Teatime for the Firefly

by Shona Patel

  “Which way from here, sister?” asked Karim. We had not spoken a single word the entire way. Something told me Manik would be at our old bungalow. As I directed the lorry driver, I was filled with a terrible dread. Was Manik even alive? All I knew was that he had been seriously injured. I had no idea what to expect.

  The lorry roared up the hill. The monkeys were nowhere in sight. The bungalow roof came into view. We were just a short distance from the front gate when Karim shouted to the driver to stop.

  “It is not safe for us to take the lorry any farther, sister,” he said. “Somebody may hear us and shoot. We have to leave you here.”

  “Thank you,” I said, clambering down.

  “No mention, sister,” said Karim in English. “Inshallah, this madness will end soon.”

  With that, the truck turned around and rattled back down the hill.

  I walked to the gate. It was wide-open on its hinges. The marigold pots were cracked and broken. Manik’s jeep was parked haphazardly outside the portico. I lifted my sari and started to run toward the house.

  “Manik!” I screamed. “Manik, please, God.”

  I heard barking. A black streak bounded down the stairs. It was Marshal. He galloped toward me. He had a crooked limp and his thick fur was caked and matted with blood. His eyes were wild and he was foaming at the mouth. Seeing me, he whined and collapsed at my feet and rolled over.

  Then I heard Manik’s voice. “Who is there? Stop! Or I will shoot!”

  “It’s me, oh, Manik!”

  I ran up the stairs, and there he was slouched over his gun in torn and bloody clothes. Manik looked up briefly. His glasses were missing; his left eye was closed and misshapen. When he saw me, his gun clattered to the floor.

  “Layla,” he said, stunned. “How did you come here? Where is the baby?”

  Manik had an open wound on the side of his head, his hair was clotted with blood and his arm hung at a funny angle, but he was alive.

  Tears streamed down my face and he collapsed into my arms.

  * * *

  The servants had fled the bungalow. The pantry and kitchen were deserted. I filled Marshal’s water bowl and found some stale bread, which I broke into pieces for him. All Manik wanted was a cigarette and a stiff shot of whiskey. I heated a kettle of water to give Manik a sponge bath. He had not bathed in two days and had not budged from the veranda in the past twenty-four hours, nor had he eaten. My stomach turned when I saw his wounds. Manik’s back was striped black-and-blue with stick beatings. He had trouble breathing. And when he coughed, there was blood.

  “I feel your tears on my back, Layla,” he said softly. “Please don’t cry, darling. I will live, I promise. I will not die without seeing my daughter.”

  Just hearing him say that made me feel better. I mixed Dettol with water in the basin and washed his wounds. I found one of my sari petticoats in the cupboard, cut it into long strips and bandaged his wounds as best as I could.

  “They are still around—the men,” said Manik. “They will try to get into the bungalow to kill me. But Marshal is there. He saved my life, Layla.”

  Bit by bit he related what had happened. For the past three weeks, the union leaders had held protests outside Manik’s office. The crowds were getting harder to control. Every day the tea pluckers were harassed on their way to the plantation and the factory workers threatened. The union leaders hijacked the tractor bringing in the leaves from the plantation. They beat up the driver and overturned the trailer, throwing the leaves on the road. Despite everything Aynakhal was still managing to function.

  One day a young coolie reported that there was elephant trouble in the plantation. It was only in hindsight Manik realized that this man was a well-known troublemaker who had been recently suspended from work.

  Manik drove to the section where the trouble was reported. He found a tree felled across the road. He assumed that it was the elephant’s doing. Had he been a little observant, he might have noticed that the tree had been chopped down. He got out of the jeep to investigate, leaving his gun in the car, when five or six men hiding in the tea bushes jumped on him. Marshal ran to his rescue and savagely attacked the men, ripping flesh from their bones as they tried to fend him off with sticks. Finally Manik fell into a culvert and Marshal stood guard over him so ferociously the men did not dare to come near. Most of them had suffered Marshal’s bites in one way or the other. Some of them had serious injuries: one had his face bitten terribly and another had his arm in shreds. They had no choice but to leave. That was when Manik crawled out of the culvert, got into the jeep and drove home with Marshal. They had been holed up in the bungalow ever since.

