Ants Among Elephants

by Sujatha Gidla

  She packed her things, bought train tickets. Only one day was left. It had been two years, and the government had still not disbursed her scholarship (one of the many ways in which benefits owed to untouchables are undermined). If she left before the university took its cut, the rest of it would never reach her.

  At nine in the evening before her departure, she took Durga Kumari and went to see Professor Narlekar about the money. The meeting couldn’t have stood in sharper contrast to her earlier one with Professor Tripathi. Although also a brahmin and renowned as a mathematician, Professor Narlekar was extremely courteous. His wife plucked jasmine blossoms, strung them on a thread, and gave each of the two women a piece of it to adorn their braids. She served coffee, and the couple chatted with the two women about their families. For Manjula’s sake, the professor arranged for the clerk to arrive early at the office and went in early himself. Together they processed the scholarship, and Manjula was able to get her money before starting for home.

  *

  AFTER TWO DAYS OF TRAVEL, Manjula reached her father’s new home in Veeravalli, a village in Krishna district. She took a long, hot bath and washed the soot from her hair and skin. She was the only one living there with her father. Peace all around. For eighteen years studying had been her main occupation. With the end of her master’s program, all that was over. She slept as much as she wanted. She felt calm.

  A few days later, Manjula was cutting vegetables when an unexpected thought struck her: “What am I? What is the purpose of being? How can any human being ever be doing nothing?” From that moment on, her calm left her. She grew restless.

  Then she noticed small plants sprouting in the yard. Every day she watched them in awe because by evening they would be one inch tall, and the next morning when she woke up they would be three inches.

  The plants needed nothing from her. They grew by themselves on a patch in front of their house that needed no fertilizer, having at one time served as the floor of a cow shed. Manjula plucked the spinach, cleaned it, cooked it, sent some to neighbors.

  After two months of doing little else, she received her marks list in the mail. She was shocked to find she did not get a first class. She barely got a second class. What could have happened? Had she deluded herself about her own ability? But everyone in the university had been amazed at how tenaciously she studied, and no one doubted she would do well. Could she have numbered her answers wrong? One number wrong, all the rest that followed would be wrong. Did she lose, or did they lose, some of her answer sheets? She stared and stared at her marks list. Then, like a photo developing, a picture formed in her mind. She had made top marks in all the papers except for those that were graded by Tripathi. With the poor marks from his papers, she barely averaged out to second class. His venom had a delayed effect, and Manjula’s career would suffer.

  She applied for jobs and got an interview for a position teaching political science at a Catholic college in Eluru. She dressed in a modest white sari and no ornaments, gathered her certificates in a loose pile, and caught a bus to Eluru. Just as she got off, the sky opened up. She was drenched to the bone; her certificates were a sopping mess. She was not going to get the job, she knew. Not only because one of her sandals had washed away in the rainwater, but also because she had not studied political science. History had been in demand when she started college eight years before, but by the time she graduated no history jobs were left.

  But the Catholics loved her. They correctly assumed that her poverty, modesty, and plain white sari meant she would be docile. They told her to expect papers by mail.

  Just as she returned home from Eluru, Manjula was asked to another interview, this time at A.C. College in Guntur. She went and was told to report for a three-month temporary job. It was hardly worth her going there for the sake of such a short-term position. But it didn’t matter, she would be hearing from the Catholic college soon. Luckily O. Vijayalakshmi was in Guntur, working in another college and living on campus. Manjula came to stay with her, explaining, “I will be leaving in a couple of days, as soon as I get the papers from Eluru.”

  Days passed as Manjula waited for the envelope from Eluru to arrive. Her friend suggested that she buy her own comb and sheets and soap. “But just a couple of days,” said Manjula.

  Again and again her friend proposed, “Let us go to the bazaar and buy you a few things.” Again Manjula demurred. Finally, summoning the necessary cruelty, OV told her, “Look, Manjula, you are not going to get the job in Eluru. You are going to stay here in Guntur.”

