My Days (6 page)

My brother sensed the atmosphere and had somehow made himself scarce, and did not answer when called. For my part, I bolted down my dinner, went to bed, drew the blanket completely over my face, and lay still when I heard Manja's staff pounding the gravel outside. I expected, watching and waiting through the suffocating blanket, to hear Mother's denouncement of us and to have Father come swooping down on us, but nothing happened. I waited to be summoned, long after everyone had gone to bed and all sound had ceased, and only the night lamp was burning. But nothing happened; we had obviously been protected by Mother although betrayed by the sister.

Back to Madras. I had completed the final year at the Lutheran Mission School. The last group photo was taken after a farewell party, with our headmaster sitting in the middle, and the four teachers who were considered to be the cream of the teaching staff flanking him, a dozen or so of the classmates standing up in two rows behind. I have an old print of it—the one group photo which has not yellowed, browned, or dimmed with years, but remained remarkably fresh. It has a brilliance and glow which I find uncanny and embarrassing. It has stood up to the ravages of time, resisting every process of decay. The gloss and sepia tone are not a whit lost. Its freshness saves one from the natural depression that an old photograph provokes. Occasionally I try to amuse myself by recollecting the names of the figures in the photograph. Starting with the headmaster, in his perfect turban edged with a thin lace, and a silk coat buttoned up to his throat, an elegant moustache turned up at the corners with the utmost artistry—I never knew what his name was: one never thinks that a headmaster could have any other name. He was the perfect picture of a headmaster. He was a good man, soft-spoken, but rather inclined to using the cane at the slightest chance; he always prowled around with it in hand but had the good sense to put it away while sitting for the photo. He delivered a regular quota of cane cuts on my upturned palm on most Monday noons, in respect of absence from drill class on the preceding Friday evening. I skipped the class with reckless indifference; Monday the day of reckoning seeming far away and unreal. Six whacks on one's palm (with the choice of taking all the six on one or three on each palm) were less painful than the drill on Friday. On the right-hand side of the headmaster sat Guruswami, who taught us English, Tamil, and mathematics, and who tucked in a thick tuft of hair under a woolen cap, which was constantly popping up owing to the springy action of his tuft. I viewed him as a friend since he sent me on minor errands from the classroom, such as buying him
pan
or a packet of tiffin from the shops across the street, and I felt honoured by such assignments. His face was pock-marked and he was a homeless man, living in the school lumber-room off the upstairs verandah. The other teacher by his side was a soft buttery-faced man whose tuft stuck out of a short, felt headgear known as Christy's (London) cap. He was a mild, mumbling man who taught us history and geography, and was easygoing and more afraid of us than we were of him. He had the craziest name one could devise—Mrityunjayam—which we could neither spell nor pronounce. At the two rows of standing classmates I look hard and long but can't get their names except the one in embroidered cap over his tuft—what a lot of tufts in those days!—Kapali, our monitor, a supreme being, in my view, of dignity and authority. I hung upon his words and felt thrilled when he spoke to me. Where are they and how are they now? As if lost in a vast ocean. I can be sure of only myself in a black coat. (Which our tailor Appu Maistry took months to deliver. He came every month when the crescent moon was three days old, took a long look at the moon from our terrace, and then immediately gazed on my uncle's face for good luck. “‘If one's eyes fall on a virtuous face first thing after glancing at the new crescent, one will have good luck a whole month,' say the shastras,” said Appu. Always in difficulty, he gazed on my uncle's face every month, for he was the only good man within his reach. He could have given me my coat—an old black one he had undertaken to alter—earlier if he had stuck to his machine instead of pursuing good men's faces. But he took months, compelling me to visit him every day. Still, he delivered it with every button stitched, in time for the group photo, where it remains enshrined forever.) I cannot recollect a single other name in the photo, although for eight long years ours was a proud batch, reading, playing, and suffering our teachers together. When we came to the final year at school we held ourselves proudly aloof as became seniors, who occupied the rooms upstairs. We thumped up and down the wooden staircase heavily, authoritatively, as became the gentlemen of the school; stood looking down the parapet wall at the juniors swarming the school ground below, like Olympian gods eyeing fumbling and shuffling pygmies below. But I have to ask, Where are my fellow Olympians at this moment? Perhaps watching grandchildren, or waiting for their arrival from play or for a holiday. If and when through a freak of destiny there is a reunion of our group, I am sure we shall be comparing our lumbago, which keeps one pinned down to the
pyol
of the house, or the hyperacidity that corrodes one from within, converting food into poison, or the blood-pressure that jangles one's ear drums and decrees as in the case of Macbeth, “Sleep no more.” All this speculation on the premise that they are all alive and recognizable. However, if I saw them now sitting in a row on a park-bench, I would pass them without recognition, as they might wonder in turn, “Who is this hairless fellow striding along jauntily, unbecoming his years?” Very much in the strain of my American hotel manager, who told me once, “Son of a gun, you must be as old as I am, though you don't look it; don't push yourself too hard, take care.” He had just recovered from a heart attack, and knew what he was talking about.

A change of school for the fourth form, to an institution called C.R.C. High School, an endowed school whose benefactor's name was too lengthy and was abbreviated for practical reasons. A school with no particular quality of good or evil about it, the chief interest in this change for me being that to reach the school I had to pass through the shopping area beyond the tram-terminus, which gave me a sense of enlarged horizons. School lessons became secondary at this stage—all kinds of other interests kept me absorbed. I became a scout, and proudly revelled in an exclusive world of parades in khaki shorts, double-pocket shirt, green turban, shoulder stripes, gaudy scarf, and a bamboo staff in hand; we saluted each other with the left hand, since it had to come from the heart, which is on the left side. Our great unseen God was Lord Baden-Powell, who had devised this institution in order to make the younger subjects of the British Empire healthy-minded, sturdy, and loyal to God, Crown, and Country. Our three fingers held up in salute were supposed to symbolize this triple loyalty to God, Crown, and Country. But alas, what a miscalculation! We were absorbed into the B.S.A. (Besant Scouts of India, Annie Besant being our President, championing the cause of Home Rule for India), and our three uplifted fingers indicated an oath to serve not God, Crown, and Country but God, Freedom, and India. The anthem we sang at the end of every drill to the tune of “God Save the King” actually said, “God save our Motherland, God save our noble land, God save our Ind.”

