by Kiran Desai
He was very fond of theories. Something had only to catch his attention and, regardless of whether it was a problem or not, he immediately had a hypothesis, complete with steps to be taken and possible conclusions. This trait was of great annoyance to his wife. Should she be drying dishes, he would creep up from behind and watch her with his shiny eyes. ‘You know,’ he would tell her. ‘I’m sure if you carried the dishes outside the sun would be hot enough to evaporate the water in as much time as it takes you to dry the plates. In conclusion, if the hypothesis proves true, you will save energy and time.’
But what about the time and energy it would take her to carry out the dishes and spread them upon the balcony? She was infuriated. Or would he carry them out for her? All his theories, in her opinion, were worth nothing. She remembered the time, years ago, in the terrible summer of drought, when he had invented a fan to draw monsoon clouds into Shahkot. And the last time he had tackled the monkey problem, he had had to concede complete failure. The monkeys had not eaten a bite of the sleeping-pill-laden food; hungry street urchins had gobbled it down instead, and then promptly fallen into a deep sleep that lasted, in one case, up to forty-eight hours. It had caused a terrible uproar among the slum dwellers … Not that this disaster had dampened her husband’s zeal, of course. Here he was with yet another idea that would cause trouble for a lot of people and end in nothing.
‘Disband?’ said his wife. ‘The monkeys will probably attack you instead, and if they don’t, all the Hanuman Monkey Temple people will, and you will be khitchri,’ she announced with satisfaction.
Really, his wife had a bizarre sense of humour, one with rather a vicious edge, he thought. She had no scientific training at all, but apparently had no inhibitions about attacking his every thought with childish retorts. This is what he got for sharing his intellectual pursuits with her. Sighing, he picked up the telephone to call the CMO, who might perhaps be able to give him some more information on the monkeys’ misdeeds.
Way off in the local army outpost on the edge of town, the commotion of the morning continued. The Brigadier, who had just finished with the papers, picked up the ringing telephone.
‘Chief Medical Officerji?’ said Verma.
‘Wrong number,’ said the Brigadier.
‘Sorry,’ said Verma.
A second later the phone rang again. ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Verma. ‘You know how mixed up the telephone lines are in this town – only now and then do you get the right number.’ A few minutes later: ring, ring.
‘Will you stop phoning me?’ shouted the Brigadier angrily.
Tring, tring. ‘Oh, sorry, sir.’
The Brigadier slammed down the phone, unplugged it and retired to the bathroom, where he sat upon his Western-style toilet with his binoculars, looking carefully for any birds that might be about that morning. He was on an endless quest to raise the count of birds he spotted in the area: bird-watching soothed and relaxed him like nothing else in his regimented life. Cormorants, black storks, paddy birds, cattle egrets, little bustard quails; orioles, drongos, chestnut-bellied nuthatches; barbets and honey guides; parakeets and nightjars; flycatchers and hoopoes. The list went on and on, but it was his dream, more than anything, to be able to list the green pigeon in his bird-watching logbook; yes, the simple green pigeon, that had for so long been invisibly goading him with its song. Everywhere he went, the Brigadier carried his book with him so he might write down the name of each bird as he saw it, but he recorded most of his sightings from the bathroom window, which had the best view of all: over the valley and with a bank of fruit trees nearby. ‘Treron phoenicoptera phoenicoptera,’ he murmured to himself like a mantra.
But that morning not even a crow or a sparrow interrupted the unbroken expanse of sky. Disappointed, he lowered the binoculars and watched his soldiers going through their morning exercises on the parade ground instead. Hop. OneTwoThreeFour. Hop. FiveSixSevenEight. Hop. NineTenElevenTwelve. It was all very well, he reflected, thinking back to the morning’s events, that his soldiers should hop and march, but what use was there for all this discipline?
Left, right. Left, right. Stand at ease.
What hope was there for the army? When the telephone system did not work and, he remembered the newspaper reports, when monkeys developed a taste for alcohol and went on the rampage?
He leaned out of the window, still on the toilet seat, with a megaphone, to shout: ‘Double march. Jump to it.’
The soldiers, realizing they were being mysteriously observed from farther up the hillside, leapt like frogs and, in their confusion, scattered in all the wrong directions.
Somewhat mollified and feeling better about the day after having shouted at his men, the Brigadier retired for his bath. He looked up the schedule that was mounted behind plastic on the wall by the water taps. ‘Monday,’ it read, ‘back of the neck and ears. Tuesday, between the toes. Wednesday, the back,’ and so on. Ah, it was his day of the week for washing behind his ears and neck. Each morning he paid attention to a different tricky part of the body. In this way, in seven days, every crease and crevice and difficult-to-remember spot was given a good scrub, despite water rationing. Of course, he washed his face every day.
But just as he was working up a good lather to apply to himself, he remembered the army mess, with its well-stocked bar, where he enjoyed a whisky soda almost every night. The monkeys must, at all costs, be kept away!
Rushing out of the bathroom in a way he knew he would later regret, he replugged his telephone and attempted to call the police superintendent, whose assistant answered and snapped: ‘He has already gone on investigation,’ which was untrue. The police superintendent could not be disturbed because he was at that moment getting his shoes shined at the shoe stand behind the station.
