Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

25

In the orchard, meanwhile, things were remarkably quiet. In a corner, something in a big pot steamed and simmered with a gentle bubbling sound. It had been bubbling all night already, in preparation for the monkey catchers’ arrival. Kulfi slept near it. As the men absorbed themselves in catching the monkeys, she had thought she would somehow, by hook or by crook, direct the fall of one of the animals right into the cooking pot. Then she would drown it immediately away from attention into a delicious gravy. This was the plan. How exactly it would work, she was not quite certain, but she knew that in the midst of the ensuing confusion she would manage it. The scent of herbs and fruit, of spices and seasonings, filled the air and consequently everyone who slept on the hillside that night dreamt of food, from the watchman’s shed at the top of the road, all the way down into the valley where the police superintendent was still wrapped cosily in his blanket. They dreamt of magnificent banquets, of ladles and spoons so big that battalions of cooks had to be employed in carrying them through vast fogs of steam to simmering cauldrons that spluttered and glowed …

‘A bushel, a drachm, a pint,’ muttered Kulfi in her sleep. ‘A peck, a coomb, a sack, a hogshead, a scruple, a ton. Sandal, madder, cassia, orris root.’ She turned restlessly. ‘Gall nut, cinnabar, mace. Senna, asafoetida, quail eggs, snail eggs, liver of a wild boar, tail of a wild cat …’ She turned around again. ‘Nasturtium leaves, rhododendron flowers, cicada orchids!’ She sat bolt upright. The delicate white and wood-green flowers of the cicada orchid. What would her dish be without them? A tasteless dish, not even half what it should be, a failure, a disappointment. An utter disaster.

She would have to go and fetch this flower, wouldn’t she? She must have it, this exquisitely flavoured, graceful, transparent flower that hinted of moss and forest. She must have it and she must have it immediately! She looked around to see how the night was thinning … It was almost dawn. There was just enough time for her to go up the hillside and back before the monkey catchers arrived. Hurriedly dressing, she took up her spade, her sickle and a coil of rope and disappeared into the shadows, passing as she did so, the spy, who was already hiding in the bushes awaiting the morning’s drama.

Running a high temperature because of the excitement and nervousness he was experiencing, he awaited the dawning of this day that would, he was determined, in the midst of chaos, deliver to him the opportunity he had been waiting for so long: the opportunity to discover exactly what stewed in those cauldrons of Kulfi. ‘If you have a monkey, you will not get lice. To make curd, don’t unsettle the milk. Does a pond clean the mud at its bottom? Does the rain wash the sky? As is the wood, is the meat cooked upon it.’ The past few months had turned him into a man tormented. The lines in his head were like jungle vines entangling him, smothering him. He would have to break free, prove his character to the world. And to himself.

As Kulfi passed by on her way to the forest, she walked so near to where he was squatting, the edge of her sickle knife tickled his nose, but she went on without noticing him.

She did not stop to check on Sampath either, or the rest of the family, which was all for the best, since otherwise she might have noticed the absence of Pinky, who was already waiting under the tamarind tree for Hungry Hop, dressed and ready, just as planned, although she was in an extremely bad temper for some reason she was not able to determine. Yes, who knows why, but she was feeling exceptionally irritable, dissatisfied and angry. Maybe it was just a lack of sleep. As she waited, she hit against the side of the road with a stick. If only Sampath had come along, she would have had somebody to talk to …

But Sampath sat in the guava tree, encased in absolute stillness like a fossil captured within a quiet moment of amber. The watchmen had been dismissed for once, so the monkeys might not be disturbed on this, their last night in the orchard; that they might be in the tree, barely awake, when the monkey catchers arrived.

Sampath had been sitting still a long while. He had watched as the last of the sun disappeared the evening before, as the hills turned soft and blue like woodsmoke and as the bushes, gathering shadow since late afternoon, merged with the darkening air. He had felt the breeze against his cheek, heard the sound of the crickets start up, the first frog’s awkward inquiry into the evening, its rising, ginger croak growing stronger with the night that leaked from the soil and ran from the dark shapes about him. It had seeped from the black bellies of the underground tubers, from the hidden pods of seeds and flowers, from the inky beetles and the hollow-hearted bamboo. He saw the white petals of the night flowers unfold, a speckling of bright stars appear above him; smelled the jasmine his mother had planted and the poisonous datura, watched the wan moths ford the blackness to hover lovelorn over a tobacco flower. Lifting his finger, he traced the magical shapes of constellations, creating them at whim, then let his hand drop back into his lap again.

The night wore on. Down below, all was silent. Still Sampath sat and watched. Once he felt a flutter of terror about his heart, but he did not follow it to its source, did not think ahead to what was to happen the next day, and the flutter died down as quickly as it had started. Hour upon hour went by. The hour of midnight passed. It was Monday, the last day of April, and all was quiet in the orchard. The family slept and the monkeys were silent in the guava tree.