We were a very dedicated and purposeful troop that assembled in the compound of a home called Malabari House, for training and drill under a scoutmaster. Performing at least one good turn a day was an inescapable duty for a scout. So we were given little good-turn notebooks in which to record the daily good turns made. It was hard to find any occasion for this fulfilment. I remember watching the street wistfully, hoping someone would stumble down or get run over so that I might rush to him and practise my First Aid (we were taught tourniquet-tying, and bandaging the skull, leaving the ears out). But alas, casualties were rare. I remember many a time jotting down in my notebook, “Gave a coin to a beggar,” or “Unrolled the mat for Granny to sleep on.” A scout started as a “Tenderfoot,” and then was promoted to “Second” and “First Class” and given the appropriate badge for each class. I failed to attain the First Class badge, though I coveted it. I could never light a camp (or any) fire with just one match-stick; my knowledge of knots never went beyond the reef-knot, though there were four others to be mastered; and I could never read the signs and track a buried treasure. I always went astray. With all that, when Lord B.-P. visited Madras, I was one of those (ten thousand) who presented him arms with a bamboo staff.

After scouting, football became an addiction. We called our team “Jumping Stars,” and kicked our football at a place called the Lake. (I don't know why; there was never a drop of water within miles of it; it is still called the Lake or the Spur Tank, though it is arid as a desert.) We were about ten—classed into goalkeeper, full-back, half-backs and centre forward—for each side, and we jealously guarded ourselves from being swamped by more; we had a captain called Jumbu. He collected four annas from each of us from time to time and financed the rest from his own funds. He wore the whitest dhoti and shirt and had the darkest face and hair; he tucked up his dhoti and always played centre forward and had an inborn sense of leadership. We all obeyed him blindly and looked to him to throw out marauders from rival teams, who would arrive earlier and try to take our ground at the Lake. Every day we met him at the corner of Subramanya Pillai Street. I could never guess where he lived, I never knew where he studied. He did not study at my school, but mentioned some unknown school in Saidapet—another world, in our view. God alone knew when he found the time to go to school and return home, as we always found him ready for the team at the street corner, wearing his whitest shirt and hugging a football inflated and ready to be played.

Our team was formed by Jumbu and we were from different schools. As soon as we were finished with school we gathered at the street corner and marched along to the Lake playground, lightly tossing, kicking, and passing the ball over the heads of pedestrians in the street or through the wheels of carriages, from one side of the street to another. People passed along unmindful of the nuisance. We went down Vellala Street, and across Ponni Amman Street and reached the Lake. At the field we had our ground beside the railway line. We rolled up stones to mark the goalposts, divided into sides, and kicked, passed, and dodged until darkness fell. Panting and perspiring and hungry, we turned homeward, retracing our steps; we paused at the street corner again to analyse the day's game and talk about plans for the morrow. We had problems to face sometimes, such as a challenge from a superior team, or fear of losing an evening game as the seams of the ball-cover were splitting at an awkward moment. But Jumbu handled all situations calmly. At the end of the year Jumping Stars did creditably, as out of the ten week-end matches on our records (at best our own composition, perhaps not verifiable) we had won ten—our only reward of victory being the lemons that were distributed, half per head, to quench the thirst; and even those were produced by Jumbu, we never knew how or from where.

A
fter the C.R.C., my uncle got me admitted to the Christian College High School, using his influence as an old student. I felt proud of my new school. I left home with a lunch pack early morning by tramcar to George Town, nearly four miles away, through crowds and traffic into the heart of the city. I had been suddenly let loose into a larger world. Purasawalkam, to which I returned in the evening, seemed a backwood. Christian College was practically the first building on the Esplanade, and beyond it was a road skirting the beach. From the college terrace one had a view of a blue sea and steamers on the skyline, and a salty air blew in all day. Our masters were well dressed, kind, and reasonable men, the students very different from the crowd I had known at the Lutheran Mission and the C.R.C. High School. Spacious corridors, a Gothic tower with a bell, a chapel, well-lit classrooms and halls, and an accessible library. At lunch-time, I carried my packet of rice and curd to a bookshop nearby and ate it behind the enormous shelves. It was one of the oldest bookshops in Madras, importing books from all parts of the world. I cannot explain why I was supposed to go there to eat my lunch, except that the proprietor was related to my uncle, who wanted to make sure that I ate my lunch in peace and privacy. After lunch, I browsed through the book-titles in the shelves until I heard the booming bell at the college tower. Some days, if there was a longer recess, 1 crossed the road, hopped over the railings, and wandered through the enormous corridors of the High Court (the same place that had received a knock from
Emden
years before), making myself inconspicuous so that the sergeant who prowled around crying, “Hush, silence, silence,” could have nothing against me. At the end of the day, I raced along with some of my class fellows to the Beach Station, clambered on an electric train, and got off at Egmore, the station nearest my home, saving thus the one-way tram-fare. I never bought a ticket for this journey, but on the advice of experienced friends, jumped off at Egmore and scampered through the coal-yard. I continued this practice until I bragged about it one day at home and was severely reprimanded by my uncle, who warned me that I might find myself in jail for this adventure.