The Five Dollar Smile: And Other Stories

by Shashi Tharoor

  It was obvious, too, that Achan’s lack of aptitude for farming was taking its toll on the family finances. We children were never encouraged to think about money, an inhibition which in the past hadn’t prevented us from realizing we hadn’t any. But Amma let us know early on that if we had come up in the world to possess the largest house in the village, with our own mango tree and vegetable garden, we didn’t have much other than some tumbledown furniture to go with it. We grew more or less whatever we needed to eat, but money for everything from clothes to bus fare had to come from the sales of our paddy, and Amma made it clear there wasn’t very much of that after salaries and levies had been paid and the upkeep of the house attended to. Under Achan’s management the returns from the farm seemed to decline. The telltale signs appeared in the weeks when the profits from the previous harvest had dwindled and the expenses for the new sowing began to mount. At these times, our milk would turn watery, the clothes would be given less often to the washerwoman, a special occasion would no longer be celebrated by a bullock cart trip to the movie theater in the nearest town.

  It was during one of these periods that Thangam fell ill.

  Thangam, who helped Amma do without a full-time servant by working in the kitchen before and after school; Thangam, who attended to everything from my scraped knee to the weekly puja offerings; Thangam, who silently bore the brunt of Achan’s irrational anger for anything that had gone wrong in the house; Thangam fell ill, and it was as if our world had collapsed around us. She stumbled one day in the kitchen, dropping a precious pan of boiling milk in her fall to the floor, and it was more the spilt milk than the fall that convinced me something was seriously wrong. Amma ran in alarm and anger to her, but after one look at Thangam’s face she brought the hand she had raised for a slap gently down upon her daughter’s forehead. I was in the kitchen by then, and I could see the alarm on her face.

  “You’re very hot, my child,” she said quietly. “You have a fever.”

  “Nonsense, mother, it’s just the heat of the kitchen,” Thangam retorted, but in a voice so weak I knew she was lying.

  “Go and lie down, my dear,” Amma said. “I can manage in here.” And despite Thangam’s protests she was bundled off, with me in tow.

  When Achan came home that night he was initially too wrapped up in his problems to notice that anything was amiss. Then it struck him that it was I who was helping my mother serve his dinner. “Where’s Thangam?” he asked. “Has she already gone to sleep?”

  “No, she is not well, poor child,” Amma replied. “She had a fever and I’ve asked her to lie down.”

  “What have you given her? Has she eaten anything?”

  “No, she didn’t want any food.”

  “Medicine? Did you give her something for the fever?”

  “I didn’t know where you kept the medicine. I thought I would wait for you to come.”

  Father washed his hands and went to Thangam. She was shivering uncontrollably under the thin sheet. Drops of perspiration stood on her brow like beads fallen off a broken chain.

  “You should have called a doctor,” he said accusingly to Amma.

  “How could I? I don’t even know where to find one or what his name is. I waited for you to come,” she repeated despairingly.

  “It’s too late for tonight. Tomorrow, the boy must go to Dr. Parameshwar in Nemmara.” He gave me instructions on how to get to the doctor’s clinic in the nearby town. “Ask the doctor to come here.”

  “But how can we possibly afford to pay . . . ?” my mother began.

  “I’ll find a way,” Achan said grimly. “Get the doctor. I have to go early tomorrow to our fields in Shoranur. I may not be back till very late. If the work keeps me too long and I cannot get a bus, it could even be tomorrow afternoon before I return. But don’t worry. I am sure the doctor will take good care of Thangam.”

  I slept next to my sister that night. Her skin was so hot I recoiled from her in shock. She dozed fitfully, her body racked by shudders. Occasionally she cried deliriously in words I could not understand.

  In the morning I ran through the rice paddies to the nearest bus stop. It took me twenty minutes on a normal morning; today I did it in ten. There I waited in an agony of frustration for the bus to Nemmara. When it came it was full, but I clambered onto the tailboard and clung on in desperation throughout the bumpy ride. My father’s directions were good; I found the clinic without great difficulty. There were a number of patients in the line and in the waiting room. I tried to barge in to see the doctor but was sharply reprimanded by a nurse. Each moment seemed to drag by until finally I was ushered into the doctor’s chamber.

  “My-sister’s-very-sick-you-must-come-and-see-her,” I burst out in one breath.

  The doctor laughed. He was a kindly man, with a round face and a bushy, black moustache. “Now, now, hold on there a minute, son,” he said. “What exactly is the matter with your sister?”

  I told him. His face became grave. “Yes, I think I must see her,” he agreed. “Can you bring her here?”

  “But it’s impossible!” I expostulated. “She can hardly sit up. And we—could not bring her in our bullock cart.” I did not add that we could not afford a taxi from the town.

  He reflected for a moment. “All right, I shall come,” he said finally. I can still remember the sense of triumph and relief which his words produced in me. “But not just yet. I have all these patients to see.” He gestured towards the line outside.

  “But you must come now,” I pleaded stubbornly. “My sister cannot wait.”

  “She will have to,” he said firmly. “These people have all been waiting.”

  “But this is different! She may—she may—die.” I whispered the last word, confronting its horror for the first time.

