Teatime for the Firefly

by Shona Patel

  I banged on the door to Potloo’s hut, but it was like trying to raise the dead. He finally emerged bleary-eyed, wrapped in his scratchy old blanket.

  “I have to get Chotasahib,” I said hurriedly. “Get in the jeep and bring your torch.”

  The jeep growled to life, coughed and died. I tried again and the engine throbbed and held. The gears engaged with a terrible squeal and the vehicle lurched forward. I sat at the very edge of the seat and inched out of the driveway, my hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Potloo sat behind, gripping the back of the passenger seat as we bumped down the hill and into the pitch-black night.

  The night was thick, and eyes of furtive animals gleamed in the headlights. I drove the entire way in first gear and instructed Potloo to check the sides of the jungle road with the flashlight for signs of an accident—an upturned vehicle or, God forbid, bloodied human remains. But there was none, thank God. We entered the Kotalgoorie Tea Estate gate and drove past the factory to Flint’s bungalow. All the lights were blazing. Flint had the luxury of a small kerosene generator in his bungalow. His manager was easygoing, so his bungalow was pretty much the party house for young assistants.

  It was close to one o’clock when I arrived. There was a big racket going on and nobody heard me pull up on the driveway. I killed the engine and paused, listening. Somebody was twanging a guitar; there were shouts, drunken voices singing rowdy Irish songs and shrieks of female laughter.

  I got out of the car. My head was thundering as I marched up the stairs. The living room was in shambles. Beer, whiskey bottles, glasses and plates strewn everywhere. Flint was flat on his back, his head cradled in the bosom of a dusky female, her sari falling off her shoulders. She was feeding him bits of what looked like omelet from a plate on the floor. Larry was shirtless, perched on the sideboard with his ankles locked around a slant-eyed girl, singing lustily. Peewee had passed out, like a baby bird on the sofa, and Manik and another fellow whom I did not recognize were attempting to build a house of playing cards on the coffee table. Manik swayed like a leaf in the breeze, trying vainly to tent two cards together. His glasses were hanging off the tip of his nose. He was hopelessly and completely drunk.

  “Manik!” My voice slashed through the room like a whip. There was an instant chill in the air. Larry’s hand froze on the guitar. The omelet froze halfway to Flint’s mouth; the girls froze in their tittering and Manik glanced at me, then quickly down at the two cards on the table, which were now miraculously tented together.

  “I believe that is my wife,” he told the other fellow. He looked confused, not knowing whether to be dismayed at seeing me or triumphant at the tented cards. “I have to be home for dinner. I am a married man, you know.”

  All eyes were riveted on me. Suddenly I was mortified to think how I must have appeared: in my crushed sari and disheveled hair, I was the very caricature of the irate wife chasing down her faithless husband. I was the killjoy and a laughingstock. A hot wave of humiliation washed over me as I stood there blinking back the sting of my tears.

  The awful silence woke up Peewee. He looked around fearfully. “What’s going on, fellows?”

  What followed was a confused babble, everybody talking at once.

  I looked at Manik. “Let’s go,” I said acidly.

  “Oh boy,” said Larry, glancing at the others nervously.

  I turned around and marched down the stairs.

  Flint ran out to the veranda and peered over the railing. “Bloody hell, she drove here by herself. I didn’t even know she could drive.”

  “Where is my shoe? Has anybody seen my shoe?” I heard Manik shout.

  “Forget the shoe, old chap,” said Flint. “You better go.” He said to the others, “She’ll make mutton chop out of him.”

  Manik tumbled down the stairs, wearing one shoe.

  “Goodbye, fellows, have to be home for dinner. I am a married man, you know.”

  Blinded by tears and fury, I drove back to Aynakhal. Manik lolled around in the passenger seat and slept soundly. I left him in the jeep, went upstairs and locked the bedroom door. Potloo must have put him to bed that night, because in the morning Manik was asleep on the living-room couch, covered with Potloo’s scratchy old blanket. How he made it to kamjari on time is anybody’s guess.

