by Sharon Maas
'This is bad. Really bad,' said Henry, and his brow was wrinkled, anxiety written into every line and into the downturned corners of his lips. 'The village will be under water; those poor people!'
Nat rubbed behind his neck. He was thinking less of the poor people, more of his own poor self, because obviously, if the village was under water, there might be some difficulties in getting away, getting to Town to find a bus to Bangalore. And by the look of things he'd want to leave as soon as possible because obviously his father's house was no place of refuge in this weather. He fleetingly considered defecting here and now, while he still had a chance: excusing himself, jumping down into the black water, getting the boy to retrieve his plastic-wrapped suitcase from the bus's roof, taking a rickshaw or a taxi to the airport and the next plane to Bangalore.
However, he stayed put. Maybe it was an innate laziness, a disinclination to plunge back into the deluge after having found this temporary haven of dryness. Maybe it was lack of courage; he didn't relish Henry's barely concealed disapproval at yet another change of plans. Irresolute, Henry would call him, weak, wet and watery.
Maybe, though, it was something else. Whatever it was, he stayed put.
That something else in Nat began to stir, like the tiniest seedling nudging itself from its bonds, as the bus plunged through the countryside, through sheets of water falling from above and sheets of water covering the earth, water as far as the eye could see, water above and below, water, water, water. The bus lurched through an endless lake, for no road was visible, no roadside, only water. Water, collecting in some unseen pocket in the bus's ceiling, and released at intervals, gushed down on them in urgent, violent bursts, showering those passengers crouched on the back seat. Henry opened his umbrella and he and Nat took shelter beneath it. He removed a plastic sheet from his carry-all and passed it to the other back-seat passengers who thanked him and huddled, miserable, silent, beneath it. Nat saw their lips moving. They were praying.
Nat found himself praying too. It was not an act of will. It first stirred in him as they drove through a village Nat remembered, back then in another life. Driving to Madras in this same bus, and the rest-pause here in this very village, right here outside the Bombay Lodge. He recalled ragged ladies with baskets on their heads screeching 'Vadai-vadai-vadai-vadai,' pushing those baskets filled with sorry little round orange vadais up to the bus windows in the hope of a sale, little half-naked urchins loaded with banana bunches pushing through the bus aisles selling a banana here, a banana there, half-grown girls calling out, 'Chai-chai-chai-chai,' balancing trays of grubby thick-glassed tumblers half-filled with a brownish liquid on spindly, splayed-finger arms, strands of greasy black hair falling into their faces, looking up out of pleading great black eyes. Toddlers shitting in the dusty roadsides. Stray dogs, cows, goats, sadhus, cyclists, cripples, rich men, poor men, beggarmen, thieves, walking, running, screaming, calling, creeping, crawling all together in one huge mosaic of colour, sound and smell.
Now there was nothing. Just water.
The roadside stalls stood in water. The entrance to the Bombay Lodge was barred by a large metal gridwork before its wooden door, and the gridwork stood in water. The tea and coffee shops stood in water, and the coconut-frond roof of one shop lay collapsed over the counter, over the large metal vat used for boiling water. Not a living soul was to be seen.
The bus stopped for an instant somewhere in the sheet of water that replaced the main street and a few sorry sodden figures descended and melted into the grey wetness. The bus lurched off again, into the water.
Another bus lay on its side, abandoned, in what must have been a roadside ditch, in another age, before the water came and rendered it indistinguishable from the rest of the earth's surface. By some sixth sense their own driver wove his way through abandoned, waterlogged ruins of buildings, homes, shops, businesses, by some miracle keeping to the road, invisible beneath the water, by some miracle keeping his ark afloat.
Where are the people? Nat cried in his heart, and inside him he felt a constriction as if he could hardly breathe.
Where are the people? Where are they?
He closed his eyes so as not to see and not to know, but his heart knew and sent tears out from beneath his eyelids and he opened his eyes and he saw people. A small family, beneath a tree, doing nothing, waiting, a woman with a baby in her arms, a man, two small children, almost knee-deep in the water, under their tree. The man held a piece of sodden cardboard over the woman's head. The rain fell on the tree and its leaves moved in an up-and-down rhythm, bouncing almost merrily, while the family just stood there in the wetness, waiting.
