White Man Falling

by Mike Stocks

  Maybe she’s half-right. Maybe she’s half-wrong. But which half is right, and which half is wrong? Swami doesn’t know.

  …and look at D.D. Rajendran husband he is spending the lifetime cheating bullying swindling he is caring only for the fat wallet and the bulging bank and the dirty doings and then he is incountering you and what is he doing I will tell you what he is doing he is becoming best reformed caracter he is giving up filthey cheating ways and devoting himself to the good works isnt it husband and all Mullaipuram is talking about this and saying how can this happen and they are ansering that it is you the guru who is making this happen because DDR is feeling your aura every body is feeling your aura every body is knowing that DDR is devoting himself to you now husband he is making very big plans and now he is paying educashun fees of all dauters husband so what are you thinking of when you say you are not sure if you are the guru of course you are the guru you must be the guru or why else would DDR be doing all this husband…

  Swami’s default condition these days is passive – more than likely, god lies in the reception and not in the commission – but when he thinks at all about DDR’s activities, then he feels ambiguous. Five times already the fellow has been visiting, with a legion of retainers, and once with the owner of a tea plantation who – unknown to Swami – was excited about making a big donation towards DDR’s plans for an ashram, but understandably wanted to sample the new guru’s aura first of all, just like he did with tea. But Swami is not so sure about this idea of an ashram. What about Number 14/B and his ordinary life?

  …and what about the dauters husband they were in number one worst posishun no dowries no chance no good boys no anything husband and during very first pre-engagemunt meeting white man is falling on your head in extra special spirichual way and in second pre-engagemunt meeting DDR is taking you away for the higher reasons and then you are dying and then you are walking with God and then you are living and before I know it parents of Mohan practiculy giving us dowry for Jodhi now what is this husband if not power of your godlyness now we have no dowry worries with or without very fastest scooters what is that husband if not a miracul so now we are knowing why we had no sons husband so try to realize your humble guru nature makes you too modest but whatever you say or do the people are knowing you are the guru and so do I husband I am proudest wife in all Mullaipuram I never thought that when you died it would be very best thing that ever happened to me…

  At page eleven of Amma’s letter – which is remarkably similar to page one and page four, and page ten – Swami is interrupted by a wailing; there is some kind of commotion at the front door of Highlands. He gets up from the desk and limps slowly into the cottage, as Kamala goes rushing to the front to peer out of the window.

  “Appa, it is a woman with a baby bundle, and there is a man beating the earth. They look like tribals.”

  Swami sighs. Another stillborn child. How can I make a dead baby live, he asks himself? Surely I am not this god they say I am. I don’t even remember walking with God. I am just a man who is no longer in despair.

  7

  Perhaps Leela’s guilty conscience has cracked just in time, because today a pained Mr and Mrs P are visiting Number 14/B, bringing with them a panoply of aggrieved expressions, half-hidden hurts, multifarious doubts, and some second-best-quality Sri Lankan tea. At first Amma is not very worried. If they had visited yesterday – before Leela had confessed to her every assault on truth’s citadel, from her lessermost random dabblings to her utmost inspired gossip-mongering, then who knows how Amma might have handled this difficult encounter? Even a woman who can draw on all the authority that comes with being the wife of the Guru Swamiji might have struggled for equanimity in such circumstances. But now, for the first time in weeks, Amma feels as though she has an understanding of the Jodhi situation. She might be exhausted after a night of recriminations and tears with her youngest and eldest daughters, she might be feeling hard-done-by because of the obstacles placed in her path, but at last she feels as though she is in control: Leela has admitted to all her mischief, and Jodhi has unambiguously reaffirmed that her daughterly duty is to marry the person whom Amma and Appa deem appropriate.

  The conversation in the living area of Number 14/B has been delicate but substantive in its treatment of the jeans, and has now come to a halt. Mr P sips at his tea in a parsimonious fashion, and smoothes down his moustache with his free hand, gazing glumly at the cement floor of the bungalow, at the bright but worn home-made mats – Kamala’s handiwork. Mrs P is not interested in the floor. For some reason, she has taken the opposite tack, and with her head thrown back is earnestly scrutinizing everything above her, taking in the curious exposed rafters of this old British-built house. Amma gazes with some appreciation at the way those three chins of hers arrange themselves on the exposed neck, like fleshy garlands.

