The House of Blue Mangoes

by Davidar, David

  ‘All right then, paati-ma, here’s your fruit,’ the cowherd said with a laugh, and plucked a handful of fruit and dropped it on the ground. The poetess picked the fruit up and was blowing off the dirt when the boy shouted, ‘If the fruit is cold, why are you blowing on it?’

  Ways of seeing. Every reality is perceived differently, depending on who is doing the looking, so let’s take the road ourselves to see what we can see. This road stretches back a couple of centuries to the time when the precursors of John Company came to India to trade and decided to stay. It has had numerous twists and bends, and is choked with the debris of a thousand battles and the unquiet spirits of the great and the good, but it is now coming to an end. A new road will need to be hacked out of the future and the implements to do so are in the hands of millions. Their leaders view the road ahead, each in his own way: the Mahatma sorrowfully, as the killings in Noakhali and elsewhere seem to presage the carnage that lies ahead; Jinnah inflexibly, he will make sure he gets his Pakistan before the terminal disease in his blood gets him; Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, guiltily, for he knows the mission he was charged with, the orderly transfer of power, is bound to end in costly failure with millions dead or displaced . . . Virtually alone among the great ones, Nehru, though his heart is heavy, looks to the future with hope. It is he who will say, on 15 August 1947, the undying words that schoolchildren will memorize so long as there is an India: ‘Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge . . . At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India shall awaken to freedom . . .’

  And what of the people? When they walk the road to independence, what will they see, how will they feel? As they march along, bound in the opposite direction to the multitudes who will take over from them, some of them, like the soldiers of the 1st Cameron Highlanders, racist to the end, chant:

  ‘Land of shit and filth and wogs

  Gonorrhoea, syphilis, clap and pox.

  Memsahibs’ paradise, soldiers’ hell

  India, fare thee fucking well.’

  But that is the minority view, even among the British. Most of them are beset by feelings of dejection, sorrow and fear, but what they feel, overwhelmingly, is relief that the years of uncertainty and ambiguity are about to end.

  For millions of Indians, the horror of Partition will be the single overwhelming reality. Freedom for them is synonymous with grief, hatred, displacement and loss. For millions more, the most wretched constituents of the subcontinent, independence will not be an occasion for rejoicing, their lives will be as miserable as before. But what of our grandparents and parents, uncles and aunts, who have wrested a prize that has demanded of them every ounce of commitment, idealism, courage and talent they possessed, what do they make of it? No matter who or what they are, ordinary or extraordinary, rich or poor, high caste or low, humble or exalted, they look to the future with joy and hope. But embedded in the euphoria there are questions; no victory or triumph is ever unqualified. What exactly will freedom bring? Will its surging optimism cleanse the country of the noxious vapours of casteism and communalism? Will its currency buy the poor and the disadvantaged bread, hope and equality? In sum, will the country be equal to freedom’s challenge?

  Late April 1947. Early in the morning. It will soon be very hot, for summer has crept up on Doraipuram. Already the houses have begun to draw their cloaks of green – the dark green of mango and jack, the feathery green of tamarind, the lighter green of neem and ashoka, the green-black of palmyra, the slate green of casuarina – tightly around them to ward off the blazing heat of day.

  Deep in thought, Kannan makes his way down to the river. He has slept poorly, and hopes the cool morning will refresh him for the tasks ahead. The settlement is gearing up to celebrate the coming of freedom. Three months later there will be another celebration, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Doraipuram is also upon them. He has spent the past week serving on various committees charged with co-ordinating the activities that are being planned for both occasions. It has been an optimistic time as the settlement prepares to honour events larger than its constituents’ individual concerns.