Nat knew what this deluge meant for the people of his village, and of all the villages around. Not only were their huts built trustingly on ground level; they also contained no furniture. People slept not on beds, but on the earthen floor, simply spreading one thin cloth to lie on and covering themselves with another. They cooked on the ground, using dried cow-dung or twigs as fuel. They had no sanitation; they went out into the fields to relieve themselves. They could not afford raincoats or umbrellas; they usually had only one change of clothing, which when washed was laid on the ground or over a bush to dry.
What happens, then, he asked himself, when all their clothes are wet, and there's no sun to dry them? When there is no dry cow-dung or twigs to cook with; when the earth on which they sleep and cook and into which they defecate is no longer earth, but a sheet of water? When the dried mud with which their houses are built grows soggy and starts to dissolve, and their thatched roofs first leak and then cave in, and the rain won't stop? And the water keeps rising? Oh Lord, help then!
Six hours of water: collapsed mud huts, collapsed roofs; a world collapsed and abandoned. Nat was speechless.
When they arrived in Town they found more water, falling from above and rising from below, and no rickshaws running. Henry hired two boys to help with their luggage, Nat's, his, and the supplies they had bought in Madras, and the four of them set off through the abandoned streets of Town, out into the open countryside, through sheets of water and pouring rain, to the village.
They arrived at Doctor's long after nightfall, plodding through the water only by the light of Henry's torch, for the streetlights were not working. Henry called out but there was no answer except the whimpering of children, so he shone his torch around and they found the entire floor, inside the two rooms and around three sides of the verandah, covered with women and children; some of them lying, sleeping, covered with damp sheets, but a few mothers still up and comforting small weeping children.
'Where's Doctor ?' Henry asked one of the mothers. She was the only woman on her feet, walking up and down between the slumbering bodies, jostling a tiny living form clasped to her bosom; covered with the shawl of her sari, it was emitting weary whimpering noises. The woman was crying, but she looked up when Henry addressed her. Although he had spoken Tamil, out of the few Tamil words Henry had mastered, she replied in English, probably for Nat's benefit, for she was looking at him, and he realised she didn't know him, nor he her, and that he was home but he knew not his home and home did not know him.
'Sahib daktah going, coming, my not knowing,' she said. 'Big wattah coming, daktah boy taking, boy sick, boy no taking meals, boy…'
She didn't know the word for dead so she made the gesture for dead, head lolling to one side and tongue hanging out and eyes staring, and then she began to wail, loud and penetrating, and then she said, 'No fire making, sahib, no cooking, no taking meals, wattah coming, coming, coming!'
Henry turned to Nat. 'Some boy's dead, Nat, I think it must be her son. Doctor must be looking into that… I'd better go and find him. Are you coming?'
Nat nodded, still speechless. Where's Dad? Where's the dead boy? Where will they burn him? What will they do with the body? And a silent horror spread through his body and he could only look at Henry out of this horror and nod, yes, he was coming.
They left their luggage there and waded through
the rain to Henry's house next door, and that too was filled with wet sleeping whimpering children and comforting mothers. They plunged into the darkness, having no goal in mind except the village, but the village was deserted.
Dad, Dad, where are you? wept Nat's heart, What are you doing with the dead boy?
Henry's sober, calm voice cut into Nat's horror. 'Let's try the schoolhouse,' he said. 'That's the only other building that could possibly have survived this.' So they plunged through the water, following the beam of Henry's torch, and found the schoolhouse, under water, filled with Indians, and Doctor was there, spreading tree branches over the floor, and other men were helping him, one holding a kerosene lamp, another whittling at the branches with a cutlass, the others piling up the sticks to range out of the water in a sort of a platform.
