White Man Falling

by Mike Stocks

  “That was in the days when one could thrash the porters,” he is saying, by way of explanation.

  “Those were the days,” Anand murmurs, looking at all Amma’s daughters with an expressionless face, hoping he’ll force an involuntary smile out of one of them. Jodhi and Leela come close.

  “Five billion passenger journeys every year! 1.6 million employees! 39,000 miles of track! Our state-owned Indian Railways is still the glory of India!” Mr P affirms.

  “Ah yes,” says Swami gravely, in a deep and reassuring voice, with a slowly nodding head, his greying temples freshly clippered, his shirt collar starched and ironed into a flawless graceful plane, his moustache trimmed and shaped and – yes – subtly enhanced with black dye, at Amma’s request.

  Who could have foreseen this, Amma is asking herself. One week her husband ruins everything by offering himself as a landing strip for a death-wish foreigner, while the next he is this dignified presence who seems to be impressing the formidable P family. She looks around the room in a state of nervous satisfaction. Kamala is taking an empty dish into the kitchen for replenishing, while Leela and Pushpa are paragons of daughterly obedience, with not even a hint of any whispering or joking or fidgeting. Amma has finally made the girls understand how desperate their situation is. We are poverty-stricken, she had pleaded, we can only just afford to eat, we pay for your education in debts, we are going to the wall, and if Jodhi bags a boy then that is one daughter who won’t end up on the street, so you MUST behave… The two girls had ended up whimpering in self-pity and shame.

  Amma nods and smiles at Mrs P, who is reciting impressive biodata not just for Mohan – surely that prodigy will be earning in excess of 300,000 rupees per annum in no time at all? – but for Anand as well. But although Amma’s “most wonderful”s and “very excellent”s sound animated, it is difficult for her to simulate interest in that haircut-shy college drop-out. Her true focus is on Mohan. She catches him glancing repeatedly at her Jodhi. From the way his hungry, tongue-like glances flick all over her daughter, she can see he is besotted. Is this our future son-in-law? Amma wonders dreamily. She looks over to Swami, as if he might know. Seated like this in his best clothes, quiet and serious and smiling, he looks almost as impressive as the fine figure of a man he’d been before the stroke. Amma watches in amazement as everyone directs conversation to him respectfully. Everyone except Mohan. He has been mugging up on the web for titbits about English Literature, for Jodhi’s benefit, and now, excited, he lets rip:

  “How many plays did William Shakespeare write?”

  A roomful of synchronized eyeballs swivel around to him and then swivel across to Jodhi. Jodhi flushes. The burden of being engaging and interesting lies heavily upon her, but what is to be done with such a question, one that kills conversation stone-dead and diverts everyone’s attention to her slightly quivering chin?

  “I think it was thirty-seven…”

  The eyeballs rotate back to Mohan, as everyone anticipates a fascinating rejoinder to Jodhi’s remark.

  “Correct,” says Mohan.

  There is a long and uncomfortable pause. Just as Amma and Mrs P are on the cusp of ending it with some chat, he sputters into action again.

  “Which are your favourites, the Tragedies, the Comedies, or the Histories?” he blurts. He’s doing his best. Yesterday he even got hold of a western self-help book called How to Attract Women.

  “The Tragedies,” Jodhi half speaks and half whispers, almost incapacitated by the fathomless depths of her embarrassment.

  “What is,” says Mohan, screwing his eyes up in fierce concentration as he strains for something interesting to say, “what is,” he repeats, now roaming the outermost boundaries of conversational desolation, “what is… what is the best play that Shakespeare ever wrote…”

  Anand stifles a snort of laughter.

  “…and,” Mohan adds, suddenly inspired, “what are three main reasons why it—”

  “But – what are you doing?!” Mr P interrupts.

  “Mohan is crazy about Shakespeare!” Anand announces, grinning.

  “Shut up you little idiot,” Devan says.

  “Now now,” trills Mrs P to all her menfolk in a brittle tone, while a few aunties and uncles from both sides make a hearty chortling show of pretending not to be embarrassed.

