The House of Blue Mangoes

by Davidar, David

  Aaron interrupted him, ‘Is there more? Tell me, is there more?’

  ‘Thambi, we can talk later. Please . . .’

  The bruised lips formed a short sentence: ‘No time!’ And then Aaron said, struggling to get the words out, ‘I wish I’d known, I wish I’d known, all these years hating amma . . . you . . . my God, anna!’

  A great joy flooded through Daniel’s anguish when Aaron used the honorific for older brother. He leaned forward, took his brother’s hand, bony and with the knuckles abnormally pronounced, in his own. ‘Rest, thambi, you must rest . . .’ Daniel said, tears spilling down his cheeks. ‘We’ll all be back together very soon . . .’

  ‘What have I done . . .’ Aaron began, when he was overcome by a coughing fit.

  ‘Enough, thambi, we’ll talk later, this is doing you no good. Here, take your medicine . . .’

  Aaron waved the medicine away. ‘Let me finish, anna, I don’t have much strength left.’

  Tears continued to drip down Daniel’s face. He made no effort to wipe them away.

  Aaron said, ‘So many regrets . . . little I can do about them now. I wish I could see amma, Rachel . . .’

  ‘But you will . . .’

  ‘I don’t think so, anna, not them, not my beloved Chevathar.’ Aaron paused, then pressed on. ‘You know, one of the things I thought obsessively about when I was in prison, the only thing which kept me going, was memories of Chevathar. I had no use for my family, chithappa had seen to that, but Chevathar, oh Chevathar was always with me, it kept me alive. It’s ironic, I kept running away from the place, but it grew to be the most important thing in my life . . .’ His voice tailed off as his energy ebbed away. Over Daniel’s protests, Aaron struggled to speak again, finish what he was saying. ‘Isn’t it curious how we always realize the important things when it’s too late? Perhaps that’s His way of reminding us how useless and insignificant we really are.’

  As a long bout of coughing shook the sick man, Daniel swiftly administered the sleeping potion; Aaron couldn’t be allowed to exert himself any more. As it took effect and his brother’s ravaged face began to relax, Daniel leaned back.

  Just then Aaron’s eyes opened. ‘You should go back, anna, take our family back to where we belong,’ he said slowly. ‘Don’t have the regrets I do. You may not be much like me, but you’re the last of us . . .’

  Aaron slept the rest of the day. Daniel persuaded the Superintendent to let him spend the night in the infirmary. He lay awake, listening to his brother’s laboured breathing, praying that he would recover. In the early hours he nodded off. He thought he heard his brother say ‘Jayanthi’, and watched the woman, young, beautiful, with eyes so black they seemed to absorb all light, go to him . . .

  In the morning, when he awoke, Aaron was dead, the beginnings of a smile on his lips.

  51

  A few furlongs from Chevathar, the landscape unfurling outside Daniel’s jutka matched exactly the landscape kindled in his memory. The road was a shimmering blue-black stripe scored in the red soil. Small clusters of huts rose from the living earth, punctuated every so often by a more pukka construction, blue, green or white, all shawled and swathed by the dull green of coconut, and the duller olive of areca nut. Deep emotion swept him as he absorbed the familiar details. Lord, how could I have stayed away so long? Aaron was right, Chevathar is where we belong. He leaned as far as he could out of the carriage to take in everything that offered itself up to his remembering eye.

  They passed into an uninhabited stretch. This rock-and scree-strewn landscape possessed a beauty that owed nothing to nostalgia. The hand that had painted this landscape of God had, from time to time, daubed a brilliant mad contrast to the sober earth tones of the background – the jewelled red of a coral tree, spliced with the violent vermilion of flame of the forest, the yellow slash of laburnum, mellowed only by the soft violet of jacaranda. Each new vista that he soaked in affected him more powerfully than the one that had preceded it.

