‘Look, amma, sunbirds, I haven’t seen them in a long time,’ Daniel said. Why is the world so full of enchantment, and yet so sad, Charity thought, as they watched the birds that morning, iridescent drops of gold and emerald motionless under the great bank of flowers that had drawn them to this magic garden.
34
Anniversaries of failed revolutions are nerve-racking occasions for rulers and the state. The embered ashes of defeat begin to glow, preparatory to bursting into flame, the unquiet spirits of martyrs walk the land, instilling the fire of revolution in those who would rise up again, and everywhere the tension heightens. As the fiftieth anniversary of the 1857 War of Independence drew near, the rulers in unified India watched its approach with trepidation.
The war had served to emphasize several things: the differences between ruler and ruled, the latent hostility and mistrust that existed between both sides, and the vulnerability of Empire in the subcontinent. The Crown had always been aware that should there be a mass uprising it might well mean the loss of its most prized possession. It simply did not have the numbers or the resources to control India’s millions if they decided to sink their differences and unite against their masters. The 1857 revolt, ill-managed and short-lived though it was, could never be repeated.
Consequently, in the summer of 1907, as the anniversary approached, the British grew more vigilant. From the Sub-divisional Magistrate in his lonely posting on the banks of the shining Irrawaddy in Burma to the tea-planter in remote Assam, from the Governors in their mansions in the great Presidencies of Bombay, Bengal and Madras to the enlisted men in the cantonments, every one of the hundred thousand or so white subjects of His Majesty the King Emperor wondered how three hundred million Indians would react to the memory of the uprising.
Chris Cooke was among those who watched the gathering storm with deep foreboding. He had seen at first hand how quickly the seemingly submissive people of this land could explode out of control, and he often worried about the new horrors the anniversary could unleash.
But he wasn’t fretting about the Mutiny now. For the past hour Cooke had been stuck in the main concourse of the Madras Central Station with practically every Briton in the city. In one of the pointless displays of sycophancy which the capital of the Presidency was prone to, pretty much everyone who counted was expected to be present at the station to dance attendance on the Governor whenever he left or returned to the city. Cooke looked grumpily at the people milling around dressed in their best suits or uniforms. What a complete waste of time, he thought; you would think all these important people had no work to do, and that their lives depended on getting to shake Governor Lawley’s hand. And all this in the hope of promotion or a couple more letters after their names.
This was one of the things he disliked most about Madras but there were others that ran it close – the politics at the office, the gossip at the club, the rule-bound social whirl – although he did enjoy his cricket at Chepauk and the music and amateur theatricals. But what really bothered him was the fact that he was stuck behind a desk when what he had liked about his career was the opportunity to serve in the field. In the capital, you were completely isolated from the people and their problems, and this was not what he had joined the civil service for. As a third-generation ICS man, he had been weaned on stories of the duty which members of the service owed to this land and its people. To be a part of the steel frame meant doing your best for the millions in your charge, not spending half the day waiting for one man to get on a train. He would put in for a transfer back to Kilanad as soon as was politic, or when he could take life in the capital no more, whichever happened sooner. It might not be the best career move he had made, the district he had served in was the least important in the Presidency, but Cooke didn’t care. He had just turned thirty-three and was still unencumbered by family or other commitments. He would think about serving a sentence in the capital a decade or so from now. His neighbour accidentally stepped on his foot, the soaring heat made his stiff collar and suit unendurable, and Cooke was suddenly desperate for some fresh air. He began pushing his way to the edge of the throng.
Further up the platform, which had been cleared of regular travellers and its usual chaos, were some benches, most occupied by people like him who’d grown tired of waiting. Cooke headed for an empty bench in the distance, but before he got there a prematurely balding man with an open, cheerful face hailed him. An assistant editor with the Mail, Nicholas was one of the first people he had met in the city. They got on well and Cooke gratefully took a seat beside him. A red-faced man with scanty eyebrows shared the bench and the journalist made the introductions. When they shook hands, Cooke noticed with distaste that the man, who was the managing agent of one of the big trading firms, had a sweaty grip. Surreptitiously he wiped his hands on his handkerchief.