  But Kannan isn’t thinking about the coming ceremonials. After the revelry is over, the problems that have kept him awake for many nights will inevitably resurface and it is these he is thinking about as he walks by the river. Miriam-athai and her sons have ganged up with Karunakaran and are threatening to sell out to a powerful builder who wants to build beach-front homes. There’s a steady haemorrhaging of young people from the settlement to distant towns and lands in search of jobs and opportunities. The founding families who are committed to Daniel’s dream are growing older. Will it be only a matter of time before Doraipuram is just a memory? He is not sure whether he is up to the challenge of ensuring that the settlement thrives for the next twenty-five years. It’s easier to have a grand vision, he thinks, than to keep it going. But almost immediately he dismisses the thought as unworthy. Each generation has its problems. Daniel and the other founders dealt with their difficulties as best they could, we need to cope with our own troubles as successfully as our skills, passion, imagination and resolve allow. And then he thinks: I worry too much. Of course Doraipuram will survive and prosper because it was founded in love and hope, and these are the most vital and powerful impulses granted to our kind.

  He is in one of the mango topes now, surrounded by rank upon rank of medium-sized trees with short straight trunks covered with fissured black bark. The arrowhead-shaped leaves are a beautiful dark green on top and a paler green below. They lie thickly upon the branch and effectively absorb the heat, dust and light, giving the orchard a hush that is broken only by the crackling of dried leaves underfoot. The Neelams are lovely to behold. Blue fruit on a field of green, it’s as if the sky, the high blue-white sky of the Chevathar summer, has exploded and come to rest in this tope. Heavy as a woman’s breasts, these are fruit to be fondled sensuously as you pick your way among the trees. Their fragrance fills the air. Kannan reaches up to a blue mango, caresses it, its heat filling his hand, and gives it the slightest tug. The mango comes away in his hand. Instinctively, he does something he learned from his father, and he from his father before him . . .

  He empties his mind, concentrates the senses. He regards the fruit he has picked for a moment, then raises the mounded end, with the dimple in the centre, to his nose and inhales deeply. The bouquet explodes upon his senses: a huge delectable sweetness, overlaid with notes of freshness, lightness, sun and blue, counterpointed by a deep rolling melody of an almost corrupt muskiness. He holds his breath, lets the high and low notes invade every aspect of his being. The heaviness lifts from his heart.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a novel, so the usual disclaimers apply – names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Having said that, there are a couple of things that need to be clarified.

  One of my reasons for writing this book was to recapture memories of an idyllic childhood spent in places like the high tea country in Peermade, where my father worked, and my grandparents’ homes in Nagercoil and Padappai. Also, my paternal grandfather Ambrose established a family settlement and this seemed such a splendid achievement that it marked the point of departure for my novel. However The House of Blue Mangoes is wholly invented. It is not autobiographical nor is it in any way family history masquerading as fiction. Solomon, Daniel, Aaron, Kannan and the rest of the Dorai clan are people I’ve imagined and bear no resemblance to anyone I know. The same is true of Doraipuram, Chevathar, Pulimed and Kilanad district.

  For those who are interested in a little more information about these places, I can do no better than recapitulate my notes on them when they were first visualized. Kilanad is the smallest district of Madras Presidency, so small that in 1899 it had only two reven
ue sub-divisions or taluqas (one less than the next smallest, the Nilgiris district, which had three at the time). Shaped like a notched arrowhead, Kilanad’s northern boundary is Tinnevelly district (now Tirunelveli); to the west lies the kingdom of Travancore (now the state of Kerala). It’s rimmed to the east by the Bay of Bengal and to the south it narrows to a point two kilometres short of Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari). The Chevathar, a non-existent tributary of the mighty Tamraparani, bisects the district before debouching into the Bay of Bengal near the village that bears its name.

  One further paragraph will suffice to encapsulate Kilanad’s main points of interest. It has an area of 489 sq. miles with a maximum width of sixty-five miles and length of eighty-six miles, with three towns, forty-eight villages and a total population of one hundred and fifty-three thousand. Its chief town is Melur, with a population of eighteen thousand and ninety-nine, on the Nanguneri–Nagercoil highway. It is where the Collector is based; it has a big Mariamman temple and a famous cattle fair is held there twice a year. The second biggest town, Ranivoor (population fifteen thousand two hundred and fifty), the headquarters of the second of the two taluqas, is almost equidistant between the district headquarters and the only other town in the district, Meenakshikoil on the coast. Ranivoor is famous throughout the district for a church dedicated to St Luke that is supposed to have miraculous powers of exorcism. Meenakshikoil, which became the headquarters of the taluqa of the same name early in the twentieth century, has an eighteenth-century temple dedicated to the Goddess Meenakshi built by Kulla Marudu, the last feudal lord of the area. Predating the Meenakshi temple is a small Murugan temple across the river in Chevathar village.