  ‘I will recover Chevathar for you, Aaron,’ he vowed, ‘I’ll recover it for all of us. I’m only sorry it took me so long.’ As he had often done, he wondered now if a return to Chevathar was the restorative that his mother needed. His mind went back to the immediate aftermath of his brother’s death. When he had returned to Nagercoil he had kept the news from Charity; he didn’t know if she’d be able to cope with it. She had asked him how Aaron was, and he’d told her that he was well, and she’d seemed satisfied. Three days later, as he was preparing to go to work, she came up to him. ‘I dreamed last night that Aaron was with his father in Heaven.’ When Daniel looked at her, thunderstruck, she said, her voice eerily flat, ‘You’re a good son, Daniel, but you shouldn’t lie to me.’ He’d been terrified that she would have another breakdown but she had grieved so much, it seemed to have exhausted her of all emotion. It hurt him to see her empty eyes, her lack of interest in her grandchildren and the family, but he was also relieved that she was doing no damage to herself. As the weeks slipped by, and her condition showed no signs of deteriorating, he began to make plans for his journey to Chevathar.

  Meenakshikoil, which he reached in the short twilight hour, was a revelation. Slabs of light from the busy vegetable market revealed a town that had stretched and grown. The road through town passed two schools that hadn’t existed when Daniel left Chevathar, a brand-new jail and a profusion of shops. They finally came to the old bridge that led to the village.

  As the jutka rattled over it, Daniel strained to take in every sight, absorb every smell and sound. The village seemed much the same, except that there were a few more houses of brick and mortar, and it seemed dustier and dirtier than before. A medley of dogs snapped at the jutka for a couple of minutes, then the horse pushed through and they were rolling past Anaikal and the acacia wasteland, from which the smell of ordure wafted as of old. The Murugan temple had been spruced up, he noticed. A few more minutes and they were at the Big House.

  Daniel was disconcerted by what he saw. It was as if the vitality and grandeur he had associated with his old home had been sucked out. The great neem and rain trees, the profusion of palms, the teak that grew behind the house, all outlined in black against the grey fur of the sky, seemed positively malevolent, dead spirits threatening the house they had once sheltered. Even in the half-light, Daniel could see that the house itself was in an advanced state of disrepair. The roof had lost half its tiles, windows hung from their hinges, it obviously hadn’t been whitewashed in years, and dead leaves and other detritus clogged the courtyard. He walked around the house. The place seemed lifeless, and then a dark shadow came leaping out of the gloom and he evaded the dog just in time. He picked up a stone and flung it, and the animal took off with a yelp. He wandered around the house, pounding at windows and doors, and finally a weak voice quavered, ‘Who is there?’

  For much of the journey, his uncle’s perfidy (for even though Aaron had taken his secret with him, it had been easy enough to work out) had alternately enraged and mystified him. Why had Abraham done it? Why had he and his wife turned Aaron against his family? He could easily imagine the broad strokes of their campaign, the detail was unimportant now – Abraham and Kaveri filling Aaron’s confused mind with carefully invented facts about his mother and himself abandoning Chevathar and the soil of their ancestors for the dazzle of Nagercoil, their prosperity and their neglect of him. Aaron’s pride would have done the rest. And it was all so unnecessary. Neither he nor Charity had asked Abraham for anything, not even remonstrating with him when he had failed to send them the annual pittance he had promised them. And his brother? Why hadn’t he bothered to check? Daniel thought of the last words his brother had uttered. Was this what Aaron wanted him to return to? Or had he been gone too long to see the house in this dilapidated state?

  He was taken aback by his first sight of Abraham Dorai. His uncle had always been skinny, but now the bones leapt out of his face and chest. Clad only in a filthy dhoti, he looked like a mendicant. He blinked at t
he man in front of him, not recognizing Daniel for a long instant, then a grimace stretched his features.

  ‘Daniel-thambi, is it really you? Vaango, vaango.’ He raised his voice in a shout for his wife and then came forward to greet his nephew. Kaveri emerged and greeted Daniel as effusively as her husband had. And then for a time they stood around, unsure of how to proceed. Daniel was astonished to see how husband and wife had grown to resemble each other – their features had settled and arranged themselves in patterns that could have been lifted from an identical mould. He remembered how they had been. Kaveri, short, plump and fair, and Abraham, tall and dark. Now their faces were lined, hair white. Decades of a childless marriage could do that to you, Daniel mused. He found the thought unexpectedly humorous. But there was nothing funny about the way they had conducted themselves. Through their avarice and selfishness, they had divided his family, dishonoured Solomon, brought about the death of his brother and the madness of his mother.

