Amma clutched Appa’s hand. ‘Promise me you will never go to Africa,’ she said.
Patti and I had walked ahead. I turned back to look at Appa and Amma. Appa had his arm around her shoulder. He whispered something in her ear and she giggled.
Patti asked, ‘Siva, did you like Bagheera, Ka, Baloo or Shere khan?’
‘Baloo,’ I replied and did the bear dance once more.
‘And don’t forget what the bear said,’ Patti added, patting my head playfully. ‘Life is made of small-small things. Don’t look for things you can’t get, you can’t find. Forget them and the small things,’ she spread out her arms, ‘will become big-big-bigger, as big as life.’
EenieMeenieMineyMo, Tara whispered in my ear.
The moon above was large and round and the shadow on it looked like Ba-geera. I felt nicely de-stessed. It was a good day, and so was the lesson I learned from Baloo, the bear.
Amma and Tara were the barest necessities of my life: breath and heartbeat. I couldn’t live without them.
Then there was Georgie Gibbs of course; he stared down at me from the wall in the hallway every time I passed by. And sometimes when no one was looking I talked to him. But he was a different matter. He was not family; he did not belong to our inner or outer world. He belonged altogether to another world.
4
I was introduced to God early in my life. I can’t say He did me much good. To know me, just me, would have been difficult even for Him, as it would prove to be for me. There was no escaping my fate, no, not even with His help. I seriously doubted if He would help, or if He could. In any case, who was God? Some questions don’t have answers; science has still to find them, Appa had told me, that’s why people believe in God. God was important. I knew this. I also knew that God had a lot of answers. But I couldn’t understand why He didn’t have answers for everything.
Most of what happened to me, with me, was not in my control but I had found a way of filling in the gaps, finding hidden clues, swimming the tide to become who I was meant to be. The gaps and clues were tiny at most times but it was the enormous tide that eventually swept me off my feet. But first about those gaps and clues:
I now knew a lot of words, some of them with their spelling:
G-i-r-l = girl. B-o-y = boy. Many ‘girl’ = girls. More than one boy = boys. Like a girl = girl-ish. Like a boy = boy-ish. I had worked out in my mind the difference between Girl and Boy.
Girls: Patti, Amma, Munniamma, Tara, Rebecca and Rose-aunty. Girls were sweet and cried easily. They cooked, cleaned and did not go out to work.
Boys: Appa, Vishnu-thatha. Boys were strong, they had hair on their face; they were very busy and they went out to work.
But were there boys/girls who were half-and-half? Boys who were strong and cried easily? Girls who were sweet and had hair on their face? I didn’t know. These were un-answerable questions, at least for me. As for God, God only knew.
Appa was fully a boy, and thank God for this. He was strong; he had hair on his face, and he left early to work and returned late in the night. Girls surrounded me all day long, old, older, oldest: Amma, Munniamma, Patti. Now and then Tara whispered in my ear: ssh-hiss. Except for Georgie Gibbs, if he could be counted as a man. Then there was the chakka-man who parked his cart under the chakka tree. But he couldn’t be counted; he was outside. Until the morning Mani arrived at the gates with a tattered suitcase. He was a cook and Appa had hired him.
That morning Rose-aunty had left Rebecca in my house and gone to Sunshine Home, the school for the handicapped and poor that she looked after. Rebecca and I were in the kitchen watching Patti churn curds with a stick to make fresh butter. Patti saw Mani from the window and went out to meet him. Rebecca and I ran after her.
Mani leaned on one hip against the gate, scrutinizing the property. One arm was flung carelessly behind his head. As we approached, he stroked the side of his head, and pushed his hair up. His face was smooth and his teeth were so even and white that they put a Colgate smile to disgrace. He was girl-ish. ‘My name is Mani,’ he said in a squeaky voice. ‘I was a cook in the Indian army. I know English cooking very well. And an Englishman I worked for said my chicken curry was the best.’
Patti grunted. ‘There is no army here. Just three of us, and this little one here,’ she said pointing to me. ‘English cooking? Chicken curry? Look at me. Do I look like some pale English woman to you? We are vegetarians. No eggs. No meat.’
