He was filled with a cold, hard fury. How dare she? How dare she? He was so furious all through the photograph session that the flash from the camera caught him unawares, making him blink. The shadow of a man? Who did she think she was?
He was still bitter that night when the Kambeymada family wended their way down to the fields. The moon was full, a slight breeze molding the paddy into an undulating silver sea. Poli, poli, Deva! More, ever more, O God! the family cried, their voices resounding in the night. The first sheaves of paddy were cut to a thunderous round of gunshot and hoisted into a wicker basket for the most senior daughter-in-law to carry into the house. Sprigs of this new crop were tied to the lamp hanging in the prayer corner, and to doors, pillars, and bedposts all through the house. May we never hunger for grain. Machu barely noticed the crackers bursting in the yard, although when the liquor was brought around, he downed two hefty pegs in a swallow.
The next day, when Machu informed the Nayak that he would represent the family in the paaria kali that evening, the Nayak delightedly stroked his mustache. It was good magic, the photograph—already, it was working!
Machu was expressionless as he danced the kolata dance in the village green with the other men, moving in intricate, ever-decreasing circles to the steady beat of the drums. The thin red canes felt light in his hands after the heft of his odikathi. The bells at the ends jingled softly as the canes swooped and fell through the air. His head was empty, devoid of thought, the same jungle weightlessness of old. The drums grew more and more rapid, the canes singing breathlessly to their beat. Slowly most of the dancers stepped back until only the contestants for the paaria kali remained.
The paaria kali was an ancient technique of warfare, an expert series of parries and thrusts handed down through the generations. It had been tamed now into a game contested during Puthari and used occasionally by the village elders as a means of settling disputes: each contestant was armed with a bamboo shield and a pair of canes with which he was allowed to strike his opponent only below the shins. Nonetheless, these mock battles were often heated affairs, with the elders sometimes having to intervene before one or other of the men involved was seriously injured.
The village shouted out encouragement as the contestants squared off against one another. Machu circled his opponent like a jungle cat, taking his measure, his eyes scarcely blinking. The hum of the crowd, the dust rising in puffs around his feet. Her eyes upon him, an unwavering gaze no matter which way he turned. The man thrust at him and Machu gracefully blocked the blow with the shield, his hands sweeping in a blur toward the other’s shins. The canes came back bright with blood. No need for thought, just this dance, the eternal dance of the hunter and the hunted. Was there anything more pure? The drums grew faster, but Machu could no longer hear them, his attention fixed upon the canes shrieking in the air. The sting of blood on his legs, the canes dancing in his hands. Faster and faster, elation in his veins.
I am the tiger killer.
His opponent’s shins grew more and more bloody, and the crowd became increasingly silent. And then the man threw down his shield with a yell of pain. “Enough,” he cried, “I have had enough. You are the victor.”
Machu blinked as a great cry arose from the crowd, “Kambeymada Machaiah! Machu! Machu is the victor!” He looked straight at Devi. Her lips were moving; she was too far for him to hear what she was saying, but she was beaming proudly at him, her eyes bright with tears.
Both men embraced. “You were invincible,” his opponent exclaimed ruefully. “But then I should have known better than to go up against the tiger killer.”
I am the tiger killer. And yet, malleable as the clay at a potter’s wheel he had been. Inconsequential as a summer cloud, blown hither and thither by the wind.
“You were a worthy opponent,” Machu said. Still locked in that gaze, unable to tear his eyes from hers. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “There is nothing I would like more than to cement our friendship on this auspicious occasion of Puthari. You have a sister, don’t you? With your parents’ permission, I would like to marry her.”
Chapter 21
1904
The terra-cotta floor felt smooth and cool, like a pebble from the Kaveri. Nanju lay still, contemplating its texture against his cheek. After a while, he lifted his head and turned it so the other cheek now lay on the floor. “She does not like flowers,” he repeated to himself. Nanju ought to have known that his mother did not like flowers.