  “Well well,” Amma says, sighing; she thinks she is home and dry. “So many sorries and apologies and what-all,” she offers, so that Mr and Mrs P cease their mysterious musings and return their attention to her; “all this confusion and the many gossipings, one day we will all be laughing!” she trills gaily. “Please be understanding,” she sums up, “Leela is a little girl, she is not knowing all these serious consequences of getting carried away with silly stories!”

  Why do Mr and Mrs P seem so strangely unconvinced? Mr P has shunted his buttocks to the edge of his white plastic chair, and sits with his elbows on his knees and with his chin on his fingertips, nodding non-committally at Amma’s reassurances. Mrs P, who has no wish to challenge the fundamental constraints of her personal physics by shunting her buttocks towards any perilous edges, is conveying her unease by planting both forearms on the armrests, and by failing to partake of a plate of fried banana wafers that is well within range.

  “You see,” says Mr P at last – scratching his nose, tweaking his ear, smoothing his moustache, slicking back his hair, pursing his lips, crinkling up his eyes, raising his eyebrows apologetically, lowering his eyebrows decisively, raising them again rather less decisively – “you see, the thing is – Madam, this is very delicate matter, please be forgiving me but – the thing is, what it is necessary to say, at this point in time, at this juncture, at this moment…”

  Hasn’t he molested his own body enough? But look at him, he is still scratching and tweaking and pinching and rubbing things in embarrassment.

  “Dowry situation?” Amma asks, puzzled.

  “No no no, this is not about dowry, let us not be worrying about dowry situation.”

  “Dowry situation is now excellent,” Amma boasts – choose your scooter, she is tempted to say. She knows and they know that an alliance with a family that is now intimate with D.D. Rajendran is not to be sniffed at.

  “Not about the dowry,” Mr P repeats.

  Amma is frowning now, and no longer feeling quite as serene as she did ten minutes ago. She finds herself in one of those rare situations in her life when she cannot even hazard a guess as to what to think – so she remains silent, looking between the husband and wife. Mr P smoothes his moustache for the umpteenth time and glances at his wife, who drums her fingers softly on the armrests and glances at her husband, who breaks into an ominous and apologetic smile and glances out of the window, and—

  Just as he is about to come out with it – whatever the damn thing might be – the front door opens and Jodhi walks in from her day at college.

  “Oh – greetings Sir, greetings Madam!” she exclaims, in about as excellent an imitation of pleasure as could be hoped for from a woman who is facing marriage to their middle son. “How are you?” She looks around the room apprehensively, as though Mohan might spring up from somewhere at any moment and identify a goat.

  “Hello Jodhi,” says Mrs P awkwardly.

  “Returning from college, is it?” Mr P says; he has come out in a sweat.

  “Returning from college, yes…”

  Jodhi looks at these three middle-aged faces and understands that her future is
on the line; but during the night she has resigned herself to the worst the future can hurl at her.

  “Daughter, while we are talking about this and that, take some money and go and buy the vegetables.”

  “Yes Amma.”

  Jodhi goes into the bedroom to deposit her books, comes back into the living area, and with a degree of self-consciousness so acute that it threatens to overwhelm her ability to walk, she finds Amma’s purse on the shelf, extracts thirty rupees, goes into the kitchen and gets the shopping bag. Mr and Mrs P watch her.

  “I’ll go and come back,” Jodhi says, almost inaudibly.

  “Yes, go and come back,” Mr P says in a kindly way, and turns back to Amma as the front door clicks shut.

  Poor Mr P – now he has to go through his repertoire of nervous gestures and aborted gambits from the beginning, which is a time-consuming procedure. Amma is thoroughly on edge by the time he has scratched the stubble under his chin for the very last time and is ready to spill the beans.