‘I know South-Indian cooking too, ma,’ Mani said beaming. ‘And North-Indian. Bengali, Gujarati dishes also.’
‘Okay-okay.’ Patti let him in and led him into the outhouse at the back of the kitchen.
As Rebecca and I followed them important questions came to my mind. Important, because only God had the answers to them.
•Mani was a boy but he cooked. He was girl-like; he waddled.
•Munniamma was a girl but she went out to work. She was strong; she had muscles.
Amma had told me about Exceptions. In English one thing could become many things by adding ‘s’. Like banana and banana-s, apple and apple-s. But cherry became cherr-ies and mango became mango-es. And the more difficult one, knife became kni(f)-ves. These, Amma said, were exceptions to the rule. They were special. So I concluded that Mani and Munniamma were exceptions. They were a bit of both – a girl and a boy. Like me. I was an exception too. I was two people at once: one a half of the other. Being an exception was special. I liked Mani. Exceptionally.
In the outhouse Mani put his suitcase down and opened it. He took some of his things out and laid them on the floor.
‘You can unpack later,’ Patti said. ‘First cook the rice.’
‘Cook rice? Now?’
‘Yes. I want to feed the crows.’
‘Crows?’
‘Crows are the spirits of our ancestors and feeding them brings good fortune and peace to the family. Don’t you know this?’
‘Okay, ma. I will come in a minute.’
Rebecca and I returned to kitchen with Patti. Amma was grating coconut and Munniamma washed the utensils. Just then Rose-aunty arrived to fetch Rebecca. Some minutes after they left Mani stepped into the kitchen in a lungi; his chest was bare. Patti stared at the blue-black tattoo of a heart on his arm.
‘What happened to your shirt eh?’
‘It’s so hot, ma.’
‘I don’t care. I can’t have your sweat and hair falling into my food. Go, put on a shirt.’
Amma ground the grated coconut with green chillies, ginger and cumin seeds and added the paste to the stewed pumpkin. She now added the buttermilk left over from the curds that Patti had churned. Mani returned to the kitchen in his blue shirt and got busy boiling the rice. When it was cooked he heaped some on a plate and held it out to Patti.
Patti stepped out into the garden with the plate of rice. She rolled the rice into balls, then standing on her toes she placed them in a row on the garden wall. I had seen her perform this ritual every morning and sometimes she even made a tiny rice ball for me and thrust it into my mouth. Ka-ka-ka. She called out to the crows. Before long, she had a response. I looked up and saw a large black crow with a cut near its left eye staring down at her. ‘Oh. It’s you,’ she smiled, ‘so many years and now you show your face eh? Your son is doing well. Raman has become the director of the Georgie Gibb Mosquito Institute here. You would have been proud, had you been alive. And yes, you have a grandson, Siva.’ She didn’t tell the crow about Tara. ‘Now don’t worry about me. Your son is looking after me well. When he is not running after those mosquitoes, that is.’ She hurried back into the kitchen and returned a few moments later with another ball of rice. She held it up to the waiting crow. ‘Here, eat this one, I have mixed it with fresh homemade butter that I churned this morning only.’
But the crow flew out and up over the palm trees. Ka ka, ka, Patti shouted to it as she walked further in
to the trees, her arm outstretched with the ball of rice. There, hidden by lantana bushes, she saw a tomb made of broken laterite. The stone had crumbled and grass grew out of its pores. The inscription on the weathered headstone was worn.
Ge rge Gi bs.
Ap il 13, 1862.
Patti dropped the riceball and covered her mouth with her hands and screamed. Munniamma and Amma came running past the palm trees.
Amma pressed her hand to her mouth, and her eyes grew wide. ‘It’s George Gibbs’ grave.’ She glanced at the date. ‘By Jove! It’s a hundred years old.’
‘What Jove, Jove!’ Patti retorted. ‘You silly woman! Don’t you even know that the dead person’s memories will seep into each of us and make us live his life and think his thoughts?’
‘Don’t you worry ma,’ Munniamma said. ‘I know someone who can drive spirits away.’
Patti folded her hands, looked up, and prayed to the Goddess of unhappy spirits: Oh Periyachi Aaman, keep the English spirit away from us.
