Lakshmi spread out the sari on the rocks to dry. She heard an insistent wail, ‘Acca, Acca, pasikithu.’ Sighing, she picked up her 3-year-old sister, who had been playing in the mud behind her. The little girl grabbed the sleeve of Lakshmi’s faded dress and wiped her nose on it.
Lakshmi perched her sister on her hip. She squatted down and gathered the rest of the half-washed clothes in her other arm. Her mother would yell at her for not finishing washing them. She might even hit her. Blaming Meena’s little brother wouldn’t make any difference. The unwashed clothes would have to be rinsed out later in the night under the single, shared tap at the back of their line rooms.
Lakshmi stopped to watch a car wind its way along the road on the other side of the stream. It was the Periadorai’s black car. There was another person in the car; he looked younger than Periadorai, must be about her age. As she watched, Periadorai reached over the boy and wound up the window, separating their world from hers.
Lakshmi’s eyes met that of the boy as the car drove by. His eyes were the deep blue of the sky after a thunderstorm. He seemed to look right through her. She watched as the car drew away up the hill towards the Tea-maker’s house, and then turned toward her home in the line rooms.
Lakshmi stepped between scrawny chickens and listless goats, deftly avoiding the garbage and animal droppings that lay around in the line room’s common compound. She headed for the single room that she, her mother, father and sister called home. They had one room in a row of five – the coolies’ line rooms. The room was always damp and smelled of smoke, stale sweat and rancid curry. It was all so different from the large, sweet-smelling rooms in the Tea-maker’s house where her friend Shiro Chinnamma lived.
Getting to the line room, Lakshmi dumped the half-washed clothes in a corner. She slipped her sister into a homemade cloth swing hanging from a metal hook on the rafter and gave her a piece of dried bread to chew on. Ignoring her continued whimpers and sniffs, she went out to the back veranda, which doubled as their kitchen. She needed to get started on the evening meal of rice and dried fish. First, she had to wash and clean the uncooked rice of stones. She lugged the heavy pan to the tap in the garden that the families in the line rooms shared. Squatting down by the tap, she rinsed the rice and picked out the stones and sundry weevils.
Her sister started wailing again. ‘Vayapothu!’ Lakshmi yelled back. Her sister howled louder. Lakshmi ignored the screams.
Carrying the heavy pan of washed rice on her hip, she walked back to the veranda. She set the pan on the open fireplace and turned to the sticks she had collected last night. Lakshmi chose a couple and broke them into pieces. She groaned and cursed. They were damp from last night’s rain. Picking up the newspaper she had brought from the Tea-maker’s’ house yesterday she shoved it into the fireplace. Thank God that was dry. She would have to use it to light the fire. Now to find the box of matches. Her mother hid the matches in the box with her clothes. That way her father could not find it when he wanted to light his ganja. Lakshmi rummaged through the tea crate that contained her mother’s clothes and found the box of matches.
With the fire finally going, she squatted by it and stirred the pot of rice. Impatient, she blew on the fire. She had to finish the cooking before her father got back from his work in the factory. Yesterday, she had been late coming home from playing with Shiro Chinnamma. The rice had not been ready when her father wanted it. He had called her a lazy cow and had hit her.
Smoke swirled up from the damp wood and drifted into the line room. Her little sister coughed and screamed louder.
Lakshmi saw her mother in the distance, walking down the mud path with the other women, returning from her day’s work as a tea plucker. Her mother was younger than Periamma. And yet with her greying hair and stooped walk, she looked so much older. Her mother never smiled, while Periamma sang and laughed all the time. As she looked at that lined face, Lakshmi saw herself in twenty years’ time. She suppressed a shudder and quickly dashed a tear from her eye with the back of her hand.
Reaching the line room, Lakshmi’s mother dropped her tea plucker’s basket at the door and came through to the back veranda. ‘I saw Shiro Chinnamma today. She tried to talk to me, but Kangani wouldn’t let her. You tell her that she will have to behave. It is wrong for her to talk with us.’
‘What did she do wrong?’ Lakshmi stirred the rice. ‘She likes to be friendly.’
