Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

5

A few months later, at the beginning of winter in Shahkot, when the nights were cool and the town was full of flowers, the wedding day of Mr D. P. S.’s daughter arrived. Soon after sunrise, as instructed by their boss, the entire post-office staff was on hand to perform such necessary tasks as hanging marigolds and chillies in the doorways, procuring strings of party lights for the trees, fetching young and tender goats for the biryani. Miss Jyotsna and Mr Gupta rose to the occasion with tremendous enthusiasm, shouting at the band members and the tent men for laziness, tasting kebabs for tenderness, meeting relatives at the train station, running with joy to the tailors and back again with bursting bags. This was not the time to let anyone down.

Sampath had been allotted the job of filling glasses with sherbet, of washing the glasses once they were emptied by the guests, and then filling them up again; it had been decided by group consensus that even Sampath could be counted on to manage this simple task. But, after all, it is very boring to sit filling and washing hundreds of glasses, especially after you yourself have drunk your fill. Sampath began to toss choice bits of food to the stray dogs that had gathered at the back of the wedding tent to see what they could scrounge from the feast. Then, when the cooks began to threaten — ‘You stop that or we’ll chop you up with the onions’ — he decided to look around to determine the layout of the house. He opened doors and peered into cupboards. He went through the contents of a drawer. But things were rather old and dusty. Nothing in Mr D. P. S.’s residence seemed terribly interesting until, at the end of the corridor, he came upon a room piled high with wedding finery in which the cousin-sisters had dressed each other and departed in a rush, leaving their belongings strewn higgledy-piggledy over the place. It was not the bride’s dowry, which was under lock and key, of course, or the aunties’ precious jewels, which had been locked up as well, but it was quite exciting all the same. The clothes for several days of celebration were scattered upon the floor, the beds and chairs.

He could see ruffles of peacock silk and tiny pleats of rosy satin; lengths of fabric and saris of every colour imaginable. Fabric run through with threads of gold, scattered with sequins and bits of glass, with embroidered parrots and lotus flowers worked in silver. There were mango patterns in rich plum and luminous amber shades. There were dark velvets and pale milk-like pastels tinted with only the faintest suggestion of rose pink or pistachio. There were unbroken stretches of crisp white petticoats in waves about Sampath’s feet.

He uncorked a bottle of rose-water and its fragrance escaped to mingle with the rich mutton biryani smells rising from cauldrons outside. Sampath, whose sense of smell had been refined during years of paying close attention to the olfactory curiosities offered by the world, could also discern the scents of musk, of mothballs, marigolds and baby powder. Of sandalwood oil. Oh, scented world! He felt his heart grow light. He held the fabrics to his cheek, let their slippery weight fall from one hand to the other and slide over his arms. He swathed lengths of pink and green and turmeric yellow about himself until he looked like a box of sweets wrapped up for the Diwali season. In a box full of a cousin-sister’s jewellery, he examined unusual iridescences: pearls hung upon stalks of silver; a stone lit with the brilliance of an eye; the delicacy of shell. He imagined the sun deep in the ear of a flower. He put a blue stone in his mouth, then took it out and rolled it, cool and round, up and down his arms. To his nose he attached a nose ring decorated like a chandelier with glassy, glinting drops. He wondered if he could be considered beautiful.

The room was quite dark, since he had closed both the window and the door so he might conduct his exploration undisturbed. In order to survey himself in all his finery, he lit a candle by the mirror and watched as he metamorphosed into a glorious bird, a magnificent insect. The mirror was mottled, slightly cloudy, speckled with age. He felt far away, lifted to another plane. Held within this frame, he could have been a photograph, or a painting, a character caught in a storybook. Distant, tinged with mystery, warm with the romance of it all, he felt a sudden sharp longing, a craving for an imagined world, for something he’d never known but felt deep within himself. The candle attracted his finger like a moth and he drew it back and forth through the yellow and blue flame.

He remembered how, not so long ago, the rest of the family asleep, he had spent dark hours over his books, always some examination to study for, some test or some long question to answer. He had wrapped a wet cloth around his head, hoping for coolness, but the sweat had trickled down his back like the quick run of a beetle, his fountain pen had grown slippery in his hands, ink smearing into monster tracks, blue and black across the page. How, even then, candle at his elbow, his finger had been distracted from the lines of print he hoped to follow all the way into memory; and like the moths that joined him, his finger too had sometimes been caught and singed.

