The House of Blue Mangoes

by Davidar, David

  Aaron spoke at every town and village he visited, either to small groups at tea stalls or to larger audiences, especially if he proposed to spend a couple of days in a place. He was not a natural orator, but he spoke from the heart, and this usually masked any deficiencies in his delivery. He was glad Iyer had given him another chance to prove that he could handle reading, writing and speaking. He read slowly and laboriously and found much of what he ploughed through tedious but he kept at it. He would do anything for the revolution. He loved the sense of purpose it gave him but the sense of brotherhood it fostered was equally important. He thought less and less of his own family now; when he did so, they didn’t fill him with rage any more. He would even wonder what it would be like to meet them. On the rare occasions that he visited Chevathar, the news contained in Charity’s postcards that Kaveri had bothered to save for him was already old. Even hearing of Daniel’s marriage and professional success did not enrage him, as it would once have done. Fulfilment isn’t the best way to nurture hate and Aaron was more content than he had been in a long time. Solomon and Joshua were always present, far back in his mind, but he didn’t mourn them as fiercely as he’d once done.

  Towards the end of 1909 he arrived again in Tuticorin, where he had participated in his first action. He remembered the fear and excitement of that time. And then a memory rose within him of the mysterious woman in the rundown quarter. Anthracite eyes. Jayanthi’s eyes. Suddenly he felt very alone. As the loneliness deepened, Aaron decided he would track down the mysterious woman.

  That evening, his work done, he took off on his own. He wandered for hours and was finally so wretchedly tired that he decided to call off the search. He entered a dingy, near-empty tea shop and ordered tea and a vadai, then sat with his back against the wall and shut his eyes. With no surprise at all, he found that he was walking through a familiar quarter. He recognized the poor hovels lining the road and, looming out of their midst, the grand mansion. As he came up to it he saw that it must have been an imposing house in its prime, the residence of some fabulously rich Dutch merchant or English factor. It had gone to seed, its walls discoloured by monsoons and dirt, the wide stone steps leading up to the pillared veranda chipped. Some of the windows hung askew. He felt a bit apprehensive as he mounted the steps and walked across the veranda, his feet stirring the dust. The house seemed to be abandoned. He went on. Just by the front door a small bronze plaque gleamed brightly. Inscribed on it was a single word: VIDUTHALAI. Freedom. Release. He pulled the tasselled bell rope. Chimes sounded distantly within the house but nothing happened. He was on the point of pulling the rope again when the door opened suddenly. He was disappointed to see that it wasn’t the mysterious woman he remembered so well, but an elderly servant.

  He was about to make his apologies and leave when the servant said, ‘Vanakkam aiyah, you are expected.’ He had a sense of large and luminous mysteries waiting just out of reach, and then he was following the servant down a long tiled passage. He was ushered into a magnificent drawing room. Maroon drapes shut out the view and enormous fringed punkahs kept the temperature even. At least a dozen sofas radiated like the petals of a giant flower from a highly polished granite centre table placed directly under a many-branched chandelier. There were two or three people already sitting on the sofas when Aaron walked in. The servant led him to an unoccupied sofa. Then, as if on cue, music sprang up from behind a beautifully carved wooden screen, and servants appeared carrying silver trays of sherbets, raisins and nuts. When all of them were served the servants vanished and a tiny old lady came down the marble staircase. She was dressed in a sapphire-coloured sari and her complexion was only a shade darker than her white hair.

  She came up to them and said delightedly, ‘I never know what visitors each day will bring but I’m never disappointed by the rare diamonds who visit this house. Every one of you has been shaped by forces that most people would have succumbed to and you are all the more precious to me for that.’ Aaron glanced at the three other men in the room. On the adjacent sofa was an enormously corpulent man, his eyes, chin and nose pouched in fat, his vast stomach spreading the cloth of his jibba. Further down was an older man, prosperous looking but with a birthmark that disfigured half his face so that from some angles it looked as though he had been neatly sliced in half. Across the room was an impossibly handsome man, about his own age, sharp-featured, with angry eyes. The wounded of the world! Scarcely had the thought struck him than a healing fog invaded his mind, obliterating the idea even as he fought vainly to develop it.