  * * *

  Assam lies on a seismic fault that is wide and disastrous. Mild tremors are common. Once in a while, the earth gives an involuntary shudder as if imagining something frightful. The old bungalow creaks, lightbulbs sway and people forget what they were saying. One time we were halfway through dinner when it felt as though someone gave a violent jolt to the dining table. The walls weaved a little, the silverware clattered and the water glasses formed shuddering whirlpools. Then, just as abruptly, it all settled down.

  The earthquake that hit Assam the first summer I was in Aynakhal measured 6.5 on the Richter scale. When I look back, I recall there was something different in the air that evening—a rigid stillness almost, like a clamped throat. The dusk did not linger as it normally does in Assam and night fell swiftly. There was not a single sound, not a single firefly.

  Manik and I did not speak the whole next day after I pulled him out of Flint’s. There was icy silence, and Manik crept about like a thief, coughing nervously. He looked awful and I’m certain he felt worse. I was still giving him the royal snub.

  “The lads are very impressed with your driving,” Manik offered, trying to be friendly.

  I gave him a frosty look. “I don’t care what the lads are impressed with, and I am certainly not impressed with you.”

  He took his evening tea alone in the veranda while I stayed in the bedroom. When he came into the bedroom for his bath, I went out to the living room. I sat at the writing desk and tried to compose a letter to Moon. Through tear-blurred eyes, I wondered how to tell her of my tragically flawed marriage. Each word took so long to write, the ink kept drying on the nib of my fountain pen until I ran out of ink altogether. I was filling my pen with the dropper from the inkwell when a movement against the wall caught my eye. It was about a foot long, thin like a snake but without the writhing serpentine motion, rather it bobbed up and down in a straight line. I moved a little closer to take a look and found to my utter astonishment a long line of very tiny mice. They were holding one another’s tails and scurrying rapidly along the edge of the wall in a single file. The tiny convoy then turned the corner of the living room and disappeared into the darkness of the veranda. It was the most bizarre thing I had ever encountered, and I had no idea what to make of it.

  Three minutes later, the inkwell flew off the desk and smashed against the wall. Books tumbled off the shelves, and the ground began to move in a violent sideways motion like a giant sieve. The desk tipped and jammed the bookshelf into the wall. I lost my balance and grabbed the sofa, watching in horror as it slid toward the dining table, dragging me along.

  Manik ran out from the bathroom covered in soapsuds and wrapped in a towel.

  “Get out!” he screamed. “NOW!”

  The floor was tipping in the opposite direction now. He yanked me to my feet. We bolted down the stairs and ran to the far reaches of the garden. Halua, Kalua, Potloo and their families were already gathered outside, shouting, screaming and crying. When I turned around the bungalow was a sight to behold. The massive structure was shaking violently. The lightbulbs swung in giant arcs, there were rattles and thuds and then, like a giant freight train slamming on its brakes, it all came to a sudden and shuddering stop.

  A split second of dead silence was followed by pandemonium. Thousand of voices broke out in the night, mixed with the braying of petrified cattle and the barking of dogs.

  The crowd on our lawn began to ungroup. A quick head count revealed everybody was safe. The biggest wonder of all was that Manik’s bath towel was still in place. In the midst of the chaos he had quietl
y slipped his arms around my waist. He held on to me like a drowning man, and I could feel his heart thudding through his bare chest.

  “Please don’t leave me, Layla,” he whispered in a tortured voice.

  I was so relieved we had both escaped unharmed, I could only cover his hand with mine and squeeze as Manik tightened his arms around me.

  I believe sometimes the heavens move in curious ways to solve human dilemmas. A hornet was dispatched to solve our sex problem, but it took an earthquake to mend our squabble.

  * * *

  There was no sleep for anyone that night. No lights, no fan, either. The power lines were down and it was swelteringly hot. Without bothering to rinse off the soap from his body, Manik pulled on his trousers and ran to check the state of the factory. Damage to the structure and equipment would mean a major blow with the second flush plucking season just around the corner. But miraculously Aynakhal had been spared. Other than clearing the debris and straightening up the mess, there appeared to be no major damage.