The next day, he had known, he would leave blanks instead of answers to the questions chalked up on the blackboard — the ten most important political reforms introduced by King Asoka, the advantages and disadvantages of the caste system. They had retreated into the trembling scene before him, along with the soil and altitude requirements for a good crop of wheat; the stages of reproduction in the paramecium; and the proof, in an isosceles triangle, that an exterior angle is equal to the sum of the interior opposite angles.

He had watched as a piece of paper flared up in the night and crumpled. Collecting the dripping wax, soft and greasy, into a dozen balls of varying size, he had sliced through them with instruments from a geometry box; studied the wobbling globe of light cast through the belly of an empty glass; fingered the warped wood of the table. He had salvaged only odd words here and there from the pages in front of him. Slips of sentences. The thought of a river dark through pale country. The cool ‘o’s in Colombia, drawing the tongue over them as easily as water. He had traced the outlines of a map that showed the savannah grasslands of the world, run his finger over the backbones of the mountains in his atlas, down the veins of blue rivers. But he had forgotten the urgency of finishing the night’s work, the importance of the next day’s examination.

He had held the candle far enough away to lose its heat, yet close enough to keep its light around him. He remembered carrying it to the mirror. How, with its hot, eager breath in his face, the flame had illuminated into strangeness a chin and a cheek, or a hand, a nose, a mouth. He had watched his lips form words, any words: just ‘hello’ sometimes, or even ‘mmmm’. The memory of them hanging in the air for a moment, then disappearing into the silence of the room, spreading to stillness like the ripples cast by a small pebble. Sometimes, though, he had made no sound at all, just worked his lips like a fish in the deep-shadowed light, mouthing the air like water.

Now he traced the outline of his face and drew in the fantastic costume. He smiled and bowed at his reflection as if he were his own honoured guest. The lizards on the wall watched him with severe eyes. He stuck out his tongue at them, felt suddenly and ridiculously happy. Perhaps he was made for a life hung with brocades, worked out in fine patterns of jewels. Perhaps he was made to wear silk slippers and, with a wave, demand the world’s attention. Striking a pose, nose in the magical air, hand raised for a touch of drama, he sang, making up his own words to a popular tune: ‘My suit is Japanese, tra-la-la, my lunch was Chinese, tra-la-la, but though I may roam, tra-la-la, don’t worry, Mama and Papa, my heart belongs to home. Oh, my heart belongs to home.’ He gyrated his hips in perfect circles.

Venturing out of the room to where the party had just begun, he was made brave by the smell of the biryani and kebabs; encouraged by the sparkle of elegant clothes and jewellery, by the clinking of plates and finger bowls, by the laughter of the arriving guests in the tent and the jostling sweets frying in clarified butter just outside. A red carpet stretched from the entrance of the marriage tent all the way to a fountain at the centre. Sampath cavorted up and down its length, tossing his nose ring, kicking his legs. Mr D. P. S. and his wife, plying their future son-in-law’s family with drinks and snacks, greeted his advance upon them with stunned silence. Sampath felt as if his feet were far above the floor, as if, floating in some groundless state, he were missing the weight of his head, his stomach and all of his insides. ‘Tomorrow it will be too late,’ he sang, chandelier-style drops in his nose all aquiver. He waded into the fountain and jumped in the spray, splashing the grand ladies with water so they ran squealing in consternation. ‘Meet me under the plantain tree,’ he warbled, ‘and there will be no more talk of heartache.’

And slowly, deliciously, feeling it was the right thing to do, Sampath began to disrobe. Horrified shrieks rose from his audience. However, in this flushed moment, he mistook them for cries of admiration. With a style particular to himself, one by one he let the saris and dupattas draped about him fall. He unwrapped the last glittering length of fabric, but still he felt he had not yet reached the dazzling pinnacle of his performance, the pinnacle he strove towards, that his whole being was in anticipation of. He could not let himself down and he began to unbutton his shirt. He tossed the garment into the air like a hero throwing away the rag with which he has cleaned the weapon that will kill his enemy. As the shrieks grew in volume and intensity, he lowered his hand to his pants. ‘Stop him,’ shouted Mr D. P. S., and several people rushed forwards. But Sampath climbed deftly on to the highest tier of the fountain and, in one swift movement, lowered both his trousers and his underpants. His back to the crowd, he stuck his brown behind up into the air and wiggled it wildly in an ecstatic appreciation of the evening’s entertainment he himself had just provided.