  “We are hearing everything you are telling us, the jeans, the Internet, the gossip, the dear little sister creating troubles, yes yes, the naughty little monkey…”

  “Yes, that is not the problem,” Mrs P chips in.

  “There has been all this gossip, that is so, but we can see Jodhi is a good girl, it is not as though we are thinking she is doing any bad thing…”

  Amma smoothes her sari down over her thighs.

  “…but the thing is, she is not seeming so very enthusiastic,” Mr P points out.

  “Not 100% keen,” Mrs P suggests.

  “Almost as though,” Mr P says slowly, “almost as though she is not liking Mohan.”

  Amma rocks back in her seat in an approximation of horror at this amazing allegation.

  “Not liking Mohan? Not liking Mohan?” Her hands are flailing up, in the manner of a woman flabbergasted that such a trifling impediment could be the source of all this bother; after all, how could anyone not like a boy genius who is fully expected to go straight to the top of the Indian IT sector? “Let us not be worried by this – yes yes, of course she is liking Mohan, who could not like your splendid son!”

  “She is seeming little bit… reserved,” Mrs P says delicately.

  “Yes yes, she is little bit reserved, this is the young girls for you, of course they are little bit shy, who would want it any other way?! When I was introduced to my husband first few times, oh!” exclaims Amma, and she laughs with a desperate gaiety, fingering the edge of her sari anxiously – but curiously fails to develop her theme, mainly because when she was introduced to Swami the first few times, and saw his proud gaze and bristling moustache and ceremonial police cadet uniform, she had been subject to such disturbing bodily sensations that she had nearly fainted.

  Mr P’s shoulders rise and fall heavily. This is not proving easy. He had hoped that Amma would meet them halfway in facing up to the problem, but she is proving intractable. What is he supposed to do now? There is scarcely a protuberant aspect of his corporal matter that he has not tweaked, pinched, stroked, patted, tapped, rubbed, fondled and pawed; but at last he brings his hands in front of him, extending the thumbs towards each other; he connects the two tips of his thumbs together, and gazes at the connection as though it might short-circuit the impasse.

  Amma’s chest is heaving up and down. She senses that the parents of the boy have something terrible to say, that even now they are wheeling its monstrous engines out into open view. She swallows. She can hear crows squabbling on the red tile roof above her, cawing and flapping, and from somewhere outside she can hear children chanting and squealing as some adult carries them around like gunny sacks, playing the same game that she had played as a child:

  “Does anybody want to buy my salt?

  Does anybody want to buy my salt?”

  “You see, Mohan is worried…” Mr P says.

  “Yes?” Amma says. “What are these worries of Mohan?”

  “I am very sorry for my frankness, please do not be misunderstanding me, I have best interests of both the young people at heart, but he is worried…” – the thumbs break apart, waggle in circles, cease waggling, connect together again – “…that she is having the sweet feelings for another boy somewhere, somehow.”

  There, it is out at last, and all three of them can look at it – that very shocking possibility – with all the awe it can command.

  “Oh!” says Amma, dismayed.

  You could argue that this suggestion is not fundamentally different to her own anxieties until a few hours ago; you could claim that it is untrue; if you combine a modern outlook with a forgiving nature, then you might be tempted to say “so what” even if it is true – but wherever you stand in this matter, you cannot fail to appreciate how shameful it is to have the father of the boy touch his two big fat thumbs together in your own house and come out with it.

  “Oh! That is… ayyo-yo-yo!”

  “Forgiving me, please, I do not like to say this, but this is the impression Mohan is getting, so what can we do?” Mr P pleads. “We must make our enquiries.”

  “My Jodhi,” Amma gasps, “eldest daughter of Guru Swamiji, and this, and this, and that is how you, and this is how I…”

  Amma sits up straight in her seat, lowers her brow, juts out her lower lip pugnaciously and assumes the dignity that all her years of life’s battering have granted her, all the presence that her seventy-odd kilos of matter can afford her, and all the outrage she can chisel out of every available nook and cranny of her motherhood.

  “Jodhi is best daughter in Mullaipuram, but if she is not good enough for you—” she bluffs.

