Tiger Hills

by Sarita Mandanna

  She waited in the car for what seemed an indeterminable time. Bangalore was sweltering, the sun beating down on the black car, turning it into an oven. She mopped at the sweat running down her forehead, staring anxiously at the gates. As soon as he came out, she knew. She opened the car door and stepped outside. “Kunyi, it doesn’t matter.”

  Appu shook his head, so defeated he couldn’t even look at her. “He would not listen, Avvaiah. The deal is done, he tells me. Timmy—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Devi tried to say again, but the heat, the lack of water, had turned her tongue fuzzy. The sky was pale blue, cloudless. The sun, so brilliant in her eyes …

  “Watch out,” she heard Appu say sharply as her knees buckled beneath her. Devi fainted.

  When she came to, she found herself lying in the crisp white bed of a clinic, its sheets cool against her skin. “Where … ?” She tried to sit up and felt a throbbing pain in her knee.

  “Easy now.” The voice was gentle. “That was quite a fall you took. I am Dr. Ramaswamy. Your son brought you in. Nothing to worry about—a spot of low blood pressure, that is all.”

  He waved a hand in the air, brushing aside her thanks. “Now tell me, madam, and I apologize for my forwardness, but I could not help noticing on the form … ” He tapped a finger to the file in his hand. “Is yours not a Coorg name?”

  “Yes,” Devi said simply, “I’m from Coorg.” She tried to flex her knee.

  “Easy now. Gently, gently … I knew someone from Coorg also,” he continued. “A classmate of mine, Devanna. Many moons ago, while I was still at medical college.”

  Devi looked at him sharply. “Where? Here, in Bangalore?”

  “Yes.” He shook his head. “Committed suicide, I heard, poor chap. Took a gun to himself. Though really, who could blame him after all he had been through?”

  Devi was just about to correct him, telling him it had been an accident, and that Devanna had survived, when the latter half of his sentence caught her attention.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled. “What had he been through?”

  Dr. Ramaswamy took off his glasses and blew on the lenses. He pursed his lips, the action making his buck teeth even more prominent. “Ragging. In those days, it could get quite rough. There was one senior who had it in for this poor chap. Day in, day out—it was utterly relentless. Beatings, thrashings, possibly worse … ” He sighed. “There are times when I wonder if we should not have done more, brought it to the attention of the authorities, perhaps. Nice sort of chap he was, too, Devanna, and really quite exceptionally gifted. Madly in love with some girl back home; he used to talk about her sometimes. I remember he brought a pet squirrel to the hostel. It was against the rules, but it was a gift from her, you see. A Malabar squirrel.” He squinted as he tried to remember. “Nancy, I believe we had named her. Such a charming pet, and Devanna, he absolutely doted on the little thing. All of us did, actually, but Devanna most of all.”

  The baby squirrel. Devi had forgotten about the pet she had given Devanna. He had never mentioned Nancy again, and she had never thought to ask; too much had happened, too many lives twisted out of shape.

  The doctor was continuing. “Thomas—the senior—he butchered the squirrel. While it was still alive. Poor Devanna, he went up against Thomas, but he was no match for him. A gold medalist in boxing in the army … none of us was a match for Martin Thomas.” He was staring into the distance, lost in the past. “Devanna left college that same day. He was in no shape to travel—he had a very nasty concussion and was terribly distraught. We tried to stop him, but he kept mumbling something about this girl. Said he had to find her … ”

  Devi was very still. “And what happened to him?”

  Dr. Ramaswamy shook his head. “A suicide, we heard.”

  “Not Devanna. Him. The Thomas fellow, what happened to him?”

  He grimaced. “Nothing, really. It was never reported, the fight with Devanna. Keeping the squirrel in the hostel was against the rules, and telling the authorities would have got everyone into trouble. Besides, technically, it was Devanna who started that last fight with Thomas—he was the one who threw the first blow. Thomas graduated, joined the army. Got into a few more scrapes after that. One, I heard, was particularly horrendous.” He looked apologetically at Devi. “Sodomy, it was rumored.”