  Just when we thought the worst was over, the next day there was another calamity. Manik had gone to Mariani after breakfast, and I was reading on the veranda when I heard a sudden rumbling followed by what I can best describe as a wet slapping sound, like a loud phlaat, that came from the master bedroom. The sound was so loud that even the floor shook a little. I ran to the bedroom to find a large portion of the thatched roof had fallen in and entirely covered my grandmother’s dressing table. Clumps of moldy straw, splinters of bamboo and rattan were strewn in massive heaps all over the bedroom, and a four-foot square patch of blue sky peeped overhead. What was more alarming was the bedroom was crawling with snakes! Several dozen baby banded kraits that had been nesting in the thatch descended with the debris. There they were all tangled up in a fat, writhing knot. I stood on the bed and screamed for help. Halua, Kalua and the malis ran to get sticks, brooms and shovels. By the time they returned all the snakes had vanished. The whole lot. The babies sought refuge in every nook and crevice they could find. They crawled inside our clothes cupboard and the laundry basket in the bathroom, and when we looked in Manik’s shoes, each one had an angry baby krait hissing inside. Some even managed to slink off into the living room and veranda.

  Mrs. McIntyre got news of our roof collapse and sent us sandwiches through her driver. Manik returned from Mariani at lunchtime to find the house pell-mell. That day the servants killed twenty-nine baby kraits and days later they were still showing up in odd places. We even found one quietly curled on top of a record jacket right on Frank Sinatra’s face, looking exactly like a mustache.

  Since we had no roof over our heads, Manik and I moved into the guest room—the one with the hole in the floor. Halua, Kalua and Potloo spent the better part of the night clearing out Manik’s hunting junk so that we could sleep. It was well after midnight when we finally went to bed.

  CHAPTER 26

  Aynakhal

  24th April 1946

  Dear Dadamoshai,

  I know you must be worried hearing about the earthquake. The epicenter was thirty miles from Aynakhal. But we are all safe. Our Chung bungalow withstood the tremors fairly well, considering how old it is. The only damage was that a part of the roof in our bedroom caved in. Huge mounds of moldy thatch everywhere! The roofs of these old-style bungalows are very heavily thatched to keep out all the rain we get here and sometimes the beams rot and give way. This is common. Oh, and the biggest dilemma of all! Our bungalow was crawling with snakes—banded kraits! They are extremely venomous. Halua and Potloo have killed more than two dozen so far.

  The Jardine Henley director flew in today from Calcutta to do garden inspection. You will never guess who it is? James Lovelace! Charlie, the Jardine’s pilot, flew the small yellow Cessna low over our bungalow so Mr. Lovelace could see the damage to our roof. I was in the bedroom at the time and waved at them through the hole in the thatch. It was very surreal. The McIntyres are throwing a cocktail party for James Lovelace this evening, so I will get to meet him finally.

  Several other Jardine Henley gardens in the Mariani district have been badly damaged. The Dega factory has collapsed, damaging all the machinery. In other tea gardens, labor lines have been flattened and there is a substantial loss of life and livestock. The aftermath is even more horrific, because a deadly outbreak of cholera has crippled the workforce in many gardens.

  I must get ready for the party now, Dadamoshai. I will give this letter to Charlie to post from Calcutta. It seems like letters take a shorter time to reach Silchar from Calcutta than they do from the gardens.

  My love to you,

  Layla

  James Lovelace was a tall, bony man with a Van Dyke beard. He looked like an old-fashioned count. He was the brother of Estelle Lovelace, Dadamoshai’s English sweetheart from his Cambridge days, and had known my grandfather as a young man.

  “What was my grandfather like when he was young?” I asked him.

  We were chatting in the smoking room of the McIntyres’ bungalow, a large study-cum-library with teak paneling and a stone fireplace. Long shelves of books lined the walls. A tiger skin complete with a monstrous head and glassy yellow eyes was spread across the wooden floor. On one wall was a large framed photograph of a group of Scottish highlanders in their tartan kilts standing stiffly, their guns by their sides. Gordon Highlanders, 1932 was inscribed at the bottom. A military sporran with long hairy, tasseled tails and a crested metal insignia hung on a hook to one side of the photograph. Everything about the room was warm, woodsy and manly.