***
A half hour later Munniamma returned with an old man wrapped in too much cloth. Patti and Amma were waiting for her in the garden. Patti asked, ‘Munniamma, who is this human cocoon?’
‘He is the fakir who sits near the Mosque.’ Munniamma rubbed her hands together. ‘He will drive away the evil spirit.’
‘Ye di Munniamma, could you only get a halfstarved man to do the work?’ Patti asked. ‘And can’t you see he is a Muslim?’
‘With ghosts, religion doesn’t matter ma,’ Munniamma whispered. ‘And it is an English ghost after all. I can tell you this much, ma: the spirit will be gone just like that.’ She clicked her fingers in the air. ‘He says he will do it for fifty rupees.’
‘Fifty rupees!’ Patti hissed. ‘What does he think money grows on? My bald head?’
‘He has to send the ghost away all the way to England, no?’
‘I don’t care if he sends the ghost to England or Kanyakumari,’ Patti retorted. ‘I am not paying more than twenty-five.’
The fakir raised three fingers, shook them in front of Patti’s face. ‘Thirty rupees. You have to pay first.’
Patti opened the knot she had tied with the end of her saree and retrieved several notes. ‘Here’s twenty. Five I will give later.’
The fakir spread a black cloth on the ground. I stood behind Amma and peered at him as he arranged coins on the cloth, stones and bits of wood in a circle. From his bag he took out a small roll of cloth no bigger than his palm. He wound a piece of twine around it and placed it in the middle of the circle and thrashed it with a broom made of leaves. Then he sat on the ground and shut his eyes and swayed back and forth. His body shook and he wailed as if in terrible pain. Spit spewed out of his mouth.
Patti asked, ‘Ye di Munniamma, why is this man howling like a mad dog?’
Munniamma raised a finger to her lips. ‘Sshh, it is the English ghost tormenting him.’
The wind became steadily fierce. The fakir stood up and with his arms flailing above his head he circled round and round. He rushed to the pond and just when it seemed to me that he was about to jump into it, a branch of a palm tree snapped and fell into the water. The fakir crashed down in a heap on the ground. He foamed at the mouth and his body shook. Amma watched, her hands covering her mouth. I stood close to her. Tara had set up a wail in my ears.
‘Achicho, he’s having fits or what?’ Patti screamed. ‘Mallika, go get my old slippers and leave them next to him and, yes, get an iron key and shove it into his mouth. Go! What are you waiting for eh?’ Munniamma cupped her hands, filled them with water from the pond and sprinkled it on the fakir’s face. She held him by his shoulders and shook him. ‘Why are you shaking him like that?’ Patti said. ‘Can’t you see he’s already shaking?’
The fakir opened his eyes, wiped his face with the back of his hand, sat up and pointed to the branch fallen in the pond. ‘That was the ghost,’ he said.
‘That branch?’ Patti asked.
‘Yes. The spirit entered me, and then flew to the tree, slid down its branch and dropped into the pond.’ The fakir held out his hand. ‘Give me the rest of the money, ma. The ghost is gone.’
Patti looked at the branch fallen in the water. Although my grandmother believed in the supernatural, logic was stamped in her Tamil brain and it often intercepted her blind faith. There was no way she was going to believe the fakir. ‘The ghost has not gone anywhere. It is still in the pond. Floating. It is an English spirit after all and it can certainly swim. Go now.’ Patti waved her hand at the fakir.
Disgruntled he walked away. Mani had come out into the yard by now, having heard the ruckus. ‘You should get a dog, ma,’ he said. ‘Dogs can see spirits. And they bark loud and scare the spirits away. Yusuf has a pet store in the market. I can get a dog from him, but he is expensive.’
‘Why pay for a dog when so many of them run about in the streets eh? Go look for one and bring it here. Feed it for a few days. Then it will remain faithful and guard the house and keep the ghost away.’
Half an hour later, Mani returned holding a rope tied to the neck of a mangy white dog. It smelled of an old gunnysack. Patti inspected the dog, walking around it. She slapped her forehead. ‘Aiyooo Rama. Why is it so thin and white? Those English people left behind their dogs or what? Chi-chi, God only knows what illness it has. Feed it outside the gate, Mani. So it will stay there, under that chakka tree, near the chakka-man.’