  “Sodo—?” Devi began and then, understanding the meaning of his words, she flushed. “Oh.”

  “Yes. He was headed for a court martial, I am certain of it, but then the war happened. Nineteen sixteen … any and all medics were welcome in those days, I suppose. Thomas did quite well in the war, apparently, managed to receive a commendation of some sort.”

  He glanced at Devi, who was sitting ramrod-straight, completely absorbed in his tale. “He is retired now, right here in Bangalore. Quite the drinker, too, I hear. Never did settle down, raise a family, that sort of thing. Tried coming to the college reunions once or twice, but he was ostracized so completely by our class and the other students who had known him that he stopped.”

  He grimaced again, exposing those unfortunate teeth. “Even now, all I associate with those years is Martin Thomas and the hell, the absolute living hell, he put us through. And Devanna, he fared much worse than any of us. Those later rumors of Thomas’s penchant for sodomy. I have often wondered … ” He shook his head.

  “Why?” Devi asked, her voice bitter. “Why Devanna?”

  Ramaswamy sighed, absently rubbing the end of his stethoscope against his sleeve. “Who can say, madam? Sometimes, it would seem, we are simply cast in the path of misfortune.”

  Night had fallen by the time they got back to Tiger Hills. Devi alighted gingerly from the car, her knee still sore from the fall. “I’m fine,” she said wanly to an anxious Appu. She reached up and patted his cheek. “Go on, Baby must be waiting.”

  She stood looking up at the façade of the house, lights glimmering here and there from its silent interiors. “Hot water, akka?” Tukra shuffled onto the portico. “Shall I run your bath?”

  Devi nodded. “And lay out dinner. Devanna anna,” she asked haltingly, “how is he?”

  “Not well. He is in his room. He has not eaten as yet, said he would wait for you.”

  She stopped by the old photograph in the foyer, touching her fingers to it. Loving you is like having wings. Slowly she walked on. The door to Nanju’s room, the old nursery, stood ajar; she paused in the hallway and looked inside. There they used to sleep, her boys, brothers both. Nanju–Appu, her pride, her heart, her sun—and moon. The stars began to wink in the inkiness outside, the scudding clouds now shadowing, now revealing the tiger that proudly strode across the wall. In the half light, his eyes seemed to bore into her. For you, I would have given up my God. Tawny eyes, so fierce, forever beloved. Golden, dancing eyes, such tenderness in their gaze.

  At last she turned away and continued upstairs, past the silent library, toward Devanna’s room. She hesitated an instant and then knocked on his door. “I’m back.”

  He looked somberly up from his book. “Appu?”

  “No.” She walked over to the bed. “No, of course it did not work.”

  She placed a hand on his forehead, and he started with surprise at the unaccustomed touch. “You still have a fever.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  She sat on the edge of bed, looking at him. So much to talk about. So much of the past, their past, left unacknowledged. So many questions unasked. “I met … ,” Devi began, a catch in her throat. “The doctor … ,” she started again, then stopped. A wave of tiredness swept over her. Devi lay down on the bed and rested her head on Devanna’s chest.

  She could hear the beat of his heart, quickened now by surprise. He hesitated and then, moving slowly, very slowly, as if not to scare his wife away, he set his book down on the table and put his arm about her.

  Inseparable they had been, as children. Close as two seeds in a cardamom pod, that was what people said about them. He was the one s
he unfailingly depended upon, to remove the thorns from her soles, to set the world right again.

  He is in love with you, Machu had said to her, and she had thrown her head back and laughed out loud.

  She had known, though, hadn’t she? She must have.

  Devi lay there, feeling the comforting rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek, his arm tight about her, holding her close.

  Tayi’s voice in her ears: Forgive him, kunyi. He has suffered, too.

  She was tired, so very tired. Shackled to loss and to grief for so many years. A stone about her neck, growing heavier with the years, with nowhere to set it down.

  So many years gone, so much time lost in regret. Do not be so brittle, Tayi had said to her, that you shatter at the first lightning. Do not be the tree that can bear no fruit.

