The House of Blue Mangoes

by Davidar, David

  83

  Lily’s visit to Pulimed almost didn’t come off. She was scheduled to arrive barely a fortnight after the débâcle at the Stevensons’ and Kannan toyed with the idea of asking her to postpone the visit. He wasn’t sure if Helen would be up to it. But in the end he decided it would be a good thing for her to have a companion for a few weeks, especially someone as caring as his mother.

  In the weeks leading up to Lily’s departure, a vast variety of sweets and savouries were prepared in the cavernous kitchens of Neelam Illum – murukku, oompudi, athirasam, munthirikothu, halwa and thenkuzhal – and packed away into boxes. Three steel trunks held yards of shimmering Conjeevaram silks. She presumed the house would be well furnished so she omitted the traditional gifts of pots and pans and furniture but she did include two sacks of new rice and two large jars of mango pickle. Kannan had asked her to pack some woollens, it could get quite cold, so one trunk was devoted to sweaters borrowed from a cousin who had moved to Doraipuram from Ooty. When she’d finished she had twenty-seven pieces of luggage, which Ramdoss managed to whittle down to eighteen, including a case containing bottles of Dr Dorai’s Moonwhite Cream (Helen was very fair, but you could never be too fair) and other unguents. There was some family jewellery to be passed on, gold earrings and chains; and she had a thali specially made at the best jewellers in Meenakshikoil for her son’s bride. Finally, all was ready with two days to go. On the evening before she was due to leave, she looked in on Daniel. ‘I’m sure Thirumoolar will like the mango pickle,’ he murmured.

  She could hardly sleep that night for excitement and she was already exhausted when she climbed into the Chevrolet in the morning. The driver and his helpers managed to wedge in fifteen pieces of luggage (two boxes of sweets and one sack of rice were left behind) plus six people. In addition to Lily and the driver, there were a middle-aged couple whom Ramdoss had nominated as her travelling companions till Pulimed, and two servant boys to assist with the luggage at the station.

  Despite the crush, and the rigours of the journey, Lily managed to sleep in the car and on the train. At Madura the group shed the two servants and four pieces of luggage. The rest were somehow fitted into the Humber, which Michael had again loaned Kannan for the day. Having washed and eaten, they set off, a pickle jar wedged tightly between Lily’s knees. Her travelling companions, unused to the twists and turns of the ghat road, were mildly car-sick, so having produced some limes for them to suck on, Lily was pretty much left to her own devices. With every passing mile, as the air grew chillier and the world sheered away from the road in great forested ridges, her excitement grew. Michael’s driver had warned them that they might run into wild elephants, an ever-present danger on the ghat, but the only wildlife they saw were dozing langurs suspended in a tree like exotic black fruit.

  Higher and ever higher they rose, and the houses and trees of the plain shrank from view. They entered a dark, dank stretch where forest giants met overhead. Water dripped from the leaves and stained the road. The driver switched on the headlamps and they went on with exaggerated care. From the darkness came the sound of a solitary bird. Its song, liquid and sweet, tripped a switch in Lily’s mind and in a flash she was back in the estates of her childhood. Those hills in Ceylon were different to these jagged slopes, their pleasantly rounded contours furred with pine and tea, and studded with English villas and most prominently the Hill Club to which, naturally, she was not admitted. And yet there was something that yoked them together – the cold, the damp, and once they reached the cultivated area, the fragrance of tea. There was a club in Pulimed, she knew that from Kannan’s brief letters, and she couldn’t quite believe that she might soon be part of a world she had glimpsed and coveted from afar.

  Higher still, and the first mists of the day slid in, ageing the trees along the road. An hour or two of this and they were near the end of their journey. Her companions had dropped off, and Lily thought now about Helen, and how they would get on. She had spent very little time with her at the wedding, and she wondered how she would build bridges with her pretty daughter-in-law. She would have to win her trust, paper over the hurt caused by Daniel’s rejection, show her how to please her man and manage her marriage. In other words, she would need to be the right sort of mother-in-law. As the car rolled towards Morningfall, she thought, as she had often done in the past weeks, of how exceptionally good her own mother-in-law had been. The circumstances were somewhat different, but she was sure everything could be worked out. First she’d need to get a sense of Helen’s world. It had seemed so different from her own during her brief glimpse of it. No matter, there was bound to be common ground. All she had to do was find it.