Aware that there was no point in calling the District Collector, for the new DC had not yet arrived at his posting, the Brigadier then tried to call the Public Health Department, but got instead a film star vacationing in the mountains, the Malabar Sweet Shop, the D’Souza household and the Patedar Shoe Store.
In frustration, the Brigadier took up his cane and, feeling grubby behind the ears, got into his jeep to visit the CMO. The CMO, despite a distinct pain in his side, had donned his Gandhi cap and set off along with Mr Chawla to see Verma of the university, albeit by a roundabout route that gave them the benefit of a good view of the mountains. Verma himself had left his house for his customary walk to the university through the Badshah Gardens with his friends Poncha of Epidemiology and Sinha of Virology.
Thus they all missed each other and that morning, anyway, the monkey menace was not discussed by the authorities.
‘Oh, just look at how bad you’ve been,’ said Sampath, when the monkeys reappeared in the orchard later that day.
Their dark faces peered from the battered foliage of the tree, looking contrite. Holding their heads, the distillation of pain and hardship in their expressions, they sat limply propped against whatever branches had not been wrecked and left to hang like the useless limbs of the war-wounded.
‘Yes, you are very bad,’ said Sampath. But he could not help but be charmed by them anew each time he saw them and he sounded like a fond parent trying hard to be disapproving. ‘Of course you feel sick after all that. In fact, I myself feel a bit sick.’ He forgave them completely. He could not blame his lovely monkeys. This was not their fault. It was the fault of those who brewed the liquor that had turned the langurs into alcoholics.
With grunts and burps, the monkeys suffered through what was probably a combination of indigestion and bad headaches.
16
In a room in his family’s house in the bazaar, Hungry Hop sat nursing his ear, no longer throbbing and painful but adorned with small stitches to remind him of that very strange day in his life when he had been bitten by Pinky Chawla for no apparent reason. Since then, he had developed such a constant pounding in his heart, he had not yet mustered the courage to venture outside.
‘Poor boy,’ said
his family, twelve women and three men, clucking their tongues beneath his room, looking upwards where, through the ceiling right above them, Hungry Hop sat by the window, fingering his ear for hour upon hour. ‘He has really been given a scare. That crazy girl,’ they said. ‘It is best he stay inside and rest for a while longer. He never was a very strong boy’.
The days had gone by. The thought of Pinky went round and round Hungry Hop’s head like a fish in a bowl; he could not get her out of his mind. He remembered those black eyes, that red determined mouth floating in the midst of billowing waves of polka-dots … the determination of that face! How terrifying!
Clearly, he had not taken his first brush with out-and-out danger in this world with very much spirit. And, as it transpired, his instincts in this matter were sadly to be trusted, for as he sat tearfully house-bound, his aggressor of old was plotting and planning yet another assault upon him.
‘Once the rain has filled up all the holes in the earth,’ Sampath said to Pinky as she sat morosely beneath the tree, ‘amworm has no option but to emerge.’
He did his best to say something to his sister that would be helpful as well as acceptable to her, although he himself was fraught with worry over the fate of the langurs and, for that matter, his own fate. Already, of course, he had heard the first mumblings about modern hermitages and monsoon rains, and he could see exactly where it was all heading. And now that the monkeys had behaved so badly, he had no idea what was in store for him. Concrete hermitages! Phoof! A true hermit lived in a tree or on a rock, in a cave or a hole.
He looked down at the reflection cast by the morning sun upon the grass below: his own figure in its crazy contraption of tilted string cot and raggedy, monkey-battered umbrella, and the shadows of the monkeys grouped about him, their long tails hanging. Peaceful for once, full-bellied and quiet, they were in one of their most endearing moods; lazily, in perfect placid companionship, they regarded him and yawned. He thought that he would never be able to do without them. All the fun would disappear from his life: the teasing, the games, their naughty behaviour – their shamelessness and outrageous charm …
He looked at the tree that was such a good home. Its smooth, spacious branches of silvery tan that stretched wide and far-reaching in knotted, twisted curves and delicate bunches of spreading leaves. How important this had become to him. Here, sitting not too high and not too low, he had seen the world in absolute clarity for the first time, the days emerging as if purified from nights of a clean and brilliant blackness. The sunlight coming in through the leaves at daybreak, shifting and flickering, breathing its fire-breath upon the bark, falling now and then upon Sampath, whom it treated as if he were not the solid being that he was, scattering him like water … He felt weightless here, rocked by this lambent light, lapped by the swell of flower and grass, of leaves as rich as fruit, being warmed to their different scents. All about him the hills rose darkly up into a sky that stretched like a sea, white-stippled and warm, to the very rim of his eye.
How strangely it made him feel, Sampath thought, how strangely he thought of beauty. He was greedy for it, insatiably greedy. He could watch it constantly and never could he do it justice … At first, he had stared intently, watched everything about him with a fierce urge to take it all and imprint it within himself, every detail, every sweep. He had stared so that tremors ran over him, until this encounter with something that he could not believe, lying there right before his eyes, had him in its thrall. He had closed his eyes to check if it had indeed entered him, as he hoped it would – to see if the landscape before him could be conjured up inside him, at will.
