The House of Blue Mangoes

by Davidar, David

  ‘Long after I tried to vanish from the daily world of the living, long after I tried to empty my heart, mind and soul to grapple with the Infinite, I realized that my endeavour would not be wholly successful. We live, fully engaged, until we die. Pain, meditation, thoughts of God may distract us but we cannot subtract ourselves entirely from the world until we are dead. And so, while I no longer actively participated in the life of the community and of the family, my mind refused to let go. What did I think about? Mostly, I regretted the things I hadn’t done, I thought about quarrels that hadn’t been resolved, I thought about matters left incomplete. It’s one of the paradoxes of life, and it is something that each one of you will discover, that your achievements, your successes, your crowning glories do not matter to you at the end of your life. No, no, no, if I leave you with nothing else, I leave you with this piece of wisdom – it’s your regrets that stay with you till you die. And you, my family, whether you like it or not, are one of my regrets. I’ve often wondered why I slaved for you all my life when I could have lavished more care and attention on myself.

  ‘As I write these words I think about the mango that has been our most prized possession for over a century. One fact about it strikes me powerfully and it is this: No fruit is more beautiful, yet the blue mango has a monstrous flaw. Every season a tiny insect, the mango fruitfly, lays its eggs beneath the skin of some of the ripening fruits. The eggs hatch and the maggots tunnel through the pulp, eating as they go. From the outside, the mango looks perfectly healthy. But when it is cut open, dark tunnels and headless maggots greet the eye. I do not need to extend the analogy to make my meaning clear. Every family has within it its maggots – greedy, dishonest, ungrateful people, whose worst qualities are magnified when they are gathered together. So, at the end of my life, my picture of Doraipuram is bleak. Outside, to the world at large, we are an example of just how a family should be. Inside, the rot is beginning to spread.’

  Ramdoss asked for water. The silence in the room was broken only by the rustle of makeshift fans, the shifting of anxious bodies. A servant brought him a glass of water. He emptied it in one long swallow, mopped his face with a cloth slung over his shoulder, and carried on.

  ‘Do I hear you shifting in alarm? Is some irrelevant advice the only thing the foolish old man has left us? Don’t worry. For a family which has given me endless trouble, fights about land, about money, about prestige, about marriage, you should be grateful that I’m not an especially vindictive man. I have left you all something, although you will be surprised to learn that until very recently I had very little left of my former wealth. The empire I had created with my line of patent formulations was a shadow of its former self. People had begun flocking to inferior English medicines, which cost four times as much but were not even a quarter as effective, and business was bad. That didn’t worry me for I was aware that I didn’t have a great many years left. What concerned me was my family and how I could provide for it. Kaka vuku thun kunjie / pon kunjie – if even a crow thinks her chicks are golden, why should I be any different?

  ‘And talking of gold, that’s what I’m leaving you, my family, a fortune in gold, sixty-five kilos of it, that should keep all of you named in my will comfortable for the rest of your lives. You own the land you live on, that was my first gift. Now you don’t need to worry about money ever again. This is my last gift.’

  Ramdoss paused. Kannan noticed that he didn’t look up. Instead his eyes were fixed on the sheet of paper he was holding. Kannan looked at his family: his mother, who sat with her eyes cast down, her head sheathed in the pallu of a white sari; his aunt Miriam, plump, sweaty and prayerful, her eyes fixed on the fresh-framed portrait of her brother garlanded by sandalwood and roses; his sister Shanthi, with a tired and lined face though she was barely thirty-five, her mousy little husband Devan behind her; his other sister Usha and her husband Justin, his eyes skittering over the crowd like light on water; his nephew Daniel, his father’s favourite. Most of them seemed electrified by the news of the fortune that the patriarch had left them. Murmured conversation, the noisy exhalation of breath. Ramdoss held up a hand for silence. ‘I’ll be finished in a few minutes,’ he said.

