Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  AK was pensive. It wasn’t often he was in this mood. It must be his age, I thought. In your mid-fifties, thoughts about life and death often swim to the surface of the mind.

  I think of his house in Madras: the bougainvillea-festooned gate and the many-angled house with slits and crevices trapping light. Stacked canvases fill every bit of space. For himself, he has a small living area with a narrow bed, a table and a few other things …so few possessions for so rich a life. The rest of the house is devoted to the tools of his art. He has found his place. It can’t have been easy, however. He works in the state department and stays resolutely out of the art establishment and its coteries. His art is his own and perhaps that’s why he is so content in his skin.

  I look around me. There is nothing here to suggest the presence of my art. All I have are my steel fingernails and a little box of ghee in which my chundapoo seeds wait.

  I close my eyes. I think of my father. In his last years, he came here often and some days he would talk a great deal. I do not know if what he told me was to ease his burden or mine.

  He saw my art as a burden. It would forever keep me down. It would forever prevent me from being me, he said.

  ‘I have worn many faces, played many roles, but I did that to survive. So that I could preserve the I within me. I had no choice. But what you do …I don’t understand it. How can you choose to be someone else all the time? Why do you always need to be in someone else’s skin? Is that the only way you can be satisfied with life?’

  I had tried explaining, but it was beyond him, I thought. His life was not mine. He would never understand that I had to be someone else before I could be content in my skin.

  Then I think, while telling my story I will have to wear the guise of both my father and mother. Only then will I be able to explain their love. And only when their stories are told can I permit myself to even enter the story. Without them, I don’t exist.

  Will Chris be patient enough? Will he understand?

  It doesn’t matter, I think. It is enough that I tell him. But first he has to know about how Sethu my father who called himself Seth, met Saadiya my mother.

  1938 The Plank of Avidity

  They cycled. The two men, Dr Samuel Sagayaraj and Sethu, cycled everywhere. Others might choose a bullock cart or a covered jhutka cart with a pony, or if they could afford it, a car. Bur Dr Samuel Sagayaraj disdained all forms of transport except his bicycle. ‘I am happy with mine; you will be with yours, I assure you. My cycle has served me well,’ he had said, gazing at it fondly. Then he counted the money once again.

  ‘Why do I need a bicycle when there is an ambulance?’ Sethu asked. He didn’t relish the thought of cycling in the fierce heat. Besides, he hated having to admit to the doctor that he didn’t know how to cycle. It would begin a round of discussions which at this point Sethu decided he had neither the stomach nor the stamina for.

  ‘Ambulance!’ the doctor expostulated, more a cry of outrage than surprise. His eyebrows locked horns even more fiercely. ‘The ambulance is for patients, and emergencies. Even then, I use it only reluctantly. Running an ambulance is expensive. And running it for able-bodied men is a sin,’ he said, thrusting the notes into Sethu’s palm.

  Then the doctor turned his head and said softly, ‘Go, do all that is in thine heart; for the Lord is with thee.’

  Like a baby pigeon, Sethu thought, looking at the doctor’s head, which was cocked in expectation. He sighed. He was weary of this game but obedient enough to respond. It had begun during the time of the Great Cholera Epidemic when the doctor had said that he thought Sethu didn’t seem to be well acquainted with the Bible. Sethu had known fear then. What if the doctor saw through him? So he began reading the Holy Book diligently and discovered that he retained most of what he read effortlessly. It stayed in his mind and, without knowing how, he once placed a quote the doctor had mouthed. Thereafter, the doctor expected him to do it each time, and soon Sethu spent all his free time reading the Bible and memorizing it. ‘The Second Book of Samuel, otherwise called the Second Book of Kings. Chapter 7: God’s promises to David.’

  ‘You are simply amazing. How on earth do you do it?’

  The glee in the doctor’s voice made him cringe. ‘It’s not hard when you read the good book as often as I do,’ Sethu said, knowing it was expected of him. Particularly when it is the Books of Samuel you choose your quotations from, the voice in his head added.

