The House of Blue Mangoes (9 page)

When he arrived in the village, he had immediately tried to make his presence felt. After the excitement of Salem, he was impatient with the slowness and rusticity of Chevathar. He felt the only way to make his period of exile bearable was to stir things up. He had no doubt that he would succeed in making an impact on the affairs of the village. He had the money, he had the brains, and he had his town-bred sophistication – what could be easier? But he hadn’t reckoned with himself. With his impatience and vanity, he swiftly succeeded in offending everyone of consequence. Muthu Vedhar had beaten him up in the presence of his wife and children, after the lawyer had been overheard referring to Muthu as a stupid buffalo. And he had annoyed Solomon on more than one occasion with his meddling ways. The ordinary villagers were impressed with Vakeel Perumal’s wealth, his two-storey house, and the outdoor lavatory he had had built to his specifications, but Solomon seemed impervious. In Vakeel Perumal’s scheme of things, it was important to get the headman on his side if he wanted to get his own back on Muthu, which he was determined to do. And, if the headman managed to subdue or drive out Muthu, Vakeel Perumal assumed he would automatically become the secondmost important person in the village. His would be the voice Solomon would be forced to listen to, until he, Vakeel Perumal, was ready to move against the headman himself. Although nominally an Andavar, Vakeel Perumal felt no especial loyalty towards members of his own caste. The only thing that mattered to him was his own welfare, so he had no qualms about plotting against a kinsman.

It was immensely frustrating for Vakeel Perumal, then, that nothing was going as planned. Even his latest initiative had ended in disaster. Vakeel Perumal had never meant to have Valli molested. It was a Vedhar woman the thugs had been hired to terrorize in retribution for the attack on the Andavars at the temple. Once the deed was done, the lawyer was sure the tension between the two groups would run so high that it would be easy for a man of his genius to turn it to his advantage. But it hadn’t worked. He might still have salvaged the situation but things had continued to go wrong. Nothing had come of his idea of painting the incendiary message on Anaikal. Who would have expected those two idiots Solomon and Muthu to exercise such restraint? For a few days it looked as though a confrontation might actually take place, in which case there would have been opportunities that he could certainly have used. Now it appeared that there would be no fighting after all, despite the lawyer seeding the village with the rumour that Solomon had hired the thugs in order to discredit Muthu. Vakeel Perumal had half expected Muthu to charge at the headman in a fury and get poleaxed in the process. It hadn’t happened, and he had been very disappointed. But he wasn’t the sort of person to dwell on his defeats for too long, and he had already started planning other schemes.

Vakeel Perumal had considered befriending Father Ashworth soon after he had established himself in Chevathar. But when he noticed his deep interest in India, he had decided the priest was unworthy of his attention. He had none of the contempt for natives that other Englishmen had in abundance, and this in the lawyer’s view was an important disqualification. But now the Englishman was the only person left whom Vakeel Perumal might utilize, so he decided to be nice to him.

He was thinking of Father Ashworth as he read an article in the newspaper about Easter being celebrated the following day. By the time he was halfway through the piece, an idea came to him. He yelled for his wife. When she appeared in the room, he said excitedly, ‘We’re going to become Christians.’

Kamala, a rather stolid woman, was used to her husband’s sudden enthusiasms and said incuriously, ‘Why? I thought we were quite happy being Hindus.’

‘Yes, yes, but Easter is tomorrow.’

‘What about it?’

‘Oh, you stupid woman, that’s when Jesus Christ, the Christian God, is born again.’

‘You mean like one of Narayana’s avatars?’

‘No, no, you madwoman. Anyway, from today you are Mary and I am Jesus Christ.’ These were the only Christian names Vakeel Perumal could find in the rather sketchy account. Just then his younger daughter, Vasanthi, wandered into the room.

‘And what will she be?’ his wife asked, getting into the spirit of things.

Vakeel Perumal was nonplussed for a moment, then he said airily, ‘No harm in her being Mary as well!’

‘And Nirmala, will she be Mary too?’

‘No, she will not be Mary. I’ll find her a name. Get me my shirt and trousers, I’m going to visit the Christian priest.’

Father Ashworth received Vakeel Perumal in the front room of the parsonage.

‘Good morning, aiyah. I’m Jesus Christ,’ Vakeel Perumal began.

The priest wasn’t sure he had heard right and asked with exquisite courtesy, ‘Can I offer you some tea?’