  He looked at me in exasperation.

  “I shall not leave this room till you agree to come with me,” I said very quietly.

  He came, his anger dissolving in tolerant laughter. And Thangam didn’t die. When we got home, I saw to my surprise a familiar figure sitting by Thangam’s bedside, stroking her hair. My father.

  He didn’t say a word in response to my look of astonishment. But after the doctor had examined Thangam, administered his medication, told us all would be well in a few days and left us with his prescription, my father explained what he had decided to Amma.

  “I came back,” he said simply, tousling my hair and sounding defensive. “And I’m not going to go again. It is madness, traveling all the way to Shoranur every other day. And it is not as if my going there makes a lot of difference either. My place is here, with you and my children. Balan Nair, your Valiamaman’s old retainer, has offered to manage these fields for us. He will give us a specific portion of the harvest, and attend to all the daily chores. It will save us a lot of trouble.”

  “But—how can you give it all to him?” Amma was incredulous. “More than half our land is there, in the Shoranur fields.”

  “I’m not giving anything to him, woman,” Achan rejoined irritably. “The land is still ours. He is just going to run it for us, that’s all. And I can keep an eye on the smaller fields around our village. Nathan is old enough to help me.” Nathan was my oldest brother. It was obvious he was not going to amount to very much at school. My father had clearly made a wise decision.

  Things got a lot better after that. Balan Nair took complete charge of running the fields, and though later his dues were paid at intermittent intervals and he increasingly seemed to have new reasons for not giving Achan all that we expected, we still had an assured income without Achan having to lift a finger for it. I still remember Balan Nair’s frequent visits to Achan, a clean white cloth flung over one shoulder, his head bending so low in respect over his folded hands it looked as if he was going to drink from them. Achan was happy and relaxed. He had more time for his books now as Nathan gradually took over control of the closer fields. My brother had that capacity to alternate between seasons of hectic activity and periods of enf
orced idleness that in our country characterizes the rustic life. Achan was able to leave virtually everything to him—and, of course, to Balan Nair.

  This left Achan a lot more time for me. He would let me into his “book-room,” as we children called it, and turn a casual browse into a magic world of instruction and enlightenment. He taught me, without the drudgery of a classroom, things I would never have been able to learn in school. He introduced me to the English language, to the pleasures of literature and the perils of philosophy. When he caught me straying into a card game with my brother’s farmer friends, he would pull me out on some pretext and shame me with his disapproval. As to the new vocation the inheritance had given us, Achan never let me have anything to do with it. The first time I attempted to accompany Nathan etta to the field, he stopped me. “That’s not the world I want you to inhabit,” he said to me fiercely. “Leave the fields to your brother, you understand? And never let me catch you going there again.” His interdiction was so total I was the only male in my family who didn’t know the way to our kalam from the house.

  The years passed in tranquility. Thangam, restored, already an able housewife in her teens, was married to the son of a landed family. Achan did not have to borrow for the dowry, as he had had to do for my eldest sister. Another child was born, my youngest brother, the only birth in the big house. The event seemed to signify a rebirth for Amma too. She began to acquire more authority in her role, as Achan slipped more and more into complaisance. I did very well at school and was admitted to the government Victoria College in Palghat, the district capital thirty miles away. It was clear I was the one destined to follow in Achan’s educated footsteps.

  Those were turbulent years in Kerala. All the big issues of the day seemed to be emerging in the microcosm of our little state—communism versus bourgeois democracy, parliamentary politics versus revolution, capitalism versus socialism, free education versus scholarly privilege, agrarianism versus industrialization. Tempers heated rapidly on our campuses: conflicts erupted over words and were fought over bodies. I was caught up irresistibly in the mood of the times. I had the talents of a “leader”: a loud voice, a way with words, and a willingness to employ both in the service of my interests. I joined an opposition party and rose rapidly in it. Before long, while I was still in my mid-twenties, I was awarded the party’s ticket to contest the elections to the state assembly.

  I went home in a mood of jubilation to prepare my campaign. It was there that the first news of misfortune reached me. Achan had developed some sort of a mysterious pain that left him virtually crippled. The local doctors seemed to be able to do nothing to relieve his discomfort, and could only attribute it to a particularly severe form of rheumatism.

  I wanted to help, but I was too much in the fray of my political battle. I left it to my brothers to investigate the matter further, and embarked upon my electioneering.

  I had early arrived at a populist brand of politics, which suited my rhetorical style and my ideological convictions. My familiarity with the ideas of equality and freedom had first come from the crumbling pages of Tom Paine, Mill, and Rousseau on my father’s bookshelves. But I had been able to update their ideas by the inevitable university acquaintance with Marx and a diligent reading of Nehru. Today I spoke eloquently against priests and businessmen, and for free schooling and land reform. The latter was an issue that rapidly caught the imagination of my predominantly rural constituency. “Land to the people!” I declaimed. “The tillers must benefit from their toil! Down with the landlord exploiters!”