Devanna had beckoned to him early that evening, pointing out the bloom from the living room window. It was the first of the season, perched high on the sampigé tree. Larger than his fist, infused with musk. “What about this for your mother, then?” Devanna asked, and Nanju had clapped his hands in delight. Father and son, complicit in their plan, sent Tukra clambering up the tree. Devanna had shown Nanju how to blow gently on the stamen of the flower, probing the creamy, tapering petals with the fingers of his good hand to rid them of ants. He had sent Nanju to present it to Devi.
“Did your father put you up to this?” she asked. He had nodded vigorously, unable to stop grinning.
Without further comment, Devi had plucked the flower from his palm and placed it in the prayer corner.
“No, Avvaiah,” Nanju had protested, “this is for your hair, like the other ladies wear.”
“I have no time for such frivolities, Nanjappa. Tell your father that.”
Nanju’s face had fallen. Avvaiah did not like flowers. He needed to remember from now on that she simply did not like them. He had tiptoed unhappily from the room. Appaiah, too, had fallen silent. Certain that it was all his fault and not knowing how to make amends, Nanju had once again crawled under the bed.
He did not remember how or when he had started to shelter here. He knew he really shouldn’t, he was nearly five after all, a big boy now. Still, it remained his secret burrow, a place to cocoon himself among the tin trunks filled with silks and copper vessels. He would watch, hidden from view, as adult feet moved in and out of the room. Avvaiah’s slim, delicate feet, adorned with a pair of silver toe rings; Tukra’s cracked and dirt-blackened heels. Appaiah’s slow shuffle as he selected a volume from the rainbow stacks of books piled around the room and the rest of the house.
Nanju turned his head again. From where he lay, he could just about make out the legs of Appaiah’s chair. It was placed in its customary position before the living room windows. Nanju did not think that Appaiah had moved at all. He had sat there all evening, staring silently out the windows, at the lane that ran in front of the house and the brief patch of lawn with its beggared, sweet-scented sampigé tree.
The house had fallen quiet once more.
It was kept shut for most of the day; too much dust, intolerable noise, Avvaiah said, it was bad for Appaiah. The house was located in the Muslim quarter of the town, and Avvaiah neither mixed with any of their neighbors nor encouraged the advances of their children toward Nanju. Nonetheless, he could not remember ever chafing against the quiet. Years later, when people would tell Nanju he was a man of few words, he would never know quite what to say. He had always seemed to prefer the stillness of silence, the room it accorded for thought.
That’s what he would remember most about their home in Mercara, the quiet. Tukra’s nonstop mumbling did not count. Having listened to it practically from the cradle, Nanju had grown as accustomed to it as another child might the ticking of a clock. It burbled in the background, a mishmash of words soft as Appaiah’s gruel.
Avvaiah spoke with him, of course. Each morning, Nanju would stand before his mother as she inspected the parting of his hair—straight as an arrow it ought to be, she always said. She would dot his forehead with vibhuti, the sacred ash from the prayer corner, asking him if he had remembered to brush his teeth. She would smile as he nodded, a quick softening of her mouth that made Nanju’s heart glow like the sun.
That was on the good days. There were bad days, too, when she would be brittle all morning, trying hard
not to snap at him, a sharpness creeping nonetheless into her voice no matter how carefully he combed his hair. Or worse, she would become disconcertingly silent, her face drawn, filled with a sadness that made him ache. How he longed then to be able to reach up and remove the unhappiness from her eyes. She would faithfully stand in the window as she saw him off, but on such days she would barely notice as he turned around to wave. Her eyes so unbearably sad, fixed on something far beyond that Nanju could never see.
He was never any good at predicting Avvaiah’s moods, at anticipating the good days or bracing himself for the bad. So it was that when Nanju found Tukra waiting anxiously outside the mission school one afternoon, he was immediately filled with dread. He knew something was wrong from the way Tukra was fussing and fidgeting with the dust cloth that hung always from his shoulder. “Avvaiah?”
“No, no, Nanju anna, your mother is fine. It’s your great-grandfather. Kambeymada Nayak died last night. You are to go with your mother to the Kambeymada village.”