  Ever since he came to Nazareth, the voice in his head had acquired a new timbre. It had changed from his uncle’s to a gruffer version of his own. A voice that mocked him so often for what he had turned into. A voice that wouldn’t let him be a true acolyte.

  When Sethu’s black Raleigh arrived, the doctor taught him to cycle like he had taught him, during the epidemic, to load syringes and give injections. The good doctor was relentless once he had set himself a task.

  ‘I need you to go with me to many places, and doing it on foot will take forever. Here, don’t stare at the wheel. Look ahead,’ he said, giving Sethu a little push as he perched on the high seat precariously. The cycle wobbled, but Dr Samuel was there to hold the handle bar and steady it.

  Sethu tried to concentrate. It wasn’t just Dr Samuel but Faith, Hope and Charity who nurtured a great desire to see him cycle. They chirped, cheeped and clucked words of encouragement. Sethu glared at them darkly thinking, if I ever learn to conquer this contraption, I shall ride away from their cosseting into the horizon.

  A few falls, a skinned knee and a scraped palm later, Sethu got his ‘balance’ as Dr Samuel referred to it.

  ‘He’s got his balance,’ Faith rushed to tell Hope and Charity.

  ‘Praise be the Lord,’ Hope, the most pious of the three, cried.

  ‘Oh holy father, thank you for giving our Seth his balance.’ Charity broke into prayer.

  Seth flushed with embarrassment. They made it seem as if he had swum to Ceylon and back. ‘Oh shut up, you fat old hens!’ he wanted to scream.

  But the thought of the horror on their faces made him curb his tongue and irritation.

  ‘Yes, praise be the Lord and our Dr Samuel,’ Sethu said obediently.

  The women looked at each other joyfully. That was why they liked Seth so much. He was a good Christian and a loyal acolyte, just as they were.

  Sethu on his bicycle knew a freedom that in the past few months had been denied him. He had had to depend on Dr Samuel for his forays into the outer world. Now he mounted his bicycle and set forth on his own, pedalling briskly.

  Uphill he would rise from the seat and pedal even more furiously, feeling the muscles in his calves tense. And downhill, he would glide on the momentum of that effort, the wind rushing through his hair, making his shirt billow and whispering in his ears. Who would have thought that two wheels and a handle could provide such a sense of escape?

  Sethu did not dare seek beyond the immediate peripheries of Nazareth. Here, in Nazareth, he knew a security he had never known before, not even in his own home. And yet, a certain restlessness bruised the pattern of his quiet life, making him want more. More of what, he didn’t know. But there it was. He felt the need to escape, to flee, to break out and break away.

  A few months after the epidemic, in November, when the monsoon had arrived and left its trail of wetness, Dr Samuel decided it was time for them to go to Arabipatnam.

  ‘How far is it?’ Sethu asked, looking at the baskets Hope, Faith and Charity were packing. Medicines, a change of clothes and packets of food.

  ‘The doctor won’t drink any water except from his well,’ Hope said, while pouring water into his surukku sembu. Its copper sides gleamed.

  ‘And won’t eat any rice except the rice grown in his paddy fields near Palaiyamkotai. Every harvest, his mother sends a huge gunny bag of grain for him.’

  ‘Fat brown rice; that’s the secret of his energy and devotion to duty,’ Faith added, knowing Sethu’s preference for polished rice.

  ‘It makes sense to be careful
,’ Dr Samuel said. The doctor had little patience for fripperies and the sisters made him seem like a fusspot, a foolish fusspot at that.

  ‘Most water in this region is not potable. I know that with water from this well, I am safe. As for the rice, now that’s my weakness.’

  ‘He gets constipated if he eats any other rice,’ Charity murmured.

  Sethu grinned. Dr Samuel shooed away a fly. And the other two nudged Charity to be silent.

  Dr Samuel’s bicycle bore the stamp of his profession—his doctor’s bag. On the handle bar was slung a little basket with his surukku sembu, its lid screwed on tightly so as to not spill even a drop of water.

  Sethu stared at the two baskets slung on either side of his cycle carrier. The doctor and his mule, he thought bitterly.