  Later that day, the men returned to break into the servant quarters and chase the servants away. At night they tried to enter the bungalow, but Marshal was always on guard and Manik fired several rounds from the veranda.

  Then Manik stopped talking abruptly and looked at me through his wounded eye. “How did you get here, Layla?” he asked. “Who brought you from Silchar?”

  I sighed. Given the state he was in, I didn’t think Manik could stomach the details of my grisly journey. “It’s a long story,” I said finally. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  * * *

  Manik would not stay in the bedroom. He rested on the veranda, but refused to sleep while I kept a lookout with the gun. He ate six boiled eggs and drank half a bottle of whiskey, but managed to stay alert and sober.

  Around 2:00 p.m. Jimmy O’Connor’s jeep drove up. Peewee was sitting in the back, brandishing two guns, one in each hand. There was another man on the passenger seat: he turned out to be a doctor who had flown in from Calcutta with Charlie. His name was Doctor Watson and he was from the Woodlands Hospital.

  Jimmy said the army had finally reached Mariani and the violence was now under control. A contingent was on its way to Aynakhal. The miscreants had heard of the army approach and fled.

  The doctor checked over Manik, administered first aid and gave him a morphine injection. “Mr. Lovelace has told me to bring you back to Calcutta,” he said. “We will be leaving in a couple of hours.”

  “Who will take charge of Aynakhal when I am gone?” Manik asked.

  “I would let the company worry about that,” said the doctor. “Right now you need medical attention.”

  “And Marshal—”

  “Marshal will stay with me,” Jimmy said.

  Manik looked at him. “You are not leaving Dega?”

  “Hell, no,” Jimmy said. “That’s out of the question. Williams here has volunteered to stay, as well. We have the coolies to take care of.”

  Manik was silent. “Are my injuries life threatening, Doctor?” he asked quietly.

  “They are serious,” the doctor replied. “I suspect you have multiple breaks in your arm, broken ribs and a head injury. My worry is you may be hemorrhaging internally.”

  “But are my injuries life threatening?” Manik repeated.

  “Well, depends what you mean—”

  “I am not leaving Aynakhal,” said Manik abruptly. “I cannot leave things the way they are.”

  “Manik, you have to,” I insisted. “You need medical attention.”

  “Your wife is right, Mr. Deb. You may have a concussion, or serious internal injuries,” the doctor added.

  “I am willing to risk that, Doctor, but I cannot leave the garden. The Compounder Babu in the hospital, he’s still here, isn’t he? He can attend to my medical needs. We get plenty of broken bones down here, leopard attacks, factory accidents and whatnot. The Compounder Babu takes care of everything. I am in good hands, Doctor. Layla can go back with Charlie.”

  “I am not going back without you,” I said, then unaware I was parroting Jimmy O’Connor, I added, “Hell, no. That’s out of the question.”

  Manik bolted u
pright and pinned me with his bad eye. He looked alarmingly thuggish.

  “What do you mean ‘hell, no,’ Layla!” he yelled. “I am shocked at your irresponsible behavior. You had no business to leave the baby and come here. I order you to go back with Charlie, do you hear?”

  Order, did he just say order? The thunder went shooting straight up to my head. I had not survived a death-defying train ride, held off a gang of hoodlums and ridden in a truck to arrive at Aynakhal only to be bossed around by a patched-up Manik Deb or whatever broken bits remained of him.

  “You can yell all you want,” I said firmly, “but I am not going back.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as we both glared at each other. The doctor looked at his shoes, and Jimmy O’Connor cleared his throat.

  “I guess yer lass is staying put, Deb,” he said with a grin. “Not much ye can do about it, aye?”

  “I will have to report to Mr. Lovelace that your injuries are serious but you are choosing to stay back. He will want an explanation. What do you want me to tell him?” said Doctor Watson.

