The musicians were moving forward, making their way through the crowd toward the tent. The kettledrums settled into a steady beat as they began to sing:
Be blessed and listen O friend, listen to this singer’s song
In the depths of these jungles, in this wild heartland
A tiger roamed fiercely hungry all day, all night long
Restless was the starving tiger, under a twisted tree it lay
The fey moon had been and gone; no promises had it chanced upon
Uneasy dozed the mighty tiger, in the fretful first light of day.
A cheer went up through the crowd. The bridegroom was tall, taller than most of the men there. He moved with an easy grace behind the musicians, his best man almost on tiptoes as he reached an umbrella up high to shield the bridegroom from the damp.
Mortal men were on the prowl again, thus the tiger dreamt
With skill; with stealth; with guns; with arrows;
Their dogs hot upon its scent
It heard a barking and awoke startled. Looking all around
The tiger pricked its ears, its eyes ablaze
And then gnashed its fangs with a thunderous sound.
The bridegroom’s kupya was a ceremonial white, pure as milk, his cummerbund crimson worked over with gold. A square of red silk was draped over his gold-spotted turban, its ends drifting down over his shoulders. He held a gun casually in one hand and a ceremonial walking stick, festooned with silk tassels and tiny bells of silver and gold, in the other. Devi stared at him, transfixed. Never, not ever, could she remember having seen anyone so beautiful.
He turned, laughing at someone in the crowd, and the gold studs in his ears glinted against skin the color of teak.
“Today,” it reflected grimly, “not one good omen have I found
Still, if the hunter should dare my path to cross
I shall rip him to pieces, I will fling him to the ground.
Today,” thought the tiger, sparks shooting from its eyes,
“His gun shall be decorated or the wails of his bride be heard.
Today,” resolved the fearless tiger, “today we shall decide.”
“But … but … I don’t understand,” Devi said, bewildered. “Why is he marrying a tiger?”
Thimmaya tugged affectionately at his daughter’s braid. “It is only a mock wedding, kunyi, an ancient custom to honor someone who has slain a tiger.” The man she saw there was a great warrior, he told her, Kambeymada Machaiah. They were all gathered this evening to celebrate his victory and admire his kill.
The mighty tiger arose and roared, its mouth was open wide
As it came bravely snarling, roaring, bounding forward
To where the hunters stood waiting outside
The hero took aim, his bullet sped, it tore a tiny hole
The tiger stumbled, eyes ablaze; then it leaped toward the sky
It fell to the earth; with fire dimmed and dying breath, it gave up its noble soul.
Devi slowly nodded, her eyes drinking in the pretend bridegroom.
When they went to the tent to congratulate Machu, for the first time in all her ten years Devi found herself utterly and uncharacteristically tongue-tied. Up close, he was even more fetching. He sat astride a squat, three-legged stool, his gun resting across his lap. A dimple flashed in and out of one cheek, and when he glanced briefly at Devi his eyes were a merry, sparkling brown. Thimmaya sprinkled rice over Machu’s head and pressed a coin into his hands. “You have done us all proud, monae,” he said simply. “A true son of Coorg.”
Machu bent to touch Thimmaya’s feet. “It is your blessings, anna,” he said, and his voice seemed to Devi like honey gliding down the inside of her arm. She hid behind Thimmaya’s back, quite forgetting even to look at the tiger.
“Are you tired, kunyi?” Thimmaya asked anxiously later, as she clung to his hand in the crowds. “Why are you so quiet? Shall we go find Tayi and ask the ladies to get you some dinner?”
Devanna came rushing up to them by the food hall. “Devi! Here you are. I have been searching all over for you. Did you see the Reverend? He is here, too. And the tiger, did you see the tiger? My cousin Machu killed it. My cousin! Did you meet him? Come on, you must meet him!”
“No, no … ,” Devi protested, but Devanna was already dragging her along. She swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat and stole a shy glance at the bridegroom. The ladies of the village had walked through the gathering a little while before, bearing gongs and small brass pots filled with water; with dinner announced, the crowds around the tent had dispersed. Machu had arisen from his stool and was holding court, a group of giggling young lovelies hanging on his every word. “Oh, Machu,” they exclaimed breathily, hands pressed to their pert bosoms, “tell us again how you brought down this beast.”