  The entire district is sparsely populated and musters the lowest revenues in the Presidency. The chief cash crops are cotton, to the north, and palmyra products, jaggery, arrack, baskets and mats – these last are famous throughout the Presidency.

  Of Pulimed, across the border in the central Travancore hills, there is little to add, except that it’s an imaginary tea-planting district between Peermade and Vandiperiyar.

  A word about some of the caste groups in the book. The Andavars (who bear no resemblance whatsoever to the contemporary followers of Andavan Swamigal, among others), Vedhars (not to be confused with Vedars, Vetans, Veduvars, etc.) and Marudars do not find a place among the hundreds of castes and sub-castes exhaustively surveyed by the Anthropological Survey of India in the People of India project, compiled and published in thirteen volumes by K. S. Singh (OUP, 1997). I invented three new castes because I did not wish to add fuel to the caste controversies that have raged for centuries now, to the general detriment of the country and the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala which are my particular interest. All that needs to be said here is that the three castes share similarities with some of the non-Brahmin castes in the south.

  Most of the historical incidents and personages to be encountered in the narrative are well known and need little by way of explication. The only one that needs comment is the murder of Robert William d’Escourt Ashe. His assassination is a historically documented fact. Among those convicted of his murder were Neelakantha Brahmachari and Vanchi Iyer. Aaron Dorai wasn’t among them.

  Finally, I should point out that I’ve retained spellings from the period in which the novel is set – Tinnevelly for Tirunelveli, Madura for Madurai, Madras for Chennai and so on.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Although this book is a work of fiction, I’ve tried to be as rigorous as possible in researching its historical, sociological and technical aspects. Of the dozens of books I consulted I found the following especially useful:

  ON VILLAGE LIFE: The Remembered Village by M. N. Srinivas (OUP, 1976), Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way by E. Valentine Daniel (University of California Press, 1984) where I first encountered an interesting version of the son of the soil theory and Siva & her Sisters by Karin Kapadia (OUP, 1996) which has excellent descriptions of ritual possession by villagers.

  ON THE HISTORICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF SOUTH INDIA: Peasant History of South India by David Ludden (OUP, 1989), The Politics of South India, 1920-1937 by Christopher John Baker (Vikas, 1976), Politics and Social Conflict in South India by Eugene F. Irschick (OUP, 1969), The Nadars of Tamilnad by Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr (OUP, 1969) which is particularly good on caste conflict and Land and Caste in South India by Dharma Kumar (Manohar, 1992). I found The Rajaji Story, 1937–1972 by Rajmohan Gandhi (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1984) useful and National Movement in Tamil Nadu, 1905–1914 by N. Rajendran (OUP, 1994) excellent for details of the extremist movement and the assassination of William Ashe.

  ON THE RAJ: In my view James Morris’s Pax Britannica trilogy, Pax Britannica (Faber, 1968), Heaven’s Command (Faber, 1973) and Farewell the Trumpets (Faber, 1978), still remains the best account of the Raj, a quarter-century after it was published. Raj by Lawrence James (Little Brown, 1997) is a good single-volume history and Plain Tales from the Raj by Charles Allen (Abacus, 1975) is an excellent gossipy account of the time.

  ON THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE: The Men Who Ruled India by Philip Mason (Jonathan Cape, 2 vols., 1953, 1954) is the acknowledged classic, but the book I relied on the most sadly had lost both cover and title page so I had no means of ascertaining the author and publisher’s name. No matter, The District Officer in India proved to be an invaluable work of reference.