  Before Manik could answer, Peewee shouted from the railings of the veranda.

  “Manny, look! There’s a big crowd gathering outside your gate!”

  Hundreds and hundreds of coolies had collected outside our gate, some of them carrying baskets, bundles and marigold garlands. It looked as if the entire population of Aynakhal had descended on our bungalow.

  “I should go and talk to them. They must be worried,” said Manik, struggling to his feet. I offered him my arm, which he accepted. He turned to the doctor. “Thank you, Doctor. Please tell Mr. Lovelace that I will be all right. There is no need to worry. The Aynakhal hospital staff will attend to my immediate medical needs.” He paused to catch his breath at the head of the stairs. “But if there is one favor I could ask of Mr. Lovelace, it is this. Can you ask him, as soon as it’s safe, if he could please fly my baby down from Silchar in our company plane? My daughter is six weeks old and I still have not seen my baby’s face. I want to see her more than anything else in the world.”

  With that, he limped slowly down the stairs, one painful step at a time. A loud cheer went up from the crowd as they surged through the open bungalow gate toward him.

  EPILOGUE

  Two years have passed. Cruel, relentless years, they were. India’s hard-won independence was marred by the bloodbath of partition. The orgy of violence that followed the division of India and Pakistan would mark indelibly the generation to come.

  Aynakhal remained remote and insulated. The peaceful Mirror Lake reflected nothing but the forest and sky. We heard the distant thunder and saw the war-torn clouds on the horizon, but the waters stayed calm, the lilies bright and full. Only the air became dense and charged and we became watchful.

  Manik was appointed General Manager of Aynakhal the year following the riots. It was a hard-earned promotion—paid for in blood. We have both changed. We are still the same clay but remolded on the inside, and in some ways reinforced and stronger. Manik wears his leadership quietly, like a sabre: it’s sheathed, but there. I see the flat steel in his eyes and the involuntary flex of his shoulder blades and, much as I try to, I can’t read him anymore.

  Jonaki is Manik’s lightness, his release. He teaches her to fly. He lifts her up on my grandmother’s dressing table, steps back and swings like a catcher in a cricket field. “Jump, Jonaki!” he shouts. Jonaki flails her tiny wings and throws herself right into his arms. I hear Manik’s easy laugh and see his eyes limpid with love, and I recognize the man I used to know.

  Aynakhal tea prices continue to climb. The garden runs like clockwork, and Manik’s reputation with the company is riding high. Manik managed to negotiate additional capital-expenditure funds from the company this year. It will pay for better labor housing, a new elementary school and rebuilding our old bungalow. Sadly, our old bungalow will be demolished soon. The roof suffered another collapse and white ants have eaten through the floorboards in every room. It looks as though rebuilding the entire bungalow will be cheaper than the repairs. The new bungalow will have a solid tin roof, modern plumbing, an attached kitchen and even a jalikamra. Netting off the veranda section will mean no more teatime with the fireflies. When you shut yourself in, you sometimes shut out the good with the bad.

  I miss our old bungalow so much sometimes. I remember the blazing bougainvillea that tumbled over the veranda like a magenta waterfall, the soft wink of the lake through the trees. I wonder if my rose garden is still alive. Jimmy O’Connor was just teaching me how to graft roses before we moved to this bungalow. My regret is I did not stay there long enough to see anything bloom.

  How I loved the sound of Manik whistling “Tipperary,” his boots thundering up and down those wooden stairs. I never felt isolated in the old bungalow. The outside world was always within reach. If I looked out from the veranda, I would see little coolie children playing in the dirt outside our gate and women sitting around on their haunches, their baskets on the ground. The gates of the manager’s bungalow where we live now is at the end of a long winding driveway and nothing is visible except trees from where I sit drinking my tea on the veranda.

  I am suddenly filled with a longing to see our old bungalow again. Just one more time. A glance at the clock tells me it’s three-thirty. Manik left for the office just a little while ago. It’s a short five-minute walk from this bungalow. Jonaki is still asleep and her ayah, Lachmi, is there if she wakes up.