Dead! Nanju had never known anyone who was dead. He tried to imagine the Nayak lying on his bier, but all that popped in to his mind was an image of his immense mustache. Nanju used to stare at the Nayak, fascinated as the old man stroked and restroked that great silver appendage. And now he was dead …
He headed home with leaden feet, dreading the grieving mother he was sure he would find. To his relief, however, Devi had called almost gaily to him. “Nanju monae? Come, quickly now, we have to leave shortly. The barber is here. And after that, get changed, there’s a shirt and a pair of shorts on your bed. Quick, quick. And don’t get your clothes dirty, they must remain perfectly white for the funeral.”
Appaiah’s planter chair had been carted outside to the lawn where the barber was shaving his head bare with quick, deft strokes. His face looked funny without that covering of hair; Nanju had never before noticed how it seemed pushed to one side. “Can I touch?” he cried, “Appaiah, let me touch?” and Devanna, smiling wanly, tilted his head. The barber began to work up a fresh lather, and Devanna heavily patted his son’s arm to reassure him. Nanju wasn’t nervous at all. The male relatives of the deceased had to offer their hair to the Gods so that they would open the gates to heaven, Nanju knew. He sat still as the barber’s knife rasped against his scalp, watching the locks fall about him. Struck by a sudden thought, he twisted to look at his father, the barber tut-tutting under his breath.
“Appaiah, will you be coming too?”
“I—” Devanna began.
“No!” Devi emerged from the bedroom, cutting him short. “No, kunyi,” she repeated, her voice gentler this time. “You know it is too difficult a journey for your father to make. It will be just the two of us as usual, just my sweet boy and me.”
Devanna hesitated. “I should be there,” he said to her quietly. “The last rites, the reading of the will—”
“Fine. Then come. You know you are still not up to the travel; it will only exhaust you.”
“Yes,” Devanna said tiredly, “you are right. Nanju, you take care of Avvaiah, you hear?”
Nanju nodded, staring agog at his lovely mother. He thought she shone like a pearl, the pristine white of her sari almost blending into the color of her skin.
She talked throughout the journey to the Kambeymada village, her hands dancing in the air as they kept time with her words. She told Nanju about the Kambeymada house: the massive threshing plows with their ends shaped like horse heads that had taken three years to carve, and the prayer lamps dipped in twentyfour-carat gold, so ornate that it was said the Commissioner of Mysore himself had coveted them. She described in detail the massive tiger skin that hung inside the central area. “This brooch, here.” She touched a finger to the brooch at her shoulder. “Did you know it is made from a tiger’s claw? Yes, I swear, kunyi, from a real tiger!” She had been to the tiger wedding as a girl, she told him laughing, many years ago, when she was not much taller than he was now.
Nanju knew these stories by heart. Avvaiah recounted them to him each December when they visited the Kambeymada house for the Puthari festival. It never occurred to him to stop her, though; it made him so happy just to sit there by his mother’s side, listening. He liked to place his head in her lap as she spoke, and she’d draw him close, laughing. He beamed now as she pulled him affectionately into the crook of her arm.
So absorbed was Nanju in Devi’s chatter that he forgot the reason for their visit. When they reached the house, the crowds of mourners were a sudden, shocking reminder. Nanju looked overwhelmed at what seemed to him like a river of milk. Lapping against the outer pillars of the house, spilling over the steps and onto the verandah, sitting, standing, talking, weeping; men, women, and children all come to pay their last respects in spotless funeral white. He stayed close to his mother as they maneuvered through the crowd and into the inner courtyard. The Nayak’s freshly washed body was decked out in his finest velvet kupya and laid on a mat, his mustache oiled and twirled into a magnificent silver handlebar, his forehead smeared with sandalwood paste and anointed with a single gold sovereign.
“Touch his feet, monae.”
The dead Nayak’s toes felt waxy, like the translucent plugs of camphor Avvaiah kept in the prayer corner at home. Nanju hurriedly withdrew his hands and followed Devi as she sat with the other women. “Go outside, why don’t you?” she encouraged. “Go talk with your cousins.” He shook his head shyly and leaned against her. After a moment, she sighed and stroked his arm.
People kept streaming in, packed so close he could not even see to the far wall where the tiger skin was hung. A group of children of varying ages sat at one end of the courtyard, trying to be solemn but forgetting every so often, whispering and giggling among themselves until an adult told them sharply to be silent. Nanju peeped at them from behind his mother. They beckoned to him to join them, and he at once got flustered, looking away as he shifted even closer to Devi.
