Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

  It was wonderful to hear an Indian gentleman coming out with those magic words, ‘rustle up a cup of tea’. If Raghu could be so providentially English, then there was chance of a bit of it rubbing off on Mrs Osborne. Perhaps she would pick up on the national spirit of muddling through somehow, even though I had doubts about her permeability. She’d been married to an Englishman, after all, since before the war, and she still seemed to be stubbornly Polish.

  Even when she spoke Tamil she sounded Polish to my ears, and I could only imagine the impression she made on her Indian hearers. ‘Avvarai jaakiradai tuukkanum!’ she said, in what was the voice of command in any language, and a dark-skinned, smiling man I hadn’t seen before came towards me. He had a charmingly squashed nose. ‘This is Rajah Manikkam, my gardener,’ she explained. ‘He will lift you on to the verandah.’

  Somehow or other I was lifted up those three big steps, and found myself in the wheelchair, on Mrs Osborne’s verandah in Tiruvannamalai. There was a table near me at a convenient level – just over two feet high. On it was placed the welcome cuppa, which I was determined to handle competently without help. Even if there was nobody watching, I needed to demonstrate that I was something more than a helpless, hapless pilgrim, a mere drain on hospitality, not even posh but merely imposhible.

  On the table was the tool Mrs Osborne had been using when we arrived, and the tablet of stone on which she had been labouring. It seemed to be a memorial tablet for her husband. A grave marker for Arthur Osborne.

  It was good to be at this elevated level, and soon I began to feel almost at home, until I looked towards the dark hole which must have been the entrance to Mrs Osborne’s witch-house. Then my heart sank again. All the ingenuity in the world wouldn’t help me to get inside. It was cramped and poky for an able-bodied person, and anything less Johnable could hardly be imagined.

  When I had finished the tea and Raghu and Mrs Osborne appeared again, they were still shaking their heads and Mrs Osborne was murmuring, ‘Imposhible – absolutely imposhible.’

  After the interlude of teatime I was back on pleading duty, like a puppy in a pet-shop window after a lull in the pedestrian traffic on the street. The look I was making myself wear was beginning to hurt, but I concentrated every scrap of prayerful energy I had on Mrs Osborne. At that moment her stern strict face softened and became really rather beautiful.

  Between a palace and a dolls’ house

  ‘John!’ she said. It was the first time she had addressed me by name. ‘It’s quite imposhible for me to have you in my house. I built it myself, you know. I mean to say, I had no plans and no architect. I just told the masons what to do. Arthur said it was half-way between a palace and a dolls’ house. If I build another house I will try to consider your needs, but this house for you is quite imposhible. That is perfectly clear and beyond argument. We shall discuss it no further. But let me ask you one question. Where are you now?’

  I didn’t quite know what she was getting at. Was this a sort of Hindu catechism? ‘Well, on the mundane level I’m sitting at your table on your verandah at the moment.’

  ‘And izh there anything wrong with my verandah?’ she asked. ‘Izh there any way in which you poshibly don’t like my verandah?’

  In fact my only knowledge of verandahs and the torrid goings-on associated with them came from watching The Rains of Ranchipur, starring Richard Burton and Lana Turner (Theirs was the great sin that even the great rains could not wash away!), but I kept that to myself. ‘No,’ I said, trying to sound as if I was assessing the verandah by a thousand discriminating criteria, ‘I like it … quite a lot. As verandahs go I would say that the one you’ve got here is … distinguished. Altogether a high-class verandah.’

  Privately I wasn’t quite so enthusiastic. The unevenness of the floor bothered me. It had a slight slope, presumably to make it easier for water to drain off when the verandah was washed or the rains came. The wheelchair wanted to veer off towards the shrubbery in the garden, but I kept the brake lightly applied. If the wheelchair did break free, there would at least be a nice cushion of shrubbery waiting to receive me. Mercifully there was no prickly pear cactus or indeed any spiky plant in that particular bed. Jasmine was curling its way up some makeshift trellising, making its contribution to the fragrance of the air.

  ‘Ekshellent!’ said Mrs Osborne. ‘Then it is on my verandah that you shall spend your days here in Tiruvannamalai.’ Without changing her tone of voice she stopped addressing me directly. ‘Arunachala has called, so he has come and is welcome!’

