Monsoon Diary (10 page)

Nodding slightly, my grandfather returned to the house. We waited quietly, until his footsteps died away. Then all our pent-up energy and resentment exploded as we wrestled and paddled in the water.

All too soon Ammu came to tell us that it was time to get out. With ancient instinct and innate negotiating skills, she cajoled and threatened fourteen boisterous, temperamental children out of the water so we could get ready for the day.

At breakfast the young ones whined and the older kids argued over who was the fastest swimmer. When I was a teenager, I was responsible for getting the little ones to shut up while my grandfather ate. The women fussed over him in between halfhearted admonishments to us to keep our voices down. Every now and then my grandfather looked up fiercely. Immediately, there was silence. Until the first voice started whispering.

Mornings were the purview of the colonel, who arrived before the first summer visitor and left after the last. The colonel was a person of nebulous descent—no one knew exactly how he was related to them, even though he claimed a relationship with almost everyone in town. He had spent his career in the Indian Army before retiring as a colonel, hence his name.

The colonel was the purveyor of gossip, courier of objects, soothsayer, and savant. He traveled far and wide, and nobody was sure of his exact whereabouts at any given time. Once he showed up at our house in Madras carrying a peacock as a present for my mother. It was a toy peacock for sure, but a giant one. My parents inquired as to whether he had informed any of our relatives in Kerala that he had come to Madras. True to form, he hadn’t told a soul. My father called his daughter, who was frantic with worry, and told her that the colonel was not lost but was on his way back home.

Three qualities endeared the colonel to every woman in the community: he was an expert at managing large groups of children; he doled out juicy bits of gossip; and he knew how to compliment women.

A tall, thin man with a bald pate and spectacles, the colonel was an object of endless fascination for us children because of his many oddities. Every morning we would return from the bathing pond to find him sitting in his armchair reading the newspaper. Periodically, his arm would snake upward to pick out clumps of dry, blood-veined snot from his nose, which he then arranged on the verandah wall like miniature, misshapen hills. After he finished the paper, he would collect all the pieces of snot, roll them together into one large ball, and toss it into the wastebasket like a basketball player shooting a basket.

The colonel did yoga to stay healthy, and he taught us children. He would line us up in the courtyard under the hot sun and shout out commands, perhaps pretending that he was still in the army. In spite of his age, he would wrap and twist his body into an amazing array of poses, which he attempted to get us to imitate.

After an hour of yoga, we would burst into the house, hot and hungry, and collapse on the swing. The swing was a flat sheet of wood the size of a bed. It was suspended by four long chains from the ceiling on the spacious verandah.

The swing was where my grandfather dictated his case notes after breakfast, where my grandmother took her afternoon nap, where husbands and wives exchanged confidences and servants gossiped. During midday, however, the swing belonged to us children. We were cousins united by blood but separated by language. Some of my cousins grew up in Kerala and spoke Malayalam. Others grew up in Bombay and spoke Hindi. My brother and I spoke Tamil. Lacking a common language, we resorted to communicating in English, albeit an English fraught with regional Indian accents.

About a dozen of us would clamber on the swing and play an endless game of train. The swing would become a magic train that visited exotic lands like Paris, Sudan, Korea, and nearby Madras, all in one evening. My brother, by virtue of his geographical expertise, always got to be the ticket collector.

“Paris, next stop!” he would call in an official voice. “And Madagascar after that. Have you got your tickets?”

The driver’s job was up for grabs, and there was always a furious fight for it. Being the eldest, my cousin Kannan assumed responsibility for maintaining fairness. He would come up with an elaborate system of rotation whereby each child got to be driver at least once a month. But nobody was satisfied, especially the younger ones, who complained furiously even when they got to be driver more often than anyone else. My cousin Sheela, who made up in belligerence what she lacked in size, would demand that we overthrow Kannan’s scheme. I was always accused of offering bribes to Kannan, and I would feign outraged anger. Kannan would get mad or disgusted or both and threaten to leave the game. On some days, one of the younger kids would do such a lousy job as driver, propelling the swing in such savage, creaking diagonals, that a disgruntled faction would quit the game and head for the garden.

