Teatime for the Firefly

by Shona Patel

  “Or they have OPs...their concubines.”

  “Like Jamina?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, Alasdair got Jamina from Auntie’s.”

  Got Jamina from Auntie’s! Why, Jamina sounded like a puppy.

  That made Alasdair one more rotten pea in the pod, I thought bitterly. So much for royalty and fine breeding. I was beginning to feel hopelessly depressed.

  “Here is something you must understand, Layla. Planters have to stay sane under the most trying situations. It is lonely in the tea garden—the work is grueling—there are very few diversions. Assistants are forced to remain bachelors for three years. Then even when they are officially allowed to get married, it is hard to find a wife who will agree to come and live in the jungle.”

  “What made you think I was different?”

  “I know you are.”

  “You hardly know me,” I retorted archly.

  “I would like to, if you let me.” Manik held out his upturned palm. I did not realize I had pulled my hand away and clenched my fists in my lap.

  We drove in silence. I looked out my window hoping Manik would not notice the tears that brimmed in my eyes. Stare into the wind, Layla, I told myself. Hopefully your tears will fly off like little birds, and he won’t see them.

  * * *

  The Koilapani River cut a gash a quarter mile wide across the road. A narrow suspension bridge straddled the two banks like a giant centipede. The bridge creaked on its girders and swung from side to side as the jeep lumbered across. The sluggish streams below meandered around mammoth rocks that stuck out like elephants’ feet in the parched riverbed, cracked and pitted like a wasteland.

  “You should see this river in the monsoons,” said Manik, breaking the silence. “It swells and sometimes rips that bridge in two. Then Aynakhal is completely cut off. We’d be lost without Rupali, I tell you.”

  I thought for a moment he was talking about a Sister of Mercy. But Rupali, thankfully, turned out to be the resident elephant of Aynakhal. There were three elephants: Rupali, Moti and Tara, Manik said. All females. Tara was now retired. Rupali and Moti were indispensable as tractors. They hauled lumber, chased game with shikaris on their backs and served as a mobile bridge for emergencies during the floods.

  “Larry’s wife, Janice, once dropped her high-heeled slipper in the river when she was crossing on elephant back,” said Manik, chatty as you please.

  Talking of Larry reminded me of Auntie’s and made me peevish. But I was curious. “Was there a medical emergency?” I asked. High-heeled slippers seemed impractical for an elephant ride. I realized this was the first time I was hearing Larry even had a wife. Why was he not at home, then, enjoying his fine cigar instead of smoking low-grade bidis at Auntie’s?

  “No, there was no medical emergency—she was just trying to get to the Mariani Club,” said Manik airily. Getting to the Mariani Club on club night was apparently deemed important enough to cross a flooded river on elephant back, high-heeled slippers and all.

  “She left Larry and went back to England after that,” Manik continued. “Had enough of jungle adventures.”

  Ah, that explained why Larry was at Auntie’s. At least Janice got away. A slow claustrophobia was beginning to seep into me. One thing was certain: getting in and out of Aynakhal was not easy.

  * * *

  We were now in serious jungle country. Tall trees crowded out the sky. They grew close together, knit by dense creepers that snarled over branches and dropped ropelike stems with giant leaves to the ground. The dense undercover was furrowed with labyrinthine tracks that disappeared into the dark interior. Pale lilac orchids sprouted from mossy armpits in branches. The road was rutted and bumpy, more a jungle track than a road. We turned down a fork with a banged-up and lopsided wooden marker with AYNAKHAL T.E. painted on it.

  “This can’t be the only road into Aynakhal?” I asked, feeling a little alarmed as we continued on our bone-rattling journey. Where was he taking me? I held on to the dashboard tightly as the jeep heaved and groaned over potholes, tipping precariously from side to side.

  Manik hummed, unfazed. “There is a decent road from the Chulsa end but that’s twenty miles farther down the highway. I am taking you by the scenic route.”

  The bad road was probably only a five-mile stretch, but it seemed to go on and on.