“Machu anna,” Devanna called from behind the brocaded bustle of their saris, “this is my friend Devi.” Machu dimpled affably and waved. Devi felt her stomach slide. She forced a smile, peeling her lips back from her teeth. “My father says that you … ,” she began brightly, then halted midsentence. Machu had already turned back to the women.
“Machu anna,” Devanna called hopefully again, but Machu was too engrossed in recounting his tale to pay them any attention. “Well, never mind,” Devanna said resignedly to Devi, “at least you got to meet him.” He took Devi’s arm and turned to leave. A sudden anger spurted within Devi and she shook herself free of his grasp.
“So you killed this tiger?” she demanded rudely. “Why is everyone making such a fuss? It doesn’t seem that dangerous to me.”
There was a collective squawk of outrage from the women. “Just listen to the brat!” one of them exclaimed. “Not dangerous?” exclaimed another. “No, it isn’t dangerous at all, hanging dead from the roof, but what would you do, I wonder, if you saw it coming at you in the jungle? Wet yourself, I should imagine!”
“I would not,” cried Devi indignantly. “I … I am the bal battékara. I’m just as good as any hunter.” She knew how silly her words sounded even as they came out of her mouth; she could see Devanna gaping at her from the corner of her eye. “Besides,” she continued in a sudden burst of inspiration, as she triumphantly crossed her arms, “this tiger doesn’t even have any claws.”
The women glanced at one another and then burst out laughing. A particularly tall girl bent down to Devi. “It doesn’t have any claws, kunyi,” she said, deliberately emphasizing the word, “because it was declawed after Machaiah killed it. The claws have been removed to be fashioned into brooches and earrings for the Kambeymadas. Like this one.” She pointed to the brooch that lay curved upon her bosom, fastening her sari to the velvet blouse below. A crescent of a claw, the palest green tapering into ivory, stripped of all menace by its capping of gold.
Devi’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. She opened her mouth to retort, but Machu stepped in before she could say anything. “Leave it be,” he said, dimpling at the women. “My little friend here doesn’t seem terribly impressed, but then we can’t please everybody, can we?” He winked at Devi, and she found herself grinning foolishly at him. “Ayy, Devanna,” Machu continued, “is your friend always such a tigress?” The tall girl began to protest, and he shook his head. “Come now. Enough. She is but a child.”
Devi froze in horror, the smile wiped from her face. Had he just called her a child? Still chuckling, Machu turned to leave, shepherding his entourage.
The tent was now silent except for the tortured creaking of the bamboo frame as the dead tiger swung slowly above their heads. Devi bit her lip, close to tears. Beside her, Devanna took a deep, deliberate breath. “Did your head suddenly turn inside out?” he asked. “Why were you so rude?”
He had called her a child. She bent to pick up a jasmine bud that had fallen from the garland about Machu’s neck.
“Devi, I am talking to you. What madness got hold of you that you had to be so rude?”
Devi closed her palm about the bud and w
hirled upon the startled Devanna. “Just leave me alone! Why don’t you go pester him instead, your newfound cousin and his group of clucking hens?” She rushed off, ignoring the hurt in Devanna’s eyes. “Where is my father? I want to go home.”
She slept fitfully that night, Tayi’s breath whistling in her ears. She was withdrawn all through the journey the next day as well, unaware of the anxious glances from Tayi and the others. When the bullock cart finally turned into the courtyard of the Nachimanda house, to Muthavva’s pleased surprise Devi flung herself silently into her arms.
“What’s this?” Muthavva murmured, kissing her daughter’s head. “Missed me, did you?” Devi said nothing, but burrowed her head deeper into Muthavva’s neck.
As Muthavva tucked her into bed that night, Devi asked, “Avvaiah … when will I get married?”
Muthavva flicked her daughter’s cheek affectionately. “Why? Are you in such a hurry to leave your mother?”
“Don’t make jokes, Avvaiah. How long before I have my own wedding?”