  Wasn’t that what I’d been trying to tell her all along? Getting my message across was hard slog, always. Why did it take people so long to cotton on? If I’d known it was always going to be so hard to be recognised as a separate intelligence I wouldn’t have bothered with A-levels. A few exam certificates weren’t going to change things.

  Was the verandah solution going to work, though? Just thinking about having a tuppenny (tuppenny bit rhymes with shit) gave me a twinge of panic. Even if I managed against the odds to sleep on this small verandah, I would never be able to get inside Mrs O’s house, let alone manage the toilet. In tuppenny terms I was OK for now, but I was bound to need one tomorrow morning. Once I had realised that, it seemed simplest to go on a long fast. My lunch of sandwiches and samosas would keep me going without hardship for the rest of the day.

  Austerity, fasting, self-deprivation – everything that goes by the name of tapas – is an ancient strand of Hinduism. And on the mundane level, after all: no food, no shit. One of the major reasons we eat is to maintain body temperature, and I wasn’t worried about that. It was almost unbearably hot. I would need to drink a lot to replace the moisture I was losing as sweat, but I could imagine myself becoming holier and holier in this place, without ever troubling this body with solids.

  Mrs O’s face still bore traces of that kind and melting look, as though a truce had been signed between her brain and her heart. After a moment she announced that she had something special for me, and she disappeared with Rajah Manikkam somewhere into the garden. Not long after that I heard her calling out ‘John … Oh Joo-o-o-hn!!’ in something close to a motherly croon. ‘Will you please try zhome-how to cover your eyezh? I have a surprizhe to show you!’

  Mere moments ago, I had been an impossible object of hospitality. Now it seemed to be my birthday all of a sudden. Still, I was happy to humour her, though properly blocking my vision takes a little arranging. If you simply close your eyes, quite a lot of light still filters through the thin capillaried layer of the lids, so that doesn’t count. When you’re asked to ‘close your eyes’ because someone has a surprise for you, a deeper level of darkness is required. So I closed them, then I put my right hand on top of my walking stick and pushed the stick upwards with my left foot. That’s how I can push the back of my hand over my eyes. I made things go pitch black in my world, my vision blocked by bone of exemplary density, while my ears, which I hadn’t been told to close, told me that there was some rather laborious shuffling and trundling going on. Then Mrs Osborne was asking me to ‘open my izhe’, and so I did.

  What I saw before me was perhaps the most beautiful sight I have ever seen (æsthetic impact depending, naturally enough, on emotional context). It was an Edwardian commode, made out of wood, with arms and proper seating and a removable pot. I felt a ripple of joy in my chest and gave thanks in my heart to Arunachala for this gift.

  ‘We obtained it for Arthur’s use,’ Mrs Osborne explained, ‘since he was unable to manage … certain things … when he became ill. After he shed his body, I decided to keep it in his memory, but perhaps I was following a destined impulse all along. Arthur has no use for this seat now, and I know he’s delighted for it to be used again by one in need. See how well Arunachala is looking after you! I hope you realise how lucky you are.’

  How could I not? Lavatories in the Western style might have caught on in Madras, but out here in the country people would never have consented to excreting indoors.
Nothing could be more unnatural or oppressive. In this culture a commode made about as much sense as – I don’t know – perhaps a harpsichord gives the right idea.

  What I saw when I opened my eyes at Mrs Osborne’s command was indeed a magnificent present. There was just the one commode in all of Tiruvannamalai, and I had exclusive use of it. Mine, all mine! Mrs Osborne had made a journey all the way to Bangalore to get it. I promised myself that I would think tenderly of Arthur Osborne every time I ascended his throne. Forlorn, undignified perch for him, throne of convenience and joy for me.

  ‘I’m very sorry about your husband,’ I said. ‘He was a great man.’

  ‘The body, as we know, is no more than an old coat,’ said Mrs Osborne rather crisply. ‘What sort of devotee would I be of Bhagavan if I mourned the shedding of an old coat?’ I loved hearing the word devotee on another person’s lips, since I so much wanted to claim it for myself, but I couldn’t help feeling that there was grief still liquid beneath her no-nonsense manner. Hadn’t she been chiselling a memorial tablet when we arrived, too sunk in thought to respond to our presence?

