The Retribution

by Shankar Kashyap

  It was not until a year later when the scandal broke out. There were police in Dev’s house asking lots of questions to him and his brothers. His father was mortified when he was told by the police that Brother Francis had been arrested for sexual abuse of school children. There was even talk of the school closing down completely. The rumour factory swung into overdrive and it became increasingly difficult for Dev’s family to live in Mombasa anymore. People were pointing fingers at Dev wherever he went. Ramcharan tried to keep himself busy at the temple. There were taunts within the temple too. He had to put up with accusations from a section of the local Hindu community.

  ‘You should not have put him in that Jesuit school’ they said, ‘We told you something like this would happen’ ‘You can’t be a priest in the temple, it is not holy’ or ‘the boy needs to be cleansed.’

  Dev’s mother could hear whispers and sniggers as she walked to the grocers in Wellington road. She could not understand what was happening and was bewildered at the comments made some people at the grocer shop she frequented. Sexual abuse to children was an unheard of concept to Meera Ben, coming from an extremely sheltered Gujarati upbringing.

  “We will have to leave Mombasa. We will go back to India.” Dev’s father said to his wife, Meera Ben.

  “What will you do there? Will you get a job in a temple again in India after this scandal?” Dev’s mother was constantly crying ever since the police had come to his house. “I told you not to put him in that school of heathens. God Krishna will not forgive us. We will rot in hell for this sacrilege.”

  “We have no money to go anywhere else. Sharma ji has already said that the community leaders will be asking for me to leave during the next meeting.” Dev’s father said. “And that is only next week.”

  “You can ask your uncle in England to help.”

  “I have not spoken to him in years. How can I ask him for help now?”

  Meera Ben started to cry again. She had the end of her red pallu in her mouth, which was soaking wet by then. Dev and his brothers were hiding behind the door, too afraid to say anything. Dev did not understand what the problem was. He had come to enjoy his visits to the Brother’s office every evening after school. He used to get lots of sweeties and gifts almost every time. Brother Francis had bought him new clothes and shiny black shoes to wear to school. He was nearly as smart as those boys of rich merchant family of Sharmaji. He had gone around showing everyone the big colouring book in the school. It was his birthday present from Brother Francis.

  “Ok. Ok. Please don’t cry any more. I will call him from the post office first thing tomorrow morning.”

  It took Ramcharan a few days before he could get hold of the uncle. The uncle was surprised to hear from Dev’s father after so many years. It turned out that he was not happy with his local temple in Leicester and he wanted to bring someone from Gujarat to start another temple.

  “Let me speak to my friends in the Gujarati association here in Leicester and see what I can do.”

  Time passed with no word from his uncle in Leicester. Ramcharan tried to get hold of his uncle again a few times with no luck. He would spend hours sitting in the post office after ‘booking a call’ to England waiting to be connected. Finally, one rainy day his call was connected as he was trying to dry himself inside the post office. The torn umbrella did not keep much rain off his clothes as he walked two miles from the old house to the post office. The battered old Lambretta scooter had finally conked out despite Suleiman’s efforts and it had been languishing in his garage now for months. The connection was bad and Ramcharan could not hear everything his uncle said over the phone. The uncle was arranging a sponsorship for Ramcharan and family to come over to England.

  “You bring the family over here and we will fix something for you.” It did not fill Ramcharan with a lot of confidence, but he was running out of options and money.

  “What about a temple?” Ramcharan had asked hesitatingly.

  “That will take some time. But I have seen a place in Leicester where you can run a grocer shop till we sort out a temple for you.”

  Ramcharan had thanked him profusely just as the connection was lost. ‘A grocer shop is something better than nothing,’ he thought. A letter arrived a couple of weeks later but no sign of a sponsorship from the uncle for a British visa for the family. Ramcharan was getting increasingly despondent by the day. He could see his family on the streets. The temple committee would throw the family out of the house any day now, he thought.

  Dev was sorry to leave his school and his friends. He never saw Brother Francis again after the day when the police had come home. His elder brother, Kishen took him to the school for a few days afterwards. But the continuous taunting and interminable fights made school intolerable. Going home with a bruise here and there became a normality almost. When he came home with a torn shirt one day, Meera Ben was distraught.

  “I knew this would happen. I told you not to put him into that Christian school. You did not listen to me. No one listens to me.” She complained to Ramcharan with tears in her eyes as she sewed the shirt back. One day he was called to the Headmaster’s office where he found his father waiting for him.

  Father Phillip, the Headmaster smiled at him as he was ushered into the office.

  “Come on son. See who is here to see you?”

  Dev could not understand what his father was doing at the school. He was too scared to say anything and stood there twiddling his hands with head bent down on his chest.

  “Dev, father Phillip says that you are getting into fights with other boys. Is that true?”

  Dev lifted his head up to stare at the father Phillip first and then turned to look at his father.

  “It is they who start the fight, father. They call me names. They make fun of me all the time.” He paused for a minute and looked down as he continued. “They beat up my friend Peter Ngyo.”

  “You should come to me son.” Father Phillip said. “Next time anyone picks on you, I want you to come straight to me.”