Doctor had aged. He wore huge wellingtons, which he had bought in Madras once after a monsoon — but no monsoon had ever been as bad as this — large enough to cover the metal-and-leather contraption that held the wooden foot to his stump. Once, many years ago, Nat had asked Doctor what had happened to his foot, if he'd been born that way or if he'd had an accident. Doctor had only replied, 'Singapore. The war. Japanese.' And Nat knew the subject was closed, like every other subject dealing with the past. Like the portrait of the woman in their home. ‘Who is she, Dad?’ he’d asked, and Doctor had only said, ‘a very dear old friend,’ and his face had closed up and Nat had known the subject was taboo.
The past was a closed book. The orphanage, Gopal Uncle, Doctor's own family, Doctor's entire past, all was kept locked behind a wall of silence, while Doctor attended to the present. Only the present counted; the past was gone and done with, its only purpose was to produce the present, and a person's duty was to deal appropriately with that present, which in turn would give way to a future which did not, in itself, exist, because when the future arrived that, too, would be the present, to be dealt with appropriately. That was the Indian perspective, and Doctor was through and through Indian. For him only the here and now with its problems and challenges mattered — only the rain and the floods and the water was real, and the platform of branches and twigs they were making.
Doctor looked up when Henry and Nat entered, and far from falling into Nat's arms he only said, 'Oh, there you are, I was wondering when you'd turn up. Did you buy plastic sheets in Madras?' without stopping for an instant in his piling up of twigs and branches.
'Yes, I've got them here,' said Henry, opening the canvas bag he'd brought along and pulling out a folded wad of crackling plastic.
He unfolded it and Doctor said, 'That corner's finished, spread it over the wood,' which Henry did, forming a knobbly plastic bed of sorts.
'We've got the women and children in my house and yours, Henry; I suppose you've seen that. This here is for the men and this is where we'll be sleeping too for the next couple of days — or weeks — till the floods recede. A bit uncomfortable maybe but we'll manage. Nat, look, you can help Anand over there, try to get it a bit thicker. The biggest problem is food; we've been doing the cooking at my place, but we've used up most of the supplies in the village. We're down to nothing but rice now; we've been sending someone to Town occasionally but everything there's used up too, no vegetables, no chillis, nothing. And if this keeps up we'll have a cholera outbreak. The children are the worst off. One little boy died today; it was tragic, the mother's in a state but what can one do? I tried to save him but… well, he's gone.'
'Where's — where's the body?' Nat could hardly mouth the words but somehow the question wormed at him, as if, of all the problems in the world, the problem of how to dispose of a body when all the world is water was the very worst.
'Well, what can you do?' Doctor shrugged. 'Can't bury it, can't burn it. Sent it to the morgue in Town but they refused it, can't deal with any more bodies; they've got basically the same problems as we have, only worse. Had quite a few electrocutions there; good thing the people here have no current or we'd have had that too. So I wrapped it up in an old blanket and plastic sheets and took it out a few miles and hid it in the branches of a tree. Won't be an aesthetic sight if this goes on much longer, and I suppose it's not a very reverent thing to do with a body, but what can you do? Poor little fellow, not even three. Name was Murugan. Bright little boy, Ravi's son. Remember Ravi, Nat? Ravi married an educated woman from the next village, prides herself on her English. They've got two more children and a baby girl.'
'Yes, we met them,' said Nat, and that was all he could say. Ravi's son. Just before he'd left for England Ravi had married; Nat had attended the wedding but the bride had kept her head lowered and so he'd not recognised her as the mother of the dead boy; and then Ravi had had children and one of them was dead, his body stuck up in a tree to rot…
'Where's Ravi?'
'Ravi's in Chetput; he's getting a proper training as a nurse at the hospital there. I sent him a year ago, promised to look after his family in the meantime. Things are growing here, Nat; we need qualified staff. Anand's not enough. When Ravi returns I'll send Kamaraj for training. Got a few girls in training, too. But we need another doctor, Nat… we need you…'
He stopped speaking,, then and looked up from his work, and Nat met his eyes just for an instant. That look and those last words hit home. The simple naked statement, telling the whole story in the choice of words: not I need you, but we need you. Not want, but need. No accusation, no moralisation, no condemnation, no verdict, not even the hint of a reproach. That was the worst. Had there been a reproach, Nat would have fought back… but this!