There were ways of thinking about darkness. He could steel himself against it, Sampath thought, close his eyes tight, wrap himself up in his quilt. Or he could let all its whisperings, all its shades of violet, float into him. This impersonal darkness could be comforting as no human attention ever was. He felt the muscle in him relax, and as time drew on he felt strangely calm, felt his thoughts drop away and a strange strength enter into him, a numbness seeping into his limbs. From exhaustion, or resignation, or faith in some new inspiration, who knows? He could not feel the trunk of his body any more, but his senses were not numbed. They grew sharper and he was acutely aware of every tiny sound, every scent and rustle in the night: the stirrings of a mouse in the grass, the wings of a faraway bat, the beckoning scent that drew the insects to hover and buzz somewhere beyond the orchard. Underground, he could hear water gurgling, could hear it being drawn into the trees about him; he heard the breathing of the leaves and the movements of the sleeping monkeys.

Here and there in the branches near him, the season’s last guavas loomed from amidst the moonlit leaves. One, two, three of them … so ripe, so heavy, the slightest touch could make them fall from the tree.

He picked one. Perfect Buddha shape. Mulling on its insides, unconcerned with the world … Beautiful, distant fruit, growing softer as the days went by, as the nights passed on; beautiful fruit filled with an undiscovered constellation of young stars.

He held it in his hand. It was cool, uneven to his touch. The hours passed. More stars than sky. He sat unmoving in this hushed night.

In the van the Hungry Hop boy was growing more hysterical as he drove. What did he want? He wanted to meet Pinky just as they had planned. No. What he wanted was to turn around and go back to his comfortable bed. Then he wanted to wake up and go downstairs for his morning parathas, cooked just he way he liked them. No. What was he thinking? He remembered all of his sisters and aunties waiting for him. In fact, it never happened that he was allowed to eat even his breakfast in peace.

Pinky saw the van appear around the bend in the road that curved down the hillside below her and picked up the bundle of belongings she had brought with her: ‘At last!’ But then, mysteriously, she saw the van turn on to an unpaved farm road and disappear again. She couldn’t have imagined it, could she? From lack of sleep? But that wasn’t like her at all. It must be that fool of a boy. Would she really be able to stand him after all? Well, she would give him a beating with her stick. Just then, the van reappeared. Once more she picked up her bundle. And then …

What!

It made a neat beetle-like turn and disappeared again! ‘To hell with that bloody van,’ yelled the Brigadier. Surely this could not be happening? But again and again, driving sometimes in front of them or sometimes behind, disappearing into side streets, then reappearing, was the icecream van! ‘I am going to shoot him,’ the Brigadier vowed, speaking quietly all of a sudden. ‘I tell you, I am going to shoot that lunatic dead.’

‘Aiii, sir,’ said Mr Gupta, sitting up and squawking like an alarmed bird. ‘Don’t do that, sir. He is only an ice-cream vendor.’

White-faced, the DC hung on to the side of the jeep. What were things coming to? He was caught up in a nightmare. He wasn’t even awake and this was a grisly awful nightmare.

Mr Chawla went to check on Sampath. ‘They will be here soon,’ he said and went back along the path to rejoin Ammaji, who was awaiting the police superintendent at the entrance to the orchard, along with all the roadblock policemen. But the police superintendent was still in bed. For he had decided the night before, in the hope that he might be demoted, to absent himself from this sensitive operation. Happily, with his blanket pulled over his head, he dreamt and snored.

For a minute, the orchard was empty. ‘Aha!’ thought the spy, still hiding in the bush where Kulfi had passed him a little while ago. The cooking pot stood bubbling enticingly as he darted out towards it and, his heart in his mouth, he clambered up the tree beneath which the pot stood. He would position himself above the cauldron so that he might watch exactly what was going on. In his pocket was his collection of vials and string; hopefully, he would be able to take samples from the gravy while seated above it … A man possessed, he edged his way along the branches.

The langurs moved restlessly as morning dawned. The army crawled up the bazaar road. In the back of the Brigadier’s jeep lay the Hungry Hop boy, trussed up with monkey nets, firmly tied to keep him from making any more trouble down one way streets. ‘Let me go,’ he had cried, struggling. ‘Let me go. Today I have to decide my life.’

‘You are not deciding anything,’ the Brigadier had replied. With a scarf taken from Mr Gupta, he tied up the Hungry Hop boy’s mouth.

And the Hungry Hop boy fidgeted and struggled in silence, borne towards Pinky despite his vacillations.

‘There they are, Sampath,’ shouted Mr Chawla when he caught sight of them. ‘Sampath! They are here!’

All of a sudden, with explosive alarm, like a physical expression of an exclamation mark, the langurs leapt out of Sampath’s tree, confusion and terror upon their faces.