‘What a dreadful waste of time this is, don’t you think?’ Nicholas said. ‘All the Governor is doing is leaving on a two-day trip to Coimbatore. Surely that doesn’t require the presence of virtually every Englishman in Madras?’
‘Protocol,’ said Cooke cautiously.
‘Protocol be damned, old boy,’ the journalist said cheerfully. ‘Shouldn’t you chaps be on your guard with all these rumblings in the city?’
‘We’re taking steps,’ Cooke said.
‘Spoken like a true bureaucrat,’ Nicholas said gleefully. ‘Taking steps, that’s rich. Did you read the report in my paper about the furore that Bengali chap Bipin Chandra Pal caused last week? Practically urged our Tamil friends to burn every Englishman alive!’
‘Surely not.’ Cooke adopted his friend’s bantering tone. ‘Just got a little excitable. Isn’t that supposed to be a Bengali trait?’
Nicholas laughed. ‘It certainly is, if you go by the commotion they’ve been causing. But I suppose they have something to shout about, the division of Bengal and all that!’
‘That’s a problem, isn’t it?’ Cooke said thoughtfully. ‘It’s often hard to damn the protesters without feeling you’re being a bit unfair.’
‘Unfair!’ the businessman sputtered. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Mr Cooke? Do you know that the natives are talking of boycotting all English products? They’re urging their countrymen to buy indigenous products. What’s the word they use?’
‘Swadeshi,’ Cooke said.
Nicholas chimed in, ‘And, my friend, you’d better print the other native word that begins with an S on your brain. Swaraj. Freedom. You’re going to be hearing it a lot in the months to come.’
‘What’s the country coming to?’ the businessman said irritably. ‘You fellows should arrest the lot. Deport them. Show no mercy if you don’t want a repeat of 1857.’
‘I don’t think there’ll be a repeat of 1857. I think we can rely on the natives . . .’ Cooke wasn’t allowed to finish.
‘Rely on the natives,’ the businessman said shrilly. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but you can’t mean that.’
‘Oh come now, without relying on them, the vast majority of them at any rate, we wouldn’t be here. Do you really think we could control India if all of them got together and decided to give us the heave-ho?’ Nicholas said, coming to Cooke’s rescue.
‘Well, I suppose not,’ the businessman said grudgingly. He mopped his face with his handkerchief and looked hopefully down the platform. But there was no sign of the Governor. An engine exhaled somewhere. It was exhausting to talk in the heat, but the silence didn’t last long for the businessman, who had evidently been brooding over what had been said, abruptly burst into speech again.
‘I suppose the real problem is the educated native. Macaulay, a sterling fellow in most respects, made a mistake when he advocated that we develop a race that was Indian in blood and colour but European in opinion, morals and intellect. Gave the natives ideas above their station. That’s why we had the Mutiny, and that’s why we have these problems today. Keep the heathen illiterate and unchristian and control him with a whip, that’s the only way.’
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br /> Cooke was dangerously close to anger. ‘You don’t happen to believe that, do you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ the businessman said bluntly. ‘You can’t trust the native. Not now, not ever. Unless you want to preside over the dissolution of Empire. It was because we trusted them that the Mutiny took place. God, women and children cut down in cold blood, dismembered, thrown into a well. Cawnpore and Lucknow will be remembered a thousand years from now, all because we weren’t vigilant enough and trusted the brown man. Whenever I hear one of these Indians whining about injustice, all I need to do is recollect 1857 and I could cheerfully pistol-whip them.’
‘We were no better,’ Cooke said. ‘Do you know that we made all the Indians who were captured at Cawnpore lick the blood from the floor of the building where the slaughter took place before hanging them? And that we erased whole villages, killing and maiming and torturing? The Devil Wind, they called it.’
‘But they deserved it, the bastards, we had to stand firm to ensure it was never, ever repeated. And we have to be ruthless with these mischief-makers today,’ the businessman said, refusing to back down.
‘Enough,’ Nicholas said, stepping into the breach, his voice soothing. ‘There’s no reason to get excited. Most of these so-called nationalist leaders have no real support and we have no cause to worry, unless they join forces. But that won’t happen, especially now – there’s an internal power struggle going on among the Extremists and Moderates in the Congress and some other organizations. So while there might be some fireworks, everything will die down quickly. The Tamil is a timid creature not given to sustained anger.’