  Swami looks across at Mr P approvingly: if this was my boy, that’s exactly what I’d say to the little idiot, if I could speak. Then he directs a forbidding stare at Pushpa and Leela; despite everything that has been bellowed at them, they look to be on the point of a giggling fit. It’s the boy Anand’s fault – he has charm, and a naughty streak.

  “The youngsters are a little nervous, it’s only to be expected,” Amma offers.

  “They should have a few moments alone,” suggests Mrs P, “get to know each other…”

  “No no, not necessary,” Jodhi yelps.

  “Yes yes,” Amma says, “that is very wonderful idea, and anyway I was just about to send Jodhi out for milk – Jodhi, Jodhi, please go and buy milk for more tea for our honoured guests.”

  “Oh no, no no no,” says Mrs P, “please don’t worry about tea for us, not necessary.” She rather fancies a glass. She stands up and pulls Mohan to his feet. “We don’t want any tea, but you go with her, my son, accompany her as she goes to the shop and carry the milk back for her.”

  “Yes, why not get to know each other a little,” says Mr P, also standing up, slightly angry with himself for his outburst, “but please,” he adds, “please, no need for any more tea for us.”

  “No tea,” Mrs P confirms politely. She’s gasping for it.

  “Eighty-two,” Swami says, while Amma is saying, “You must have tea, you must have tea!”

  “What what?” asks Mr P, puzzled.

  “Eighty-two,” Kamala repeats. “Appa knows The Sacred Couplets – off by heart,” she admits, with a dash of pride.

  The visitors gaze at the head of the household with supplementary respect; anyone who memorizes The Sacred Couplets is special.

  “Eighty-two!” Mr P breathes, “eighty-two is it? Well let us see it, let us see couplet eighty-two! Off by heart, you say…”

  “No no no,” Amma is fretting, “there is no need to have a look, it’s just his little game—” but it’s too late. Kamala already has The Sacred Couplets down from the shelf and is passing it over. Amma takes the book in her hands and tries to glare at Swami in such a way as will be interpreted as a gaze of loving admiration to everyone but him – a skill one acquires little by little, after about fifteen years of marriage. “Well then,” she says, thumbing the pages, “now then, eighty-two…”

  Mr P is highly excited by this turn of events. He loves a bit of tension. He once lost 30,000 rupees on a bet. “Off by heart, is it?” he keeps saying, “off by heart!”

  Silence steals over the little living area as Amma finds the page. Jodhi, Kamala, Pushpa and Leela watch in apprehension; what if it’s another Nine Hundred and Thirteen, Pushpa is thinking in horror? Who knows what Appa is capable of at the moment?

  “Sacred couplet Eighty-Two is in section nine of Part One of The Sacred Couplets,” Amma recites in a quiet voice – is that the pada-pada-pada of her heart that everyone can hear? She scans the lines slowly. Her face relaxes:

  “It is wrong to drink even the nectar of immortality

  If your honoured guests stay thirsty.”

  How should this triumph be described? The guests are enraptured by their host’s erudite display of grace and hospitality. Mr P can’t stop braying like a drunken donkey, and he’s still saying “Off by heart! Off by heart, is it?”; Anand, who is in love with literature even though he is one of the worse poets ever to scrape nib across paper, is saying “respect, man” in English; Devan is nodding profoundly; Mrs Devan is muttering “couplet eighty-two”, as though meaning to lodge it in her memory; and Mrs P looks to be close to tears that someone has said something so beautiful to her family.

  Amma wobbles
her head, as though to confirm “Yes, this is my husband – pre-eminent scholarly genius in Mullaipuram and all South India”. Even Swami, chronically depressed as he is, has to work hard not to beam with satisfaction.

  “What is the nectar of immortality?” Mohan asks.

  “Go!” his father tells him, “get the milk, and then we will find out!” He pushes him out of the room, and Amma trails Jodhi behind him, and away they go together, the two young people, loping awkwardly down the street.