She ducked to avoid the blow her mother directed at her head. ‘What are you talking about, idiot! Staff and coolies can’t be friends! You think that just because Periamma teaches you English and sews you dresses out of left over pieces of cloth, you’re better than the rest of us? You think I don’t notice that you are trying to speak Jaffna Tamil like they do? You’re a coolie, you fool! An Indian labourer! You may be fairer than me, but that is nothing. You will never ever be anything other than a coolie! The staff and Periadorai are all alike. They will use you, and then throw you in the drain when they are done.’ She hawked and spat into the back garden. ‘Tea-maker Aiya doesn’t care for you. You are a servant there. A servant, that’s all. Remember that when you’re playing big sister to that spoiled brat!’
Lakshmi’s vision blurred. Hot tears filled her eyes. Leaping up from her squatting position at the open fire, she left the half-cooked meal, ran out of the room, and scrambled up the hill towards the Tea-maker’s house. Behind her, she heard her little sister’s familiar loud wail. Her mother yelled, ‘Lakshmi, come back here at once, kaluthai!’
Lakshmi ducked into the tea bushes, hiding in them as she climbed up the hill. Her mother’s foul curses and her sister’s loud screams followed her.
Someday, Lakshmi told herself, somehow, she would have a better life. Periamma would teach her to read and write English, and to sing and sew. She would learn to live and speak like they did. She would get away from the ugly, dirty life in the line room.
She thought of Shiro Chinnamma’s parting words yesterday evening. ‘Lakshmi, there will be a day when you won’t have to go back to the line room, when you and I live together in a little house that we will build in my own special place on the rock by the stream.’
Shiro Chinnamma was, as usual, making things up. Imagining and playing, she called it. But maybe … just maybe.
Lakshmi heard the hoarse, drunken laughter of the men returning from the tea factory. Today was payday, and that meant many of them, including her father, would be drunk on the cheap alcoholic drink, arak, sold at the little local shop. She cringed into the tea bushes and lay there till the raucous voices and crude language faded into the distance.
Clambering up the hill, she popped out of the tea bushes across from the Tea-maker’s house. She ran around the back, through a little gate, and into their garden.
By the time she reached the back door of the Tea-maker’s house, Lakshmi was smiling.
Chapter 3
May 1957 Colombo
The BOAC Lockheed Constellation bumped down onto the Katunayaké Airport runway. Its four turboprop engines roared in reverse thrust and the aircraft slowed.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ceylon.’ The captain’s voice crackled over the speaker system. ‘The local time is four pm. The temperature is ninety degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is seventy four percent. The distance from Katunayaké International Airport to Colombo is 18 miles. It is a ninety minute drive.’
Anthony Ashley-Cooper stretched his lanky, 16-year-old frame in the seat. He rubbed the film of sleep from his eyes and rotated his stiff shoulders before taking a peep out the tiny window. So this was Ceylon.
A mirage-like haze rose from the ground. Brown-bodied natives with black hair and beady dark eyes, dressed in coloured skirt-like garments, scurried like so many gaudy insects towards the plane. What a dump. What the hell am I doing here? Stupid question. Checking out my little part of the British Empire in the colonies, of course!
The Britis
h cabin steward swung open the door. A damp and malodorous cloud invaded the cool, crisp air of the plane. Excited, hoarse shouts streamed into the cabin. Anthony gagged. Is this what I’m going to have to breathe for the next few months? I think I’m going to be sick. Someone get me an oxygen bottle!
Anthony unbuckled his seat belt, stood up, and walked to the exit. He stepped out of the aircraft and scrambled down the metal stairs. The handrail burned his palms. When he reached the ground, the heat of the tarmac sizzled through the soles of the hand-crafted leather shoes his mother had insisted he wear for the journey. The sunshine was blinding, a burning heat on his unprotected head. Sweat oozed from every pore of his body. He squinted and reached into his shoulder bag for his sunglasses.
The natives who had disembarked behind him rushed into the single-story building in front of the aircraft. That was the airport terminal? It was only a little bigger than the stables in the Ashley-Cooper manor. Anthony followed them.
