The House of Blue Mangoes (28 page)

That evening, just before night fell, the policeman strolled towards the station, a lit kerosene lantern in his hand. He conferred briefly with his younger colleague and retraced his steps home. He never got there. Madhavan aimed and fired.

The bullet whipped into the victim’s right knee and he fell forward, the lantern dropping by his side, the glass miraculously intact. He began screaming, a high-pitched unearthly sound that permeated the deepening twilight. Madhavan then shot the younger policeman on the veranda, a sleeve of blood magically appearing on the boy’s chest. He seemed to accept the bullet without pain, for he made no sound. Quietly, as if wishing to cause his murderer no more trouble than was absolutely necessary, he crabbed over and fell out of sight behind the balustrade. Calmly, Madhavan told the novices, ‘I am now refilling the magazine. Six shots, one for each of you, and one for me. If one of you hesitates, that bullet is for you. You will place your bullet exactly where I indicate. Each shot you fire will give the dying man maximum pain.’

With torn lungi strips masking their faces, the killers followed Madhavan to where the constable lay screaming. As they surrounded him, his pain-crazed eyes stared wildly at them. He made as if to grab at the man nearest to him, Madhavan, who sidestepped casually and dug his foot into the gory mess of the policeman’s knee. He screamed once, a full-throated sound, and then seemed to pass out. Before Madhavan could attempt to revive him, his eyes opened again. Madhavan walked across to Aaron and gave him the rifle. ‘Shoot him in the stomach.’ Was that contempt he saw in the other’s eyes, Aaron wondered for a moment, the gun heavy in his hands. Revulsion swept through him; he made no attempt to point the weapon at the man who was writhing on the ground.

Madhavan’s voice came to him. ‘The stomach. Fill your mind with your frustrated contempt for me, you spineless fool, fill it with your desperate desire to make some sense of your wasted life and put a bullet in this good man’s stomach.’

Aaron raised his eyes, met the other’s level gaze, then looked away. The policeman at his feet was now muttering, a half-intelligible, pain-darkened chant. To his horror, Aaron realized he was begging for mercy. Commotion in the darkness, footsteps, the man’s wife racing in their direction. Casually, Madhavan knocked her to the ground.

‘The stomach. Otherwise all we’d have done is leave him a cripple. Like you.’

Aaron’s head emptied. The rifle was pointing at Madhavan, then it wavered a fraction and the bullet thumped into the policeman’s stomach. The blood was black in the diffused light of the lantern, and the screams though louder were strangely muffled, they seemed to be happening in a dream. He dropped the rifle and walked away. Three more shots, one more, and the screaming was shut off, an abrupt cessation of all sound.

42

Zephaniah Pick had established a small pharmacy on the Poonamallee Road in Madras in 1811. A hundred years later his great-grandson ran
Z. Pick, Chemist
. Zachariah Pick had made few changes to the store, which had become a local landmark, besides having the lettering on the frontage repainted in a rather florid, curling script. A wooden counter ran the length of the shop, ending in a glassed-in cubby-hole in which Zachariah sat, receiving the cash and keeping an eye on the three young men he employed.

For some years now he had stocked a shelf with native remedies and ointments. Some of his Indian customers seemed to prefer those vile-looking potions to the regular English medicines he sold. It had proved to be a wise move, for when the nationalist ruffians had started to boycott foreign goods, Zachariah’s shop had escaped unscathed when he had shown the two polite young men who visited the pharmacy his stock of siddha and ayurvedic medicines. As the agitation intensified, Zachariah increased his stock of native formulations and, moreover, displayed them prominently.

His regular supplier had recently brought him a rather elegant eleven-sided jar with a garish pink label that proclaimed itself
DR DORAI’S MOONWHITE THYLAM
. Zachariah agreed to stock a dozen bottles of the cream on a strict consignment basis. The same week his eye caught a small advertisement on the front page of the
Hindu
:

DR DORAI’S MOONWHITE THYLAM MAKES YOUR FACE SHINE LIKE THE PONGAL MOON!

There was even an amateurishly rhymed ditty:

On the darkest night your face will gleam

With Dr Dorai’s
MOONWHITE CREAM

A thylam which will make you glow

Whiter than the whitest snow
.