  Increasingly, he felt bile corrode his thinking. The total subservience demanded of him filled him with a resentment that he couldn’t explain. The voice in his head mocked him more than ever: So is this what you want? To live here forever as the doctor’s pack animal until one of these days, he foists one of the kondai sisters on you? Whew, aren’t you lucky? To have your pick of the three buns. So which one will it be? Big bun, little bun, or the plaited bun? And for your honeymoon the doctor might set up a health camp where all five of you can go and read each other’s heartbeat.

  They cycled. The two men, Dr Samuel and Sethu.

  ‘We have to cycle towards Thiruchendur,’ Dr Samuel said as they set off.

  Sethu tried to read the doctor’s face. Had he in some way read Sethu’s mind and discovered its vagrant leanings? Is that why he had proposed the trip to Arabipatnam? If so, the doctor had got it all wrong. He barely had time to glance at the countryside. The heavily loaded bicycle needed all his attention.

  But slowly, he found that it didn’t seem so heavy any more. If he didn’t think about the medicine bottles smashing or the food packets unravelling, the bicycle didn’t seem so weighed down. And soon, he could look his fill at the landscape they were cycling through.

  It was, he realized, no different from Nazareth. Flat scrublands were broken by an occasional pocket of acacia trees. Suddenly there would be a glimpse of green fields in which paddy grew and a line of palm trees, a few of them with their tops spliced by lightning. Sethu felt hot and dirty. The brownness of the landscape made his throat hurt.

  At home, one never saw brown. It was always green. A million shades of green. But here, everything was the colour of mud, dried mud. Mud-coloured rocks. Mud-coated leaves. Mud-coloured rainwater puddles. Vast tracks of deserted brownness.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the road, Dr Samuel braked.

  ‘Look to your left, Seth,’ he said, pointing to a little hillock of mud and stones.

  ‘Some years ago when the public works department began cutting a road through here, the workers found an urn. When they opened it, they discovered a skeleton and many precious things.

  ‘The workers refused to work after that. Then an archaeologist, an Englishman, organized a dig. They unearthed several such urns. And when they finished, a Hindu priest and a Christian padre came to exorcize the land. Only after that did the workers agree to return.’

  Sethu looked around him with interest. ‘Did they ever find out whose skeletons they were? I mean, did they belong to some ancient race or a nomadic tribe?’

  ‘Seth, burial urns are not all that rare. What made these extraordinary was that each one of the urns contained a female skeleton. Not one was male. Not even a baby’s. It makes you think, doesn’t it? What kind of people were they? History would have us believe that once upon a time, perhaps a thousand years ago, a certain primitive tribe lived here. But I think this was the burial ground for the women who once lived in Arabipatnam. Wives and daughters of the original settlers. But I am not a historian, so who is going to accept my conclusion!’

  Dr Samuel mounted his bicycle again, but Sethu stood rooted to the spot. Suddenly the land had acquired a sinister hue. Beneath all that placid brownness lay a darkness. Sethu shivered.

  ‘As we go on, I’ll show you more strange sights. Things that will make you wonder …’

  Sethu only half-listened as he pedalled. Why did they bury their women in urns? Were these women alive or dead when they were stuffed into the urns?

  Sethu felt a sense of trepidation grow within him. He darted a glance at the doctor. Suddenly he realized that the land wasn’t so desolate any more. He saw a few buildings. Then more and more houses, small and with tiled roofs, each surrounded by a cluster of trees, began to dot the land. The two men turned into what seemed like the main street of a village. Houses lined the street on either side. Houses that were dressed with vermilion and white markings.

  Sethu looked around him in surprise. A little Brahmin ghetto in this Christian heartland? Soon they went past a temple. He glanced at Dr Samuel’s face again. No wonder he looked grim. ‘What is this place called?’ he asked.

  ‘Look to it: for evil is before you,’ the doctor mumbled.

  Sethu stared wearily at the doctor’s profile. Wouldn’t he ever tire of this? Even in the heat of the midday sun, he expected Sethu to place the quote, chapter and verse.

  ‘Exodus 10; the plague of the locusts.’