Two acres of property surrounded the house. And since my grandmother’s idea of gardening was to stand back and let things grow, the garden had become a veritable forest. Fragrant jasmine creepers twined around jackfruit trees; pinegrass grew under papaya. Neem trees sprouted in the oddest places, and since they were considered to be the abode of ghosts, we were strictly warned to keep away from them. Crows cawed constantly, monkeys chattered and gossiped as they swung from banyan branches, parrots called nasty names and flew away hurriedly. And at night the croak of the tree frog put us all to sleep.

ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH our vacation was our family’s annual
shraadham,
a daylong ceremony when the entire clan gathered to pay obeisance to our ancestors. The servants were given the day off, and the women cooked an elaborate, five-course feast that would feed twelve Brahmin priests, two cows, our entire family, and all the crows in the neighborhood. They would lay down banana leaves in the grass, arranging food as carefully for the birds as they did for the guests indoors. Crows were supposed to carry the souls of our forefathers, so the more crows we fed, the better it was for our lineage. It was a good omen if the birds flew in from the south, for that was where the abode of our forebears was believed to be.

There were strict rules. Dairy and grains couldn’t mix and had to be placed in opposite ends of the kitchen; you had to wash your hands after touching leftovers; everything had to be fresh and prepared according to a menu that had been decided on generations ago. It was an ancient system, somewhat akin to Jewish kosher rules, but I didn’t know that as a child.

On
shraadham
day the entire household woke up before dawn. Coal embers glowed like beacons under the heavy bronze cauldrons filled with rice or vegetables. My cousins and I scampered between pantry and kitchen, carrying shredded coconut, water, and spices. My mother and aunts chopped vegetables at a furious pace, while my grandmother presided over the stove.

The men, meanwhile, got a fire pit ready in the hall. They lined the cement floor with bricks, stacked twigs and wood shavings inside, and built a makeshift brick wall around the square pit. At seven-thirty the twelve Brahmin priests arrived. They lit the fire, sat around it in a circle, and began chanting in stentorian voices, bringing back images of the numerous
shraadhams,
marriages, birth ceremonies, and engagements that had been conducted in years past. My grandfather, whose knowledge of Sanskrit verse was as good as any priest’s, joined them with gusto. The rest of the men did as they were told.

Four hours later the priests summoned us from the kitchen. By then the cooking was done. The entire family squeezed into a circle around the dancing fire. As the smoke rose, the priests invoked four generations of our ancestors by name.

“Carry this ghee, O Agni, Lord of Fire, to the ancestors of this family! Bless the procreation of this lineage! Shower them with health, wealth, and happiness!” the priests chanted as we circled the fire, our eyes blurred with tears from the smoke that shrouded the entire room. It was a circle that defined my lineage, my identity, and my place in the world.

As usual, the
shraadham
ended with a feast. The boys were dispatched to the backyard to cut twelve banana leaves, which were wiped clean and placed on the floor for the priests. As the women began to serve the food for the priests, who were the first to eat, we youngsters convened in the neighboring bedroom with paper and pencil. Then the betting began.

As children with hearty appetites who grew up in a joint family, we were used to the large-scale consumption of food. Still, the copious quantities that the priests ate fascinated and astonished us, especially since the elders wouldn’t let us eat until the priests had finished their lunch. As a result, we kids lived in a constant state of hunger on
shraadham
day. First, we had to get up at dawn, which seemed to make our gastric juices work overtime and induce hunger as early as 5:00 A.M. When I complained to my mom that my stomach was rumbling, she handed me a glass of milk. The unstated rule—or was it a rationalization?—was that liquids didn’t count as food. So we could drink as much as we liked but couldn’t eat anything.

By the time noon rolled around, we were nearly faint with hunger. And the rituals still hadn’t ended! All of us were banished to the attic, where we bickered and complained about how much we hated
shraadham
day. We viewed the priests with extreme resentment. Not only did they get to eat first, but they also took their own sweet time to finish the meal, without any consideration for us hungry kids.