With reason, thought Cooke. The inhabitants of Britain’s first acquisition had had the stuffing knocked out of them in various campaigns: the Poligar Wars, the defeat of Tipu across the border, the suppression of the Vellore riots a hundred years ago. No, the Tamil had suffered and tended to behave himself. But you couldn’t be too careful.
‘Do you really think these protests will come to naught?’ he asked the journalist.
‘I expect so,’ Nicholas said. ‘Nothing we’ve heard seems to indicate anything to the contrary. A few children throwing stones at policemen, protest meetings, the usual stuff.’
‘Natives cannot be dealt with too severely,’ the businessman said darkly. ‘Any misdemeanour and you should hang them. Do they still blow them from the barrels of guns?’
‘Afraid we can’t oblige you there, Mr . . .’
‘Damn, where’s Lawley?’ Nicholas exclaimed suddenly. ‘He’s never been this late. Anything we should know, Cooke?’
‘Nothing that I would know about,’ Cooke said.
‘Think I’ll just go and see what’s happening,’ the businessman said, getting to his feet. Without shaking hands with either of them, he walked off in the direction of the crowd.
‘Who was that excrescence?’ Cooke demanded when he was out of earshot.
‘Oh, he’s quite popular, my dear fellow. You should get out more, get to know your city’s charming social set.’
‘Damned if I will,’ Cooke said. ‘Not a day passes when I don’t wish I was back in the district. Madras is beginning to get to me.’
‘That’s the problem with you district-wallahs,’ Nicholas said. ‘All you can think about is striding around the countryside being noble and worthy. You should learn to relax. Drink, after Lawley’s gone?’
‘No, thank you, I think I’ll go for a long walk, clear my head.’
It was late evening by the time Chris got to the Adyar river, one of his favourite haunts in the city. The sun was low on the horizon, turning the water the colour of molasses. A young moon had scraped a sliver of yellow in the sky. The calm of the river and the scrub that massed on its banks, shot through with bird-calls and the unseen rustling of small creatures of the night, acted as a much needed restorative. But his respite was brief, as his argument with the businessman returned to bother him. Was repression the only way to control this land? Would they be able to keep Indians from having a say in their own country for ever? Hardly likely, he thought, sooner or later something would have to give. Didn’t that disgruntled boor see that unless the British worked with the people they ruled, they would, at some point, be faced with something far worse than the Mutiny? A phrase from one of the nationalist leaders, who had compared the Swadeshi movement to a raging fire, occurred to him. It had been reported widely, often approvingly, by sections of the Indian-owned media. Would they all be incinerated in the blaze? He hated himself for feeling so panicky. That was another thing he disliked about the city. Detached from the immediate reality of the country, you spent your time obsessed with rumour, inaccurate newspaper reports and gossip. God, what wouldn’t I give to be back in Kilanad, he thought. With real problems that I could actually have a hand in solving!
It had grown darker and he could hardly see the path, so he decided to turn back. About halfway to the car something about the river, the scrub, and the position of the moon in the sky awakened in him a memory of Chevathar. That time had been the most calamitous of his career. He’d worked without pause for weeks, especially as his acting superior had no knowledge of the district, and it had been a miracle that the troubles had been brought under control. He would put in for his transfer soon. He would journey back to Chevathar, revisit the village that his friend the priest had fought so valiantly to save. If only they had listened to him. He hadn’t heard any news of his former Collector, Nathaniel Hall. Nobody knew anything about him. But he had come to know a couple of years ago, from a colleague in Burma, that the crooked lawyer Vakeel Perumal had resurfaced in Rangoon. How unjust, he thought, that people like him continued to prosper while the good were buried, and in time forgotten.
35
Sunk in its own concerns, Chevathar was untouched by the rumblings of nationalist politics in 1907. The new year opened in the village with grey, headachy weather. The prospect of yet another weak monsoon, the fourth in a row, was awful to contemplate – crop failure, possible famine, which would in turn lead to an inability to pay taxes and government levies on land and farms.