  ‘No, no,’ the doctor whispered. ‘The Egyptians were as innocent as baby goats, compared to these. This place is truly evil.’

  Sethu chewed his lip. What did the doctor mean? He must hate this place, this ghetto of heathens where there was not even one lamb for Jesus’ flock. Why else would he brand the village evil?

  Sethu cleared his throat and asked again, ‘What is this village called?’

  Dr Samuel muttered under his breath, ‘Later. Later!’

  When they had left the village and its main street behind them, the doctor stopped under the shade of a tamarind tree. He drank deeply from his surukku sembu and said, ‘Ugh! Every time I have to go through that village, my stomach heaves. Their hypocrisy nauseates me! And I wonder what disease lies trapped within those walls …’

  Sethu said nothing. This bordered on fanaticism, he thought. How could he react so strongly to a Hindu village? Something in him rebelled.

  ‘They have as much right to be Hindus as others have to be Christians or Muslims,’ he said.

  The doctor stared at him.

  ‘What do you mean? Do you think it is their being Hindu that disgusts me?’

  Sethu shrugged. He was not going to state the obvious.

  ‘That isn’t just an ordinary Hindu village, Seth,’ the doctor tried to explain. It was as if he understood the younger man’s uneasiness.

  Sethu held up his hand to stem the doctor’s rhetoric.

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter. You are entitled to your beliefs.’ As I am to mine, he left unsaid.

  ‘No, you must listen. That isn’t just a village of Hindus. It’s a village of brahmins, the most orthodox brahmins I’ve ever known. They’re so strict in their “madi” that they will sprinkle the road with chaani once we have walked or cycled past. They would like to obliterate our presence with cow dung and water.

  ‘In the past, if one of them was ill, they would ask that I attend. Because I’m not one of them, they would bring the patient to a cowshed—if the house had one. The presence of chaani perhaps cleansed the air of my presence. I would have to clench my guts not to throw up for the smell of cow shit, but they wouldn’t have it any other way. If there wasn’t a cow shed, they would bring the patient to the side of the road and that’s where I would have to examine him or her.

  ‘Each time I went, I swore that I would never return. Then I would think of the patient and my Hippocratic oath and I would allow my anger to die.

  ‘But that isn’t what makes me so angry. It’s what they do while wrapping themselves in such rituals and customs. That the men marry their nieces and the widows are forced to shave their heads is something all of us know about. But this …this I wouldn’t have known, but for a patient.’

  Dr Samuel liked stories. He like
d telling them even better. Sethu often suspected him of making up stories. He had discovered that most of the tales owed their origin to not-so-well-known parts of the Bible. But he kept his discovery quiet. He was quite willing to let the doctor be Aaron: ‘I know that he can speak well,’ etc.

  Sethu leaned forward to show his interest.

  ‘The woman was possessed, they told me: she claimed that she was the mother of snakes. That in her womb she bore baby snakes.

  ‘She was sitting in the cowshed. I had never seen anyone as thin as her. She was a skeleton covered with clothes.

  ‘I have to examine her, I said. The men backed out and the woman’s aunt stayed.

  ‘Her belly was distended and I could feel a few knots. If it had been anyone else, I would have instantly diagnosed it to be a tapeworm infection. But how could that be? These people were strict vegetarians. I was puzzled.

  ‘“Why are you wasting your time?” she said. “Can’t you feel it? Those are my snake eggs. I am their mother.”

  ‘When I said it wasn’t possible, she grew angry. She said the next time she gave birth to her snake child, she would show me.

  ‘The woman turned to the wall of the cowshed and wept: “I know I am barren. I can’t give birth to human babies. But the gods have blessed me. I am the mother of snakes now.”

  ‘I would like to have had stool and urine samples to help me with my investigation. But how could I ask? Nevertheless, I did. I will be back tomorrow morning, I said. I would come in the ambulance, a little makeshift lab in the absence of anything else. I would take my microscope and do a chamber study. I was intrigued, you must understand.’

  ‘And then …’ Sethu asked, knowing how the doctor liked to stretch a tale. If he didn’t hurry him, he would proceed to some other inconsequential minutiae.