by Neil Grant
ALSO BY NEIL GRANT
The Ink Bridge
Rhino Chasers
Indo Dreaming
From Kinglake to Kabul
(edited with David Williams)
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
First published by Allen & Unwin in 2019
Copyright © Neil Grant 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Australia
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Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76063 187 1
eISBN 978 1 76087 100 0
For teaching resources, explore
www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers
Tiger of One Thousand Bees, photo composite and cover design by Amanda Gibson, Rare Metal Design
Maps by Amanda Gibson, Rare Metal Design
Font design by Khyati Trehan, Indian Type Foundry
www.neilgrant.com.au
For Marjorie Grant (1937–2017) –
whose homeland vanished as surely as Didima’s.
And for Amanda –
who knows the storms and the lulls.
And also for Emma, Matisse and Calum –
for whom India is much more than a story.
CONTENTS
Epigraph
Central Coast
Central Coast Map
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Land of Eighteen Tides
The Sundarbans Map
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Central Coast Return
28
29
30
31
32
33
Acknowledgements
1
RUDRA SOLACE IS CROSSING THE CHANNEL with his best mate, Maggs Briley – Rudra with his heart clambering in his chest and Maggs powering through, born to it. The summer storm has left bruises in the sky – great welts of cloud up high and others, blotchy stains, above the headland. Last night’s rain set the creeks to flooding, vomiting branches and beer cans from the neck of Brisbane Water. The outward tide is in their favour, helping them to the break that is spitting and cracking in the middle distance.
This is a sharky paddle – all the talk that ever was points to it. ‘Men in grey suits’ hazing boats. A local nabbed by a tiger off Lobster Beach last summer (or the one before), returning shaken and pulpy, stitched and glued back together at Gosford Hospital.
We are just meat, thinks Rudra. Him on his old six-four with glass as yellow as a smoker’s fingers. This board has lived for too long beneath his house, that much is obvious. She’ll never win a beauty contest, as Maggs says, but at least she floats. Rudra isn’t a surfer, not really, but when your best mate calls and school’s out for summer, you have to go.
Maggs, on the other hand, has a brand-new McCoy he’s been saving for this swell. He snaps at least one board a season – pulling in when he should not, in Rudra’s opinion. Maggs has neoprene skin. He fits well here on the Central Coast.
The paddle is long and brutal, and Rudra’s arms are burning by the time they reach the line-up. There are a couple of guys from school here and some older surfers on longboards. Rudra doesn’t know the school guys well – ex year twelves, finished exams and back at year zero. They were once the gods of the corridors and open spaces, cruel rulers. Now they are fallen.
One of them is called Judge Dredd; sometimes just Judge. Because of his dreads, Rudra imagines, or maybe because everyone just dreads being around him. Not much going on upstairs with these guys – they will never conquer the world. Maggs gives them a nod and paddles right inside. Past the longboarders who stare at him like he’s a piece of flotsam. Past the year zeros shooting him foulies. Not giving two shits. Cocky as.
The first wave of the set breaks – tumbling wide, sucking Maggs up and spitting him down the face. As Rudra claws his way over the lip, he sees Maggs pull in and set a rail for a barrel that is one hundred per cent guaranteed.
Rudra sits there for a moment, stilling his heart. The next one in the set is smaller and one of the longboarders paddles hard, moving his whole upper body like a beached seal, legs beating the air behind him. But he misses, slapping the water in disgust as it carries on towards the year zeros, and to Rudra.
Dreadlocked Judge paddles. He’ll never make it, thinks Rudra. Too far out. So Rudra goes for it and, as he does, he feels the wave rise and steepen. All the chunky energy – born over a hundred sea miles out – unwinds itself beneath him. He jumps into a crouch and cuts a track across the face. He knows there is nothing fancy in his style – everything about it suggests a down-the-line bolt from danger.
‘Hey!’ Rudra hears the shout behind him. ‘My wave!’
Rudra checks quickly and glimpses the wall hammering at Judge’s broad shoulders. Technically Rudra should pull out. But he doesn’t. Judge is way too far inside and he, Rudra, is in perfect position.
The wave knows it too – willing him on, throwing out little fringes of white from its lip. And the sun sneaks through, and it’s all going to be okay. He sets up for the barrel – one of only three in his whole surfing life so far. Judge is already shrouded in foam, sucking gulps of sand. Maggs, paddling back out, rips a howl that blesses this wave and their friendship and makes this a sacred run at whatever. And the wave stretches on and on and folds over like a blanket and Rudra crouches and drives for the winking eye of headland and then he is out into the summer air and the sea is hissing like Dr Pepper.
He paddles back to the line-up, all smiles, the taste of adrenaline bright and coppery on his tongue.
Maggs high-fives him. ‘Where’d you pull that from?’
And Rudra tries to be cool, to stifle the elation that is brimming over. But all he can do is smile.