Strewth, these damned natives, Zachariah thought irritably. Didn’t they understand that white is white and black is black and brown is brown and no matter what you do . . . But he had to admit it was a fine idea, given that every mother on the subcontinent prayed that her daughter would be fair. Otherwise, she had no option but to reach for talcum powder. This Dr Dorai could well end up making a fortune, Zachariah thought. He was right. His stock of Dr Dorai’s
MOONWHITE THYLAM
sold out in two days and he fretted and fumed when he couldn’t replenish it for four months.

Daniel was completely unprepared for the demand. In a desperate attempt to meet it, he converted a disused portion of Dr Pillai’s vast home into a small factory and equipped it with vats, stills and a primitive bottling plant. As demand continued to outstrip supply, he bought more sophisticated manufacturing equipment and hired a workforce, including two young pharmacists, to control quality. He blessed the foresight that had led him to contact a family of traditional glass-blowers in distant Sivakasi to manufacture the distinctive jar that held the cream. Soon virtually every pharmacy in Madras Presidency and Travancore stocked Dr Dorai’s
MOONWHITE THYLAM
.

Daniel Dorai was on his way to becoming a very wealthy man.

43

Charity woke up one morning feeling extraordinarily happy. For no reason at all, and for more reasons than she could think of. They kindled in her mind now, one by one, like lit candles, their glow coalescing into a great roaring blaze that flushed her entire being with warmth and rapture. Her daughter-in-law Lily had recently given birth to another adorable little girl. They had named her Usha. Rachel was pregnant for the third time. Charity thought she could never have enough of welcoming grandchildren into the world. She could barely wait for her daughter to give birth again. Daniel’s business was thriving and she was delighted for him – he seemed to have finally overcome the crushing weight of his father’s and brother’s rejection. Her own father seemed healthy and content. But there was more than all that, just beyond the ready grasp of her mind. She did not try to capture what was out of reach; all that mattered at the present moment was that her happiness seemed invincible. She rose from her mat, looked for a long minute at the sleeping bodies in the room, and thought how blessed she was to have this family around her.

The feeling of well-being persisted all through that morning. Rachel, who was sleeping poorly as her pregnancy advanced, was the first to join her in the kitchen.

‘How is our darling one?’ Charity whispered to her daughter.

‘Keeping me awake at night, the little rascal,’ Rachel said as she put the milk on to boil.

‘Go and rest now, I can manage here,’ Charity said.

‘But I can’t sleep, amma,’ Rachel said plaintively.

Charity was having none of it. ‘You must rest,’ she said firmly. ‘Wake up Lily, she’ll help me.’

‘Let me at least make the coffee, you shouldn’t be doing it.’

‘Go, kannu,’ Charity said simply.

Reluctantly, Rachel left the kitchen. At the door she turned. ‘Amma, I have a great craving for idiyappam. With plenty of coconut milk and sugar.’

Charity smiled happily. She loved the way babies began to control the world months before they were born.

‘You’ll have your idiyappam, kannu. Go and rest. And don’t forget to talk to the baby, she needs her daily dose of love!’

The previous evening, when she had been working in the kitchen, she had overheard Rachel and Lily talking outside the window. Without really meaning to, she had paused to listen. Lily was telling Rachel about a new development in her household. One day she had lavished her older daughter with more than her usual dose of endearments before rocking her to sleep. The next night, when she had put her to bed, Shanthi had grumpily refused to let her go. After being fussed over, she had finally told her mother the cause of her unhappiness – Lily had missed out two of the endearments of the previous night – Precious Diamond-Eyed Gift from the Sun, and Little Goddess Who Is Sweeter than a Chevathar Neelam. From then on, Lily had had to memorize the fifty-two names of love she had used for her daughter. Rachel had exclaimed delightedly and said she was going to start compiling a list for her daughter (she was sure Stella was going to have a sister) and whisper the unborn baby’s names to her in the womb. The two women had laughed, and in the kitchen Charity had closed her eyes – this was what made a big family such a wonderful thing, it could always surprise and enchant you. Who would have imagined it – the fifty-two names of love!

Lily joined her in the kitchen just then and the two women made all the preparations for the morning meal. Then they carried their coffee through the sleeping house and out on to the front steps. They sat quietly, content to watch the crystal air of the morning. Charity thought about the forthcoming arrival. If it was a girl, there was only one name that would fit – Malligai! She’d been pleased that Rachel had taken to the name. Solomon had loved the smell of malligai blossoms in her hair. She blushed furiously. How shameless of her to be thinking such thoughts at her age. A grandmother of four and a fifth on the way. To cover up the confusion she felt, she began talking. ‘How is your father, Lily? Is he coming over any time soon?’