  On the practical level, though, Mrs Osborne seemed more and more pleased with her solution to the problem that had been denounced so recently as imposhible. She oversaw the delivery of a bed-frame to the verandah near where I was installed, directing the gardener’s movements.

  ‘You know, John,’ she said, ‘there was a Swami once who lived on a verandah. He was known as “Bench Swami” – though it was more of an outshide shofa than an actual bench. He was looked after by the people whose verandah it was, and he wasn’t even invited. They brought him food. He stayed for twenty years. So I think we can manage to look after you, invited guest as you are, for a week or two.’

  Black English myrrh

  I felt a rush of tiredness and relief, thinking that my visit might be a success after all, and I might even enjoy my time on Mrs Osborne’s verandah. It was possible that my visit was a sort of unlooked-for blessing to her, requiring her to make decisions of an unfamiliar sort and to live in the present rather than the past.

  It was time for me to ask Mrs Osborne’s gardener to fetch from the car that savoury contraband, the supply of Marmite. He carried the mighty jar into the house as if he was one of the Kings in a nativity play, bearing black myrrh, salty and very English, mystical tantalising myrrhmite, while his wife looked on uncertainly.

  Mrs Osborne was thinking the arrangements through. ‘I assume you can make your water without excessive trouble. As for the other, Kuppu here’ – indicating the gardener’s wife – ‘can bring you water with which to clean yourself, but her caste, though humble enough, is too high to permit her to rinse out the commode, let alone attending you more intimately than that. We will perhaps have to pay a little something to a road-sweeper to clean things up. A Colony person.’ By ‘Colony’ she seemed to mean pariah or untouchable.

  With all the arrangements made, at least in Mrs Osborne’s head, she came to sit down by me. ‘You did not say you were so small,’ she said. It’s true that I had been careful in my letters to be offhand about my disability, since the last thing I wanted to do was to give the ashram any excuse to reject me. ‘Would you not rather be taller?’ It was an odd question to come from someone who was small herself, a little old lady who was somehow both plump and drawn.

  I assumed that this was a trick question, and formulated a neutrally humble response. ‘I have learned to accept this body without mistaking its illusory nature. And as the Bible says, Which of you by thinking can add one cubit to his stature?’

  ‘Very good, John, Matthew chapter 6, verse 27. If you want to quote Scripture you must hope you can keep up with me! But did I say anything about a cubit? A cubit would be an ambitious target. But if change is offered you should take advantage. I’m very sure that I can increase your height – yes, even in the limited time available. How long is it that you stay? Five weeks?’

  ‘A little less, now. But can you really make me taller? Wouldn’t that be a miracle?’

  ‘It is only medicine. All medicine is miraculous when it works. Faith will be amply rewarded, but is not required for the efficacy of the procedure, which is entirely scientific. Are you familiar with homœopathy? We should measure you right away, and once again before you leave, and … we shall see what we shall see.’ She gave a little chuckle.

  I had heard of homœopathy. It was something that my GP Flanny denounced as culpable faddishness, just as she sneered at vegetarianism, which gave me the immediate idea that there might be something in it (whatever it was). Certainly the presence of a compound vowel in the word, drawing my attention like an insect’s compound eye, spoke strongly in its favour. It was on my list of things to explore – but it was far further down the list than India.

  ‘You should pay attention to homœopathy, young man,’ she said. ‘I can show you books.’ One thing I didn’t want was a reading holiday. I hadn’t come half-way round the world to find myself in an open-air outpost of Bourne End Library, The Verandah Annexe perhaps, with someone who seemed a much less sympathetic librarian than Mrs Pavey, pushing her own interests rather than exploring selflessly on my behalf.

  Perhaps she sensed my resistance, because she went on to say, ‘Homœopathy is one of the few good things that the West can boast. Of course there are local equivalents, in India above all, but that is not my skill. And I have had a number of illustrious patients, who could have chosen other practitioners. Who could indeed have healed themselves if they had chosen to.’ She was looking almost skittish now, and I found that I was beginning to be intrigued.

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘I mean Sri Bhagavan.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You treated Ramana Maharshi. What ailment did you treat Bhagavan for?’