But, again and again, he opened his eyes to find that no, the picture in his mind could not replicate what lay outside; he had only to turn to have it all rush away, the way the night’s dreams recede like waves, leaving you with nothing when you wake. He could not claim it. If only it would reach out and claim him instead. If he stayed here long enough within reach of its sights and sounds, might it not enter him in the manner landscape enters everything that lives within it? Wouldn’t the forest descend just this bit lower and swallow him into its wilderness, leaving his family, his devotees, to search fruitlessly for a path by which they might follow? He thought of the way the forest’s army of weeds constantly invaded the grassy patch of the orchard, the way its insects, birds and monkeys interwove their lives with his. Of the way in which wind and rain wear down rock and smooth down stone, the way the calm of a sweep of hill can settle in the eye of one who stays long enough, still enough; how landscape rests everything within itself …
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Mr Chawla returning from town. Seeing his father’s face, the face of a man filled with a mission, irritated, angry, but determined, Sampath was positive there was more trouble to be expected. And he knew from previous experience that when you dread something so very much, it often happens. Poor monkeys, he thought. Poor, poor monkeys … And poor, poor myself … What would happen now?
Down below, Pinky looked for pen and paper to compose a note. Although she was happy to have bitten Hungry Hop, she was desolate at how this appeared to have signalled the end of their long association. From childhood days we have known each other, she thought. It is not nice to suddenly withdraw over one small thing. When she was little, she had bought ice cream from Hungry Hop’s father, who had been accompanied in those days by a small Hungry Hop. Later, when Hungry Hop himself had taken over the business, she had continued her patronage of their family van. She thought of what Sampath had said about worms being forced out by heavy rains and was heartened by it. No doubt if she barraged Hungry Hop with reminders of herself, hammered at his life in whatever way she found possible, flooded him with missives, he would have little option but to emerge and face her.
She put all her effort towards writing the note she had decided to deliver to him. After several alterations, it read: ‘I am so sorry to have bitten your ear. But it was done only out of affection. Please understand, the sight of you filled my heart with so much emotion, but it unfortunately came out in the wrong way. Here’s wishing you a speedy recovery.’
She felt rather proud of her reserve and simple eloquence. She was giving vent to her feelings, she thought, albeit in a constrained, reasonable and amiable way. Certainly, she had reached a new level of personal development, a new pinnacle of maturity. She hoped this would convince Hungry Hop of her ultimate good sense and sanity, and pave the way for many further notes and encounters. With the piece of paper in her pocket, she departed for town.
She arrived at the Hungry Hop residence, still calm and filled with the influence of Sampath’s wisdom. Although the men were out at work, the Kwality Boy was being kept closely guarded by the women of the family. They were all seated outside the entrance to their home, drying their hair in the sun after their once-a-week shampoo with soap nut. It looked like a good-tempered, leisurely family scene. They teased each other and painted each other’s nails, passing around a plate of guavas with chilli and salt, but Pinky was aware that if she was spotted and identified, these women could transform themselves into a formidable army. Despite her own laudable abilities when it came to out-and-out warfare, she would be unable to defend herself against so many of them once they were aroused.
She slipped into the back alleyway. Didn’t they know anything about family planning? Far too many women in that family, she thought with disgust as she made her way between the heaps of rubbish and scraps to see if she could catch sight of Hungry Hop from the rear of the house. And there – oh wonderful life! – looking wanly from the bathroom window, she saw his face.
Once more her spirits were caught up in their dervish-like tumble and her sense of calm, so solid a minute ago, vanished like vapour. The same compelling influence that had held her in its rabid rush the last time she had seen him in the bazaar engulfed her again. Helpless before it, knowing she had to do something quick, she picked up a stone and, her nerves in a thrum of she knew not what emotion, she fast
ened her note to the stone with an elastic band from her hair and threw it, with deadly aim, straight at Hungry Hop, who was absorbed in staring dolefully out over the rooftops into an empty patch of sky.
He had not even noticed her presence in the alleyway down below and starting from this bullet that flew out of nowhere to hit him squarely on the jaw, he staggered back, dislodging as he did so the hair-oil bottle that had been balanced on the windowsill. He collapsed on to an upturned bucket against the wall. When he realized he was not dead and when the black sheet that appeared before his eyes as if to signal his end had disappeared altogether, he picked up the missile that had inflicted the painful blow. Shaking, he read the note that accompanied it.
An hour later, he sat still dazed upon the bucket, pondering the strange possibilities of affection. Was this love? he wondered. Was it not love? How could it be? Was this a perversion, a malformation of the real thing? A trick?
Hammering at the door, his youngest sister shouted: ‘Come on out. What are you doing in there?’ She rattled at the door. ‘Come on,’ she said, banging. ‘Hurry up. We need the oil.’ Now that their hair was dry, she had been sent by the other eleven ladies to collect the hair-oil bottle; they were anxious to massage their heads with perfumed oil before embarking on the long and painstaking task of braiding it and arranging it into loops and buns.
Oh, but was this love?