It took a few moments of puzzled conversation before Father Ashworth worked out the purpose of the lawyer’s visit. It had been so long since anyone had come to him asking to be baptized into the faith that it took him a while to come to terms with Vakeel Perumal’s request. Then he grew suspicious. In all the time that he had known the lawyer, he hadn’t detected the slightest interest in Christianity in him. He began quizzing him, and his suspicions deepened. Vakeel Perumal seemed to know very little about the religion. Sensing the priest’s hostility, Vakeel Perumal quickly said that he was prepared to install an idol of Jesus Christ in his prayer room that very day, to which his family and he would do pooja.

‘Christianity does not encourage that form of worship,’ the priest observed.

‘Yes, yes,’ Vakeel Perumal replied, flustered, ‘we won’t do pooja.’

Father Ashworth was about to rise and show his visitor out when Christ’s injunction to His apostles in the Sermon on the Mount came to mind: ‘Judge not that ye be not judged . . .’ Father Ashworth looked at the man before him, and despite his misgivings heard himself say, ‘To be baptized into the one true faith is the greatest gift that any human being can receive.’ As he said this to the lawyer, another image rose in the priest’s mind: of Saul on the road to Damascus. No light illuminated the figure of the lawyer but the glory of Christ’s love had transformed worse men. If the Lord had commanded the man before him to cast off his old raiment and put on the garments of Christ, who was he, Paul Ashworth, ineffectual fisher of men, to object? And his bishop was certain to be pleased. After years of drought this flood of converts (for the lawyer claimed, untruthfully, that in addition to his own family, there were ten others who wanted to become Christians) would be very welcome.

Before the lawyer left, the padre invited him with his family to Easter service the next day and provided him with two editions of the New Testament. He also gave him a choice of Christian names, gently dissuading him from Jesus Christ. They finally settled on Peter Jesu for Vakeel Perumal, Mary for Kamala, and Martha and Hannah for Vasanthi and Nirmala respectively.

Back in his own house, Vakeel Perumal was well pleased with the morning’s activities. He was glad he hadn’t given in to a stray impulse to confess that he’d been behind the attack on the Andavar girl. He had vaguely heard that Christians confessed to priests, but what if the priest told Solomon? He had been disappointed that the priest couldn’t baptize him immediately, but cheered up when Father Ashworth said he would be received into the faith in a fortnight.

Vakeel Perumal put aside the preoccupation of the morning and focused on work that had been interrupted by his reading of the article on Easter. It was a letter to the
Hindu
, the fifty-fourth in a series that he had sent to the newspaper at the rate of one a fortnight. The fact that only one letter had been published didn’t faze him at all. This was something he did in between his other schemes, and he intended to keep it up until the editor gave in and began publishing him regularly.

Today’s letter was little different in substance from the fifty-three letters that had preceded it.

Respected Sir, [Vakeel Perumal wrote]

I would like to draw the attention of the esteemed readers of your great newspaper to the monstrous indignity visited upon the whole clan of persons known as the Andavars. As every member of the Tamil race knows, the Andavars trace their origins to the chief of the Vedic Gods, Indra. These divine origins made the Andavars rulers; indeed, as every Andavar knows, some centuries back, Andavar kings ruled mighty kingdoms that now lie buried under the burning red sands of the teri wastes. Not a day passes when further ruins do not come to light, justifying this belief. When, through dastardly tricks and stratagems, the ancestors of our great race were defeated by the foreigners from the north, the Telugu Nayaks, they were forced into exile. Divested of their lands and privileges, branded as lower castes by the insecure invaders, the Andavars had to learn how to practise a variety of trades for which their refinement had not prepared them. Meanwhile, their enemies were busy fabricating records to show that they were high and the Andavars low, while simultaneously destroying the actual historical records that proved the Andavars were rightfully Dravidian kshatriyas, emperors of the first rank. Woe betides us. But the enemies of the Andavars should beware because we will come again to rule the Tamil lands . . .

Vakeel Perumal rambled on in this manner for a further two sheets, his arguments growing increasingly disjointed and shrill.

Neatly finishing, ‘Your correspondent from Chevathar Village, Meenakshikoil P.O., Kilanad District’, he signed the letter with a flourish: Peter Jesu Perumal. Perhaps they would publish this letter, Vakeel Perumal thought, given that it was signed with a Christian name.