  This went on for a few months. There were two more visits to the school by his father. Then one day he was told he does not have to go to school anymore. His mother was crying and there were a lot of arguments in the house. Dev was confused and angry. He found his father had stopped going to temple. There was a new priest in the temple who had come from India. A young man, recently married with a young bride. Just like Ramcharan all those years ago. There were arguments in the house all the time and it always seem to end up with his mother crying and father storming out of the house. The promised sponsorship letter came through the post just as Ramcharan was losing hope of ever going to England. He had written to his family and a couple of friends back in India with no response. From a ‘rising star’ as he left the shore on the ship at Bombay all those years ago, he had become a pariah all of a sudden.

  It took Ramcharan several months to get the air tickets, passports and make the shipping arrangements. They packed their meagre belongings and bought air tickets with the money given by the community leaders as a leaving present. They were happy to see the back of the family. The rich merchant, Sharmaji gave him an envelope full of money one day and said,

  “What happened is not your fault Ramcharan. You have been a good priest all these years and you have done an excellent service to our family and the community. God will protect you.”

  The envelope had a sizeable amount of money. Ramcharan cried at the sight of it and tried to bend down and touch Sharmaji’s feet. He had never seen so much money in his life before.

  “No, no. You mustn’t. That would be a sacrilege. I hope this will help you till you set up in your new life wherever you are going.”

  Dev had watched the burly African men load their wooden boxes and gunny sacks on to the truck which would take the boxes to the ship on the way to Southampton in England. Ramcharan took Dev to the Kilindini harbour to see the loading of the boxes. Peter’s dad was a carpenter and had made some boxes from discarde
d railway sleepers they had managed to salvage from the sides of the old Mombasa to Nairobi railway line. All of their worldly goods were in those roughhewn wooden crates which looked pitiful amongst the huge containers.

  The day of departure from Mombasa came, a bit too soon for Dev. He had come to think of it as his home. It was Dev’s first flight and he was excited and at the same time, very sad to leave the place he had come to call home. A battered taxi took them to the Moi International airport on a rainy Monday morning. His mother, Meera Ben had flustered the night before the journey trying to make sure she did not miss anything to pack. Ramcharan looked at the three battered old suitcases and a cardboard box on the floor as they were waiting for the taxi. Two of them were the cases he had brought with him from India over fifteen years ago. The day when he boarded the ship at Bombay docks with his young bride was as if it was only yesterday. He was a “most eligible bachelor” with a good job as a priest in Mombasa come to Bombay looking for a bride. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he turned to no one in particular and said,

  “Not much to show for nearly fifteen years of hard work in this blessed country.”

  Meera Ben held both Dev and the little Vijai close to her as she replied.

  “This is not the time to lose hope. You have been so strong for us all this time.”

  Dev’s elder brother, Kishen, almost fifteen now, went to Ramcharan and touched his shoulder. He was nearly as tall as his father.

  “I am sure we will be fine in England father. You said so yourself.”

  He had just started secondary school, but was more mature than most boys of his age. Dev’s friend Peter Ngyo and his father the carpenter had come home to say goodbye. Ngyo gave a brand new note book to Dev as a going away present and said,

  “I want you to write down everything you see and do in England. I want to read it when I come to England when I grow up.”

  Dev looked down at the book Peter had given him. It was a bright red hard bound school note book and the pages were fully lined. It was the notebook he had always wanted from the school book shop, but the one that Ramcharan could not afford. They had hugged each other and cried. Dev could see his friend waving his hands through the back of the taxi until it turned the corner of the street.

  As they reached the airport, the two boys became excited and were chatting away. Mother just looked out of the window at the passing scene of old Mombasa with its rickety trucks filled with vegetables bound to the Mombasa market going in the opposite direction. Taita Bantu women carrying huge baskets filled with plastic utensils to the local market with children tagging behind. Pavement hawkers selling everything from t-shirts to mud pots to tribal jewellery seem to go on mile after mile. The scene of the sunrise over the sea as the taxi chugged along the old Fort Jesus enthralled Dev as he sat looking out of the back window until it turned into bustling road going through the city. As they neared Chaani, the airport traffic was busy and noisy. Once they crossed the bridge over Tudor creek the huge towers of oil refinery came into view. Ramcharan had hopes of making his sons engineers so that they could get good jobs at the oil refinery. Now they were forced to leave the country, Ramcharan had come to regard as his adopted country and where he had visions of making his family’s future. His father was quiet most of the journey as he himself was unsure of what he would face in a strange country with very little money. He was not sure how long the “going away gift”, the local community had collected and Sharmaji’s generous help would last. His uncle had reassured him with.

  “It will be fine. It will be hard in the beginning, but you can make a good living out of the grocery store till we get a temple established.”

  Ramcharan felt a bit humiliated at the thought of running a grocery store after being a respected priest for so many years, but it was beyond his control. The family landed at Heathrow on a cold November morning. Uncle had come to meet them with his white van. The first thing Dev noticed was how cold it was. It was dark even at midday and the freezing cold rain made him shiver as he was taken into the white van. It rained all the way to Uncle’s house in Leicester.