  ‘When I realized my fortune had dwindled to nothing, this house, a few mango and coconut topes and rice paddies, three thousand rupees in the bank, my cars and the cottage in Nagercoil, I went back to the texts that Dr Pillai had left me. In them lay the secret that a great siddha mystic had succeeded in unlocking and which I knew would be mine if I had the patience, discipline and guidance from above to find it. I worked for a year and a half before I finally discovered the secret of the texts, a secret that will make you all very rich. For what the texts taught me was how to turn all tamasic matter into gold. Three months ago I had myself weighed, on my sixty-second birthday. I weighed exactly seventy-two kilos. After I die I want my body placed in a herbal bath, the exact formula of which is appended to this letter . . .’

  Ramdoss was reading fast now, ignoring the stunned incomprehension that was gradually overtaking his audience, anxious to get to the end of the bizarre letter he had tried hard to dissuade his friend from leaving behind.

  ‘After two days, my body will have lost seven kilos, as all the tamasic matter leaves it. What will be left is sixty-five kilos of pure gold. I leave thirty-five kilos to my wife Lily and the children; the remaining thirty should be equally divided between all those who own property in Doraipuram. To make the division of gold easier, I have prepared a list of what each of my organs should weigh at the end of the transformation – my head should weigh . . .’

  ‘Stop this. Enough of this nonsense. My brother had clearly gone mad . . .’ Miriam shouted. Relieved, Ramdoss stopped reading. He had been wondering which of them would be the first to end the charade.

  Miriam’s outburst broke open the silence of the gathering. A few people started weeping noisily; the humiliation visited upon them by the dead man was more than they could take. Kannan looked around the room and caught and briefly held the gaze of Daniel; the boy’s eyes had a strange expression in them – was it pleasure, was it pride?

  91

  Kannan sat by the Chevathar under the stippled shade of a tamarind tree, looking out over the river. It was hot, unbearably so. Was a short stint in the hills enough to make the heat so difficult to cope with? The river had shrunk to a few dirty pools, hardly visible through the rubbish and scum that covered them. Flies clustered thickly on what looked like a dead dog in an advanced state of decomposition. So was this what it all came down to, he wondered, the question that had haunted him ever since his uncle had begun reading the letter. Disillusionment, bitterness, revenge, unhappiness? He had looked up to his father, and even though they had parted bitterly, his respect for him was undiminished. He was aware of the conflicts within the family but he’d had no idea that they had affected his father so much that he was prepared to devalue his life’s work entirely. Why did Ramdoss-mama have to read the letter? Why hadn’t he let his father go in peace? But it wasn’t his fault, Kannan realized the next moment; he would have suppressed it if he hadn’t thought it important to Daniel, and everyone knew that Ramdoss’s loyalty to his brother-in-law was unflinching.

  The wind had shifted direction and the stench from the decomposing animal was blowing directly towards him. He got up and trudged back to the house, sweat running down his face into his collar. Why did a man need to fight to find a purpose in life, then spend his best years in its service, if all that waited at the end was regret and anger? Why couldn’t he just flow with whatever came his way? Even as he thought this he rejected it. He recalled the last letter he’d received from Murthy. His best friend had written that he was thinking of leaving his father’s timber business and throwing himself into the struggle for independence. He had urged Kannan to join him. Kannan smiled when he recalled his reply – he’d asked Murthy to holiday with them in Pulimed, get his strength up, before he bent to the task of getting rid of the British. But jokes apa
rt, Murthy was right. Youth needed to think big, pour its considerable vigour and conviction into commitments that would never again seem as gripping or as essential. How could you give up on life’s challenge before you had even begun? He thought of Helen, the woman he had fought to win. Perhaps he should have made the sort of marriage his sisters had, played safe, been retained in his family’s affection . . . He dismissed the idea angrily. And then his mind turned to Pulimed. He was beginning to carve out a niche for himself, the task he’d set himself when he broke away from his father. Would his striving have the same edge now?