‘Keep to the plan,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Get set … Ready … Go!’

Clearly, the langurs were wide awake and likely to escape at any moment. The men leapt into battle formation.

‘What about the nets, you donkeys? You’re supposed to have the nets with you,’ yelled the Brigadier.

They should have been unloaded already. But the nets that were to hold the langurs now held the Hungry Hop boy instead and when the soldiers went to get them, they found their efforts to pull them out of the jeep greatly disrupted by his being entangled in them.

Pinky, hearing the noise, arrived to discover that Hungry Hop had been caught by the army. She looked at him with disgust. Oh, the sorry slug. All trussed up like that! She had never appeared so lovely to him, so angry and scornful. Hungry Hop gave her a pleading look, but the expression on her face was unforgiving. He had let her down at a crucial time.

Mr Chawla ran to Sampath’s tree to bring him down. He should really have been made to descend earlier. It was already getting dangerous. But … wait a minute –

‘Sampath,’ he shouted. ‘Sampath, Sampath, Sampath …’

The tree was empty.

‘Sampath.’ Mr Chawla’s voice rose to a shriek that echoed about the hillside and he clutched at his heart. His worst fears had come true. ‘Sampath,’ he wailed. ‘Sampath, where are you? Where are you?’

Ammaji ran to the guava tree, as over her head the monkeys leapt back into it. Its branches moved like the sea with the slam of froth and rough green water. The monkeys jabbered and muttered, widened and narrowed and rubbed their eyes.

‘Baba,’ wept Miss Jyotsna, who had just arrived to witness this terrible event. She staggered as if she were about to faint — and was caught by Mr Gupta’s waiting arms. ‘Baba, Baba …’

They looked here. They looked there. Up and down the guava tree. In the neighbouring trees. In the bushes. Behind the rocks. They stared up into the branches again and again, into the undisturbed composition of leaves and fruit bobbing up and down. Its painfully empty cot. But wait! Upon the cot lay a guava, a single guava that was much, much bigger than the others: rounder, star-based, weathered … It was surrounded by the silver langurs, who stared at it with their intent charcoal faces. On one side was a brown mark, rather like a birthmark …

‘Wait,’ shrieked Ammaji. ‘Give me that fruit. Wait! Sam-path! Sampath!’

But the Cinema Monkey picked up the fruit himself before anybody had time to move and, calmeyed and wise, holding it close to his chest, with the other monkeys following in a band, he leapt from the guava tree’s branches and bounded away.

‘Wait!’

The army chased them, giving up their struggle with the nets. Mr Chawla chased them and Ammaji. The crowd of devotees, who had by now broken through the police lines, and finally even the lazy policemen without their superintendent — how they all ran, wheezing, panting, desperate. Pinky too had joined in the chase. In front of her the Brigadier cut a dashing figure. She was filled with an urge to tweak his buttocks. Hadn’t her father told her to set her sights higher than herself, not lower?

The spy crawled farther along the branches and the sound of a rising tempest filled the air as the monkeys jumped over the wall into the university research forest, the tree tops churning as if a whirlwind were passing through, the monkeys’ path into the mountains traced by a silver trembling through the pines, by a shivering of branches and foliage. The forest birds flew up and scattered in alarm, their cries mingling with the voices down below, the air full of red and blue and black satin, the golden and brass feathers of pheasants and peacocks, woodpeckers and bulbuls …

Still, the monkeys travelled. Higher and higher. Like a gust of wind that comes out of nowhere, rustles through the trees and melts into nothing like a ghost. The crowd stood panting in the orchard. The spy crawled along the branches.

High in a mossy magnolia, gathering orchids, Kulfi was caught up for an instant in a shaking storm, saw a pale blur flash past her. She stood up on the branch where she had been sitting, shielding her eyes against the rays of the sun, to watch as the monkeys climbed on. Up into the wilderness, up to the shoulder of the highest mountain. Here the trees at the very summit wavered for a moment, bowed their heads as if in farewell — and then they were gone. Without a trace.

The air was suddenly still. The birds flew back into the forest. The feathers floated gently down after them.

And in this sudden stillness, from the direction of the orchard, people heard:

A crack!

A howl!

A watery splash!

The sound reached Kulfi in her tree. She turned back down towards the valley. ‘What was that?’

‘Did you hear?’ Pinky fired at the Brigadier with her beautiful big eyes. ‘Did you hear that sound?’

‘What was that?’ asked Mr Chawla and Ammaji, the army men and the policemen, the devotees and the townspeople.

Despite themselves, they drew their attention from the mountain top. Above Kulfi’s enormous cooking pot hung a broken branch. In the pot were spices and seasonings, herbs and fruit, a delicious gravy.

And something else.

Gingerly, they approached the bubbling cauldron.