  It was not to be. The tyranny of the oppressed is much too potent to be deflected by mere goodwill. Helen had been wounded twice. First by Daniel and then by Pulimed society. And she was too mired in her own hurt to extricate herself. Even if Helen had been able to ignore the feeling of being wronged, Lily and she were too dissimilar to even begin putting the semblance of a relationship together. For a start, they didn’t have a language in common – Helen’s Tamil was as poor as Lily’s English.

  Trouble broke out almost as soon as Lily arrived, when Helen turned her nose up at the gifts her mother-in-law had brought. ‘Is your mother mad, men?’ she stormed at Kannan the night Lily arrived. ‘Expecting me to wear those ugly saris and jewellery? And all those awful sweets. I don’t want them. Give them to the servants if you wish.’ Kannan had been infuriated by her contempt and they’d fought through the night, neither making any attempt to make up. There were other points of conflict. Lily had objected mildly to Helen addressing Kannan by name and this had set Helen off again. Two days later, Helen discovered that Lily had been teaching the servants to cook food Kannan had loved at home, and she had angrily ticked off her mother-in-law.

  Lily did not fight back. It would only make things difficult for her son. After the first few days, she retreated to her room. She wished she hadn’t sent back her escorts, she would at least have had someone to keep her company. She ate in her room, the homesick Tamil servants from the plains cosseting her and secretly cooking her favourite foods. But she put on a brave front for Kannan’s sake. All the advice she had rehearsed for weeks remained unsaid. It wouldn’t have been understood anyway. Perhaps it was for the best that her son had brought his wife to live on the estates, she thought. How would Helen have fitted into Doraipuram and the traditional role of the daughter-in-law?

  For his part, Kannan rued the day he had ignored his impulse to put off his mother’s visit. Every time he thought this, he was consumed with shame, for he knew how much his mother had looked forward to this holiday. At such moments he would hate Helen for bringing things to such a pass. Why, he would think bitterly, he’d even been embarrassed by the bundles and bags of home-made sweets and pickles Lily had turned up with. How could he have brought himself to think that way? But he had, and he continued to do so, hating himself for it and growing in his dislike of his wife and his own weakness. At other times he would try and look at things from Helen’s point of view. She had suffered. It wasn’t right that she’d had to put up with so much. It didn’t last, though, and he’d grow angry with her again.

  For a few days he tried to make peace, but it was an impossible situation. He grew irascible. Finally, he took to leaving the house early and returning as late as he could, anxious to have as little contact as possible with the combatants. When he did have to be home, he would divide his time between his wife and mother, for Helen refused to be in the same room as her mother-in-law, let alone speak to her. By now all three of them were desperate for the visit to end.

  Lily never got to the Pulimed Club. Kannan offered to take her, but she refused quite emphatically. All she wanted to do was return to her own house, and her ailing husband. She had tried her best; there was nothing more she could do. Her son would have to manage his life as well as he could. If she had been able to leave earlier than scheduled she would have done so,
but it would have been too much trouble, and Lily didn’t feel she could impose any more.

  The day she left, Helen didn’t come to the door to see her off. Kannan hugged his mother, his affection charged with guilt. But Lily was beyond caring. She pretended she’d had a good time. She pressed small gifts of money into the hands of the servants. When she reached Manickam, the butler took his present, folded his hands in a namaskaram, and said sincerely, ‘Amma, all the servants want to thank you for the delicious mango pickle.’ The words filled her with a deep sadness.