  My popularity was rapidly achieved. There was I, the educated, city-college product of a good family, speaking up for the people’s rights. My father had instilled in me the view that ideas were unrelated to life: they inhabited a rarefied world of books, not of men. “You are what you believe, my son,” he would often say. Since philosophy was a diagnosis, not a prescription, for life, beliefs did not have to be reconciled to behavior. The country’s most prominent communists were themselves prosperous elitists. I thus saw no contradiction between my convictions and my context; I thought I was merely going one step further by translating my views into votes. And I did it well. With my oratorical skills I was able to give expression to the inarticulate grievances of the landless peasant. His work would be rewarded, I promised. Land would go to the tiller. There would be a ceiling on how much property one person could own.

  I received the news of my victory at the polls the same evening as the laboratory reports came in on my father. Achan had cancer. His pains would never disappear.

  I can remember the shock. I can recall the euphoria. I am no longer sure whether one succeeded in crowding out the other.

  Achan was dying while I was to attend my first session of the state legislature. “Go, my son,” he said to me when I turned to him in anguished farewell. “I am proud of you. You and what you stand for represent the future. Do not hold it up for the past.”

  Achan was flown to Bombay, where my eldest sister and her husband lived, for specialist treatment in a cancer hospital. I promised to go there as soon as I could complete my first major task at the assembly. It was the Land Reform Bill. I was one of its prime movers.

  When I got to Bombay the news was all bad. Achan’s cancer had made alarming progress. Only prolonged and expensive treatment, using equipment and medicine that would have to be flown in from abroad, could forestall the inevitable. There seemed to be no way we could afford that.

  “But we can,” said Amma excitedly. “We can afford it. All we have to do is sell the land we’ve let out to Balan Nair. We don’t need it any more. Almost all the children are settled—we can live off the fields in our own village. Why, we can probably sell the land to Balan Nair himself.”

  I agreed, and volunteered to rush back to Kerala to arrange the transaction.

  Balan Nair received me in his house. As I stepped across the smooth, new, cement pathway into the freshly painted coolness of his living room, I realized with a shock why his payments to Achan had been so irregular. He had clearly done very well out of the arrangement.

  “New house?” I couldn’t resist asking as he ushered me to a chair.

  “Built it last year,” he admitted proudly. “We have had a few good harvests.” He sat, too, on a slightly higher chair, and then it struck me: with my father he had always stood.

  “It is about those harvests that I have come to speak to you,” I said awkwardly, accepting a servant’s proffered cup of tea. “As you may know, my father is not very well.”

  “I have heard,” he replied. “Very sad news.” He didn’t sound sad at all.

  “Achan requires some specialized treatment in Bombay, which is going to cost a lot of money,” I began. I paused, not knowing exactly how to phrase it.

  “Have you come to me for money?” he asked abruptly.

  “Of course not.” I could feel the color rising to my cheeks. “I have come to tell you that we wish to sell our land here in Shoranur. That is the only way we can raise the funds we need to pay the hospital.”

  “Very interesting.” Balan Nair said, flicking absently at a passing fly with the loose end of his shoulder-cloth.

  “I thought you might be interested, perhaps, in purchasing it.” I cast a look around the evident prosperity of his surroundings. “I am sure you can afford it, and we will of course arrange a fair price.”

  “I would be very interested indeed,” Balan Nair replied, “If you had any land to offer me in Shoranur. But I didn’t know you owned any land here.”

  At first I thought he hadn’t understood. “You know the land I mean,” I said a trifle impatiently. “The land my father let you use, here.”

  “I know no such thing,” Balan Nair responded equably. And then it hit me. He was going to deny the arrangement had ever existed.

  “You mean . . .” I spluttered, rage battling incomprehension. The words wouldn’t come; they tripped over barriers of confused thought and fell soundlessly in my mind.

&nbs
p; “I mean that the land I use here is mine,” he said. “I have tilled it for the last fifteen years. Last week I registered my possession of it, quite legally, under the new Land Reform Act. I believe you know something about the Act?”

  The question rendered me speechless. I had never associated the Act with him. Land reform, in my mind, had nothing to do with the likes of Balan Nair. It was an idea redolent with images of half-naked laborers, the sweat glistening on their black muscular bodies, their voices raised in a raucous clamour for justice. Balan Nair didn’t fit the concept, or the cause.

  “Land to the tiller. Tenancy rights. A well-drafted piece of legislation, that. You must read it sometime.” The white teeth, the white shoulder-cloth, mocked me in their triumphant brightness. “It provides for a ceiling of twenty acres per person, provided the land is actually used by the owner. I have registered twenty acres in my name, eighteen in my wife’s. We propose to continue to cultivate this land. Our land.”

  He gestured to the maidservant to fill up my cup. I thought of his hired laborers outside, bending in the sun over the ruts in the fields. Land to the tiller: the slogan had found its reality.

  “I believe you know, better than most people, that it would be futile to make an issue of this,” he added. “You wouldn’t stand a chance in any court of law.” He smiled indulgently at me. “And now, is there any other land you would like to sell . . . ?”

  Though I knew it was hopeless, I tried to have something done. I called up lawyers, spoke to officials, even tried to press some of my political connections into service. In the end I realized what I should have known all along: nothing could be done. Change had come, and it was immutable. The law, and justice, were on Balan Nair’s side.