A segue (Media Studies, year nine) makes the transition from one scene to the next, smooth and unsurprising. From this scene, where he is smiling and the sun is shining and his best mate has just seen him on the wave of his life, there should be a segue into what happens next. But there is no segue. None at all. Just a jump cut – a blunt chop to the back of his head.
‘That was my wave, you maggot,’ Judge snarls.
Rudra fixes his gaze on the Southern Cross tattooed on Judge’s overworked right delt. Anything but look him in the eye.
‘No you don’t,’ shouts Maggs paddling over.
Judge’s mate growls and blocks his path. The longboarders mutter their agreement.
‘Sorry, mate,’ starts Rudra. ‘I didn’t think you were going to
make it—’
Judge Dredd holds up his hand. ‘It was a drop-in, plain and simple.’
‘Plain and simple,’ chimes the mate.
‘Bit like you, really.’ Judge nods at Rudra.
‘Sorry?’ Me? Plain and simple?
‘A drop-in.’
‘What?’
‘Why don’t you go back to where you came from.’
‘Patonga?’
‘Don’t be smart with me, curry-muncher.’
‘Got nothing to do with that wave,’ says Maggs.
Judge turns on him. ‘Why don’t you play with your own kind?’
‘Forget it, Maggs,’ says Rudra.
‘Yeah, listen to what your girlfriend tells you,’ says Judge’s mate.
‘I’m going in,’ Rudra says to Maggs, and turns for shore. He paddles with his head down, stifling the big wrongness punching through doors inside him.
Maggs catches up. ‘Why do you let them push you around like that?’
‘I don’t care, Maggs.’ His tears are a little too close, settled, as they are, between the weave of his words.
‘Well, you should. This is yours too, you know. Your coast. Your waves.’
‘I dropped in. It was his wave.’
‘The guy’s a kook.’
They paddle in and ride the shorey to the sand, lie there for a while, letting the waves gently tug and push.
‘Thanks,’ says Rudra.
‘For what?’
‘For what you did.’
‘It was nothing.’
It was something. But Rudra can’t find the speech marks to put around it. Can’t find a way to get it out.
Up West Street they go. The tired old strip mall reels past like a Sunday drunk – pockets out, crusty duds and a gap-toothed smile. Pedestrian crossings rise from the gluey road, bringing the summer traffic to a crawl. Phlegmy air is coughed over the town. Umina is a little grubby and too real-world for the Sydney set. Better they stick to Terrigal. Better they sail over to Patonga and forget this even exists. Here, it’s mug-a-cinos and meat pies, with not a hipster beard or pair of black-rimmed glasses in sight.
Up West Street they go, carrying their boards under their arms, twisting to avoid the pedestrians heading east.
‘Do you ever think about it?’ asks Maggs.
‘About what?’
‘Being Indian?’
‘Well, I’m not really, am I?’
‘Half, you are.’
‘I don’t think it counts.’
‘Some think so.’
‘They don’t count.’ Rudra wishes it were truly so.
The sun has burnt the cloud away and the day is warming. The storm is just another memory with cockatoos, impish, swinging from the powerlines; glossy ravens cawing as they stride through carparks.
They stand in front of Mr Chicken’s Charcoal Chickenery and look up at Magg’s cracked bedroom window above, with its stained lace curtains billowing. They remind Rudra of the flowing guts of fish, flung to the pelicans and hanging for a moment in the water before they are scooped away by bills as big as pillowcases. It makes him shiver to think of it. And how tomorrow, he’ll have to work the nets with his dad and Wallace. Have to take their boat beyond the bay and pray for prawns. Yesterday, and the day before, Cord was up to his elbows in the engine’s innards. Sleeved with grease and oil, slowly boiling.
Things have not gone well lately. They need to fish to keep the boat going, they need to keep the boat going to fish. And Rudra is caught between these two competing currents with the irrational fear he is the cause of all their bad luck.
‘Let’s dump these boards,’ says Maggs. They go round the back where the weeds and the trash have their tangled empire.
Maggs has mostly lived here with his mum since his folks split up three years back. He had a brief spell up at Macs Beach while his mum took off and did god-knows-what. That’s where his surfing came good. The flat above Mr Chicken’s is a shithole and he knows it, but he can walk to the surf and, Hey, it’s not forever, man.
They hide the boards in the long grass and Rudra calls his mum. She tells him his dad is in Sydney organising something for the boat. Cord’s been doing that a lot lately. Something bad is going down; something big that Rudra would rather not know of. When his father is out the house breathes easy, though, and Rudra is glad of the break.
‘Fancy coming to mine?’ Rudra asks Maggs.
‘Is Cord home?’
‘Nope.’
‘You got food?’
‘I believe we do.’
‘Then the answer is oui.’
Rudra stares at him.
‘French.’
‘I know it’s French, dumb-arse.’
Maggs rescues his pushie from a tangle of kikuyu. ‘Let’s ride,’ he says, thumbing the tyres.
‘I don’t have a bike.’