  84

  Every time he received an update on the Burma campaign, Michael Fraser would chart it on the big map of India in his study, where red tinged the northeastern frontier. This morning there was news of heavy fighting and he stared at the map for a long time. The fine cross-hatching of lines that depicted the contested area dissolved in his mind into thick green forest infested with leeches and murderous snipers. He wondered how Joe Wilson was doing. Giving the Japs a bloody nose, he was sure. Joe had never given way in a fight. Would that there were more like him, Michael thought, as he worriedly surveyed the spreading pool of red that marked the enemy advance; if we don’t stop the Japs soon we’ll be in big trouble. It frustrated him immensely, not being able to serve at the front. There was nothing worse than sitting around, listening to news of British reverses without being able to do anything about it. Too young to fight in the Great War, and too old to shoulder arms in this one! But at the rate the Japanese were racing through Asia, he wouldn’t need to go to the front; it would come to him.

  By March 1944, the campaign in Burma was spilling into India. The Burma Army, a mixed bag of British, Indian, Burmese, Chinese and American forces, had suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Japanese. Rangoon had fallen, as had Mandalay, and now the enemy was threatening Imphal, Kohima and Dimapur. If these towns were taken, India would be vulnerable to the invading army and even China would be threatened. It was a battle the British could not lose, for they weren’t sure who the vast mass of Indians would support, should the Japanese achieve a breakthrough. The Congress leadership continued stubbornly to demand independence for India as a condition of its co-operation, and the Japanese were already talking vaguely of a Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a partnership of Asians against the white man. Moreover, the Japanese had already won over one of India’s most charismatic nationalist leaders, Subhas Chandra Bose, so it was anyone’s guess how the chips would fall if the British were thrashed at Kohima and Imphal.

  If it was a war the British could not lose, it was a war the Japanese had to win. The Russians had repulsed the Germans at Stalingrad, the Americans had battered the Japanese navy in the southwest Pacific, Allied bombers were carpet-bombing the industrial heartland of Germany, and already forces were massing to retake France and advance to the bloodthirsty corporal’s lair. Their supply lines stretched, the Japanese had to swiftly conclude the opening battle for India.

  This they were confident of doing, for hadn’t they smashed the British at Singapore and at every other point in their campaign in Burma? They were the better fighters in the jungle, their planes had ruled the skies, and their tactics this far had proved superior to those of their opponents. And so the forces met on the Imphal plain, and the future of India hung in the balance.

  The fierceness of the battle reflected the crucial implications of victory. And of defeat. Both sides reached deep for courage, ingenuity and fortitude. The Japanese would cut off the water supply to a beleaguered garrison, the British would respond by having their planes drop the inner tubes of car tyres filled with water for their thirsty men. The British would seize a position, only to have waves of Japanese soldiers swarm all over it, uncaring of what it cost in terms of men and matériel. The British forces were probably better officered, for the Japanese general, Major General Sato, had acquired the reputation of being a stolid, unimaginative soldier who was a stickler for carrying out orders, with little regard for strategy or common sense. If General Sato was ordered to take a feature, he would try to do so even it meant the death of every soldier in his command. The British, looking for the smallest advantage, were thankful that it was him they were up against. But his forces were fierce, courageous, well equipped, and for a long time monumentally superior to the defending army.

  The rest of the world may have had little interest in the war in Burma, but to the British non-combatant in India, it was the only conflict of consequence. They had cheered Allied victories in El Alamein and Monte Cassino, they had drunk to the spirit of the blockade runners of Malta, they had celebrated the sinking of the Bismarck, the Tirpitz and the Graf Spee, but they had never lost sight of the war on their very doorstep.

  The Pulimed planters were as anxious as every other white man in the country. No aeroplanes overflew the tranquil hills. Life went on much as before. But there was a hysterical edge to their actions as the battle grew closer. Planters would pull rifles and shotguns from cupboards and closets, keeping them close at hand, almost as if they expected screaming Japanese hordes to erupt out of the tea.