  His path home ran past the well his chithappa had jumped in his youth. The general decay that had overtaken much of the colony showed here too – the masonry walls were chipped and unpainted, the trees that surrounded it were unbarbered, giving the place a desolate air. It looked like nothing so much as what it actually was, an abandoned country well, one of thousands that dotted the villages in the area. But a young man had risked his life to jump across it! If he had contemplated the well’s fate and his own, would he still have done it? He certainly would, Kannan decided, if all the stories he’d heard about Aaron-chithappa were true. Every man’s struggle to make sense of life was his own. Look at his grandfather, dead in a conflict that no longer had any meaning except in family myth, but without doubt the most important challenge he’d faced. Or even his own father, doing his best to achieve his dreams . . . No, no matter that he was disturbed by his father’s dying declaration – there was no escaping the fact that it was a reflection of his father’s disappointment – he would need to fashion his own goals, pursue them for all he was worth. He walked on past the well, heading back to the house. Wasn’t it odd, he mused, that in the midst of death our thoughts turn so persistently to life, to the future.

  When he reached the house, he found Ramdoss waiting for him.

  ‘Is everyone still upset, mama?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, they are,’ he said.

  ‘I was wondering why you read it out.’

  ‘Your father asked me to. It was important to him, and that was good enough for me.’

  ‘But surely you could have talked him out of it . . .’

  Ramdoss seemed about to reply, but when he spoke, he had changed the subject.

  ‘You return tomorrow?’

  Kannan tried once more. ‘When did he write it?’

  ‘He’d been working on it for some time. He dictated the final draft three months ago.’

  ‘And he never had second thoughts about it?’

  ‘He may have done, but I think his anger took care of any misgivings he might have had.’

  ‘Tell me honestly, mama, what did he think about me, towards the end?’

  ‘He was disappointed in you, but I think he had come to accept what you did. He loved you and always wanted the best for you, you must never, ever forget that.’

  There didn’t seem anything more to say, and Kannan was about to go into the house when something occurred to him.

  ‘One last question, mama. Was appa happy?’

  ‘I’d say so.’ A faint smile appeared on Ramdoss’s face. ‘The day before he left us, we went for a drive . . . Yes, he was happy.’

  ‘He looked very peaceful when I saw him.’

  ‘Yes, people do . . .’ Ramdoss looked pensive for a moment, then said, ‘Are you sure you can’t stay?’

  ‘No, mama, we’re short-staffed on the estate, and I couldn’t take more than a couple of days’ leave.’

  ‘Are things going well for you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation, ‘I love my job, and . . . and Helen is good for me.’

  ‘Very well then. You must come home as often as you can. Lily-akka and I would like to see as much of you as possible. And maybe before too long you’ll be able to return here. That was one of your father’s dreams, you know.’

  92

  The monsoon broke with unusual severity a fortnight after Kannan got back to the estates. Since his return, he had been trying to get on with his routine, but he hadn’t reckoned with the devastating impact of his father’s death. He struggled to divert the feeling of absence and loss into something that he could understand and lay to rest. He needed to talk to someone about Daniel, but there was no one to discuss him with, least of all his wife. Ramdoss said Daniel had loved him. But if he’d loved him so much, why had he rejected him? When things were going right, love could be a great uplifting blaze, but when it soured, its potential to do damage was just as awesome. Look at how things between Helen and him stood.

  Helen tried to cope with the new situation as best she could. If she was being honest, she would have to admit that her first reaction to Daniel’s death had been one of relief. One less pressure on this embattled marriage, she’d thought. Her own mother had died when she was barely two, so she didn’t have the experience to know how Daniel’s death might increase the strain on her relationship with Kannan. By dying, Daniel had drawn his son to himself. The marriage had been made more precarious. And all it took was the monsoon to reveal the strains that Daniel’s death had temporarily masked.