  ‘All of you have spent a lifetime searching for me, making your way to me, and I will promise you that once you have passed through my hands you will never lack for that thing that everyone looks for, but few truly find. What is this thing called love? Let my girls and I show you. For only when you learn how to love do you learn how to live, and it’s only when you have loved that you know how to die.’ Taking a small crystal bell off a side table, she shook it, and four extraordinarily attractive girls appeared beside her. Light, dark, slim, voluptuous, the only things they possessed in common were large sensuous coal-black eyes.

  ‘Here they are, honoured guests, my beloved girls, whom you have created in the image of your deepest longings. They are yours for as long as you want. There is no charge for them and I implore you to treat them well, for the minute you mistreat them they will withdraw and you will be debarred from VIDUTHALAI for ever.’

  Aaron and the other men couldn’t take their eyes off the young beauties. The old lady gave them a few minutes, then sent her charges upstairs.

  ‘There are a few simple rules this house observes. The girls have no names, and you cannot choose any of them in advance. Each of them is equally precious to me, and as you will discover, equally precious to you as well. Whether you are here for one night or many, you may choose only one name by which to address your partners. Every one of them will answer to that name, and the choice is entirely up to you. For the time they bear the name you have given them, that name will adorn them and they will be the people you want them to be. The only true reality, honoured guests, is that which is not real.’

  By now Aaron had stopped fighting the fog that had crept into every crevice of his mind and everything the old lady said made eminent sense. He had no hesitation when he was asked to choose a name: Jayanthi. He found himself following the servant up the marble staircase in a state of pleasurable excitement. At the top of the stairs, a plushly carpeted corridor extended in both directions. White-painted doors opened off it. He noticed that each of them had a name carved on it in ornate script. The last door bore the name Jayanthi. The servant knocked, then withdrew.

  She sat on the bed dressed in a blue cotton sari, just as she had been the time he saw her. But this girl was dark and voluptuous, her breasts straining against the thin cotton of her blouse. The other Jayanthi had been slim, almost sexless. Yet this was Jayanthi, he was sure of it. He let the contradiction float away, and sat down beside her.

  She told him how handsome he was, how she was filled with joy at the prospect of pleasing him, harmless clichés that filled him with a tremendous warmth and happiness. He felt her hands on him, stroking his face, his hair, and then, so naturally that it seemed he had practised for this moment all his life, he made love to her in the vast four-poster bed – running his hungry tongue and eyes and hands over her full breasts with their honey-coloured centres, the convexity of her waist, her great curving thighs, and then entering her . . .

  Night after night, Aaron was a regular visitor to VIDUTHALAI. Every night he went upstairs with a different Jayanthi and every night he learned a different truth. You have to love to live. And die. And then, one evening, Aaron was unsurprised to find no trace of VIDUTHALAI when he arrived at the slum . . .

  Someone was shaking him. He opened his eyes and the proprietor of the tea shop asked him whether he had finished. Aaron looked at the untouched tumbler of tea and vadai before him and smiled, thanked the man, and left. The route
back to the rest-house he was staying in passed though a very poor quarter. As he walked past a depressing collection of hovels, a young woman suckling her baby looked at him hopefully. ‘Looking for love, aiyah? It’s cheap here, eight annas an hour.’

  The stranger gave her a silver rupee. Then he smiled at her and walked away, limping slightly as he went.

  At the next town he stopped at, Tenkasi, he ran into Neelakantha Brahmachari at the railway station. He was surprised. He hadn’t been expecting to see him for at least a month. The journalist told Aaron that he had started his own organization ahead of schedule. In fact, he had been about to get in touch with him. Neelakantha’s organization was called the Bharatha Matha Association and its objective was violent revolution.