  Grimly he agreed to stay the night. He refused dinner, asking only for a glass of water. Kaveri brought him a tumbler of buttermilk and left to prepare a room for him to sleep in. He drank it sitting on the veranda, as his father had often done, and listened as Abraham began to talk about how hard times had been. All the villages had been sold or taken over by the Government for non-payment of dues, and now he owned only thirty acres of land here and in a village to the north. That was the reason he hadn’t sent Charity the regular remittances of baskets of mangoes and rice, as agreed.

  ‘You are evil people,’ Daniel said. ‘I spoke to Aaron before he died and he told me everything.’

  Kaveri had just come out on to the veranda and she began weeping noisily. ‘Oh, that poor misguided boy. How much we loved and looked after him, and now he’s gone, Jesu have mercy on his soul. When will our sorrows come to an end, after all the sacrifices we’ve made . . .’

  Daniel cut in, his voice cold. ‘The only sacrifices you’ve made are for your own personal gain. If half the things I’ve heard . . .’ That was all it took. His aunt and uncle, tears seeping down the rills and furrows on their faces, bent to touch his feet, at which he sprang up in horror. They asked him to forgive them. It was only their poverty and indebtedness that had made them behave so badly. They spoke long into the night as mosquitoes and other insects whined about their ears. As he listened, Daniel grew at first furious, then sorry. He pitied their miserable lives, and the covetousness and insecurity that hadn’t given them a moment’s peace. When they began to get repetitive and dramatic he stopped them, and pronounced judgement. He had first thought he would punish them but had now decided otherwise. He would pay them three thousand rupees, exactly what his mother and he had received from them for the house and land, and they would leave Chevathar for ever. The old man and woman began to cry as soon as he said this, and Daniel was persuaded to revise the terms a little: the compensation would be the same, but they would be allowed to keep a couple of acres of rice and coconut, and build themselves a small house in the village to the north of Chevathar. ‘I’m showing you more mercy than you ever did to my mother, or to me. I hope to God I’m doing the right thing,’ Daniel said, before dismissing them from his presence.

  The next morning he was up early, the sounds of the dawn renewing in him the feeling that he was finally home. He walked to the mission compound and was saddened to see the blackened ruins of the church. In the cemetery, he spent a long time by the graves of his father and Father Ashworth. He thought about nothing, just letting his senses flow with the crackling of the breeze in the coconut palms and the deep thudding of the sea on the deserted beach. Memories swirled in, the episodes of family history most deeply etched in his mind rose up, and he allowed them to take him over . . . When he finally rose to go, he was exhausted from experiencing afresh the tragedies and triumphs of the Dorais. But it had been a necessary act of remembering, for it had helped him make up his mind. He now knew without a doubt what he had to do next.

  52

  Daniel Dorai was thirty-five years old, and one of the richest men in Nagercoil, when he decided to re-establish himself on his ancestral soil. His family, with the exception of Charity who was neither for nor against the idea, was alarmed by his new obsession. When Lily and Ramdoss, his brother-in-law, taxed him with it, all he would say was, ‘Chevathar has always had a Dorai. With my father and my brother gone, it’s time I returned. I’ve become a stranger in my own land and I would like to get to know it again.’ They tried everything they could to change his mind, but he wouldn’t budge and so they left him alone, hoping that pressure of work would eventually divert him from his course.

  It was not to be. Although it would be years before Daniel finally returned to Chevathar, he stuck to his resolve. Meanwhile, there were more pressing demands on his time. He had to keep an eye on the business, which was expanding at a furious rate; there were the usual importunate relatives and friends whose demands had to be dealt with tactfully; the children, both his own and Rachel’s, had to be looked after; and finally there was Miriam to be settled.