‘Haiiii. What did you do?’ shouted the family when Sampath returned home, jobless, sober and soaked to the skin. ‘Kindly remove yourself,’ Mr D. P. S. had said to him, so coldly Sampath’s heart had frozen over. ‘It is no longer necessary to report to work.’

But he hated his job anyway. He didn’t want his job. He didn’t want it, he couldn’t do it and he didn’t want another job. He would not be able to do that either. He felt defiant. But …

‘What! You have lost your job!’

‘Hai, hai, this boy is nothing but trouble and misfortune.’

‘You are completely lacking in common sense.’

‘Did you get water in your nose?’

‘What are we going to do now?’

‘You really took off your underpants?’

‘The dye from the wet clothes has stained you blue. Quick. Soap yourself clean.’

‘From tomorrow onwards, you had better start looking for a new job.’

‘Wet hair leads to a cold in the head. A head massage with gingelly oil keeps the brain warm.’

‘Go to the Office of Public Transport tomorrow morning and apply for a position.’

‘Did you open your mouth in the fountain? That water is all recycled sewage water. You could have swallowed tiny worms.’

‘Think of interview strategies.’

‘If you go barefoot in dirty water all sorts of germs will enter your body through your toes. Put on some socks and shoes.’

‘You are an absolute good-for-nothing. Go to the Bureau of Statistics tomorrow afternoon and see if they have any openings. Go to the hospital, to the convent, to the agricultural centre, to the electricity office … To the Anu Dairy Farm, to the Utterly Butterly Delicious Butter Factory.’

Mr Gupta and Miss Jyotsna came to offer their condolences.

‘Arre, Sampathji, how could you do that?’

‘Now you are really keema kebab.’

‘Now you’ll be on vacation for ever after …’

How they all went on and on! How they all talked and shouted.

Sampath felt as if they had conspired to build a net about him, what with all their yelling and screaming, to catch him and truss him up for ever. Their questions ate away at him. His head ached, and so did his heart. He felt dreadfully sorry for himself. ‘What did I do?’ he shouted. ‘I didn’t do a thing. Stop shouting at me. Stop talking. Keep quiet. Keep quiet. Keep quiet.’ He went out on to the balcony and slammed the door behind him. But they continued. Even now he could hear them through the door. He climbed up on to the roof.

How he hated his life. It was a never-ending flow of misery. It was a prison he had been born into. The one time he had a little bit of fun, he was curtailed and punished. He was born unlucky, that’s what it was. All about him the neighbourhood houses seemed to rise like a trap, a maze of staircases and walls with windows that opened only to look into one another.

He felt bitter at heart. Surely, he thought, his surroundings were detrimental to his mental health. The sky was a series of squares and rectangles between clothes lines and television aerials, balconies, flowerpots and water tanks. It looked like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle.

How would you approach this problem?

Strangely, for some odd reason, from way off in the distance, he remembered the taunting voice of Father Matthew Mathematics at the classroom board at the Mission School.

Show all steps leading to the end result for full marks.

In his mind the days, his work, his life and even his thoughts all whirled. The same days. The same place. The one road –

The post office at the end of his journey like a full stop.

He did not want another job.

He wanted open spaces.

And he wanted them in large swathes, in days that were clear stretches he could fill with as little as he wished. Here a person’s experience of silence and space squeezed and warped into underground forms that were forced to hide, found in only a few places that Sampath could discover. In his small lapses from duty; between the eye and the print of a newspaper held by someone who never turned a page; in a woman who stared into the distance and past the blur of knitting needles in her fingers; behind muttered prayers; once in a long while in eyes that could look past everything to discover open spaces. But no, Sampath was to be allowed no peace whatsoever. He was found out and turned away from every refuge he sought.

‘Hai, hai, what will become of that boy?’

‘And it took a whole year to find that post-office job …’

Around him large pigeon families cooed and fussed in the flowerpots in an effort, it seemed, to enclose themselves in a world of woolly comfort. Sampath, suddenly angry, stamped his foot to scare them. They rose, only to settle again. Coo, fuss, coo, fuss.