  One of the fiercest battles for Kohima took place in the garden of the District Commissioner’s Bungalow. Once an elegant residence, the bungalow, which overlooked the strategic Kohima crossroads, was now a blackened ruin. The two opposing armies were dug into bunkers on either side of the tennis court at the bottom of the DC’s garden. Hurricane and Vengeance fighters wheeled and darted overhead, tanks churned their way up the dirt tracks leading to the scene of battle, but in the District Commissioner’s garden the fighting was hand to hand. Neither side would give in, as the possession of the bungalow and the tennis court had acquired a symbolic significance. On the night of 29 April, the Japanese launched a desperate attack to clear the scene of British forces. Joe Wilson, a platoon commander (of 6 Brigade in the 2nd British Division), had just lobbed a grenade at the advancing Japanese when a bullet caught him in the chest. He was removed to a makeshift field hospital where he died three hours later.

  85

  The memorial service for Joe Wilson at the Pulimed church was packed. The Reverend Ayrton, more focused than anyone had ever seen him, reached outside the Bible for the central idea of his sermon, Petrarch’s observation that a good death does honour to a whole life. He spoke of the love and esteem the brave young man was held in, he talked of the loss to the community, and he spoke of how Joe had brought glory to Pulimed. In one of the front pews Mrs Stevenson’s shoulders shook silently as she wept.

  After the service, the congregation wandered out into the spacious grounds. The ladies of the church committee had organized tea and biscuits, served under the shade of a venerable cypress tree. The morning was clear and bright. It was a day that should have witnessed the sound of laughter and song, celebrated the beauty and vitality of life, but the mood among the congregation was disconsolate.

  Kannan collected tea for Helen and himself and walked across to the small group of people she was with: the Frasers, Driscoll and a planter who had driven over from Peermade for the service. They stood in the shade of a late-flowering spathodea, its purple flowers littering the ground. The conversation was desultory; there wasn’t much that anyone seemed to want to say. All they wanted was to be left alone with their memories of Joe Wilson. Kannan thought he would have liked to have known the man. He must have been quite special to have affected so many people. Belinda blew her nose in her handkerchief, her eyes red-rimmed. Joe had been her bridge partner and a close friend. The noise seemed to release them from their silence.

  ‘He promised me a Jap bayonet as a souvenir,’ Driscoll said.

  ‘Oh, Joe was irrepressible. He promised one to every planter in Travancore and he would have done it too,’ the planter from Peermade said.

  ‘Where’s Freddie? They were close, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yep,’ Michael replied, ‘poor chap’s down with malaria. I can’t imagine what he must be going through.’

  ‘Remember that time Joe went and distribut
ed medicine in the coolie lines during the cholera epidemic? He shamed us into going and helping,’ Belinda said. It was the first time she had spoken since they had come out of the church.

  ‘Yes, he was the whitest Englishman this district has ever seen,’ her husband said sombrely.

  Helen was silent, and Kannan wondered what she was thinking of. Ever since Lily’s visit her unhappiness had escalated. Her squabble with his mother was only a part of the problem though, and as time passed, an increasingly minor one. With incredible speed but completely wordlessly, the message had reached every corner of Pulimed and the surrounding estates of the way in which Mrs Stevenson had ordained she was to be treated. On the only occasion they’d been to the club in the recent past, Helen was cold-shouldered and ignored by all the women, except Belinda, and she’d wept when they got home, from the sheer humiliation and hopelessness of it all. Kannan had never seen her cry before. From then on, she found some excuse not to accompany him to the club and to parties at the other planters’ homes. It wasn’t good for his own career, he knew; the planter and his wife were expected to participate jointly, and enthusiastically, in the community’s social life. But he understood her pain and tried to cover up for her. Others tried to help, Freddie, the Frasers, and slowly they achieved a precarious equilibrium. Helen even began venturing out occasionally. He hoped she wouldn’t feel too out of place in this gathering.

  Everywhere murmured voices retailed stories of the young planter – Joe racing his Norton up a steep rain-soaked hillside in pursuit of a wounded boar, exceedingly dangerous when provoked, after he’d collided with it. Joe boldly grabbing the tails of ratsnakes and cobras as they disappeared into their burrows, whirling them around his head and snapping them like a whip so their spines were dislocated. Joe’s silken touch at tennis. Joe’s greatness as a planter. It was as though, by remembering him, they could keep at bay the grim future which the death of their golden boy portended.