‘Plenty of bikes to be had.’
‘I’m not flogging one.’
‘Property is theft,’ says Maggs.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I heard it somewhere.’ He sits on the bike, hanging his arms over the bars. ‘Anyways, it’s not stealing if you bring it back.’
‘No way known, Maggs.’
It’s hard to keep up when you’re riding a sixteen-inch Barbie bike with glitter tassels, plastic pedals, and your knees higher than your hips. Rudra tries to catch Maggs but he is far gone and riding like this is his whole goddamn life – hands-free, hair a halo, the Lord of Single Speeds.
At last they begin the fall to Patonga. The verges blur and the creek swells into view. Rudra carves slow loops between the white lines, feeling the wind quicken in him. The summer is long and the summer is good and there is much to happen.
They hit the flat and Rudra pumps the pedals again. Amy Parwill is propped on the post outside the fish-and-chip shop. ‘Nice bike,’ she yells and Rudra, half-heartedly, flips her the bird. He couldn’t care less about her and her stupid stupidity.
Rudra’s mum is out the front of their house, sitting in the shade of the old jacaranda. The house is ancient – a fisherman’s cottage painted flat onto the Patonga canvas a hundred years back, struggling now to fit in among the jaunty, nautically-themed holiday houses.
‘Hi Nayna,’ calls Maggs, and Rudra’s mother winces. She prefers Mrs Solace. That formality is just bred into her – old-school India stuff, all about respect. You can’t fight your history, she says to Rudra, and battles it every day. ‘Watcha reading?’ asks Maggs.
‘Just the newspaper.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘They’re bringing Mungo Man back to his country.’
‘Mungo Man?’
‘He lived, died and was buried on the shores of Lake Mungo. Out in far west New South Wales, over forty-two thousand years ago. He must have been an important man in his tribe, because he was covered in ochre. Some geologists found him in nineteen seventy-four. He’d uncovered himself, apparently.’ Nayna smiles at the thought of a man dead for forty-two thousand years doing anything of the sort. ‘The wind, most likely – erosion, you see. The scientists took him to Canberra for tests without asking the local people for permission.’ She shrugs. ‘Different times, Maggs. But he’s going back now. Back to his home and his people.’
‘Well, good on them, Nayna, for setting it right.’ Maggs sounds like a voiceover bloke in an old film. Nayna narrows her eyes, not sure if he’s taking the piss.
‘When’s Dad due back?’ asks Rudra.
‘Not for hours,’ Nayna replies, leaning back in the deckchair, sipping her sweet tea.
‘We’re just going to hang out,’ Rudra tells her.
‘And what does that involve?’ His mother folds her newspaper in half and then quarters.
‘The usual.’
‘Such as?’
‘Cooking meth, prison tatts and the dark web,’ says Maggs, smiling.
Nayna nods, blessing all three activities. ‘Be good,’ she says. And, as they disappear ins
ide the house, ‘Hey, where did you get this bicycle, Rudra Solace?’
No need to answer. Doorways are time portals and you get to leave the past behind. In the kitchen, they rifle through the pantry and raid the fridge.
‘Not from the carton, Maggs,’ says Rudra. ‘Mum’ll kill you.’
Maggs lets loose a thick milk-burp. ‘Only if she sees me.’
Rudra makes his speciality: three rounds of toast each, butter, Vegemite, avocado, chilli flakes.
‘This should be a thing,’ says Maggs, ‘if it wasn’t so spicy, curry-muncher.’
Rudra glares at him. ‘Only you, Maggs.’
In his room, he cranks ‘Porcelina of the Vast Oceans’. A tide of soft guitar and cymbals washes through the room. Rudra lies on the bed and closes his eyes, feels the room pulse like a jellyfish. The lead guitar smashes in – a savage set pounding a lonely beach, spewing muttonbirds and shark eggs. By the time Billy Corgan is singing about seashells hissing lullabies, Rudra is fathoms down.
Then Maggs goes and breaks it. ‘It’s a little bit shit, this old music,’ he says, turning it down.
‘It’s not old, it’s classic. Ninety-five.’
‘We weren’t even born.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Speaking of old, who’s this chick?’ Maggs picks up a framed photo.
‘That’s my didima.’
‘Your what?’
‘My grandmother – Mum’s mum. From India.’
‘Nice sari.’
‘Dickhead.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve never met her.’
‘You want to?’
‘I guess.’
‘Over there?’
‘India? Doubt it.’
‘You’re not curious?’
‘About what?’
‘About where you come from?’
‘I’m from here.’
‘You know what I mean.’
The old ute pulls up outside, crushing the gravel in the driveway, its tappets ticking like a time-bomb. Rudra kills the music. ‘Shit, Dad’s home.’
‘And?’
‘He’s not supposed to be.’
‘I feel like saying g’day.’ Maggs heads for the front door.
‘Maggs!’ Rudra shouts. Too late, Maggs is at the door already, waving.