  OV finally told Manjula the whole story. Their classmate at AU, Sarada Kelly, one of the Christian gang, was already working at Eluru. The Catholics had said to her, “We interviewed a girl, Manjula, whom we like very much. She said she was in your batch at AU.” Sarada Kelly told them, “She does not go to church, she goes to movies,” and the most damning of all: “Hers is a Communist family.” Sarada did not say this out of spite, but because, as a Christian, it was her duty to tell the truth. Not to mention that her own sister interviewed for the same job.

  Heartbroken, Manjula agreed to go to the bazaar.

  *

  MANJULA MOVED INTO THE LADIES’ hostel in A.C. College, where the faculty and students lived in the same quarters. Right away the women split into two camps: rich, fashionable, and religious Christians who were contemptuous of Manjula; and poor, rustic women who adored her. The latter hung around in her room and, seeing that she was even more of a bumpkin than they were, tried to teach her how to look fashionable, how to wear a sari properly, how to walk. “Madam, you just got your first job, you have to learn these things.”

  Susheela, another Christian from AU, was teaching at A.C. College. Susheela, who was fluent in English, and her friend Lilavathi took to mocking Manjula. On one pretext or another they would make her say English words with a z in them, and when she said j instead—a common mistake among Telugu speakers—they laughed at her. In A.C. College, they also disseminated Manjula’s story: “That girl comes from a Communist family, that girl does not go to church.” Twenty-four-year-old Manjula accepted this as her lot. Later, when she read Bernard Shaw, she realized others, too, had suffered the stigma of being irreligious: “Well, at least I am not alone.”

  On the first of the month, Manjula received her first-ever salary payment—a mere forty rupees because she had only worked a few days of that month. Like a good girl, without even counting it, she put it in an envelope, went home, and handed it to her father. She felt it was his money. The family owed money to one and all: the grocer, the milkman. With Manjula’s income, they were able to pay off some of their bills.

  But the A.C. College principal, Paulus, couldn’t wait for Manjula’s three-month assignment to be over. After hearing the rumors of her family’s godlessness, he was impatient to banish Manjula from the college. Manjula was not keen to remain in such a hostile environment, but Paulus did not get another candidate and so was forced to ask Manjula to stay.

  Satyam had just taken a job teaching at a private tutorial college in town. Manjula happily moved out of her hostel and found a rental place with him. Every day she cooked for the two of them and then walked miles to teach.

  Since some women lecturers such as Manjula were not much older than the young women they taught, Paulus instituted a new rule to distinguish students from faculty: faculty women had to wear their hair in a bun. Every day from then on it was a struggle for Manjula to keep her unruly long thick, curly hair in a bun. She tried pins, clips, slides, bands, and hidden cords, but as soon as she managed to make up the bun, it would start to unravel. Balancing her bun gave her neck pain.

  Nancharayya—Satyam’s friend from Telaprolu, who was working in Guntur—once had occasion to walk Manjula to campus. On the way, he was half amused and half disturbed to see her doing a peculiar dance: balancing her bun while paying respectful namaskarams (greetings to elders) with her two hands full of books. Every ten seconds, silly smile and “Namaste, namaste, namaste, namaste
, sir, namaste, madam.”

  “Papa, what is this? Do you know how silly you look with your endless namastes? You look like a clown doing funny tricks.”

  Manjula felt so embarrassed. But she’d been raised by a devout Christian grandmother who had beaten this humility into her. Once in her childhood she’d run into Marthamma’s friend Pastor Israel in the bazaar where Manjula was playing with her friends. She dropped everything, folded her hands, and said, “Namaste.” Then she went home and found Mr. Israel chatting with her grandmother. Once again, she folded her hands. “Namaste.” Then she went back to the bazaar and yet again saw Mr. Israel and with folded hands said to him, “Namaste.” The old man got nervous. Either she was crazy or she was up to some mischief. Shaking with fear, he fished out some coins, pressed them into her hands, and ran off.

  After Nancharayya pointed out how it looked, she learned to be more sparing with her namaskarams.

