Devanna sent Appu the details of Nanju’s leaving. Nanju would be graduating in agricultural studies at the University of Mysore, he wrote. The King of Mysore had sent his experts on a five-year field trip around the world, he wrote, and the university had been established based on the promotion of original research (University of Chicago), the extension of knowledge (University of Wisconsin), and the promulgation of an educational system that would train its students for political and social life (universities of Oxford and Cambridge).
Devanna’s letters always ended the same: “Your mother sends her love and her blessings. She asks that you make sure to eat properly and not be shy in asking the masters for more tiffin should you be hungry. Please, son, keep us informed of your progress. Let me know at once should anyone treat you roughly.”
It was while he was in his second year at Bidders, or Biddies as the boys called it, that Appu learned of the KCIO program. When he returned to Coorg in the summer of 1918, he had an important announcement to make. “Avvaiah,” he said excitedly, “I am going to apply for the Kings Commission.”
Devi looked bewildered. “The what?”
“The KCIO program … Kings Commissioned Indian Officers.” Devanna elaborated. “The war—with so many Indian soldiers sacrificed to its cause, Indian politicians have been pushing for Indians to be allowed into the army as officers of rank, not just as troops. It’s been all over the newspapers. The program is very selective, only a few seats to be released each year, and there is a strict interview process. The chosen few will receive the Kings Commission, and be allowed to command even British troops.”
“Yes!” Appu nodded vigorously, his hair falling into his eyes. “The KCIO, Avvaiah! I could be a general in the army one day!”
Devi smiled. “The army, is it? Like your father? We’ll see, we’ll see … ”
“A general, can you imagine? Ayy, Tukra,” he called to the Poleya, who was pottering around the dining room, wiping the afternoon dust from the window sills, “did you hear? You better learn to salute me.”
“Saloot?” Tukra asked, interested. “But how do you do this saloot?”
Appu leaped from his chair and, spinning Tukra around, raised the latter’s hand to his forehead. “There. Like so, this is a salute. Now stand still so we can admire you.”
So ridiculous did Tukra look, standing stiffly to attention, fingers splayed in an awkward salute, the ubiquitous dust cloth hanging from his shoulder like some faulty epaulette, that they all began to laugh.
“Oh, don’t listen to him, Tukra,” Devi said, amused. “Mr. General Sir,” she said to Appu, “sit down and finish your lunch.”
So insistent was the political pressure on the government that the KCIO policy was promptly implemented, and in October 1918 the first batch of Indian cadets was initiated into the program. Devanna sent Appu a clipping from the newspapers. Only fifty seats had been released. There had been seventy applicants from all over the country, scions of the finest families in the land, even royals from the houses of Kapurthala, Baroda, and Jamnagar. Despite the fifty vacancies, just forty-two candidates were deemed promising enough to be admitted into the program, and among them, there was a Coorg. “Nineteen-year-old Cariappa,” Devanna wrote, “will be among the first KCIOs in the country. Should he set a strong example, it will only bolster your own application.”
Balmer was highly supportive of Appu’s ambition. “Nothing would make me happier, and, I suspect, your father, if he were alive, more proud. If you should need recommendations,” he wrote, “I would be honored to provide you with mine.”
A month later, the war ended, a ceasefire coming into effect at 11 a.m. on the eleventh of November, 1918—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and almost midway through Appu’s third year at Bidders. The principal gave the boys a half day to celebrate the Allied victory. Restless and irritated because it meant that there would be no hockey practice that evening, Appu wandered over to the watchmen’s hut. He took a deep puff of a beedi, the acrid smoke searing his lungs. Suddenly a thought struck him.
“You all, what is it that you do for fun?” he asked the watchmen, squinting at them through the smoke. “No, not gilli danda. What do you take me for, an idiot? Not childhood games, what do you do for real fun?”
The watchmen looked at one another, hemmed and hawed for a bit, and then told him about the cockfights held in their village.
