Red Earth and Pouring Rain
Read Red Earth and Pouring Rain Online
Authors: Vikram Chandra
RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN
“In a word, this debut novel is a marvel.”
—
Long Island Newsday
“
Red Earth and Pouring Rain
has passages of epic grandeur and desolation worthy of Thomas Mallory…. Chandra is imagining and writing with such originality
and intensity as to be not merely drawing on myth but making it. His imagination is visionary.”
—
The Sunday Times
(London)
“Wonderfully told, with vividly atmospheric descriptions, appealing minor characters, and interesting insights into the history
and culture of colonial India. Vikram Chandra’s considerable gifts as a stylist shine here.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
“One of the most accomplished and rewarding novels of recent memory.”
—
Houston Chronicle
“Richly textured and engrossing.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Chandra has constructed a brilliantly conceived story line, and this book certainly will help classify him as a premier teller
of tales. The language used by the young author is mesmerizing.”
—
Denver Post
“In Chandra’s skillful hands this is an engrossing novel…. Time spent here will be all pleasure.”
—
Seattle Times
“Memorable and astonishing.”
—
The Literary Review
(London)
“
Red Earth and Pouring Rain
is an important story… in its breadth and scope, theme and style. For those readers open to experiencing the blurring and
complexity of the twice-told and twice-felt, this is a vastly gratifying work.”
—
Portland Oregonian
“A dazzling multiplicity of stories… it is the story of more than one nation and century; caught up in its fantastical branches
and glowing imagery are delicate and affecting portraits. Metaphor and prose are melded together with a hypnotic quality”
—
The Independent
(London)
“This is an exceptional novel…. An astonishing debut.”
—
India Currents Magazine
“Magical realism with an Asian-American twist.”
—
Library Journal
“Vikram Chandra’s
Red Earth and Pouring Rain
is, quite simply, good fiction, pure enjoyment.”
—
Virginian-Pilot
and
Ledger-Star
“There is much to admire and applaud in this novel —its playful but always intelligent command of its diverse materials; its
implicit creation of contrasts between different civilizations and epochs; its ability to create a world in which gods, monkeys,
Indians, and Englishmen coexist; and the sheer onward movement of its story, or stories.”
—
Times Literary Supplement
(London)
LOVE AND LONGING IN BOMBAY
Copyright © 1995 by Vikram Chandra
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright
Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior written
permission of the publisher.
Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: November 2009
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead,
is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-09286-9
For my father and mother,
Navin and Kamna
Contents
The Strange Passion of Benoit de Boigne.
Ram Mohan Ties a Knot, and Sikander Is Born.
The Book of Learning and Desolation
The Book of Revenge and Madness
Sikander Learns the Art of War.
In London, a Battle Between Immortals.
FOR KIND WORDS
, help, and inspiration, my thanks to Yogi Jain; Gilbert Bose; Roshna and Sudha Kapadia; Robert Mezey; Martha Andresen; Steve
Erickson; Brad Dourif; Wendy James, friend and patron of the arts; John Barth; Donald Barthelme; Lynn Nesbit; Eric Simonoff;
Alexis Quinlan; David Harvey; Amy Storrow; Leslie Richardson; David Davidar; Nicholas Pearson; Jordan Pavlin; Margo True,
who made it possible, for whom each page was written; and my sisters, Tanuja and Anupama.
before.THE DAY
before Abhay shot the white-faced monkey, he awoke to find himself bathed in sweat, a headache already cutting its way into
his skull in a razor-thin line across the middle of his forehead. He lay staring at the slowly-revolving ceiling fan that
picked up dust with each revolution through the hot air, adding another layer to the black stains along the edges of its blades.
Much later, he rose from the bed and stumbled to the door, rubbing his face with the flat of his palms. As he looked out at
the sunlit court-yard with the slightly-dazed eyes of those who go away laughingly on journeys and return only to find themselves
coming home from exile, his mother swayed across the red bricks, carrying a load of freshly-washed clothes on one hip, and
vanished into the stairway leading up to the roof. In a room diagonally across the court-yard from where Abhay stood, his
father’s ancient typewriter beat out its eternal thik-thik, creating yet another urgent missive to a national newspaper about
the state of democracy in India. A single crow cawed incessantly. Abhay forced himself out into the white, blinding square
of heat, feeling the sun sear across the back of his neck, and hurried across it to the damp darkness of the bathroom. He
stripped off his clothes and stood under the rusted shower head, twisting at knobs, waiting expectantly. A deep, subterranean
gurgle shook the pipes, the shower head spat out a few tepid drops, and then there was silence.
‘Abhay, is that you? The water stops at ten. Come and eat.’