Sweaty, bare-chested men trailed after him, chattering and pushing wooden trolleys laden with luggage from the aircraft. Anthony winced and stepped aside. He could smell the sweat streaming off them and see the gleaming whites of their teeth and eyes in the dark faces. One of them pointed to Anthony and said something in their native language. The others guffawed. How dare the idiots laugh at him?
It was only a fraction cooler inside the airport terminal. Ceiling fans circulated the fetid air. People formed what could pass as a queue in front of a table where officious-looking natives in white uniforms checked passports.
‘Sir, this way, sir, special table for British, sir.’ A man in a white uniform gestured towards a table with a printed sign ‘Foreign Nationals ONLY’. There was no line of people at that table. Anthony held out his papers and passport to the man at the desk. The man leapt up and bowed from the waist. He accepted the papers in his right hand. His left arm bent and clasping his right elbow. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. Welcome to Sri Lanka, sir.’ He stamped the papers without reading them and handed them back to Anthony.
Sri Lanka, not Ceylon as his father and mother, and even the British cabin steward called it. Interesting.
Anthony passed the official desks and entered the arrival area of the airport terminal. The racket in the room stopped him in his tracks. Shrieks and squeals engulfed him. All around him people were shouting out what he assumed were welcomes and greetings in a language or languages he didn’t recognise. Can’t these stupid natives talk without yelling?
The letter from his Uncle Irvine had said Anthony would be met by someone from Oriental Produce. His grandfather, Sir Thomas Ashley-Cooper, had founded Oriental Produce in the early years of colonisation. Now, in 1957, it had grown into the largest and most prosperous tea company in Sri Lanka with branches in Africa. He and his elder brother, William, were heirs to the business. He had a family tradition to uphold. Anthony straightened and tilted his head back.
He scanned the crowd for a British face. Brown faces with shiny black eyes stared back at him. A few smiled. One man even said ‘Good afternoon, sir.’ Anthony ignored them all.
And then he saw a sign that read MR. ANTHONY ASHLEY-COOPER. It was fixed onto a pole and held above the heads of the milling throng. Anthony watched the sign stutter its way towards him. Finally, a short, portly native stood facing him. His white suit and shirt were crumpled and his dark round face shone with perspiration. A green tie, bearing the distinctive silver Oriental Produce logo of two leaves and a bud, hung in a crude half-knot around his thick neck. The man’s lips split in a grimace of a smile as he lowered the sign. His black eyes looked up at Anthony with spaniel-like eagerness.
‘Sir, I am Mr Emmanuel, the manager of the Colombo office of Oriental Produce, sir. Your uncle Mr Irvine, Superintendent of Watakälé Plantation, he asked me to meet you, sir.’ He spoke in a loud, fluid, almost sing-song tone. ‘He could not get away from the plantation, sir. A very busy time of the month for tea manufacture, sir.’ His head nodded side to side like a pendulum. ‘I am sorry I am late, sir. Hard to find parking and people won’t give room, no, sir? Sir, I hope you had a good journey, sir?’
He wondered whether he should shake hands with a native. Better err on polite.
‘Good afternoon.’ Anthony held out his hand. Mr Emmanuel drew back. He placed the palms of his two hands close together against the chest in a prayer like gesture, bowed forward slightly, and said ‘Ayubowan, sir.’ Puzzled, Anthony dropped his outstretched hand.
Mr Emmanuel continued. ‘Sir, this is the customary greeting of the Sri Lankan people, sir. It means may you live long, sir. Don’t worry, sir, you won’t find the Indian coolie labourers using the greeting. It is only us Sri Lankans who use it.’ His face split in a conspirator-like smile. ‘But then, you will not be greeting any Indian coolies, no, sir?’
Chuckling as if he had said something amusing, Mr Emmanuel lifted Anthony’s suitcases off one of the wooden luggage trolleys. ‘Palayang yako!’ he snapped, shooing away a couple of men who had their hands on Anthony’s bags. He tut-tutted and wiped fingerprints and dust off the bags. ‘Can’t trust these natives, sir. They will dirty your suitcases, no?’
Carrying the bags, he led the way out of the terminal building and across a wide strip of dry grass to a mud patch where a number of cars were parked. The humid, dusty air enveloped Anthony as he stepped out of the building. Rivulets of sweat moistened the collar of his white linen shirt, which now clung to his wet back. Damp patches of sweat were appearing under his arms.