They were not actually held, mind you, how could they be, when they had been banned by the local magistrate? They were a respectable, law-abiding lot. Ask any of the villagers and they would vehemently deny ever having laid eyes on a fighting rooster, let alone having had anything to do with attending or organizing a fight. Still, when the moon was high, and the locally brewed arrack flowed freely … now and again, something might be arranged.
The local policemen were invited to share in the booze and partake of the winnings from the fight, and by the next morning: Cockfight? What cockfight?
When it became known in the hostel that Appu had somehow arranged an illicit cockfight, his already prominent star rose among the seniors. He greased the palms of the watchmen generously, and their collective conscience prickled only briefly. It was a sizable contingent of boys that slipped out of the school gates the evening of the fight. “Quickly, come,” the guide sent from the village urged them nervously, leading them to a natural dip in the land that lay to the side of the settlement. A makeshift ring had been demarcated by sticks, illuminated by a single, reedy lantern. Two stringy-looking roosters were pushed squawking into the ring, and with a low whistle from someone, the fight officially began.
At first the birds tried to escape, desperately flapping their clipped wings, but they were pushed unceremoniously back inside the ring. Resigning themselves at last to the fact that there was no way out, they flew viciously at one another, clawing, pecking, and ripping with their specially sharpened beaks. The boys stared transfixed, some ashen, some with faces flushed, each unable to tear his eyes away from the torn feathers, the trails of dark blood that ran thicker and thicker down the cartilaginous legs of the birds. They shouted too, along with the villagers, hoarse cries of excitement and encouragement, urging, cursing, willing the exhausted, faltering roosters forward, until at last one of them keeled over into the dust.
A cheer went up through the crowd and money swiftly changed hands as, with a final, swift wringing of their necks, the bodies of both roosters, the vanquished as well as the victor, were tossed aside.
Later that night, when one of the seniors reached into his pocket, it took Appu some seconds to grasp fully what it was that had been placed in his hands.
He had heard about it, of course; every boy in Bidders had. One of the seniors had filched the miniature from his father’s library. It featured a woman, Appu knew, in a wondrous state of undress. One of his classmates claimed he had even got a peek at the painting before the senior, whose room he had been cleaning, had spotted him and soundly boxed his ears. Unfortunately, the painting had been lying facedown and he had not seen very much.
It was an old Mughal miniature, the ivory on which it was painted dulled and yellowed with the years, the lapis lazuli along its rim missing here and there.
The artist’s muse was a young woman, luxuriating in her bath, her head arched to expose the single strand of pearls looped about her throat. Her eyes were shut, her lips, a rosebud red, partly open. A gauzy veil lay across her body, revealing more than it hid. Apart from that, she was unabashedly naked.
Appu’s heart began to race as he devoured her with his eyes, the tips of her breasts, the alabaster whiteness of her belly. The whorls of hair peeping from between her legs.
“Down, boy,” the senior snickered. “Never seen one of these before, have you?”
Appu was struck dumb. He barely slept that night, consumed by what he had seen and sweating uncomfortably in his bed. The next evening, he went to the watchmen’s hut with a proposition. They must have family worki
ng in the tea plantations in the area. Erotica, he told them. Smut. It would likely be in the master study, or in the bedroom. “Check the drawers,” he told them. “Filch some for me and I’ll pay you well.”
They had gaped at his request. “But what if we are caught?”
Appu laughed. “Don’t worry. This is one theft that will never be reported to the police. Think of the shame. Don’t worry,” he repeated insouciantly. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
Christmas came around and Appu left for Coorg once more. “Avvaiah,” he said suddenly one afternoon at lunch, “we should change the name of the estate. Nari Malai is so provincial. Let’s call it Tiger Hills instead. English.”
“What? Come on, Appu, we are going to do no such—” Nanju began, but Devi looked fondly at this fancy son of hers.
Machu, she thought, you would be so amused.
“No,” she said to Nanju, “he’s right. We should move with the times. Tiger Hills it is.”