  ‘A small growth appeared on his elbow. He submitted to my treatment, as also to others more drastic. I was unable to achieve results – the prospects had never been good. Homœopathy is better suited to prevention than cure of entrenched conditions. Others treated him with knives rather than my little pills. The ashram doctor removed the growth, but it returned and was diagnosed as a sarcoma. Three more times his flesh was gouged to the bone. Three more times the growth returned. Only when amputation was recommended did he refuse further treatment.’

  I knew some of the circumstances. When asked if his arm hurt, he replied, in a gentle voice and with his distinctive radiant smile, ‘If you know the pain of a scorpion bite, then imagine a thousand scorpion bites – it is somewhat like that.’ He made it clear that this sort of physical collapse was only to be expected, like the blowing of a fuse when a humble appliance (in this case a human body) has been plugged into an overwhelming source of power.

  I was yawning so hard it hurt my jaws. My apparatus was overwhelmed with new impressions and changes of scene. Darkness had come without my noticing. Before I went to bed Mrs Osborne summoned Rajah Manikkam one more time. He helped me stand by the wall of the house, and Mrs Osborne marked my height on the wall. I’d seen Mum do the same with Peter as he grew, in the kitchen at Trees, but of course there had been no point in wasting pencil lead by measuring me – though I had a late growth spurt during my time at Burnham Grammar School, by courtesy of the surgeon’s knife, when in that mystical intervention my leg was shortened and made longer. It felt strange to be the object of so hopeful a ritual, in this unfamiliar place.

  Then Rajah Manikkam helped me to take my shoes off and to lie down on the bedframe. It was still hot, but I had certainly expected some sort of blanket or even sheet. None arrived, and I didn’t dare to ask for any such embodiment of Western cosseting. If Mrs Osborne thought nothing of sleeping on the road while doing pradakshina she would hardly be indulgent if a pilgrim wanted pillows to be plumped up for his benefit. Already I seemed to personify the folly of offering hospitality too freely to strangers. I nerved myself to ask for the pee bottle to be left within my reach. Wishing me goodnight, Mrs Osborne said, ‘Tomorrow you will visit
the ashram and meet Ganesh.’

  ‘Couldn’t I pay my homage to Arunachala? For so long I have seen the mountain in my dreams.’

  ‘Young man, you must be as patient as Arunachala himself. For one thing, we must decide how someone with your limitations is to undertake the ritual circumambulation of the mountain. At the ashram you will meet fellow devotees and you will be fed. The holy mountain does not offer lunch.’ She looked at me shrewdly. ‘Perhaps you do not wish to meet Ganesh?’ It was true that I wasn’t in a hurry to make the acquaintance of the gentleman who had seemed to offer encouragement, then tried to put the kibosh on my pilgrimage before it had begun. ‘He is your great friend, I assure you,’ she said, and I mimed one more yawn as an alternative to answering her.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed if you hear strange cries in the morning. Peacocks live wild in this area – their cries are disturbing to those unfamiliar with them.’ I was able to assure Mrs Osborne that on the contrary, peacock cries would make me feel at home, since Bourne End was infested with them. I didn’t go into the whole saga of Tom Stoppard and the Abbotsbrook Estate. It was too long a story to tell a new acquaintance.

  Brusque, peremptory dawn

  I slept poorly that first night, buffeted by alternating gusts of exhaustion and exhilaration. I had been provided with a bed, but none of the institutions that I had been in, not notably sybaritic, would really have called it by that name. It was only a metal frame with planks laid across it, sans mattress, sans pillow. By morning my body was as sore as it had been for many years. Snakes and scorpions had left me well alone, but I wasn’t spared by mosquitoes. I let them feed with a willing heart, though I couldn’t really classify them as holy just by virtue of living on the mountain. On my toes they battened especially.

  There were advantages to sleeplessness in my new surroundings. I saw my first Indian dawn, which wasn’t at all as I expected it. I’d begun to think that India was a country where the categories that were supposed to be separate bled into each other like bright colours in a washing-machine. Everything was true and not true at the same time, thoroughly mixed and indefinite. Airline employees threw themselvers into passionate embraces with strangers, cows were vegetarian cannibals, mountains could project themselves across space. But the Indian dawn wasn’t like that – it was brusque, peremptory. It took hardly a moment. The English dawn was like a whole orchestra tuning up, but here it was like a single vast gong struck with a stick. The heat which the gong released was already so intense that I doubted my body’s ability to adjust.