  Suddenly there were signs of civilization. The forests cleared, and we drove through rice fields lined by bamboobaris on either side. A large bird of the most brilliant plumage flew across the road, followed by three dusky mates.

  “Jungle fowl,” said Manik, slowing down to look. “Good eating bird.”

  We rumbled over an unmanned railway crossing to enter the tea estate. There was a boom gate across the road with a big red STOP painted on a circular piece of metal stuck in the middle.

  Manik honked, and a sprightly man dressed in khaki shorts and shirt rushed out of a tiny guardhouse. He salaamed smartly before unwinding the rope and letting the boom gate ride up, then did a double salaam when he saw me riding in front.

  A tractor lumbered down the opposite side of the road. It idled with its engine throbbing. As we passed, the driver lifted his left hand in another salaam. I noticed he was missing his right hand. Handless or no, people here seemed to salaam left, right and center.

  We drove through neat sections of tea plantation and past the gated entrance of a long whitewashed building with big airy open sheds with AYNAKHAL T.E. painted in large blue letters on the silver roof. A deep malty smell of Assam tea filled my senses. Just then a high-pitched siren screamed through the air, making me jump.

  “What’s that?” I said, startled out of my wits.

  “Factory shift change,” Manik said. “Must be four-thirty. Oh, here is my office,” he said, slowing down as we drove by a long building with several rooms connected by a veranda. There were a couple of bicycles leaning against the wall. The office looked rather unimpressive and rudimentary. I had expected tea-garden offices to be imposing and majestic, maybe because I had Dadamoshai’s court office in mind.

  The road curved to the right and wound up at a small forest-covered hill.

  “That’s my bungalow up there. Look, you can see the roof.” Manik ducked his head, peering over the windscreen and pointing through the trees. A group of golden langur monkeys scampered across the road. We pulled up to a white-painted gate with overgrown hedges on either side. Manik blew the horn with his elbow. A small man with bandy legs ran out, bobbing and salaaming and getting all tangled with courtesy. He swung open the gates.

  “Potloo. Chowkidar. Night watchman,” Manik said, by way of introduction.

  The driveway was edged with white-painted bricks buried diagonally in the ground and pots of marigold that looked freshly watered. The bungalow was built in a traditional Chung style and stood eight feet off the ground supported by tall wooden pillars. The heavy thatched roof looked like a head of overgrown hair; under it, small windows peeped out like bleary eyes. A small flight of wooden stairs led up to a spacious wraparound veranda. A profusion of bougainvillea showered down from the railings in heavy splashes of magenta.

  Manik pulled up, and I saw a small and motley entourage lined up on the portico.

  “Who are these people?” I said, astonished.

  “Bungalow servants,” said Manik. “To welcome the new Chotamemsahib.”

  As I got out of the jeep a cacophonous chorus of “salaam memsahib” went up. They were all males, four in all, not counting Potloo, the watchman, who was scurrying behind the jeep trying to catch up. A gnome-size man was dressed in a stiff white tunic so spanking new it still had the purple factory seal of the textile mill stamped on the chest. Gnome number two, who looked like his identical twin, was dressed in khaki shorts and shirt. The third was a skinny lad, cross-eyed with a large ringworm on his cheek, and
the last an old man with bright brown eyes, his face wizened as a monkey.

  Manik introduced us. The one in the spanking white uniform was Halua, the bearer. His twin in khaki, Kalua, the cook. The other two were nameless. The ringwormy lad was just called the paniwalla, kitchen boy, and the old monkey-eyed man was the mali, the gardener.

  “You will meet the rest by and by,” said Manik. So there were more of them, it seemed.

  All the servants scurried around in confused circles, helping to unload, bumping into each other and falling all over themselves. I guess welcoming the new Chotamemsahib was a big event.

  The wooden stairs creaked and groaned all the way up to the veranda. The view from the upper veranda was spectacular. The Aynakhal chota bungalow was set high up on a hillock. The grounds sloped down to a thick wooded area, with no fencing or boundary wall from what I could see. Bushes and trees grew wantonly, spilling and tumbling over one another. The only manicured plant in the garden was a tall hibiscus hedge that defined the property line by the main gate. Otherwise the garden just blended lazily into its natural environment. In the far distance, through a filtered curtain of foliage, a sheet of water winked, catching the light of the dying sun.