Nanju said nothing more, but he was especially quiet when Appu found him later that afternoon, sitting beside the birdhouse. When Appu finished a long and especially wicked story about one of the boys at Biddies and Nanju didn’t so much as crack a smile, Appu looked at him quizzically.
“Nanju,” he said lightly, “if it means so much to you, call it Nari Malai. It was just a thought, that’s all.”
Nanju shrugged, apparently absorbed in the birdhouse.
“C’mon, man, you’re—”
“Is there anything she won’t do for you?” Nanju said suddenly. “Ask her for the sun the next time, why don’t you, along with the moon and all the stars in the sky?”
Appu chuckled and, throwing back his head, began to sing the ditty they had come up with at Biddies. It was an ode to the draconian nurse who manned the infirmary. He had taught it to Nanju and they substituted certain key words whenever Devi and Devanna were in earshot; not that Devi would understand anyway.
A rich girl uses vaseline,
A poor girl uses lard.
Nursie likes axle grease,
Her punt is old and hard.
Despite himself, Nanju’s lips began to twitch. He sighed, and then cuffing his brother lightly on the head to acknowledge the blatant change of subject, he joined in the ditty as well.
It was the following spring, almost at the tail end of the school year, when the watchmen finally sent word to Appu. A tea boy in one of the plantations had found something that would interest the young sir. The wait had been well worth it, Appu discovered, stunned at the prize the watchmen delivered.
It was a stack of daguerreotypes, each lovingly framed in gilt. There were two women, gently disrobing each other. A creamy shoulder exposed in one frame; a flutter of fingers, a length of leg in the next. A corset, coming delicately undone, until soon they were spread-eagled on a lace bedspread, frolicking with abandon under the hearts and knots carved into the headboard above.
The daguerreotypes passed into legend at Biddies. For years to come, they would be handed from one graduating class to another, lovingly fondled by so many hands that the gilt frames grew dull, the identities of the two beauties infused by a hundred active imaginations.
They sealed fifteen-year-old Appu’s standing at school for good—Dags, the boys now called him, the deliverer of the daguerreotype legacy, and Dags he would forever remain to a certain social circle, even when they were old and grizzled, with barely the strength to walk.
Chapter 32
The summer of 1920 dawned especially hot and dusty. Coorg lay parched under rainless skies, the rivers shrunken to trickles of muddy water.
Appu came home for the holidays once more. A school chum invited him to join the family at the Club one evening.
“Come along, don’t you want to see what they get up to in that fancy schmancy club?” Appu urged Nanju, but the latter was having none of it.
“No, certainly not, whatever am I going to do there? No, Appu, you go.”
Appu walked into the Club, the easy swing of his stride, the width of his shoulders, and his impressive height all serving to belie his seventeen years. Even Devi had been startled at how much he had grown this past term. She barely came up to his chest now, needing to reach up on her tiptoes to brush his hair back from his forehead, and that, too, only when he indulgently tilted his head toward her. Nonetheless, the gangliness that so afflicted boys his age had passed Appu by. He carried the extra inches well.
He glanced about him, affecting a blasé expression, as if he had been frequenting the Club all his life. He took in the thick red curtains, the pall of smoke that hung over the card tables, the waiters standing ready just beyond the light of the lanterns. “The billiards room,” his friend’s father suggested, “would you boys like to give it a go?” Appu bent over the billiards table, and from the way the balls sped across the green baize, one would have been forgiven for thinking that he had been playing the sport forever.
There was a hearty round of applause at the end of the game. Someone offered to buy both boys a drink. “Ah, it’s okay, laddies, you’re old enough. Not so long ago, youngsters your age were getting drafted, weren’t they?”
Liquid fire. Appu held the glass of whiskey up to the lamps, examining the pale golden swirl of the alcohol. Suddenly aglow with bonhomie, he threw back his head and guffawed. His voice had cracked the previous year and already it was baking into a deep, rich baritone.
So penetrating was his laugh that it carried into the ladies’ cloister. Kate Burnett glanced toward the sound. Who was that? she wondered, as she took in the spreading hulk of Appu’s shoulders. There was an air of youth about him, like the scent of a new leaf in spring.