  * * *

  It is 9 p.m. on a Friday evening – the family priests had been particular on the timing of this unorthodox second pre-engagement meeting, which has to be so overtly auspicious as to counter the debacle of the first – and Mullaipuram is throbbing with people who are shopping and promenading in the cool night. The traffic is nose-to-tail on every road, at every junction, with pedestrians cramming into the space between the cars and the shops: whole families, old friends, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters and sons, girls walking in pairs with elbows linked, boys walking in threes with their forearms across one another’s shoulders, all of them milling around and weaving in and out of the mass. There are strings of lights over every stall, music blaring from shops, resting cows, altercations, some drunks, a street drama taken from the Mahabharata, large insects butting into lamps, bats tumbling overhead in the night air. Jodhi, burning with embarrassment, in mortal fear of stumbling into a friend, leads Mohan off the main street and down a side road, where the Tamil Nadu Milk Board has an outlet.

  Mohan takes a sly sideways glance at Jodhi’s figure, and gulps involuntarily from an excess of admiration. Jodhi takes a quick peak at Mohan, and has to admit to herself that he is certainly a handsome boy. She waits for him to speak, but he does not speak. She realizes that she must speak, but speech has deserted her. Walking side by side, both of them building up to saying something, they pass a tethered goat chewing on a plastic bag, and at last Mohan is inspired to break the silence. It’s true that he is the holder of the Sri Aandiappan Swamigal Tamil Nadu Information Superhighway Endowment Scholarship, and it’s true that he can write computer programs in C++ of dazzling elegance and utility, but…

  “Goat,” he says.

  Though mining remote nooks and crannies of their brains, they arrive at their destination without excavating any further conversational jewels. In silence Jodhi buys a floppy plastic sachet of milk from the sullen boy sitting in the open hatch of the Milk Board outlet. As soon as it is in her hands Mohan snatches at it, blurting “Let me carry it!” as though her life will be at risk if he doesn’t – but his reaction is so abrupt that Jodhi instinctively steps backwards. In the confused tussle, Mohan’s grab at the milk sends the sachet flying down the street.

  “So sorry!” Jodhi cries, mortified.

  “It didn’t explode!” he exclaims in relief, and scampers off to recover it; then he takes it back to the boy selling milk, and barks, “Wash this dirty thing!”

  Following this little adventure, they set off for home, still incapable of finding anything sensible to say. Just as they get back, he whispers, much too late, “What is your email address?”

  “Ah, here are the young wanderers!” says Mr P, slightly annoyed – he had been on the verge of raising the subject of the dowry – “Here they are, talking talking talking, talking away!”

  Jodhi takes the milk into the kitchen, and Amma rushes in after her. She clatters around in a frenzy for a few moments, then “Yes?” she whispers, “yes?”

  “Amma?”

  “Yes?”

  “Amma, yes what Amma?”

  Amma rolls her eyes as she opens the valve on the gas canister under the bench and lights the one-ring hob.

  “What do you mean with your ‘Amma yes what Amma?’” she hisses, “what did he say!?”

  “Nothing.” Jodhi cuts a corner from the sachet, then pours the milk into a vessel as her mother looks on ominously.

  “What do you mean, ‘Nothing’? You tell me now everything he said!”

  “But Amma—”

  “No but-butting, speak Daughter!”

  Jodhi leans back against the wall and wraps her arms around her ribs, shrugging.

  “He said ‘Goat’, ‘Let me carry it’, ‘It didn’t explode’ and ‘Wash this dirty thing’.”

  Amma’s eyes goggle in her head.

  “What are you talking about, you stupid girl!”

  “Amma, this is what he said.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “He asked for my email address.”

  Amma stirs the tea over the gas ring with triumphant vigour: “There,” she crows, “I knew it, he’s mad about you!” But on a whim she stops stirring and points a finger at Jodhi accusingly: “You don’t have an email address do you?”

  “No Amma, of course not.”

  Amma nods and goes back to her stirring, then stops mid-stir and jabs another finger at Jodhi: “Why not? What is the matter with you, how can you expect to impress a boy like that if you don’t even have an email address? The boy can build computer-supers before breakfast!”

  “But Amma, it was you and Appa who wouldn’t let me have an email address because of all the dirty doings in the internet cafés.”

  “How can you expect to bag a boy like Mohan if you don’t have an email address, you silly girl?” Amma accuses her, wide-eyed. “You get hold of an email address immediately! How much do they cost? Where do they sell them?”