If it were possible to die of self-reproach, to suffocate from guilt, to drown in a deluge of shame, then Nat would have fallen over in that instant, and drowned.
37
Chapter Thirty-seven
Saroj
Georgetown, 1969
By the time Lucy Quentin came home Trixie's maternal instincts had taken over and she had roused herself into cooking supper for the whole family, of which Saroj was now an honorary member. Rummaging in the kitchen cupboards Trixie found an open packet of Chinese noodles, a tin of peas, a tin of corn, and half a bag of chick-peas.
'Chow-mein a la Trixie!' she announced. 'Shit, I should soak the channa for a few hours… never mind, I'll do it in the pressure cooker. Now, let me see, spices . . .'
She searched at the back of the spice cupboard. 'I thought we had some soya sauce left over — damn it, the bottle's empty. You think curry powder'd do as well? Let me see, salt, pepper . . .'
Saroj's mind wasn't much on cooking so she wandered off to make herself at home, heaving up her stuffed pillow-case and lugging it into Trixie's bedroom. This was cluttered with heaps of miscellaneous stuff on the floor, under the bed, and all available surfaces: piles of papers, old magazines, records, comics, photos, you name it. Her Archie comics, which she wasn't allowed to read — Lucy Quentin had few rules, but the ones she had, like no Archie comics and no Romance Picture Library, nothing woman-hostile, she upheld to the hilt — were all stuffed under the mattress, as Saroj knew. She pulled one out, leafed through it, chucked it away, picked up a Teen magazine, opened it at a page with an article called How to Know If He'll Kiss and Tell and chucked that away too.
She wanted to unpack, just to make certain that this was, finally and definitely, her new home, but unpacking was impossible for the wardrobes were stuffed with Trixie's things, and there wasn't a free shelf to be found. She'd have to wait till Trixie made room for her.
The telephone rang.
'Would you get that, Saroj? I'm just in the middle of stir-frying this stuff !' Trixie called, so Saroj lifted up the receiver unsuspectingly.
'Hello?'
'Saroj! There you are! I've been —'
She slammed down the receiver with such clumsy force that she missed the hook and the whole phone gave a twisted leap and clattered to the floor.
'What the hell was that!' cried Trixie, rushing from the kitchen waving a wooden spoon.
'Ma!' Saroj said,
and plonked herself down on the tattered Morris chair next to the telephone table. Her knees had turned to jelly, her heart raced and her hands were so icy she shoved them under her armpits and clamped them there with her arms.
'Huh! What d'you think? Of course she knows you're here. Sooner or later she'll come to get you so you'd better get yourself armed and ready for battle.'
She was right. Sooner or later Saroj would have to face the consequences of her flight. Till now she'd only looked forward to liberty, to revenge, to a new life free of restraints. What Ma and Baba would do to get her back she hadn't considered. But in fact, she now realised, they must have been after her all afternoon.
She'd spent the time from lunchtime till Trixie's return in the hammock slung under Trixie's house. Though mentally and physically exhausted, her mind was still in a whirl and as she lay there unable to sleep she'd heard the telephone ringing upstairs, faintly, as through a mist. After that she'd fallen asleep, the hammock swaying in the gentle breeze seeking its way between the pillared houses of Bel Air. Now she knew for certain that the ringing had been Ma, searching for her. She'd have to think; and she'd need help. She longed for Lucy Quentin.
Saroj followed Trixie back into the kitchen and found her shoving the finished chow-mein in a Pyrex dish under the grill. She'd changed the recipe to chow-mein with grilled cheese. Trixie's idea of a gourmet meal was anything topped with grilled cheese, and though Saroj wasn't much of a cook herself, certain sensibilities had automatically rubbed off from Ma. She promised herself to take over kitchen duties as soon as tact allowed. Might as well begin now: the kitchen was a mess because in Trixie's unlimited creativity food was free to overflow and settle where it wanted, in or out of bowls and dishes, on, under or above the surfaces.