Appu caught her looking at him, the frankness of her appraisal making him flush. He turned away in confusion; then, annoyed at how easily she had punctured his composure, he swiveled on the bar stool back toward her. Taking a long, iced swallow from his drink, he returned her gaze, his eyes boldly raking over every inch of her, from the bob that shone like polished mahogany to the pointed tips of her shoes.
Kate arched an eyebrow at his insolence, the corners of her lips contriving to lift slightly at the same time in amusement.
She turned back to the women, ignoring him. To his annoyance, Appu found his eyes returning to her again and again through the remainder of the evening.
He had been unable to get her out of his head when his friend invited him to the Club again the following week. Appu eagerly accepted. He dressed with care, setting Tukra to polishing his oxfords for a good hour, but to his disappointment she was nowhere to be seen that evening.
“Mrs. Burnett? The pretty, brown-haired one? I suppose she must be home—her husband travels a great deal, I’ve heard,” his friend said vaguely.
Appu was surprised at how let down he had felt by her absence. He thought of Mrs. Burnett a great deal over the next days, showing Nanju the package of FLs he had bought, just in case.
“French letters. You do know what these are for, don’t you?”
Nanju nodded sheepishly. “Yes.”
Appu boxed him on the shoulder. “So you do want a few? For the lovelies in your college? It’s okay, I have more.”
It took three more visits to the Club before he saw Mrs. Burnett again. He looked anxiously at her, and to his enormous relief, she remembered him. She tilted her head in a mock salute, her earrings swinging delicately against her hair.
Midway through the evening, a bearer handed him a note. Appu excused himself to visit the men’s room, where he unfolded the note. “Belvedere Estate,” it said simply. “Tomorrow. 3 p.m.”
The paper smelled faintly of her perfume. Appu held it to his nose, eyes shut, as he took in its fragrance. And then, scrunching the note into a ball, he threw it into the chamber pot.
Catherine Burnett was bored. It was nearly five years since she had first come to Coorg. She had met Edward at a social in London, where the bulk of his frame had immediately caught her eye. It had not been long before they w
ere affianced, and soon he was writing to her from his estate in India, describing cool, lush Coorg, the thick jungles and ancient, forgotten stone temples, the waterfalls that spilled down mountainsides, and the evenings filled with fireflies. Kate had been enchanted, a spell that would last well into their marriage. And then gradually, she wasn’t even sure exactly when or why, the bloom had begun to fade from the rose.
“The coffee,” she would correct herself in a private, wistful joke, “the aroma has begun to fade from the coffee.”
Edward had bought another estate, this time in South Coorg, where the soil was particularly fertile and coffee yields were said to be exceptional. Unfortunately, it meant that he was gone for days at a stretch, leaving Kate to her own devices in their sprawling bungalow. At first she hadn’t minded—she had been planning to redecorate anyway, and besides, the separations brought a certain … frisson to their marriage. But after she had finished refurbishing, and with the gardens landscaped and manicured to perfection, an ennui had crept in.
Edward would come home, tired and laden with the frustrations of a new estate; he would kiss her absently on the forehead, oblivious to the new dress she had put on especially for him. They went to the Club regularly when he was in town, but even that had grown dreary. The same faces every time, the same gossipy conversations.
The evening that she noticed Appu, Edward and she had had a “disagreement,” as he preferred to call their fights. She had been, oh, she didn’t know, a trifle on edge, perhaps, brought on by the fact that he was leaving for the other estate again in a couple of days. He had patiently explained, yet again, that the estate was not quite there yet, another year perhaps and then—
“Another year?” she had protested. “Edward, another year is simply too long for us to carry on like this. You are hardly here, we hardly ever meet … it is simply far too long.”
“Come, Katie,” he had said in that calm tone that so deflated her. “Must you exaggerate so? We spend a great deal of time together—why, I have been here all this past fortnight.”
Tiger Hills Page 34