  Hurt accumulates. Unless consciously cast aside, it accumulates, building on itself. Hardening, thickening, gouging our hearts apart. We try at first to pick at the scabs, to render ourselves as untainted and innocent as we once were. Over time, though, it becomes too difficult. This forced unbandaging, this revisiting of painful memory. Easier to lock it away, unseen, unspoken. To haul it about like an invisible stone about our necks. We leave our wounds alone. Layer by layer our scars thicken, until one day we awaken and find ourselves irrevocably hardened. Rooted in a keloidal past while the world has passed on by.

  Be the jungle orchid that perfumes the wind.

  To let go of hurt, to cast bitterness aside. This is the only way forward. To cast aside the pain and allow hope a chance once more. We drift through time, sometimes in shadow, sometimes blistering under the sun, laying ourselves open to the skies. Until, inevitably, we begin to heal, the lips of our wounds coming slowly together. We fill with light, with grace, capable once more of opening our hearts, of letting someone in.

  The breeze catching our wings once more.

  “It was for you.” Devanna’s voice was barely audible. “When I awoke, still alive, and found the bullet had missed … that at this, too, I had failed, I was so ashamed. Had I been able, I would have lifted a gun to myself once more. It was only later that I grasped how slim the odds had been of my survival. Nanju, I had thought, then, that he was the reason. That I had been left alive for the sake of our son. I was wrong.” He swallowed. “When Machu died, that was when I understood. To look after you. That was why I was spared, to look after you.”

  He stopped, trying to gather himself. “What I did to you, Devi,” he said shakily. “If I could take it back, what I did, I—”

  “Enough,” Devi whispered. She moved her hand, finding his fingers, and clasped them in her own. She shook her head, and her hair at once sprang free of its bun, even with so small a movement. “Enough,” she whispered again.

  Devi shut her eyes, letting go. Sinking softly into the past, floating toward that innocent time when both their lives lay unsullied ahead of them, shining with promise. A clear summer sky, two children running laughing through the fields. The sun glittering upon the crab stream, the water like molten silver against their legs. A length of chicken gut, cast it in, draw it out, the water, so bright, look, a cluster of fat black crabs, glistening like gems.

  “So many crabs we caught that day.”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Tayi made crab chutney. And you … you ate so much you were sick in the bushes after that.”

  Devanna lay very still. Then lifting his hand, he gently pushed the hair back from her face.

  Epilogue

  Dawn hung suspended over Tiger Hills. Devi watched, as gradually, like a curtain being lifted, the night began to part. A fulgent mist rolled in from the mountains. The light seemed phosphorescent, glimmering over the flower beds and the pale green scum of the pond. Silently she called their names, one by one, all those who were gone, as color streaked the velvet skies and a rooster began to crow.

  Miles away, a car climbed steadily through the winding roads. It had motored all through the night, the light from its lamps thrown back from the gray banks of fog, now flaring briefly inside the car, then casting it once more into shadow. The driver had pressed on, undeterred by the poor visibility, navigating as much from memory as by sight. He glanced to his right, not really seeing the rising sun, or the valley emerging blue-gold into sight. Not long now, not long at all. His foot pushed unconsciously down on the accelerator, lifted again. The car surged forward, sunshine probing its bumper and diffusing in a morning haze.

  Deep within the estate, something stirred in anticipation, the beginnings of a breeze, shivering through the coffee. Tentative at first, questing, and then, like a coil unsprung, it whirled outward, erupting through the mist, banging unfastened windows to and fro down the length of the house, raising puffs of red dust from the gravel as it sped down the drive. It bowled past the gates, shaking loose a burst of carmine from the flame trees lining the road. The flowers spun in the air, this way and that, one blowing in through the open window of the car. The driver picked it absently from his lap, pressing its petals between his fingers, then cast it aside, flexing his palms against the wheel. The sun caught the gleam of metal at his wrists: a watch on one hand; on the other an old silver amulet, fastened with cord. The flower oscillated midair for an instant until the wind scooped it up once more. The car flew on toward Tiger Hills, a flash of color beneath the trees.