They sat for what seemed like hours. Nanju began to fidget. “Sit straight,” Devi whispered. “Don’t slouch like a Poleya—are you Tukra’s child or mine?”
“How long must we stay?” he whined. “I’m hungry, Avvaiah.”
“Shhh. Look.” A group of his uncles entered the inner courtyard, each of them freshly shaven-headed like Appaiah and him. “It must be time for the cremation.” Nanju watched curiously as his uncles lifted the Nayak’s corpse into a chair and hoisted it upon their shoulders. The funeral drums started to play, and women began to cry as they rose to their feet. Avvaiah was standing ramrod-straight, her eyes fixed on the pallbearers. They slowly circled, east to west—once, twice, three times, Nanju counted under his breath. The Nayak’s head slumped forward on his chest, the turban slipping askew. The pallbearers started down the steps that led toward the field. Somberly the men in the gathering filed after them.
Unsettled, Nanju slipped his hand into his mother’s. She flinched, startled, as if she had entirely forgotten that he was there too. “Nanju,” she said, as if reminding herself of his name, “you must go with your uncles to the cremation.”
“No—” Nanju began in alarm, but she was already approaching one of his uncles.
“Will you take Nanju with you?”
“Avvaiah, no,” Nanju protested again in fright, but his uncle had taken his hand.
“What, monae! Stop hiding behind your mother’s pleats, we will find her when we return. For now, your place is here, with the other men of your family, yes?”
Tukra had once told Nanju what happened to dead bodies. The Poleyas had originally left their dead in the forests, tipping them into pits and piling leaves and stones over them so wild animals could not get at them. Slowly, though, they had begun to mimic the Coorg tradition of cremating their dead. Tukra claimed he had attended many, many funerals. Aiyo, it was dangerous work! The ghost of the deceased had been known to rise up from its sizzling corpse many a time, fssst, just like that, and possess one or other of the onlookers.
Nanju had jeered at Tuk
ra’s tall stories, but now his words seemed all too real. He tugged experimentally at his uncle’s grasp, but it was firm and would brook no nonsense.
He was a man, he told himself, was that not what Appaiah had said to him, that he was growing so fast? He was nearly five, and he would not be afraid. His head started to itch and he rubbed a sweaty palm over it. It was a hot afternoon, the dust rising around him as he descended reluctantly toward the fields. My shorts, he fretted to himself, trying to brush them down with his free hand. Avvaiah had told him that he must not dirty them.
The cremation pyre had been assembled at the far end. The pallbearers lifted the corpse onto the logs. Nanju tried his best not to stare at his great-grandfather and attract the ire of his ghost, but try as he might, his eyes returned time and again to the corpse. The logs shifted slightly, and the Nayak’s hand slipped lifelessly to one side. From where Nanju stood, it seemed as if his great-grandfather was pointing an accusing finger straight toward him. He swallowed and looked away.
Cuck-oo, cuck-oo, a cuckoo called sweetly from the branches overhead. Nanju glanced up at it, but his eyes were pulled back to the Nayak. Three of his uncles circled the pyre; the cuckoo called again as they torched the wood. Flames crackled their way toward the corpse, wisps of smoke reaching into the air. The fire probed at the figure of the Nayak, testing the tasseled ends of his sash. Nanju made a small sound in his throat as it coiled slowly about the sleeve of the Nayak’s kupya, setting it aflame. The flames crept higher, flickering over the wide expanse of chest. Nanju was transfixed, unable to look away. The fire rose higher still, lapping at the Nayak’s chin, scorching that magnificent, gleaming mustache. A slow, sizzling sound, like fish in a pan. Cuck-ooo, the bird trilled, twitching its tail, and with a sudden WHOOF the entire pyre burst into flame. To Nanju’s horror, the Nayak’s hand seemed to rise through the flames, pointing straight at him. Nanju tore free from his uncle’s grasp and, pushing through the mourners, fled pell-mell across the fields back toward the house, screaming for his mother.
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