15

Father Ashworth had found sleep elusive as he fretted over the thalaivar’s reaction to Vakeel Perumal’s conversion. Somehow he knew Solomon wouldn’t receive the news gladly. He had decided to delay telling him and now, as he waited by the church door for the Easter service to begin, his nervousness grew. The strains of the opening hymn came to him, sung tunelessly but lustily, and he began the walk that he hated through the narrow, ill-lit wall to the pulpit.

‘
Up from the grave He arose

With a mighty triumph over his foes
.

He arose a visitor from the dark domain

And He lives forever with

His saints to reign
.

He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose
!’

As the last ‘arose’ died away, Father Ashworth stepped out of the wall and read the Collect of the day. The service settled into the familiar pattern, with the appropriate modifications that Easter called for, and he began to relax.

A fleeting memory passed through his mind of an especially ungracious pastor who would deliberately choose obscure hymns that nobody knew and secretly enjoy (of this the young Ashworth was convinced) the discomfiture of his flock. He was beginning to smile when he caught the eye of Solomon, who was glowering at him from the first line of mats, and immediately composed himself. The reason for Solomon’s annoyance was clear: Peter Jesu Perumal, until recently known as Vakeel Perumal, sat two places behind him, with his wife and daughters. They sat stiffly, holding their new Bibles and dressed in their best saris and skirts. Vakeel Perumal was, as usual, resplendent in white trousers and shirt.

The service rolled on, against the deep rumble of the sea in the background. Abruptly a breeze arose, setting the fronds of the palm trees rustling and giving the congregation some small respite from the gathering heat. An incongruous thought popped into Father Ashworth’s head as the sweat began to dry on his cassock: three hundred million years ago, Asia and Africa had been ice-bound at the Pole, while Europe and North America had sweltered at the equator. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the world rearranged itself again in the not-so-distant future? It would set the seal on Chevathar’s perfection if it could be chilly at Easter. The thought passed, and he wondered what he would say to Solomon at the end of the service.

As the Nicene Creed finished, the Reverend Ashworth, carefully avoiding the eye of Solomon, made the day’s announcements. After detailing church activities and births and marriages, he said, ‘And I would now like to welcome into our midst Peter Jesu Perumal, Mary Perumal, Martha Perumal and Hannah Perumal.’

As he read out the last name, the Reverend Ashworth finally looked in Solomon’s direction but the headman was scowling down at the floor. Father Ashworth hoped the spirit of Easter would help sweeten the other’s disposition a bit.

But for now he couldn’t afford to dwell too much on Solomon or Vakeel Perumal; he had a sermon to deliver. He closed his eyes for a moment, lost in the beauty of the one Eternal Truth, and thus dissociated from the confusion of the immediate, launched into his sermon. It was one of the best he had ever given. Without naming Andavar, Vedhar, Brahmin or Marudar, the priest attacked the divisions that rose among men on account of their losing sight of the peace and love of God. ‘Put on the new man,’ the Reverend Ashworth cried, echoing the words of Paul the Apostle, ‘which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.’

No longer shrinking from the eye of Solomon, he lashed at the petty conceits of men. He dwelled on the fact that the paths to God were many and he called for the spirit of Easter to walk abroad in the land. Even his newest recruits seemed to realize that this was a special moment.

‘Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.’

The words flowed over them, welling up from depths that Father Ashworth didn’t know existed within him. He had forgotten his prepared sermon and though he didn’t quite have a vision of the Creator speaking through him, it was almost as though that was indeed the case.

By the time the service was over, the breeze had steadied and become constant; the fronds of the palms fringing the mission compound rustled back and forth like elephant ears. In the shade of two massive puvarasu trees the women of the congregation, supervised by Charity, were organizing lunch. Three long rows of mats were laid out; as the guests sat down, plantain leaves were placed in front of them. When the first serving boys appeared, each guest automatically picked up his leaf and expertly rinsed it with water from his tumbler. In years of plenty, St Paul’s always served a great feast at Easter – avial, two kinds of poriyal, pachidi, raw mango kootu, mutton curry and rice, curd rice and payasam – but this year there was only one main course: mutton biryani followed by paal payasam. However, the biryani was cooked to perfection, each mouthful of rice spiced with nutmeg, clove and cashew-nut, and full of tender meat. As its fragrance filled the air, the members of the flock, seemingly impervious to the heat, glare and flies that swarmed over the food, began to stoop to the serious business of eating.