Lily looked perplexed. She’d heard from her father a few days ago, but she was sure she had shown Charity the letter.

‘Not until Christmas, mami. Didn’t I show you the letter?’

‘Yes, you did, how forgetful of me,’ Charity said with a small laugh. As they chatted, she recovered her composure. It occurred to her how much she liked her daughter-in-law. How much good fortune has been showered upon me, she thought.

When Lily had first entered the Dorai household, they all had to make adjustments. Her life in her father’s house in the Ceylonese tea district had been far from traditional. Her parents had tried to keep up their own customs as much as they could, but it had been impossible to prevent the infiltration of European and Sinhala influences drawn from the local community. As a result, Lily was unprepared for some of the things she had to contend with in Nagercoil. One day she had wandered into the front room where Daniel and Jacob were taking tea with some visiting male relatives. Spotting an empty space next to Daniel, she had sat down. The conversation had grown strained and had shortly ceased altogether. Daniel had glared at her, and instinctively she realized she’d committed some terrible faux pas. Then she had seen Charity beckoning to her and gratefully left the room. To her dismay, as soon as they were in the kitchen, Charity had been stern and admonitory. She had told her that no married woman should disgrace her husband and her family by doing what she had just done – casually consorting with men, even if they were relatives. In vain, Lily had protested that in her father’s house she’d been able to mingle freely with everyone who had visited. Charity’s response was blunt: ‘You are not in your father’s house now.’ Daniel had been furious with his wife but Charity had intervened, saying it wouldn’t happen again.

Lily had never repeated that error, but there had been other problems. A spirited young woman, she had clashed variously with her husband and with Miriam, her sister-in-law, and even on one memorable occasion with Jacob Packiam, when she had wanted to replace the woven blinds in his room with chintz curtains. But Charity had always been around to ease her through the difficult times, even if her daughter-in-law had sometimes found her unbending. Lily had wept and lain awake at night during her first months in Nagercoil, but under Charity’s patient tutelage she had learned to fit in. ‘Do not try to change things around you, that’s almost impossible,’ Charity had advised the young bride, remembering her own mother-in-law’s wisdom. ‘Change yourself as much as you can. That’s easier. And as you change, good things will follow.’

Lily got on very well with Rachel whenever she visited. The two young women would spend long hours together, chatting and laughing and exchanging notes on their young children. From time to time Lily and Miriam would still clash, but then Charity’s youngest child fought with everyone. Spoilt from birth, Miriam had grown up to be a difficult girl. Her good looks had grown coarse in adolescence, and Charity had wondered if this had something to do with her tantrums. Whatever the reason, Miriam was quick to quarrel. Thinking of her now, Charity’s happiness dimmed a little. The previous week there had been another battle: Miriam against the rest. Her daughter’s latest demand was to be married off immediately. She had only one condition – that her husband should have a spanking new car. Daniel had flatly refused permission, and his grandfather had supported him. In these modern times, it was good for a young woman to have a college education. Marriage could come later. Charity would have been happy to see Miriam settled, but she couldn’t find fault with the reasoning of the men. She was well aware of the great store her father and her son set by education. They hadn’t been able to do anything about Rachel – she’d been out of school for too many years by the time she got to Nagercoil – but Jacob had obtained special permission for Miriam to be educated in his school as soon as she was old enough. And neither her father nor her son was prepared to interrupt her studies. To Miriam’s rage and frustration, Charity weighed in with the men.

Miriam had broken her sullen silence the day before yesterday, with a complaint: ‘You’re Shanthi’s paati, you’re Usha’s paati, you’re Jason’s ammama, you’re Stella’s ammama, you lavish all your love upon them, and you’ve forgotten all about me.’ Having said this, she’d burst into tears, and Charity had seen the forlorn little girl lurking behind the prickly young woman. Wordlessly, she had gathered Miriam into her arms as she sobbed and sobbed, dampening her sari and her blouse. Miriam will be all right, Charity thought now. With luck she’ll marry into the right family, her rough edges will be planed down and she’ll grow into a fine young woman. After I’ve made Rachel’s idiyappam, I’ll cook a great feast for my family. It’s a day to give thanks for being blessed. From within the house she heard Usha begin to wail. Lily raced into the house to be with her youngest and the crying ceased. With a smile, Charity headed for the kitchen.