  He did not remember the accident, only the aftermath; finding himself awake and disoriented in a grimy hospital bed. He had moved tentatively, and pain had shot through his leg. It had come back in a rush, then, everything that had led up to this, the events of the past months, his self-imposed exile, amplified by his physical vulnerability. He had lain there, grief swimming up his body, as the words, his mother’s terrible words, repeated themselves in his ears.

  A curse, a punishment, that is what you are to me.

  One by one, they had seemed to loom at him from the shadows. Avvaiah. Appaiah. Appu. Baby. In his pain-addled state, each had then seemed to turn their backs upon him and disappear. He had shut his eyes, so much weight, such pressure in his chest that for an instant he was certain it must fall apart. And then something did give way within him. He had sat up, and ignoring the stab of pain in his side, he had set his feet on the floor. It hadn’t taken much to bribe the attendant. The collusion that had followed at the hospital morgue, a death certificate, faked to perfection.

  “This is the way, the only way,” he had repeated to himself. Where he would go, he did not know. Down this road and that he had turned, his mind blank, tamping down the past, his chest so tight it was as if the breath were being choked from his lungs.

  In the end, however, it came to nothing—not the distance, nor the years. For it never left him, the shape of these hills, the lay of this land. This dark fragrance of mulch and jungle earth that pooled within his heart. He used to imagine, as a child, how a marble might roll, mapping in his mind its route. Starting at the back stoop, rolling past the kitchen, beyond the pigsty, past the garden, dipping south and past the first coffee bushes, now gaining speed as it clipped toward the birdhouses, now slowing as it climbed uphill. In the end, we are each drawn to what we love most. And for him, it had always been this. Through evening fogs. In noontime shadows and the first moonlight. Through rustling leaf, in water and stone, in the glowing charcoal wings in the trees. It never stopped, not once through all that time, this clarion call of home. Rising to such a crescendo that one day there was nothing to do but return.

  The car hesitated at the open gates, as if unsure how best to herald its arrival. The wind swept through the windows, katabatic, untamed, the promise of rain in its spores. He drew a deep breath and floored the accelerator, sweeping up the gravel drive.

  Far off in the distance, down by the paddy fields and a stream that shone with silver, a flock of herons took wing. Silently they climbed, an arrow of purest white, silhouetted against the skies. Past the rows of gleaming coffee they soared, through the trees, and over the waiting house.


  Glossary of Terms

  Adigé: Coorg choker, made of gold, rubies, and pearls

  Akka: Literally, “elder sister,” used as a term of respect to address a girl or woman older than the speaker

  Anna: Literally, “elder brother,” used as a term of respect to address a boy or man older than the speaker

  Appaiah: Father

  Avvaiah: Mother

  Ayappa: Hindu god

  Ayurveda: Traditional form of medicine practiced in India

  Ayya: Term of respect used to address an older man, or a man of higher status or income than the speaker

  Bal battékara: The person who is first to touch a downed animal, whether dead or alive, in a hunt; traditionally considered to be as brave as the first person to knock down an enemy’s flag, but not as brave as the one bringing down the enemy (or the animal, in the case of a hunt)

  Barfi: Indian sweet made of condensed milk and sugar

  Beedi: Local Indian cigarette, made from tobacco wrapped in tendu leaves

  Cent percent guarantee: Local syntax for “guaranteed one hundred percent”

  Chee Chee: Derogatory slang for someone born of mixed Indian and British parentage

  Chiroti: Sweet made of layered dough and powdered sugar

  Chokra: Hindi for “boy”; derogatory for a boy of low status and income

  Cowrie: A marine gastropod; cowrie shells are sometimes used for divining purposes

  Dariya: Sea

  Dilli: Delhi

  Dosa: Thin pancake made from rice and gram beans

  Faggot: From “fag”; British public school slang for a student who was required to perform menial tasks for a senior student

  Galla meesé: Traditional Coorg mustache and sideburns that a killer of tigers sported as a badge of honor

  Ganapati: Another name for Ganesha, a Hindu deity

  Gilli danda: Children’s game in India played with sticks of two different lengths, a gilli and a danda