  In the living area Mr P, after a significant glance from his wife, is about to come to an important matter. He clears his throat tactfully and gives his moustache a tweak or two:

  “So you see,” he says, “so you see, we have come to the time when certain issues must be talked about.”

  Oh no, Swami thinks, as he nods sagely.

  “What I mean to get at is that, as you know, the normal thing to do, in these circumstances, at this stage, before any firm ideas occur as to whether the two young people will, will, will…”

  Everyone hangs on his words, two gaggles of family members open-mouthed with interest at this meeting point of marriage and money.

  “…come to an arrangement,” Mr P continues, “as I’m sure you understand, is this business of the dowry situation. Dowry situation must be under discussion.”

  Oh God, Appa thinks.

  Amma, who has come back in to make some space for the tea, wobbles her head.

  There is the noise of car doors being slammed outside, directly in front of the bungalow.

  “So we were wondering if you are wanting to give us best indication,” Mr P suggests, “about your, ah, ah, ah-hm, your, hm-hm, your, that is… position.”

  Dear God…

  There is a knock at the front door; Kamala gets up from the floor and answers it. Everyone gets a brief glimpse of two very large gentlemen on the doorstep before Kamala steps out, easing the door closed behind her. Swami looks across at Mr P, rather miserably.

  “Dowry,” he says, “dowry,” as everyone waits for more, “Thousand—”

  “What what?”

  “—Fifty-nine!” he manages to blurt out in a rush.

  Mr P is calling for The Sacred Couplets with some enthusiasm once again, but here is Kamala, stepping back inside, tugging at Swami’s arm and whispering that he should go outside.

  “Who is it?” Amma asks.

  “Two gentlemen,” Kamala says, “very urgent business.”

  “Most sorry,” Swami says, struggling to his feet.

  “He will go and then come,” Amma says.

  “Yes, please go and then come,” Mr P agrees.

  Everyone watches Swami limp across to the front door, and sees him greeting the visitors in the moment before he closes the door behind him.

  “So sorry, he will return as soon as possible,” Amma says.

  “Damn police business,” says Swami’s brother reassuringly.

  “They’re still asking his advice?” asks Mr P.

  “Relentlessly,” says the brother.
“Only the other day he travelled to Madurai to offer important pointers in a tricky case.”

  “Investigation was in complete deadlock,” Amma confirms.

  “He is certainly a very clever fellow,” Mr P says. “But what about this couplet, please be reciting,” he implores Amma.

  As soon as Swami goes outside, he knows something is wrong. The expressions on the faces of the two gentlemen are only arbitrarily polite, and the car waiting for them on the side of the road – back door open, engine still running – is a Mercedes.

  “Sorry for the disturbance,” one of the goons says. “Mr Rajendran wants to talk with you.”

  DDR? Owner of Hotel Ambuli? Wants to talk with me?

  “Yes?”

  “Please come,” says the other goon. “Mr Rajendran will explain.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Mr Rajendran is very busy.”

  “Daughter!” Swami pleads, pointing back inside, eyes bulging in panic. “Wedding! Hour,” he says, “then you,” he tries, “you then,” he says, “then then,” he finishes.

  “Let’s go,” says one of the men, and he grabs Swami’s arm.

  “Then,” says Swami, spluttering.

  “Let’s go,” says the other fellow, grabbing him firmly.

  “No!” Swami shouts.

  Inside the bungalow, they all look up.

  “Some disturbance,” Amma says. She slips to the front door and peers out. As she opens the door, Swami is sitting down in the dusty road and pleading “No!”, while the two men are trying to pick him up and bundle him into the car. Amma screeches, and everyone rushes outside or to the window.

  “Appa!” Swami’s daughters are screaming and wailing, “Appa!”

  “Oh God oh God oh God, what are you doing, where are you taking my husband?” Amma moans, wringing her hands.

  “We’ll bring him back soon,” one of the men says, getting in next to Swami as the other one takes the driver’s seat.

  “HUSBAND!” Amma wails, hurling herself at the Mercedes just as it lurches off. She drops to her knees in the street in a cloud of dust, where her daughters join her, sobbing and pleading, “Appa, Appa, Appa!”