“Well, let’s see now. First, you have to be a good child and listen to your mother. And then when you come of age and are a graceful, well-mannered young woman, we will find you a boy from a good family and have a grand wedding for you, how is that?”
Devi shook her head impatiently. “Avvaiah, I am not a little girl. And I will marry only Machu anna.”
“Who?” Muthavva asked, bewildered.
“The tiger killer … Machu anna, Devanna’s cousin. I will marry him.”
Muthavva laughed. “Cheh. What foolishness is this? Little girls shouldn’t talk this way; it doesn’t become them. Besides, if you call him anna, that makes him your brother, not your husband.”
“Mark my words, Avvaiah. I will marry Machu.”
Muthavva gazed at her daughter’s face in the lamplight and felt a strange chill down her spine. She became brisk. “Donkey girl. Enough of this nonsense. Go to sleep.”
She tightened the amulet on Devi’s arm, trying to stay her sense of disquiet by checking and rechecking the knots. Finally satisfied that the amulet was securely fastened, Muthavva lowered the lamp and, kissing Devi’s forehead, left the room.
Behind her, Devi stared through the window into the clear, starlit night. Beneath the blanket, her fists were curled into little balls, her nails pressing into the skin. She thought again of the tiger wedding, and of the bridegroom.
“Only him,” she repeated to herself. “I will marry only Machu.”
Chapter 6
1891
Sunlight streamed through the open doors, pooling over the maroon-lacquered floors of the mission. Sometime during the night, the skies had finally called a truce and the assault of the rains had abated. Mercara had awoken that morning to the forgotten sound of birdsong. Watery shafts of light spilled from behind dark gray clouds, laminating the town in opalescence. As the morning wore on, the sun had gained in confidence, scattering the clouds and blazing forth in all its splendor. Light danced from every surface, from within the raindrops suspended on a leaf, glancing off glass windows and diffusing from the hills in a shimmering haze.
Gundert stood on the verandah of his apartments, looking out at the dripping garden. He waved at passersby who called cheerfully to him, reveling in the everyday sounds so long suffocated by the rain. The potter calling out his wares, the trrringing of bicycle bells, the whooping of children, the excited barking of dogs as they shook themselves in the sun. He looked up at the skies and smiled. “Devanna,” he called. “Come here a moment.
“Devanna,” he called again, a little louder this time. Frowning slightly, he went back indoors.
Devanna sat by the window of the dining room, engrossed in his painting. The colors had to be just right, the mauve tinged with purple. Cedrela toona. How beautiful the names sounded in Latin, how much more majestic the trees seemed to become when they were called thus, standing straighter and taller, puffing out their chests with pride. Why, even the ordinary athi tree that Pallada Nayak cursed and spat at because of the way it extended its jumble of roots under the paddy fields, even that annoying tree carried poetry in its sap. Fi-cus race-mosa.
When the Reverend had introduced him to botany, he had opened up a whole new world. Devanna liked to recite the names of the books in his head:
Flora Sylvatica, Flora Indica, Spicilegium Neilgherrense, Icones Plantarum, Hortus Bengalensis, Hortus Calcuttensis, Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indicae
The Reverend had shown him colored plates and lithographs, the minute differences in serration that could mark a plant as an entirely new species. A keen amateur botanist when he had first arrived in Mercara, Gundert had let it be known that he was looking for exotic plants and that he would pay a fair sum for anything that caught his fancy. At first, people had knocked on the mission doors at all hours with plants they were sure would excite him: fiercely colored orchids, sweet-smelling sampigé, and slender shoots of wild jasmine. Gundert politely had these planted in the mission garden, explaining that such plants were already well documented in the scientific world; what he wanted was something new, some of the indigenous medicinal plants, perhaps?