  “Is that the Aynakhal Lake?” I asked.

  Manik looked up to where I was pointing. He was absentmindedly riffling through some mail on the coffee table. Ever since we’d arrived at the bungalow, I’d sensed a strange formality about him. “Yes,” he said. “It’s quite a way down. But there’s a shortcut through the property. I’ll take you there sometime.”

  The veranda was furnished with four cane chairs with worn-out cushions, a low solid teak coffee table and two mismatched peg tables. There was a hat stand against the wall with an umbrella, a walking stick and two sola topees on the hat hooks. Above it was a mounted head of a sambar deer with impressive curving antlers and peaceful eyes. In a corner, sitting on the floor, was an oversize dustbin, hollowed out of an elephant’s foot, complete with cracked yellow nails and bristling hair on the skin.

  Manik saw me looking at the elephant’s foot.

  “Rogue elephant,” he said. “It was killed by Jameson, one of the Aynakhal assistants. Planters don’t shoot elephants unless they have to. You need a special permit. This rogue wreaked havoc and killed several people in Aynakhal.”

  “Did you shoot the deer?”

  “Not this one,” Manik said, admiring the mounted head. “It was in the bungalow when I moved in. I’ve shot similar ones, but I never have the money to get the heads mounted.”

  Halua—or was it Kalua?—had arrived. He stood fidgeting. He whispered into Manik’s ear.

  “How about a cup of tea?” Manik asked. “I’ll show you the bedroom. You can freshen up, if you like.”

  The master bedroom was enormous, big enough to play badminton in. The curtains in the windows were made from what looked like women’s saris, leaf-green with a crimson border. My suitcases were piled up on the floor. In the center of the room was a regular double bed that looked tiny in the vast space. A mosquito net billowed down to the floor in elaborate folds. There were two identical teak wardrobes, side by side, against the wall. One looked brand-new.

  The bathroom had a white enamel claw-foot tub with a white slatted wooden tray straddling the top. The tall white washbasin was spotlessly clean. Manik’s shaving things sat neatly on a shelf: a soft shaving brush with its hair all smashed to one side, a slim razor and a bar of shaving soap. There was a new pink toothbrush, presumably for me, next to an orange one in a water glass and a very erratically squeezed toothpaste tube with the top missing. The towels were white and clean and smelled of starch and sunlight.

  When I returned to the living room, I found Manik fiddling with the oversize knobs on a round-shouldered radio in a lacquered case. It emitted a gloomy green light. There was a tired-looking settee, two padded armchairs and a cane ottoman, over which lay an upturned and dog-eared copy of War and Peace. A gramophone sitting on the floor unfurled its horn like a giant morning glory. Next to it was a small pile of vinyl records. The shelves along the wall, I noted with satisfaction, were crammed with books.

  “Hopeless reception,” said Manik, banging the top of the radio with his fist. The radio suddenly woke up and sizzled momentarily. Then the plummy voice of the BBC announcer sliced through, crisp and clear, amidst terrible squeals of static.

  Manik switched it off. “I just wanted to see if it works,” he said. “Here, let me show you around the rest of the bungalow. It’s rather basic, I’m afraid.”

  The square dining room had an adjoining bottle-khanna, or pantry. There was a kerosene fridge, shelves with cutlery and glassware and a larder with double netted doors. Dozens of beer and soda bottles neatly lined the floor. A swing door led down a flight of stairs from the bottle-khanna to the kitchen, which was not part of the main house at all, but a separate building, a short distance away down a flagstone path.

  There were two guest bedrooms with attached baths. One looked as though it had been turned into a junk room. Manik’s hunting gear was everywhere: a disassembled shotgun lay on a small table, along with half-open boxes of shells and gun-cleaning pipes and rags all over the floor.

  “The taps don’t work in this bathroom,” said Manik. “Also very important...” He stopped in front of a two-foot square on the floor outlined with chalk. There appeared to be a fist-size hole smashed right through the floorboards. “Don’t ever step inside this square. You will fall right through. The floor has rotted. White ants.”