By the bridge leading to Meenakshikoil, three young men were idly skimming flat stones across one of the pools that the river had shrunk to, the projectiles hiccoughing across the still rust-red surface. Aaron Dorai, the oldest of the three, abruptly left off what he was doing and stretched out on the rocky bank, staring into the closed face of the sky. He had inherited his mother’s good looks, but was saved from appearing too feminine by a strong jaw and luxuriant moustache. He had lived his young life hard and looked old for his years. When he had run away from home he had ended up in Ranivoor where he had gone to work in a grain merchant’s store. He had lasted a little over six months before the dark dingy store, the choking dust of rice, wheat and pulses that filled the air and the loud bullying voice of the proprietor, who sat behind the counter like a recumbent elephant, began to get to him. He moved on to Tinnevelly, Puthulum and Mannankoil, working for a while in each place, indulging in petty thievery and hanging out with the unemployed loafers, before moving on. He had been beaten up, he had gone hungry, he had faced unexpected kindness and equally unexpected blows, but he had lived intensely. A little over five years after walking out, he had decided to return to Chevathar.
He was surprised to find neither his mother nor his brother nor his aunt Kamalambal at the Big House. Abraham and Kaveri had a well-rehearsed story to tell: Kamalambal, poor thing, had died of cholera; they missed her greatly, but they weren’t sure if they should tell him the truth about Charity and Daniel. With well-feigned reluctance, the concocted details had tumbled out: his mother and his brother, they said, had declared that they could no longer live in such reduced circumstances and were returning to Nagercoil. Nothing could make them change their mind, not even (Kaveri said) his chithappa reminding them of Solomon-anna’s ultimate sacrifice in defence of their family home. Aaron was quick to grasp the unstated message. ‘I always knew that my brother was unworthy of the name h
e bore. But my mother!’ He had raved and ranted in a fury while his aunt and uncle tried to look aggrieved and sorrowful and empathetic all at once. As a result of these revelations Aaron was irrevocably confirmed in his hatred of his brother and his mother.
Abraham and Kaveri had succeeded in their purpose. What they hadn’t counted on was that Aaron would decide to stay on in Chevathar. But, to their relief, it soon became apparent that he had no interest in farming nor did he want to be thalaivar. Life went on for Abraham and Kaveri much as it had before. All they needed to do was keep Aaron fed and clothed and stay out of his way when he was in a rage. As before, he spent most of his days hanging out with three or four other disaffected young men in Meenakshikoil, drinking endless cups of tea and smoking beedis in the tea stalls in town, teasing young girls or old men when the fancy took him – frittering away the days and nights and coming home only to sleep. A year passed, then another. He was filled with disquiet and a deep frustration, but he had no idea of what to do with himself.
This past week, the attention of Aaron and his friends had been temporarily diverted by the impending visit of the Abel Circus, a European-owned show that had never played in Kilanad before. Fearing trouble in the major towns of the Presidency, the proprietor had decided that Kilanad, and specifically its southernmost town, Meenakshikoil, would be more suitable for the circus’s ‘winter’ tour, which usually began soon after New Year’s Day.
As soon as the crude handbills were pasted on the walls of huts and the few public buildings in town, the inhabitants, especially the adult male population, were gripped by a feverish excitement. Abel was a smart businessman, and years of experience had given him acute insight into the minds of paying customers. His handbills, printed in one colour on cheap white paper, were not subtle. In the foreground, a European woman (it was easy to deduce that the boldly drawn figure with exaggerated breasts, hips and thighs was European because she wore her hair loose and bobbed, had oversize lips, and was costumed in undersized briefs and a scanty bra) smiled invitingly, while assorted lions, tigers, clowns and dwarfs formed a poorly drawn, barely discernible backdrop. In the mofussil, Abel’s audiences were mainly male, entranced by the sagging thighs and tits of the poorly paid, fair-skinned Anglo-Indian women he employed, whose act consisted mainly of parading around the ring in sequins, tights and skimpy costumes. Only one of them had the skills and figure to do a simple trapeze act, the rest strutted and simpered, though for most of them even this was an act of torture, their weight and their bunions making the straightforward act of walking the boards in high-heels difficult and painful. The audience didn’t care about the shortcomings of the artistes. They flocked to the circus to bury their collective face, or at the very least their eyes, in the fleshy white (or an approximation thereof) thighs of its star turns.
The House of Blue Mangoes Page 16