It was my cousin Raju who came up with the betting idea. He was eighteen, and we worshipped him slavishly. One year, as we all lolled miserably around the attic, listening to the sounds of the clanging vessels from the kitchen below, Raju suddenly said, “I bet I can guess which one of those twelve will eat the most.”

The rest of us sat up. Raju rummaged around the room and found a paper and pencil. Quickly, he drew twelve columns for the twelve priests and began taking bets. We had names for each of the priests, since we had seen them year after year for the many functions in our house. The one with the loudest voice was Gun Throat; the one who always arrived first was Good Morning; the one with protruding teeth was Jaws; and so it went.

“I bet Jaws will win,” said Raju, placing his yo-yo in the center.

“No way. Gun Throat always eats fast. I bet he will win,” I said, dropping my favorite pencil as my bet.

Raju took down the names of priests and kept track of who bet what. In the end the winners split the profits while the rest of us continued grumbling.

AMMU TOLD US stories every night. Sometimes they were from ancient Indian epics, about virtuous kings and dutiful queens; sometimes they were animal tales from the
Pancha Tantra;
these always ended with a riddle. If we were really good, Ammu would tell us ghost stories.

Vaikom House was filled with ghosts. As a child, I was always tripping over them. I remember a sultry summer afternoon when I retreated into the cool folds of the great tamarind tree in one corner of the property. The afternoon breeze, the gentle swaying of the tree, all lulled me into somnolence.

Suddenly, there was a loud, horrified scream. I opened my eyes to find Ammu standing below, gesticulating wildly for me to come down. As soon as my feet touched the ground, she dragged me inside and into the bathroom. Holding my slithering body in a viselike grip, she began pouring bucket after bucket of water over me.

“Wretched girl!” she hissed. “Who asked you to go up the tamarind tree? Don’t you know that Taylor Sahib’s ghost resides there? Your mother is going to kill me when she finds out about this.” Ammu doused me with water compulsively, as if that would exorcise the ghost out of my body.

“He was an evil man, that Taylor! He committed suicide after that woman left him. Hanged himself on that tree. And you, wretched girl, have gone and stirred up his ghost! What am I going to do with you?”

Ammu twisted my ear and poured another bucket of water over me. My mind was teeming with questions. Who was this Mr. Taylor, and why did he hang himself? Who was the woman? Was she Indian or English? Were they in love? But the buckets of cold water numbed my senses and discouraged questions.

The whole household watched me for a week after that, to see if Taylor Sahib’s ghost had entered my head. Ammu especially followed me everywhere, looking for signs of aberrant behavior. I wasn’t allowed to nap in the afternoon, in case the ghost further penetrated my head. Finally, they decided that I was untainted and let down the vigil.

The tamarind tree became magical to me after that. With a child’s flexible imagination, I attributed many things to the tree. Every type of ghost and gremlin resided in it. Some were good ghosts that brought pots of gold and hid them under the tree. Others were satanic and had to be fought and vanquished. The branches became my weapons, the tree my fort. I would scurry up the branches, swing down the long secondary roots that hung on all sides, and camouflage myself within the green fronds. I was princess, pauper, spy, and warrior.

THE MOST PROMINENT GHOST in Vaikom House was a woman. Ammu called her Mohini. She was supposed to take the guise of a beautiful young woman, lure young people behind a tree, and slap them into stone figures.

“When you come back home at night and hear tinkling anklets behind you, don’t look back,” Ammu would warn in a hushed voice. “That’s Mohini, just waiting for you to turn. She will rush at you, slap you dead, and suck your blood.”

“Don’t worry!” Ammu would reassure our rounded eyes. “She can’t do anything unless you look back. And she will do everything to make you look back—laugh so melodiously that you will think it is music, waft a fragrance so wonderful, you will want to turn and find out where it’s coming from. But
don’t look back!
Or you will become stone.”

On full-moon nights we would gaze out the attic window, wrapped securely in blankets. Our eyes would roam the speckled landscape, straining to catch a glimpse of Mohini’s flowing white sari, listening for the sound of her silver anklets. The coconut palms would rustle in the breeze, the shadows of the full moon would ripple through the darkness. Mohini was definitely taking a walk that night.