  Dev hated it the minute he got out of the van. It was still raining and dark. And then the silence. There was deafening silence everywhere. All the houses looked exactly the same and there were no people. “Where are all the people?” Dev wondered. There was no hustle and bustle of Mombasa. It was depressingly quiet. ‘What happened to all the colours? There are only two colours here,’ he thought ‘only grey and black.’ He wanted to go back to Kenya and his warm home in Mombasa.

  He was put into a school where there were a lot of Asian boys and girls. They teased him about his clothes and his funny accent. He became morose and sultry. He blamed his father for bringing him to this wet and cold country where everyone spoke and behaved differently. He often thought about his little house in Mombasa and the field behind the house where he would play cricket with his friends. One of the devotees in the temple had made him a wooden bat which was one of his prized possession and it had spent many hours in the field with it with his friend Peter Ngyo. Brother Francis had bought him a new tennis ball to play with the bat. He was still bitter about leaving the bat back in Mombasa.

  “The box is full. We can’t afford to take another box in the ship.” His father had said. “I will get you a new bat when we get to England.”

  That never happened. It was always too cold and wet to play cricket in Leicester anyway, he thought. Father was not earning enough money to buy him a bat. The first year in England passed by painfully slowly for Dev. He would sit at the window of their little terrace house, watching the traffic go by in a constant drizzle. The silence seemed to stun him after the hustle and bustle of Mombasa. He went into a shell with no friends either at school or home. He missed going to the beaches, the hot scorched white sands. He missed those trips to the Fort Jesus where he was allowed to buy snacks from stalls around the old fort.

  His father watched Dev transform from an ebullient kid to a morose brat. He started to get into fights again. Ramcharan managed to set up a grocery shop with the help of his generous uncle on Harrison road not too far from Belgrave Road, where most of the Indian shops thrived. The money he had brought from Mombasa did not last long despite help from his uncle. The money from the shop was just enough to feed the family with three growing children and keep a roof over their heads. Ramcharan would call up his uncle whenever he got an opportunity to remind him of the temple that was promised. There were difficult days and the family coped with the help of the generous uncle now and again.

  Leicester

  “This is an awful country. You made a mistake bringing us here.” Meera ben complained within a few days of arrival at their little rented house. “It rains all the time and there are no people here. Where are all the people?”

  “It feels that way coming from a very busy place. We have been given warm clothes by Uncle and it is not that cold inside the house,” Ramcharan replied. “We are going to see the community Church hall on Wrexton Street tomorrow and, God willing, we should be able to get the hall. It has a great potential to be turned into a nice little temple for Lord Krishna. He will protect us.”

  Unfortunately it was not quite as easy as he thought it would be. Ramcharan had not counted on the bureaucratic quagmire he had to go through before they could even think of buying the Church hall. It was not like Mombasa where word of mouth helped move the bureaucratic machinery. Nearly a year passed before the Uncle could get planning permission and had collected enough money to pay for the hall.

  Meera Ben was going from bad to worse. She hated the place. “This is place is too cold and wet. It is always dark too. Very unhealthy. Children will fall ill,” She would complain.

  “It feels cold coming from a warm country like Kenya. You will get used to it. The children are strong and they will not notice the difference, Ramcharan would reassure her.

  But Dev had noticed the difference. ‘This place is cold, dark and wet all the time. I want
to go back to Mombasa. There are no fields to play here and where is the beach?’ He thought. Dev missed his friend Peter Ngyo. He did not enjoy the school particularly. He did not make many friends until he got into high school. He would stay indoors sitting next to the window watching the traffic go by and thinking about his days in Mombasa. He had taken the little note book his friend had given him the day after he arrived in Leicester to write in it as promised. But he could not think of what to write because there was nothing happening here.’ He spoke to his brother Kishen about it.

  “What do you think I should write in this notebook?”

  “Well, you have travelled thousands of miles from Mombasa on a plane. Not many boys of your age would have done that. Why don’t you start writing about our flight?” Kishen had replied.

  He had started to write slowly at first, not exactly sure what to write and what to leave out. It soon became a habit. He would sit on his bed last thing at night and write everything that happened to him on that day. Some days there would be nothing on the page apart from “very cold again and wet.” Soon the book was almost full. He would read what he had written the year before on the same date. It was now well worn and corners were turned up and somewhat discoloured. He did not want anyone to see the note book so he hid it under his bed. He would check every day as soon as he came back home to see if anyone had touched it. When the edges of the notebook started to tear, he bought a plastic sleeve and tied a ribbon around it.

  Dev’s father took him to the local school to enrol him in the summer. That was the first time he saw some boys of his own age. He found the school exciting and scary at first. He would come straight home from school unlike his classmates who went to play in the field afterwards. Dev became increasingly withdrawn and glum His mother’s constant complaining only depressed him further. He could not bear to see her so unhappy. She had never managed to pick up much English while in Mombasa as her life revolved around her family and the people who came to the temple. Even the grocer near her house spoke Gujarati.