  “Ah, Biren Roy,” James Lovelace reminisced, swirling the brandy in his snifter.

  Biren Roy. I sometimes forgot my grandfather even had a real name. Everybody just called him the Rai Bahadur. “He was quite a firecracker even back in those days. An excellent debater. You could tell Biren Roy was destined for great things.”

  James Lovelace remarked he was surprised Estelle and Dadamoshai never married. They had exchanged letters for several years after Dadamoshai returned to India. It was Estelle who told him about Dadamoshai’s educational work in Silchar. “She was very excited to hear I reconnected with Biren.”

  “Perhaps you could persuade her to visit India,” I suggested.

  “Well, it’s certainly a possibility.” James Lovelace smiled, stroking his beard. “My daughter Bridgette is doing her doctorate in Colonial History, and she plans to visit India next spring. I’ll ask Estelle if she wants to come along.”

  I smiled at the thought of Dadamoshai reunited with his old flame. I was sure he still harbored tender feelings because when I once asked him about Estelle, Dadamoshai had acted surprisingly boyish and shy.

  Ian McIntyre joined us. He was a stocky man in his late fifties, brusque and bushy-eyed, dressed in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches over a white shirt with no tie. He was unmistakably an army man.

  “Hello, Layla,” he said, removing the curved Dunhill pipe from his mouth. “I hope you are doing a good job keeping our man Deb in check.”

  “Oh, I thought that was your job, Mr. McIntyre,” I quipped.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” guffawed Mr. McIntyre. “Been complaining about me, has he? Hey, Deb!” he called across the room.

  Manik, who was leaning against the mantel chatting with Larry, sidled up, meek and respectful.

  “You’ve been complaining about me to your wife, I hear?”

  Manik looked discomfited, as if he had swallowed a marble. “S-sir?” His eyes darted at me nervously. It obviously didn’t take much from Mr. McIntyre to turn my husband into a babbling wreck.

  “Oh, never mind.” Mr. McIntyre laughed amiably, giving Manik a thump on the back, causing him to teeter forward a little. “Let’s just both keep him on a tight leash, shall we, Layla?”

  Larry was talking to a dark-haired man wearing a fashionable dinner jacket. I recognized him as
the stranger at Flint’s house the night I dragged Manik home. The man had the slink of an alley cat. An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. Larry, as usual, looked slightly disheveled, with his dark curly hair and sleepy blue eyes. He waved us over.

  “I don’t know if you’ve met Charlie,” he said, introducing us.

  Charlie threw up his hands. “Please don’t shoot me—I am only the pilot!” he cried in mock terror.

  Manik grinned. “Charlie has the most enviable job in the world. He flies around in his little yellow Cessna...”

  “And gets cozy with dishy air hostesses in Calcutta,” added Larry.

  Charlie gave a crooked smile. “What are you whinging about, mate? Give me a chowkri with a tokri any day.” He looked at me with a straight, hard gaze that made me slightly self-conscious. “Pleased to finally make your acquaintance, Layla. The last time I saw you, you were hauling off our Cinderella without his shoe. I hope he got the lashing he deserved.”

  “Lashing for what?” cried Manik, indignantly. “I am innocent.”

  “I’ll vouch for Manny,” said Larry. “Charlie tried every trick to tempt Manny, but the fellow held on to his chastity for dear life.”

  “You know how I hate losing,” drawled Charlie, “so I’ve kept your shoe as a trophy, old chap. I think I’ll hang it off the tail of the Cessna for good luck. Indian style.”

  “You bugger!” Manik aimed a mock punch at him, but Charlie nimbly skipped out of the way.

  “I’ll give your shoe back,” Charlie whispered huskily in Manik’s ear, “if you find me a bedfellow like your one.” He said it just loud enough for me to overhear.