The wind picked up and swirled the dust around them. Anthony’s throat felt like sandpaper. He coughed into his handkerchief. Others around him hawked and spat great globules of spit on the ground.
Anthony recognised the Oriental Produce crest painted on the door of the dusty cream Ford Consul as Mr Emmanuel scuttled towards it. Mr Emmanuel placed Anthony’s suitcase in the boot of the car with great care before scurrying over to hold the back door open for Anthony. ‘Sir, it will be two hours to the hotel, sir.’
Anthony cursed inwardly as he squashed himself into the car’s back seat. He had to listen to the ranting of this fawning old fool in his rundown motor vehicle for two hours!
Mr Emmanuel slid into the front seat, fired the car’s motor, and pulled out of the airport carpark. Other cars started up around them, rumbling, rattling and trailing clouds of black smoke. They joined the line of traffic leaving the airport on a single-lane mud road, lined with tall coconut trees and other unrecognisable shrubs. A few people walked along the edge of the road, struggling with bags in various sizes.
After about fifteen minutes, Mr Emmanuel made a sharp left turn on to a larger, bitumen road with one lane of traffic in each direction. ‘We are now on the main road to Colombo, sir. We can now travel faster, sir.’ He proceeded to drive at exactly the same speed as he had before.
They wove their way between the motley sources of transport that blundered along the road to Colombo. Cars, buses and lorries shared the road with a variety of other modes of transport. They passed rickshaws pulled by barefooted and bare-chested men wearing the same skirt-like garment, this time tucked up to expose muscled brown legs and knees. Anthony looked on amazed at bicycles with two and three people together with what looked like all their household belongings hanging off the side. The traffic also shared the road with wooden carts, full to overflowing with fruit and vegetables, with scrawny bulls shackled at the front.
It seemed that the way to progress, if one were in a motor vehicle, was to blow the horn at an ear rending volume and drive to within a whisker of whatever other mode of transport one wanted to overtake. This evoked a loud and rude response from the other driver, be he the driver of a vehicle, a rickshaw puller, or the driver of the bull cart.
‘Sir, sir, look sir, on the pavement – it is the rambuttan season. At other times it will be papaw or mango, sir.’
In between the piles of garbage on the broken ru
bble at the edge of the road lay mounds of reddish fruit with pink spikes on the surface, each fruit about the size of a golf ball. A little boy, wearing a blue t-shirt and nothing else, sat by one of the mounds sucking on a fruit. A man dressed in a coloured skirt-like garment and a threadbare shirt open to expose a caved-in chest, squatted by the boy. He smiled, showing red stained teeth.
Mr Emmanuel turned back to Anthony ‘The Indians chew betel, sir. They combine the leaf and nut with lime. It stains their mouth red. You will see that everywhere on the tea plantation.’
Mr Emmanuel pointed to a group of well-proportioned swaying bodies, many walking with no footwear, some with colourful baskets of fruit and vegetables balanced on their heads. ‘Sir, women wear cotton saris, sir. Six yards of material wrapped in one piece, sir.’
Ebony black eyes stared into the car with inquisitive interest. A couple of the younger women nodded and smiled and waved when they caught Anthony’s eyes. He shrank back into the uncomfortable seat. ‘People will all treat you very special, sir. You are white, no, sir – like a god. You will get used to it soon, sir.’
Anthony was thrown forward when Mr Emmanuel stomped his foot on the brake. ‘What the –’
‘Look sir, an elephant!’ Mr Emmanuel pointed forward and spoke in a whisper. ‘We mustn’t excite it too much!’ The car crawled past the mighty animal, once a king in his jungle domain, now reduced to carrying logs of wood with his legs shackled in chains.
Anthony gazed into the large brown eyes, fringed with long lashes. The animal gazed back at him. He wondered what memories of freedom this magnificent animal carried in its brain. The man riding the beast’s back raised his hand in greeting to Anthony. He shouted a command and prodded the neck of the beast with a sharp stick. The elephant trumpeted and raised its trunk. Anthony’s lips twitched. The largest animal in Sri Lanka salutes the visiting white god. He could get used to this.
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