  His pampered sister had painfully dragged her way through a Home Science degree, never once losing the opportunity to tell whoever would listen to her that her life was being ruined. If she grew to be an old maid, she would know exactly who to blame. During the family’s difficult days she’d had the good sense to behave herself and once the year of mourning for Aaron was over, Daniel set about arranging her marriage. He had worried that Charity wouldn’t involve herself but although his mother didn’t take on the entire responsibility, as she would have done in the past, she began to show an interest. After sifting through scores of proposals, for there was no dearth of parents willing to give their sons in marriage to Dr Dorai’s sister, Charity and Daniel settled on a young advocate in preference to the scions of landowning families. Arul’s family was prosperous, but Daniel was impressed with the young man’s determination to build a career. He married his sister off with a rich man’s pomp. The celebrations lasted nearly a month and the bride’s dowry included, in addition to the traditional gifts and money, a brand-new Ford Model T Raceabout.

  But despite the myriad duties that occupied him in Nagercoil, Daniel would often drive to Chevathar. In a couple of years, the stately progress of his latest acquisition, a laburnum-yellow Oldsmobile, through the dusty streets of the village was no longer remarked upon. On these trips he was always accompanied by Ramdoss, and by a distant cousin of Charity’s called Santosham who had helped him build the factory where his patent medicines were manufactured. The three men would patiently seek out the dozens of smallholders who owned property in and around Chevathar and negotiate to buy their land. Usually, the farmers were only too willing to sell, for Dr Dorai offered almost double the market rate. Often the lands acquired had once belonged to Solomon. The acres slowly added up. By the end of 1918, Daniel owned four hundred and twenty-seven acres in Chevathar and Meenakshikoil.

  On New Year’s Day 1919, he wrote to the head of every family in the Dorai clan. One hundred and twenty-three letters were dispatched, outlining a simple proposition. He wanted to start a family settlement in Chevathar. He was willing to give each invitee to the scheme an acre of land (those who wanted more could have it, subject to availability) at a fifth of the market rate. The only condition was that they settle in Chevathar for, at the very minimum, their own lifetimes. And if their heirs wanted to resell, they could only do so to the family. After repeated reminders, he received eighty-eight positive replies. Some of the others thought it was a hoax, some had died and the rest were not interested. There were questions, clarifications, a veritable mountain of detail, but infused with the zeal of a new convert to a cause, Dr Dorai patiently resolved every problem that was thrown up.

  He began to make the necessary arrangements. He hired assistants to run the Nagercoil clinic and factory, and set a date for the move two years in the future, 27 September, Aaron’s birthday. On his next trip to Chevathar he initiated work on his own house. He
had decided it would be where the Big House stood. Modest by nature, Daniel Dorai decided that he would go against the grain and build the most magnificent building in the whole taluqa, perhaps even the district. ‘The glory of the Dorais has been eclipsed for far too long. I want to have a house that will last a hundred years and be a fitting testament to my father and brother,’ he declared to Santosham and Ramdoss. The only room that he would retain of the old structure would be the room his father had used.

  53

  The scraggly acacia tree at the edge of the marsh cast a scanty shade. Santosham had sat under it for over six months now, overseeing the efforts of a couple of hundred men who laboured from dawn to dusk on Daniel Dorai’s ‘thousand years’ house’, as it was known locally. He was a small cheerful man with a big shapeless nose and had been one of the first beneficiaries of Daniel’s new-found obsession with family. A failed engineering graduate with a flexible attitude to life, he had acquired a basic understanding of the building trade from a Nagercoil contractor. What Santosham did not know about floating pediments and poured concrete, he more than made up for with his capacity for hard work and ability to come up with unorthodox solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Daniel had been satisfied enough with the jobs Santosham had done for him, and had no misgivings about appointing him to build the house.

  As soon as he had selected his site and his contractor, Daniel had visited Madras to pick his architect. He had interviewed twenty-three before settling on Colin Snow, a third-generation disciple of Mad Mant, the eccentric inventor in the mid-nineteenth century of the Indo-Saracenic style that fused Indian baroque with English common sense to produce a wondrous new hybrid. The only thing about Indo-Saracenic grandeur was that it required an enormous amount of money, and even Daniel’s considerable fortune would have been stretched. His architect and he decided to settle for something a little less opulent. They criss-crossed the city for a week before finally deciding on one of the grand garden houses on the banks of the Adyar river as a model for the Dorai home.