  ON SIDDHA: Siddha Medicine by Dr Paul Joseph Thottam (Penguin, 2000) is the best book on the subject.

  ON THE INDIAN NATIONALIST MOVEMENT: I’ve relied heavily on India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857–1947 by Bipan Chandra et al. (Viking, 1988).

  ON THE PLANTING LIFE: Above the Heron’s Pool by Heather Lovatt and Peter de Jong (Bacsa, 1993) is an excellent introduction to tea-planting in south India and A Planting Century by S. Muthiah (East-West, 1993) is a comprehensive history of the industry.

  ON MAN-EATERS: On man-eating tigers, there is only one authority, the incomparable Jim Corbett. I’d recommend all his books.

  TRANSLATIONS: I consulted several translations of the Bhagavad Gita. The lines that appear in this novel are an edited version of the Gita Press translation.

  Finally Aaron’s jump over the big well is a fictional retelling of an actual exploit in a south Indian village, narrated in the book by Amy Carmichael, Raj, Brigand Chief (Seeley, Service & Co. Limited, 1927). I must thank my father for drawing my attention to this.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made by my publishers and me to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Oxford University Press, New Delhi: Excerpts from The Principal Upanishads by S. Radhakrishnan (OUP, 1953) and from the Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett (OUP, 1944).

  The Anvil Press and Alan Marshfield for Poem 705 by Rufinus and the Anvil Press for Poem 807 by Paulos from The Greek Anthology (Penguin Classics, 1973).

  The Hindu: Excerpt from The Hindu Century (Kasturi & Sons, 1976).

  Little, Brown and Company: Excerpt from Raj by Lawrence James (Little, Brown and Company, 1997).

  The Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust for an excerpt by Aurobindo Ghosh published in the volume, Sri Aurobindo Karmayogin.

  The Navajivan Trust for an excerpt from The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 76 by M. K. Gandhi.

  While every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain permission, this has not been possible in all cases; any omissions brought to our attention will be remedied in future editions.

  I’m indebted to my wife Rachna, first and last, for without her constant support, patience and good advice this novel wouldn’t have been written. I am also entirely grateful to Vikram Seth for spurring me on to complete the manuscript. Having acted as a catalyst, he then read and commented on the manuscript, acts of generosity not easily forgotten.

  I delight in my agents and principal publishers, they are the best any writer could hope to have. David Godwin and Katie Levell in London; Nicole Aragi who placed the book in New York; Cathy Hemming, Ter
ry Karten, Lisa Miller and Andrew Proctor at HarperCollins in the US; and Maggie Mckernan, Geoff Duffield, Katie White and Alice Chasey at Orion in the UK whose enthusiasm and support breathed life into the manuscript as well as shepherded it through the publication process – to all of you my heartfelt gratitude.

  My brilliant colleagues at Penguin India – in order of their appearance in the book’s life, Rajesh Sharma, Aparajita Pant, Ravi Singh, V. K. Karthika, Hemali Sodhi, Bena Sareen, Philip Koshy, Sayoni Basu and P. M. Sukumar – ensured the book was published exceptionally well in its place of birth. Thank you all very much indeed.

  Grateful thanks too to David Wan, Peter Field and Aveek Sarkar who were supportive of me every step of the way.

  Others I am indebted to for contributing their time and effort to the book’s cause are my father Eddie Davidar (whose knowledge of the tea industry is unrivalled); my uncle Reggie Davidar, for sharing a couple of stories; Kamazh and Kenaz Solomon who guided me through the intricacies of caste and tradition (as did M. S. S. Pandian); Dr Paul Thottam who vetted the chapters on siddha; Drs Raj Kubba and N. P. S. Chawla who explained the mysteries of pigmentation and diabetes respectively; S. Krishnan who read and commented on portions of the manuscript; Vivek Menon who pointed out that ‘nightjars drift and do not whir’; John Ashworth who suggested the names of England’s dreariest towns; and most importantly, Raman Mahadevan who patiently and assiduously worked his way through the manuscript pointing out inaccuracies and errors.