  Helen disliked the monsoon, the clammy weather, the endless rain that marooned her in the house, the smell of drying clothes in the bathroom and the boiler room, the leaks in the house that she vainly tried to combat and the cold dark walls of mist that shut out the light. To the long list of things that she abhorred about estate life, she added the weather. Her longing to be back in Madras took on a feverish intensity. She relived cherished moments: dances at the Railway Institute with her friends, drinking thick sweet grape juice at Nair’s with Cynthia, saving up money to go to the Casino Theatre to watch Cary Grant and Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart and Vivien Leigh and the gorgeous world they inhabited. When she married Kannan, she’d thought she’d acquired a version of that world. But all she had got were miserable old men and women who hated her, a husband who couldn’t defend her, and no friends.

  A thud against the roof, and she began to drag herself out of the pleasant day-dream she’d been having. Jimmy and she had slipped out of Cynthia’s birthday party, desperate to kiss and explore each other’s bodies as they had recently started doing. They could never have enough of each other, and this evening had been no different, except it was Cynthia’s party, and she would have been very annoyed if Helen had left early. Around midnight, drunk and desperate with lust, Jimmy had finally cornered her in the bathroom of the house, and they had kissed each other so hard and long, it seemed they would disappear into the wall they were leaning against. Someone rattled the doorknob, there was a wild cackle of laughter not too far away and Jimmy had frantically whispered in her ear, ‘Let’s get out of here. There’ll be no one at the station. The last train has gone. We’ll get back quickly.’ She had been hesitant, she didn’t know if she’d be able to prevent him going beyond the limits she had set soon after they had started going out, but she was hungry for him and she agreed to the plan. Nobody noticed as they slipped out of the house. The station was deserted, the tracks on either side of the platform gleaming and cold in the moonlight, the porters untidy snoring heaps on the platform. The attendant had been asleep inside the second-class retiring room. They had woken him up, and Jimmy had slipped him six annas. Sleepy and grumbling, he had opened up the first-class waiting room with its deep wickerwork planter’s chairs and solid teak table and cupboards. The door had scarcely shut behind him before they were clasped together . . .

  The branch thudded against the roof again, and Helen looked at Kannan with a little alarm. The weather had been terrible throughout the night, thunder rolling continuously and lightning whitening the world. The creaking and rumbling in the house had kept them both awake, and the morning had brought no relief. The lawn was a lake. Virtually every plant and shrub had been smashed flat to the ground. Kannan hadn’t been able to go to work for the second day in a row, and after breakfast they had adjourned to the living room, where they had sat, each absorbed in their thoughts, occasionally lo
oking out of the window.

  There was a loud crash. The old gum tree by the hedge had been uprooted. Fortunately, it had fallen away from the house into the tea. It was gusting so hard now that it was actually raining upward, the pelting rain interrupted in its downward passage by errant rills of wind which then bore it aloft, until a dense scurf of rain formed in mid-air; the knots of rain would last a brief moment, then dissolve, only to form again.

  Lightning flickered soundlessly on the bare rock-face across the valley and the wind threatened to rip the roof off. Cold hard fists of rain slammed against the window. Kannan had never seen anything like it in his time in the hills. He wondered if the house would hold up. If the roof blew away, how would they get to safety? The gum tree had blocked the road. And even if they cleared that obstacle, he wasn’t sure he could keep the motorcycle upright in the storm.

  Towards lunch the weather grew calmer. Although the rain still crashed down, the wind had abated, and the thunder and lightning had moved away. The butler entered, announced lunch and went to see to its serving.

  ‘I want to get rid of Manickam. He’s a thief, and he’s dirty. He coughs as though he has TB.’ They were the first words she had spoken all morning.

  ‘But why? Whoever you get will be worse. At least Manickam knows our whims and the bungalow like the back of his hand.’

  ‘Exactly. He acts like he’s the master of the house.’

  ‘What? Has he been rude to you?’