  The jeep is parked in the circular driveway. I start up the engine and ease it out of the front gates and down the main road. A small chokra boy runs alongside, spinning a bicycle rim at the end of a hooked metal rod. He stops to watch me and lifts his hand in a salaam. I drive through the tea-growing sections and past the factory wafting a heady smell of fresh tea tumbling through the dryers. When I reach the bamboobari I take the fork toward our old bungalow. The jeep groans up the hill, surprising the golden langurs that scatter from the middle of the road. The big male, the one with the lame foot, bares his teeth and chases behind the jeep. I honk outside our bungalow gate, but Potloo is nowhere to be seen. I open the gates, drive in and park.

  All around me is a sense of unkempt desolation. The flower beds are overgrown and clogged with weeds. Waves of papery bougainvillea surge and roll in the wind tunnel under the porch. The wooden stairs groan as I climb up to the veranda, and my footsteps echo on the teak floors. Dust covers the coffee table. A wolf spider has fashioned an impressive web on the antlers of the mounted deer head, and the elephant-foot umbrella stand is stuffed full of old newspapers.

  Overcome with nostalgia, I wander from room to room. A portion of the roof has collapsed in the living room right where our bookshelves used to be. In our bedroom the sari curtains are sun-bleached and sad, and the discolored mattress, folded in half over the bed, looks lumpy. In the bathroom I find a dead bat in the tub shriveled to a leaf. I open and close the drawers of the bedside tables. Something rattles and rolls inside. An old torch battery, I think. I pull the drawer open, and at the far back, it’s our old butter knife! I sit on the metal frame of the bed, hold the cool blade against my cheek and smile, remembering. It seems like a lifetime ago.

  Carrying the butter knife, I walk through the dining room, past the pantry and down the steps leading toward the back of the house. The kitchen door is barred with bricks. A pair of pigeons escapes in a sharp clatter of wings through the broken window. I notice they’ve built a nest on the old stovetop.

  I wander out to the malibari. There is nothing there but a pumpkin patch with one distended pumpkin turned to seed. And in the far corner, what do I spy? A lovingly tended patch of marijuana! The cheerful leaves wave back at me like happy hands.

  The rose garden is struggling. There are no blooms—no, I see there is one. It is a red rose. I turn its face toward me. It is a curiously shaped blossom with magnificent curly peta
ls. Using the butter knife, I score the stem and break it off. The rose smells deep and sweet, and I fill my lungs with its heady aroma as I walk back to the jeep just as the four-thirty factory siren shrills through the air.

  I must hurry. Estelle Lovelace is coming for high tea. She is here in Assam staying with the Gilroys. Such a lovely woman she is, with her husky voice and gentle manners. I was so taken by her, as is Dadamoshai. I had to manipulate Dadamoshai’s visit to coincide with hers. Estelle and Dadamoshai don’t know they are meeting each other today, but something tells me they won’t be disappointed. It’s a lovely time of the year, the air calm and dusk falls softly. The rest, I think, I can leave to the fireflies.

  * * * * *

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I often am asked if Teatime for the Firefly is the real story of my parents. The answer is no. My characters Layla and Manik are very different from the people my parents were, and some of the things I have made the characters say or do would earn me a nice finger-wagging from my mother, were she still alive—bless her soul! Having said that, I will admit some incidents are true—my father’s injury in the riots, for one, as well as my mother’s horrific train journey, although the two incidents were unconnected. My parents were a rare and spirited couple, and nothing that I could fictionalize would ever fully capture the courage and integrity with which they lived. They are still fondly remembered and respected in tea circles all these years later.

  Several books were helpful in my research for creating the cultural and historical backdrop for my novel, among them John Griffiths’s Tea, The Drink That Changed the World; Jim Corbett’s The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag; The Wildlife of India by E. P. Gee, and Tea Tales of Assam by W. Kenneth Warren. I also have drawn inspiration from photographs and planters’ stories at www.Koi-hai.com.