  Some people saw charm in Manjula despite her awkwardness. One of her students, a soccer star of some upper caste, asked to take her to a cinema. Manjula thought it was just a friendly gesture. As always, she asked Satyam’s permission. Surprisingly he said, “Okay, if it’s a matinee, you can go if you want to.” So the two went to see a matinee.

  A few minutes into the movie, the boy slowly slid his arm around her shoulders. Manjula got tense. Pretending as though nothing were happening, staring at the screen, without turning her eyes or getting agitated or excited, she picked up his hand at the wrist with two fingers, as if she were picking up a rotting fish, and placed it back in his lap, as though to say, “Here, this hand strayed onto my shoulder, take it back, it belongs to you.” Again after a few minutes he slowly put his arm around her shoulders, and again, as casually as if she were merely wiping sweat off her neck, she retrieved his hand and returned it to him. It went on like this: the boy put his arm, the girl would return it. Then the movie was over. They both acted as if nothing special had happened between them, and he dropped her off at home. In class she was nice to him and he continued to adore her, but she never gave him another chance to see her personally.

  Over the school holidays, Rama Rao came to visit. He took one look at Manjula and her bun and remarked, “Our Papa is growing old. We must marry her off.”

  Satyam said, “We have been looking but have not found anyone yet,” although the parents of a desirable groom had in fact approached him. The boy, an untouchable though not a Christian, was a lawyer in Eluru. The parents were excited that Manjula was up for a job at the Catholic college nearby. “Even if she does not get that job, we have influence and can get her a job.” For reasons he never explained, Satyam had rejected that match, leaving the whole family dumbfounded.

  Then Rama Rao told Satyam about his roommate in Rajahmundry, where Rama Rao was the librarian at the college. “I adore that man. He’s the same caste and a Christian as well. Teaches English literature.”

  Manjula had no part in this discussion. Rama Rao took Carey back with him so that his roommate could help him pass English. Carey returned and said how much he loved the man. Then Satyam went to meet him and returned with the same opinion. But, once again, for some reason, he let the match go by the wayside.

  Manjula left it to her brothers to find her a husband. She continued to work over the summer and earned extra money by proctoring during examination season.

  Proctoring can be either easy or hard, depending on your attitude. It is hard to do an earnest job, easy if you don’t care. Owing to the twin influences of Christianity and Communism, Manjula believed that the task of removing all the immorality, injustice, and corruption from the nation rested upon the shoulders of people in positions of responsibility, however slight, and that everyone must do his or her part.

  With this philosophy ingrained in her, she invigilated with utmost sincerity. Some of the students taking the exam were the sons of powerful men, violent thugs, but when she caught a student cheating, Manjula just yanked his cheat sheets out of his hands or pockets or underwear and flung them out the window. Then she would book the student, ruining his prospects. She struck terror in the hearts of students and lecturers alike. Some of her colleagues would request that she let their favorite candidates cheat. She told them no.

  One student’s father was a clerk in the A.C. College administrative office, and the student’s brother was a lecturer in charge of examinations that year. Manjula watched the student closely and noticed he had a thick stack of answer sheets. “What is this, abba, it hasn’t been half an hour since the exam started and I don’t even remember him asking me for extra answer sheets. How come this bugger already has a two-inch-thick stack of answer sheets?” She investigated and found he had taken a stack of answer sheets the day before, written answers to all possible questions at home, and brought them to the exam hall. She booked him.

  Word went out. The vice principal came running. First he held her hands, then he fell at her feet and pleaded, “Amma, please don’t report him. If you do, his family will be on the street.” The vice principal, the lecturer, the student’s father, and the student begged her for an hour until finally she relented. But she confiscated and tore up all the fraudulent answer sheets.

  Now that Manjula was making plenty of money, Maniamma wanted to come over to stay. Her sister Santhamma wanted to come, too. Santhamma had grown closer to her father-in-law, Prasanna Rao, and he asked Manjula to let her stay. Her pretext? She had contracted venereal diseases from her kamma lover and wanted to get treatment in the big hospitals of Guntur. Carey didn’t want to be left out and said, “Why should I stay in the village? I also want to come.” His excuse was, he could brush up his English, a subject he still hadn’t managed to pass: “They have high-quality English in cities.” They all came to stay.