  I tried to peer into the hole but there was only darkness beyond. It looked like the perfect hideout for snakes.

  Manik must have read my mind.

  “There are snakes down there, as well,” he added.

  “So, why don’t you get the floor repaired?”

  “Right now we have a shortage of funds. This bungalow is over a hundred years old and needs a major overhaul.” Bungalow repair and other upgrades came out of what was known as Capital Expenditure Submissions, Manik explained. What the company sanctioned depended on the profits the garden made that year. Every year a list of requirements was submitted to the head office in Calcutta. It could be anything from replacing bathroom fixtures to installing a swimming pool. Manik, it seemed, had pushed for a tennis court rather than repairs in his own bungalow. But now that he had a wife, he said, his living conditions would need to be more shipshape.

  “More than anything, what this bungalow needs is a jali kamra,” Manik said, closing the door to the guest bedroom. A jali kamra was an enclosed netted outdoor room, usually an extension of the veranda. “It’s impossible to sit out here in the evenings, especially as the weather gets warmer. All kinds of creatures fly around—moths, bats, beetles, grasshoppers. But this time of the year it’s very pleasant. We may as well enjoy the veranda while we can.”

  Kalua had laid the tea-tray service out on the veranda. Darkness was falling. A pack of jackals howled in the hills, the trees rustled and the jungle was filled with soft scraping sounds. A handful of fireflies had descended from the sky and winked softly around us. I watched a firefly land on a teacup. It pulsed softly, lighting the translucent bone china with sharp flashes of ethereal light. Manik let the firefly crawl on his finger. He blew on it softly and watched it wink away.

  “The only trouble with a jali kamra,” Manik said, “is that it will keep out the fireflies. I love sharing my teatime with the fireflies.”

  * * *

  A hot soak was just what I needed before dinner. Halua had run me a bath in the master bathroom. The water in the claw-foot tub was scalding, the bathroom clogged with steam. I smiled seeing the two bars of soap: a misshapen red Lifebuoy carbolic soap, presumably Manik’s, and a new oval bar of Pears Soap for me. I sank into the tub and contemplated my rather confusing day. I could hear Manik whistling in the bedroom. The cupboard door opened and squealed shut
. Then there was a soft tap on the bathroom door.

  “Yes?” I called, my heart beating fast as water dripped down my face.

  “Is everything okay? I am having my bath in the guest bathroom,” he said.

  “Yes, thanks.” I sighed with relief.

  I was about to sink back into the tub when a small movement up on the ceiling caught my eye. A tiny fruit bat had flown into the bathroom through the open skylight. I watched anxiously as it flew in dizzying circles, round and round the ceiling. Then to my alarm, the awful creature made a nosedive into the tub and skimmed so close I felt its furred wing tip brush past my ear. I ducked and splashed and let out my own batlike shriek, which only seemed to encourage the creature further.

  “Layla, is something wrong?”

  “There’s a bat in here!”

  “Wait, I’m coming in.”

  Manik twisted the doorknob then banged on the door. “Did you lock the door?”

  I did. Don’t ask me why.

  “Can you open it, please?”

  “I can’t get out of the tub.”

  The bat was circling lower and lower. I grabbed the long-handled scrubbing brush and swiped the air.

  “Listen!” Manik yelled. “Look by the side of the tub. There is an old tennis racket—”

  “A wha—? Oooh!”

  “TENNIS racket. By the tub. Do you see it?”

  I peeked over the rim. Sure enough, there was a battered old tennis racket leaning against the laundry basket. How peculiar.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Give the bat a whack with that,” Manik yelled. “I forgot to tell you. Bats fly into the bathroom all the time.”

  The bat circled high up on the ceiling, and looked as if it was swooping in for another attack. I grabbed the tennis racket and swung at it. To my surprise and astonishment, I caught the bat in midair and sent it smacking into the wall with a sickly thud. I peered over the rim of the tub and watched with morbid fascination as the creature lay twitching under the basin.