From a window below, his mother’s head appeared, sticking out. Apparently she too was in need of a little quiet after all the noise in the house. He watched as she leaned out, craning her neck to look into the shopping bag of someone returning from the bazaar. ‘Jackfruit,’ he heard her say excitedly to herself. And then, even more excited, so the word came out wrong: ‘Cakfurit. But it will give the whole family heart palpitations!’

He could see the old Bengali teacher too, sitting on his string cot by the gate with his typewriter. He typed loudly and when the little bell went off at the end of each line, he paused and read it aloud.

Mr and Mrs Raipur, who lived in the little room at the edge of the big, crumbling Raipur family home, emerged to walk their baby up and down among the canna lilies in their garden.

‘Such a beautiful baby,’ said Mr Raipur. ‘Oh, what a beautiful baby. Look, it has a face just like mine.’

‘Not at all like yours,’ said Mrs Raipur. And she sang: ‘Small nose.’ She sang: ‘Small nose, pretty rose, tiny mung bean, little little queen.’

Far away, a generator began to roar.

xy = 0 and x ≠ 0, then y = 0. If there is x and y and the result is zero. If x is not zero, y is.

Sampath remembered how he had not at any time ever managed to solve a problem put to him by Father Matthew Mathematics, never managed to rake and weed those forests of numbers and letters upon the board into tidy rows following an orderly progression of arrows to a solution that matched the one in the list of answers at the back of the textbook.

Eating jackfruit in the summer causes anxiety and, in some individuals, ill-temper.

‘Little star,’ sang Mrs Raipur, ‘pretty flower. Rose and jasmine and moonflower.’

‘And cauliflower,’ said Mr Raipur.

‘Radishes. Are those radishes? No, potatoes. Potatoes? No, radishes.’

Somewhere a pressure cooker hissed. Kulfi Chawla climbed the stairs that led from the balcony to the rooftop with a guava. Sorry for her son, she crept up behind him. ‘Would you like a guava?’ she asked. She had been unable to resist buying it, even though it was the first of the season and still a little hard. She pulled his ear affectionately.

He thought of the post office.

‘No,’ he wanted to shout. ‘No, I do not want any guava,’ he wanted to say. But his stomach growled and he took the fruit into his hands. He was cross and grumpy. The guava was cool and green and calm-looking.

The post office. The post office. The post office. It made him want to throw up. He decided not to think of it again.

Guavas are tasty and refreshing and should be eaten whenever possible.

He stared at the fruit, wished he could absorb all its coolness, all its quiet and stillness into him.

‘Oh, what should I do?’ he asked out loud, all of a sudden. ‘What, what, what?’ He stared at the guava intently, ferociously, with a fevered gaze, and gave it a shake. He felt it expand in response, rising under his fingertips.

‘What should I do?’ he said, giving it another desperate shake. ‘I do not want a job. I do not like to live like this,’ he wailed … And suddenly, before his amazed eyes, the surface of the guava rose even more … and exploded in a vast Boom! creamy flesh flying, droplets showering high into the sky, seeds scattering and hitting people on the balconies and rooftops, and down on the street.

‘Ho!’ shouted Lakshmiji, who had been hit in the eye. ‘What is going on there? All kinds of bizarre happenings in that household always.’

But she received no answer. Up on the rooftop, Sampath felt his body fill with a cool greenness, his heart swell with a mysterious wild sweetness. He felt an awake clear sap flowing through him, something quite unlike human blood. How do such things happen? He could have sworn a strange force had entered him, that something new was circulating within him. He shuddered in a peculiar manner and then he began to smile.

‘Oh dear,’ said Kulfi. ‘I will complain to the fruit seller, Sampath, beta. Would you like an egg instead?’

Sampath’s bare feet were cold against the floor. A breeze lifted the hair off his forehead. Goose bumps covered his arms. He thought of Public Transport, of the Bureau of Statistics, of head massages, of socks and shoes, of interview strategies. Of never ever being left alone, of being unable to sleep and of his father talking and lecturing in the room below.

‘No,’ Sampath answered. His heart was big inside his chest. ‘No, I do not want an egg,’ he said. ‘I want my freedom.’