They had brought him holy tulasi, so beloved by the ancestors and the Gods, and the delicately fronded narvisha that was planted in the courtyard of every home. The leaves of the narvisha had a pungent odor that was anathema to snakes, poisonous even to the mighty tiger, it was said. These, too, Gundert had regretfully declined as mundane. They had then brought him that most powerful of plants, madh toppu, or medicine green, which, when cooked along with jaggery and coconut milk at the onset of the monsoons, stained their piss bright red and was known to prevent no fewer than forty-seven maladies. Gundert sighed. Justicia wynaadensis, he said, that was its name, and there were two specimens already growing in the Botanical Gardens in Bangalore. That was when most of the townspeople had thrown up their hands, shaking their heads over the obduracy of the Reverend. It was impossible to please him, they cried, it was hopeless. Gundert had finally resorted to field trips of his own, and in Devanna he found a gifted apprentice.
He taught Devanna the importance of discipline, the orderly mapping of an area, the close examination and recording of the tiniest detail. They combed through the hills in and around Mercara, sorting through armfuls of specimens and painstakingly documenting the most interesting. Devanna had a keen eye and a steady hand, but more important, he had a natural instinct for the work. Gundert had been surprised and then awed by his talent. Devanna dipped and swirled his brushes, his usual diffidence banished by his confident use of color.
As Gundert watched him replicate the specimens, applying a bold wash of green here, a dab of ochre, a hint of pink there, something had broken free deep within him. Spring, it seemed, had stolen softly into his ironbound heart.
Here at last, was the student he had searched for.
Here, his son.
He stood smiling in the doorway now, cupping his coffee and watching Devanna from the shadows. Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him.
Devanna traced the outline of a bud with a firm hand, lost in his thoughts and still unaware of the Reverend’s presence. Ced-rela-toona. Devi had little appetite for his fancy talk, as she called it. She shrugged her shoulders impatiently when he showed her the spores clinging pregnant with life to the underside of a fern, or told her that the fig was not really a fruit but a flower. “What does it matter!” she had exclaimed. What was in a name—figs tasted the same, didn’t they, whether you called them a fruit or a flower? Far more interesting, she had proclaimed, to know the histories of the trees instead, in the time before they were rooted to the ground, when they walked and talked with the Gods.
The butter tree so beloved to Krishna Swami, who used its spoon-shaped leaves to steal butter from his mother’s churn.
The handsome ashoka, the tree of no-sadness that banished all your woes if you sat beneath its branches and flowered only when a beautiful woman placed her henna-tipped fee
t upon its trunk.
The gun flower groves that grew in the jungles of Coorg but withered away in captivity. They bloomed each year during Kailpodh, the festival of arms. Just that one week in the entire year, an orange-yellow blossom to decorate the mouth of every gun in Coorg, and then they faded away as silently as they had appeared.
When Devanna had told her about the herbarium at Kew, home to the largest collection of specimens anywhere in the world, she had flicked her braid over her shoulder and told him not to bore her. “Go away, Devanna,” she had yawned. “Leave me alone and stop chewing my brains.”
A shadow passed over Devanna’s face as he worked. She had been increasingly strange with him, snapping for no reason and bursting into tears at the slightest pretext. “Stop following me around,” she had told him angrily. “Why can’t you go hunting or climb trees or whatever it is that boys are supposed to do instead?”
She preferred to spend her time with the girls of the village instead, the very same girls she had found too sissy just a couple of years ago. Now, all she seemed to want to do was sit about whispering and giggling.
“You are growing up, monae, you are both growing up,” Muthavva and Tayi had explained, trying not to smile when he wandered disconsolately into the kitchen. “And Devi is older than you, nearly fourteen she is. Girls, they mature faster than boys. She has different interests now, that’s all.”
He had pretended not to care, and when the schools had closed for the monsoons and Gundert had suggested to Pallada Nayak that Devanna stay on at the mission for extra tutoring, Devanna had, much to everyone’s surprise, agreed. Devi would realize how much she missed him when he was gone.
He glanced briefly outside the window. Twenty days he had been gone from the village, twenty days of never-ending, torrential rain. He had counted each day and waited patiently for a break in the clouds. And then this morning, Devanna had awoken in the mission dormitory, sleepily trying to put a finger on what was so different today. The silence, he realized abruptly, fully awake now and listening intently. The rattling of the rain on the roof was finally ended. Flinging off the blankets, not even noticing the cold draft nipping at his ankles, he had raced to open the window. Today, he could go home at last.
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