence, strikes and destruction across the country. Deemed to be the most serious uprising since The Great Mutiny of 1857 (or The First War of Independence, depending on your perspective), Viceroy Linlithgow responded with harsh repression, deploying tens of thousands of troops, making as many arrests and causing a thousand deaths.

  When Mariamma and other Lucknow members of the Congress were packed off to prison – with the Professor narrowly escaping – she wrote to the Connors asking them to take Verghese out of boarding in case he became upset about his parents’ fate. Leota had wasted no time in rounding up a coolie and collecting the boy and his bags from the dorm. As it happened, he did not appear too fretful on their behalf; his parents had been in and out of prison before and Appachi was very good at hide ’n seek. In fact, any anxiety seemed to evaporate in the excitement of being out of boarding with James. Bedtime at the Connors always involved readings from the likes of The Jungle Book and Huckleberry Finn and these were thrilling enough to make up for the lengthy Bible passages and prayers that preceded them. Then there were the delights of Aziz’ cooking and the fascination of the western possessions at the Connor’s house: James’ baseball mitt, the National Geographic magazines, the Army Surplus camping gear. Best of all, though, was the freedom to roam the hillside after dark and gather beetles.

  Playing with their captives on the veranda that Saturday, sheltering from the steady rain, the boys could hear Aziz humming to himself as he prepared supper in the kitchen behind them.

  ‘James,’ Verghese whispered, a little smile forming dimples in his dark cheeks.

  ‘Yah, what?’

  ‘Why don’t we stick some beetles into the fruit bowl for Aziz-ji, hah? Just for a little surprise, like?’

  James laughed and shook his head.

  ‘You’re crazy, man.’

  ‘No, just for fun, yeah, come on. He’ll laugh too, I promise.’

  ‘Dad’ll kill me.’

  ‘But your Daddy won’t know. Aziz-ji would never tell. He’ll just give you one play slap on your arm – tuk’ – Verghese demonstrated – ‘and that’s it. Come on, it’ll be so funny, man.’

  James was quiet for a moment, teasing a beetle with a long stalk of grass. He listened to Aziz warbling as he pounded and kneaded dough on the kitchen table. He had already told them his plans for supper: Hearty Hamburger Soup with Clover-leaf Rolls followed by fruit salad. James’ face took on a lop-sided grin.

  The fruit bowl sat on the dining table, fragrant with mangoes, guavas and small, speckled bananas. Stanley and Leota were in the office, door closed,
all sounds hushed by rain. The boys slipped off their tin lids, quickly tucked half a dozen beetles amongst the humps and crevices of the fruit and tip-toed like cartoon villains into James’ room. They threw themselves in a tangled heap on the bed, stifling their giggles in the razai and clutching their sides in pantomime hilarity. When their merriment had died down they listened at the door. There was nothing but the muffled clatter of Aziz in the kitchen and the occasional shuffle and scrape from the Connors’ office, so the boys soon tired and turned back to the room.

  ‘What you wanna do?’ James asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ Verghese shrugged.

  ‘Tops?’ James pointed at a pair sitting on his window-sill. ‘Yeah, ok,’ said Verghese and started cracking his knuckles.

  James tossed him one. ‘They’re not really sharp enough, though. You got your knife?’

  ‘Yeah, man.’ Sitting cross-legged on the floor they got out their pocket knives and whittled at the tips to make them viciously sharp. If your point was lethal enough and your technique good, you could split an opponent’s top clean in half. Knives back in pockets they started whipping their tops on the polished concrete floor. James got his to jump onto a tin trunk and then back down, while Verghese managed to spin his top on the palm of his hand for a few seconds till the pain made him drop it. A small red prick of blood rose on his hand like a stigmata and he whooped with pride. Then James turned his top on Verghese’s and sent it hurtling under the bed.

  ‘Arè, man, no fair!’ cried Verghese as he dived under the bed, with James snickering behind him. He was still underneath, shoving boxes and mouldy canvas bags aside, when they heard a scream and a crash from the dining room.

  ‘My God!’ yelped Verghese.

  ‘Shoot,’ breathed James, blanched face turning to the door. For the briefest moment they had no idea what had happened, but with the sudden pushing back of chairs in the office and the shouts from Stanley and Leota and the running of feet and the continuing screams, the truth sank home.