‘What to call it?’ Mani asked.
Patti thought for a bit. ‘A nice name. A name of a king perhaps. Or a hero.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘Yes, yes, I know what to call it. Churchill.’
I shaped my mouth and said something like ‘Cha-chi.’ Cha-chi-cha-chi, Tara went on and on in my head.
***
Not entirely convinced by the fakir’s tomfoolery or the dog’s extraordinary powers, Patti sent for Perumal Krishnan to offer prayers to Periyachi Aaman to ward off the evil eye of the spirit and, unbeknown to Amma, to read my horoscope that he had cast the day after I was born.
A horoscope is like a stamp from nature’s own manufacturing company, which lists important features as:
Manufacturing Date
Batch Number
Composition
Indication
Expiry Date
Just like on a pack of medicine.
As soon as Perumal arrived Patti sent a reluctant Amma to the medical store to get her a jar of Amrutanjan Balm. Perumal sat on the pai in front of Patti. She told Perumal about the grave she had found and handed him my horoscope. ‘A good fate can beat an evil spirit any day. Read carefully,’ Patti said, ‘and see if my grandson is going to be a great man one day. Perhaps a great leader like our Gandhiji.’
Perumal giggled.
‘What are you giggling for eh? Tell me, would Gandhiji’s mother have ever imagined her son would be a great man one day? These things happen. Yes, they happen if fate allows it.’
Perumal studied my horoscope; his nose twitched now and again. ‘He will have a soft body and face, wide forehead, deep eyes, bright countenance and a prominent nose. He is of the type – Satyameva Jayate. He will not hesitate to sacrifice his own life for upholding the truth. He will also be of the adamant type. Once he takes a decision it will not be easy for others to change his mind. While he will be very intelligent and have a good grasp of complex things, he will be very soft in his heart.
Patti clasped her hands in front of her chest. ‘See, I told you.’
‘Your grandson is born under the Mrigasira constellation of stars,’ Perumal added. ‘Its ruling deity is Parvati. Those born under these stars are on a quest; they are always seeking. He will be a wise one, and know many secrets. He will have excellent memory and the powers of premonition, and he will be prone to clairvoyance.’ Then Perumal looked up at Patti conspiratorially. ‘However, we must be careful, ma.
The Mrigasira person frequently follows a mirage and this gives rise to duplicity, fickleness and mental exhaustion in him and those around him. Let us be warned, Mrigasira is known to bring temporary contentment, deep disillusionment and sorrow.’ Perumal now looked into his charts and notes to check the position of planets, the celestial houses they occupied and their transition between houses. ‘Scorpio is the ascendant,’ he declared. ‘The Sun is in Pisces and Saturn is in Gemini. Saturn will cause a lot of damage when it transits from the house of Gemini.’ He looked up at Patti, wearyeyed. ‘This is far worse than the evil eyes of spirits, ma.’
Patti covered her open mouth with her hand. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘To ward off the evils of Saturn you must pray to Shaneeshwar, the Lord of Saturn, the son of the Sun God and the Goddess of Shadow. Everything will be all right, ma,’ Perumal said. ‘You must have trust in the superior powers.’ Perumal joined his hands, closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and prayed, Aum praang preeng proung Shanaye namah…
Patti closed her eyes and prayed to Shaneeshwar to look after me, damned by the itinerant Saturn. Cha-chi howled all night. Tara sang to me in my sleep – Kaa’s hypnotic Trust in me song.
5
The Lord of Saturn cast his benevolent eyes on me, at least temporarily. He blessed me with a fair share of intelligence. I was bright and Amma was overjoyed. She taught me s-c-i-e-n-c-e. The same science that knew lesser answers than God. I learnt that my head was made of bones, and thoughts were inside it, and yesterday’s thoughts became memories. Thoughts were the fruits of my mind, Amma told me. I wondered if thoughts were made of flesh, like papaya flesh. Skin like banana skin. Or bones like mango seed. Or juice like orange juice. I asked Amma and she said: God only knows.
IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE Page 6