  ‘We must do our bit to support our comrades,’ Neelakantha said. ‘They have offered themselves in the ultimate sacrifice and Madras must do its share. We have tried to negotiate with the authorities, we have tried to talk to them as our Moderate friends in the Congress suggested but where has that got us? Nowhere. The way ahead is clear. It’s not an easy road but it has to be taken. Every day the Government grows more brutal and we have to fight back. Are you still willing to join us?’

  Aaron did not hesitate. ‘Yes, I would like to join you.’

  ‘Excellent. Meet me this evening,’ Neelakantha said and disappeared into the crowd.

  Aaron didn’t have a great deal to do in Tenkasi. He spent some time wandering through the crowded streets and bazaars and then returned to the temple guest-house where he was staying. In the evening he made his way to the address Neelakantha had given him. He found the place without much difficulty. A silent youth led him through the small front room into a larger room that was full of serious young men with enormous tilaks on their foreheads. In one corner was a representation of the Goddess Kali in her horrific aspect, with offerings before it. Glowing vilakus gave the image a brooding intensity.

  Neelakantha introduced Aaron to the gathering. Aaron was given vibhuthi and flowers to offer to the Goddess. A pile of kumkumam, gleaming redly in the muted light, was mixed with water in a chembu and he was asked to drink it.

  ‘Drink of this, brother, as you will drink the blood of the oppressor. From this day onwards, your life is dedicated to the goal of total swaraj by every means at your disposal. Now repeat this after me . . .’

  As he raised the container to his lips a clear memory appeared in his mind of the day he had jumped the big well. Sometimes the only way to move forward, despite having little idea of what awaited you, was to take firm, unwavering steps . . . He drank deeply of the bitter liquid and tried not to gag on it.

  Aaron repeated a simple oath, affirming that his own life was a small price to pay to free Mother India. A sheet of paper on which the oath was written was produced, and a needle was handed to Aaron. He was instructed to prick his thumb and affix a bloody thumbprint to the oath. With that, the ceremony was over. Now all Aaron needed was instructions from his leader.

  40

  It took Daniel the better part of two years to grow confident of managing the clinic on his own. As he had feared, Dr Pillai left one day without warning and the number of patients immediately dipped. Not only had Daniel to try to win them back, he also had to learn to overcome the panic that struck him every time he realized that Dr Pillai wasn’t around. But slowly things began to improve. He grew confident and transferred his confidence to the patients and the staff. His renown as a pharmacist and physician who could accurately diagnose and cure the most obscure ailment spread throughout the district. Soon there were more patients than he could cope with.

  During this time, his own family scarcely saw him. His wife Lily had complained to Charity about his absences within a few months of the marriage. Charity’s first impulse was irritation. What more did the girl want? She had snared a responsible, handsome young man, wasn’t that enough? Then she remembered her own experience as a young bride, far from home, terrified and bored. Don’t worry, she told Lily, things would get better as the newness of the marriage rubbed off and she grew used to her surroundings.

  Lily managed with Charity’s help and, over time, things did improve. As Daniel grew more sure of himself, he became less anxious about his work. He and Lily had a daughter, Shanthi, and soon Lily was expecting their second child. Daniel saw very little of his daughter during the week, but on Sundays he would spend hours watching Lily and his mother fussing over the little girl, grooming her, telling her stories, playing with her. He limited himself to holding her for short spells, and his daughter seemed to sense his awkwardness. She would wriggle and cry when he held her, until he handed her back to her mother.

  One Sunday, when Shanthi was nearly two, the family was preparing to go to the Home Church for the morning service. Daniel, as always, was ready first and sat in the planter’s chair on the veranda waiting for the others. Shanthi was proving unusually difficult. Her hair was done, jasmine and ribbons entwined in it, and she looked very pretty in her smart English frock and shoes, but every time Charity tried to powder her face she would twist out of her grasp. Daniel’s smile never left his face as he watched his small daughter use all her ingenuity to thwart her grandmother. What a difference she’s made to my life, he thought. Indeed, it was only since the birth of his daughter that he had begun to feel a sense of identification with Nagercoil, although he had lived here for several years now. Shanthi belonged here, and in a curious way that had made him feel as if he belonged as well.