  Whatever she was paid, Manjula would promptly give it to Satyam. He gave her an allowance of fifteen rupees a month. Satyam enrolled himself in a bachelor of education program.

  Exams signaled the end of the academic year. As her job was only temporary, Manjula had to reapply and interview for the next year. On the way to the office, she ran into the father of the boy whom she’d caught cheating. She namaskarammed him. The man told her, “Mr. Paulus is very angry with you. It seems that you don’t namaskar him enough. He said that you are a disrespectful girl.” The man advised her, “Just go inside his room and just tell him how sorry you are, ask for forgiveness.”

  Manjula sent word to Paulus asking to see him and waited on a bench outside his office. Her family’s financial situation was quite bad. Her brother had three small children. Without her salary, they could not eat. She desperately needed the job.

  Three hours passed; still no call from Paulus. He was purposely making her wait. Manjula decided, “I don’t want to beg that nasty man! I don’t care if I have a job or not.” She went home.

  Satyam never chided her for not thinking practically. He sent Maniamma and her sister and children back to live with Prasanna Rao. After some time, Manjula found work at the Government College for Women in Guntur.

  Satyam and Manjula found a cheaper place to live, a meagerly furnished room in a prostitute colony near the college. Carey joined them. Then Rama Rao got a librarian job in the same college. Nancharayya was already there. All the friends were back together.

  And all of them leeched off Manjula for their expenses. Carey set up a credit line with a cigarette shop for him and his brother and Rama Rao to use, which Manjula had to pay. Rama Rao lived in Vijayawada with his wife, Vimala, and commuted to Guntur. Vimala gave him ticket money to get to work but not enough for the return fare. So Manjula would pay for his return ticket. It got so bad that Manjula’s salary was not enough and she had to borrow money from colleagues. She felt she was losing respect in her college.

  Manjula longed to get married. She had grown up for the most part without parents, raised by relatives who cared for her out of duty and by brothers whom she feared, always having to worry that she might inadvertently do something to disple
ase them and lose their kindness. Her only hope of escape from this unending insecurity was to marry a man and form her own family.

  With her education and her job, she should have made a desirable bride. But she was no such thing. She was dark, her family was poor, they didn’t go to church, and worst of all, her brothers were violent Communist sons of bitches. Manjula was almost twenty-five years old. Her family was beginning to worry. Once she crossed twenty-five, it would be difficult to find a match. The fear of Manjula’s spinsterhood spread like a dread disease through the family circle. Then Satyam received a letter from his old classmate at Andhra University, Ganga Raju.

  Ganga Raju had become a lecturer in Anantapur, a southern district of Andhra. A young new tutor in his department was mala, also Christian. Ganga Raju rushed to the post office and sent a telegram to Satyam, following it with a letter: “If you let this man slip by, it would be the blunder of your life.” The best thing about him was that he not only knew that they were Communists, he kind of fancied that they were.

  Through Ganga Raju, Satyam invited the man to visit. He arrived in Guntur by train. Though Ganga Raju had dashed off a letter letting Satyam know which train he was coming by, Satyam impolitely forgot to meet him at the station. He had to find his own way to the prostitute slum where Satyam and Manjula were staying.

  This tall, skinny, dark, handsome, painfully self-conscious and polite man wasn’t dressed presentably, as a man seeking a bride should be. His pants and shirt were plain white, the front of the shirt covered with minute holes from cigarette ash. His skin was clear, his eyes smiling. He had a dimpled chin and a thin black mustache, and one of his two front teeth was coffee-stained. His middle finger was permanently discolored by nicotine.

  Satyam recognized this man immediately. He was the prospective suitor he had gone to meet a few months before in Rajahmundry: Rama Rao’s roommate.

  Rama Rao, after he graduated, had got a job as a librarian in the government college in Rajahmundry. At the library, he noticed a man who always came in wearing white tennis shorts and carrying a tennis racquet. He would check out highbrow books in English, books no one else would dare to look at: philosophy, literary criticism, modern poetry.