When he emerged from the bathroom, having splashed water over his arms and his face from a bucket, his mother had breakfast
laid out
on the table next to the kitchen door, and his father was peering at an opened newspaper through steel-rimmed bifocals.
‘We could still win the Test if Parikh bats well tomorrow,’ said Mr Misra sagely, ‘but he’s been known to give out under pressure.’
‘Who’s Parikh?’ Abhay said. He could see, in a head-line on the front page of the newspaper, the words ‘terror threat.’
‘One of the best of the new chaps. Haven’t been keeping up with cricket much, have you?’
‘They don’t have much about it in the American press,’ Abhay said. ‘When does the water come back on?’
‘Three-thirty’ said his mother as she emerged from the kitchen bearing hot parathas. ‘I thought of waking you up, but you
looked so tired last night.’
‘Jet lag, Ma. It’ll take a week or two to go away.’
‘Maybe,’ Mr Misra said, folding his newspaper. Abhay looked up, surprised at the sudden quietness in his father’s voice, wondering
how much change his father recognized in his eyes, in the way he carried himself. A quick movement on the roof caught his
eye, and he craned his neck.
‘It’s that white-faced monkey!’ he burst out. ‘He’s still here.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Misra. ‘He’s a member of the family now. Mrinalini feeds him every morning.’
The monkey hopped onto the roof from the branches of the peepul tree at the front of the house, loped up to the laundry line
and, with a sweep of its arms, gathered up a sari, a shirt and two pieces of underwear, and raced back to the tree. It waited,
firmly seated in the spreading branches, as Mrs Misra went up the stairs and laid two parathas on the wall that ran around
the edge of the roof and stepped back some four or five paces. The monkey, moving with assurance, as one moves during the
performance of a familiar ritual, swung back to the roof, dropped the clothes, seized the parathas, and clambered back into
its familiar leafy territory, where, after it had seated itself comfortably on a suitable branch, it proceeded to eat the
bread, cocking its head occasionally to watch Mrs Misra as she gathered up the clothes and put them back on the line.
‘It’s still terrorizing you after all these years,’ said Abhay. ‘You should do something about it.’
‘It’s just trying to make a living, like the rest of us,’ Mr Misra said,
‘and it’s getting old. He’s moving pretty slowly now, did you see? Forget him. Eat, eat.’
Abhay bent his head back to his meal, but straightened up every now and then to peer at the peepul tree, where the monkey
was intently devouring its daily bread. Somehow, even as he savoured the strangely unfamiliar flavours of his mother’s cooking,
Abhay was unable to shake the conviction that the animal, secure in the cool shade of the peepul tree, was enjoying its meal
more than he was, and that there was some secret irony, some occult meaning in their unwitting sharing of food. The monkey
finished first and sat with its head cocked to the right, peering intently at the family below, a puzzled look on its face.
It scratched at an armpit, turned and swung itself deeper into the recesses of the peepul, stopped and peered at the sparkling
white house with its little square court-yard, and then abruptly slung itself away into the trees on the adjoining maidan.
That afternoon, in the course of his meanderings over the roof-tops of the city, the monkey found himself in a tree on the
maidan again. More out of habit than from hunger, he negotiated his way to the peepul and vaulted onto the roof. Below, Abhay
was seated at the kitchen table, sipping from a glass of cool nimbu pani, speaking haltingly and somewhat formally to his
parents about his travels and times in a foreign land. As the monkey began his customary gathering of garments, he was surprised
to see Abhay jump out of his chair and dash up the stairs to the roof. Moving as fast as his ageing limbs would permit, the
monkey propelled himself off the roof and onto a branch, clutching just one piece of apparel. A moment later, a nasal howl
of pain burst from his lips as a jagged piece of brick shattered into smaller fragments against his rump. Pausing only to
bare his yellowed fangs in the general direction of the roof-top, the aged monkey disappeared into the trees on the other
side of the expanse of open ground in front of the house.
‘He got my jeans,’ Abhay said. The son of a bitch has my jeans.’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ Mrs Misra said, a little stiffly, irritated by the sudden violence inflicted on a member of the
tribe of Hanuman. ‘You scared him away.’
‘Will he bring them back? Cost forty dollars.’
‘No, he’ll probably drop them somewhere and forget all about it. You’ve lost those pants.’
She walked away, into her bedroom. As Abhay descended from the roof, suddenly aware of the perspiration streaming down his
sides and his mother’s displeasure, he felt an old adolescent anger awaken, sensed an old bitterness tinged with resentment
and frustration leaping up again, ancient quarrels and terrors and reasons for leaving raising their heads, unquiet, undead,
effortlessly resurrected.