  Now, as he watched his daughter squirm in her grandmother’s grasp, he recalled his own childhood, investigating the tide pools with the English priest for shells and fish, watching his brother jumping wells and swimming in the river, joining his father on shoots for flying foxes and water birds. He smiled to himself as he remembered his first day at the village school, dressed in new clothes, a nadeswaram player and a drummer in attendance, the sacristan of the church singing hymns in a cracked off-key voice – all for the first-born son of the most important man in the village.

  These acts of remembering provoked an immense nostalgia in him for the place of his birth. All said and done, he mused, he was of the soil of Chevathar. He felt this most keenly in the early hours of the morning and as night approached. For the dawn was unique to each place and would ever be so: in Chevathar, the way the birds spoke from the branches and the light caught the casuarina trees, the lowing of the cattle and the chatter of the fowl, was different from this place or any other place. It was the same with dusk – the old light of day being dusted away by approaching night, the sounds of the village preparing to rest, all this was so unlike anything in the town. I miss Chevathar, he thought. I can never be truly myself anywhere else . . . It was true that things had started working out for him after he had left Chevathar, but the yearning for it would never leave him.

  He wondered about Aaron, as he often did. He had never thought that his brother’s rejection of him would grieve him so much or linger so long, but it did, deep within him, rising up from time to time. At such times, he would stop whatever he was doing and immerse himself completely in his sense of loss. Long experience had taught him that this was the best way to treat wounds of the past. Experience them fully, and then set them aside to resume the daily business of living. This was what he did now. Charity’s regular letters to Aaron never received replies but occasionally something would flutter back from the deep well of impenetrability that Chevathar had become. A missive of complaint from Abraham usually, whining about something or other which had prevented his sending the meagre annuity that had been promised, or full of complaints about Aaron. The last one, received some months ago, had painted a dire picture. Aaron had been missing for some time. Word was that he had joined the nationalists, no-good troublemakers who would bring disrepute to the family. Charity had urged Daniel to do something, but what? They had no idea where Aaron was. They didn’t know which group he belonged to. Daniel murmured a short prayer under his breath for his brother. A moment or two
more and he had pulled himself out of his depression. He told himself: Aaron is not my responsibility, he is a grown man, fully capable of looking after himself and making his own decisions. I have my own responsibilities, my own family now. If and when Aaron needs me, I’ll be ready to pick up the threads again.

  He looked at the little tableau before him: his wife, his mother, his daughter and his sister Miriam, who had just wandered in. Forget the past, he told himself. You belong here. This is your mother’s home town, you are now of this place. Learn to see it through the eyes of Shanthi: she might never suck at the sweetness of a Chevathar Neelam but she knows the unmatched taste of the tiny honey banana; she hasn’t prospected for shells in the Gulf of Mannar, but until you came here you had never seen a sunbird flash emerald in the sun! He shifted in his chair, impatient to get moving. But Shanthi and her grandmother were still deadlocked. He barked at Shanthi, ‘If you don’t let your paati put powder on your face, we’ll leave you behind, do you understand?’

  Shanthi began to wail.

  ‘Oh let the little pisasu be. Don’t put powder on her face,’ Daniel said irritably.

  ‘And let everyone see how dark she is? Who will marry her?’

  ‘Amma, she’s not even two.’

  ‘Yes, but you know how people are.’

  Daniel grew thoughtful. Everyone in the room, with the exception of Shanthi, was well powdered for the day out. He knew how important it was to let the pores of the skin breathe in the hot, humid climate of the town, but he, like everyone else, had taken to powdering his face with the new English talcum powders that had become all the rage. Only the poorest did without. The rest of the townspeople went around looking like the terrifying tantric sadhus who haunted cremation grounds, their faces sheet-white masks.