  At this moment, the best daughter in Mullaipuram returns from the market with her shopping bag of vegetables.

  “Tell them,” Amma commands her at once, “tell them that you are a dutiful daughter!”

  “Amma?” Jodhi takes in the scene at once, sees that there has been a confrontation, sees that her mother is on the warpath, and her heart sinks; “Amma, let us be calm, I shall be making some tea…”

  “Tell them! Tell them you are happy to marry Mohan – come, speak.”

  Jodhi looks at all three of them – the angered, anxious face of her mother, the half aggrieved, half apologetic expressions of Mr and Mrs P. All the lights illuminating the deep and hopeful chambers of her interior life start to go out.

  “Yes Amma.”

  “There!” Amma declaims in bitter triumph. “Do you see? Jodhi, tell them you are the kind of girl who obeys your Appa and Amma in all things, great and small!”

  “Amma…” Jodhi protests, embarrassed, “let us not become overexcited with our guests…”

  “Tell them!”

  Jodhi sighs. Her shoulders sag.

  “Yes Amma. I am doing whatever my parents are telling me to do. I know you will make best decisions for me.”

  “You see?” Amma says to Mr and Mrs P, “you see? She is dutiful girl. Tell them, tell them you will marry Mohan!”

  “Yes Amma, that is what has been decided,” Jodhi replies, quietly and with great dignity, and she walks into the kitchen.

  “You see?” Amma says, almost taunting her visitors now. “Tell them you are not harbouring the wrong feelings for another boy!” she shouts after Jodhi.

  Jodhi makes no reply to Amma’s demand. She takes a bunch of coriander from the shopping bag and places it on the wooden chopping block, and tackles a few of the tiny flies that are zipping around the fragrance of it, splatting them between her palms. Next she empties a paper bag of brinjal onto a sheet of newspaper and starts sorting them by size.

  “Jodhi, tell them that there are no feelings in your heart for another boy!” Amma commands once more.

  In the kitchen, Jodhi’s head seems to be getting lower; the base of it is sinking into the top of her neck. As for her neck, it is retracting into her shoulders. Her shoulders would diminish too, if they could. Jodhi does not answer the question, not this time, not next time, and not even in a few minutes, when
Mr and Mrs P – still apologetic and remarkably polite, given the circumstances – leave Number 14/B harbouring the gravest doubts about the viability of the marriage.

  When Amma – calling from the verandah – fails to lure them back with promises about her husband’s powers in this affair, she goes back inside and confronts Jodhi. They are both in tears. But Jodhi refuses to confirm or deny that she harbours feelings for another boy. She chooses not to respond to even the wildest and most destructive guesses at the putative boy’s identity, and won’t be bullied, provoked or tricked into discussing any aspect of the marriage with Amma.

  “I will do what I am told,” is her only comment.

  8

  D.D. Rajendran, Murugesan and Apu are sitting together in a dusty corner of the Mariamman Temple complex on Kamarajar Salai, in the shade afforded by a crumbling wall and a coconut tree. They are cross-legged on a low platform, not far from a woman sleeping on the bare stone with her child, and a stray dog that whimpers as it dreams. They bear ash on their foreheads, and they are bare-chested. They have just been through a super-deluxe, hour-long, 8,000-rupees purification ritual presided over by an old temple priest to the rhythm of kettle drums, as ululating women – bearing bunches of neem leaves in both hands, their long black hair soaking wet and their bodies smeared all over with turmeric paste – howled “Mahamayee! Maariaathaa!”

  Other temple-goers who are engaging in their everyday temple life – clanging the bell as they enter, circling the inner sanctum, catching up with the gods – look across at the men curiously; what is going on with DDR now, they wonder. Why is he with those fellows in ritual clothes? Some of these onlookers settle down to watch, squatting down on their haunches under the base of one of the gopurams, or sitting on rocks between the pillars. And a reporter with the local rag, having taken some photographs discreetly, goes into the temple in search of an insider who will tell him what DDR has been doing here. Tomorrow a garbled account of spiritual regeneration, expensive Vedic rites and personal sacrifices will be on page two of the Mullaipuram Murasu.