The Hope of Shridula (6 page)

Shridula flopped back down onto her sleeping mat. "But it is so delicious to hear the names of the food and think about their tastes!"

"
Dal,"
Zia said. "
Dal
and rice."

Yes, yes, lentils ground and boiled into a thick soup, and spiced with curry and hot peppers. So good!

"
Sambar,"
Ashish said.

Mmmm, vegetable stew. Her father's favorite.

Zia smiled. "
Rasam,
of course."

Oh, the thought of that tangy, spicy, soupy tamarind concoction! It made Shridula's mouth water.

"And rice with
ghee?"
Shridula asked.

"I do not know," Zia answered. "Young Master is not as generous as his father was." Rice smothered in melted butter was, after all, the food of the gods. "But perhaps. Perhaps."

"Fried yams," said Ashish. "And curds. All kinds of delicious fruits, too."

"And
payasam!"
Shridula exclaimed. "Sweet milk pudding! Oh, that is my favorite!"

Who could sleep while the air brimmed thick with such delicious dreams? Who wanted to? Ashish piled away their sleeping mats as Zia and Shridula hurried off to join the women already busy washing and stacking fresh-cut banana leaves. Those large leaves would serve as plates for the day's wonderful meal.

At midday, a group of children dashed into the settlement calling, "It is here, it is here! The food of Master Landlord is here!"

Shridula couldn't help herself. As if she were a child too, she ran to watch. Sure enough, the landlord's bullock cart lumbered down the path. Huge metal pots stacked in the back rattled and clanked together on the rough road. Rice, most likely. Smaller pots had been propped in between the large ones—surely they held the delicious dishes of Shridula's imagination. In every spare opening she saw piles of mangoes and guavas, and long stalks of red bananas.

"Look!" an excited woman cried. "Even a sack of cashew nuts!"

In the courtyard, cut wide by the men and swept clean by the women, laborers feasted until their hungry stomachs were so full they could hardly move. Sometime during the feast, Boban Joseph and Saji Stephen rode up in the horse cart and sat together—watching.

"They eat like animals," Boban Joseph said, though he was careful to keep a smile on his face and his voice low.

The two made their best effort to look pleasant. But neither had the least interest in watching the workers eat, certainly not while sitting in the hot sun. Besides, other than ridiculing the workers or criticizing one another, they had absolutely nothing to say to one another. They put up with it as long as they could. Before long, however, they could suffer no more of each other's forced pleasantness.

Boban Joseph stood up in the cart. "We are pleased to celebrate this wonderful harvest with all of you!" he called out. "Tonight, we invite you to eat your fill. Tomorrow, we give you a gift of one more day with no work!" He waited, smiling, while everyone cheered. "Dinkar will see that you get fresh allotments of rice, wheat, and spices. Enjoy the feast!"

Boban Joseph didn't wait for the cheering to die down. He sat down, turned the horse around, and immediately headed for home. One more day with no work. After that, Dinkar could do whatever he wished to get the laborers back to the fields. And the sooner the better.

That evening, after the men had finished their meal and Saji Stephen's sons had drifted away toward the village, Boban Joseph said to his brother, "Generosity is a wearisome pursuit."

"Perhaps that might be because it is a pursuit so foreign to you," replied Saji Stephen. "As our mother so rightly said, you are a selfish man."

The stresses of the day had already worn Boban Joseph's nerves to a frazzle. He turned on his brother, teeth bared. "And you," he hissed. "What did she say to you? Forever a baby! No use on this earth except to take, take, take!"

Saji Stephen, shaking with fury, glared at his brother. Boban Joseph clenched his teeth and glared right back.

Aaaaaahh . . . lo!

A sudden shriek shattered the stony silence, startling the brothers. Boban Joseph jumped breathlessly to his feet while Saji Stephen sat rooted, screaming for his servant.

Aaaaaahh . . . lo! Aaaaaahh . . . lo!

"It's only that foolish peacock!" Boban Joseph said with an embarrassed laugh. "Who does he think will admire his beauty in the dark of the night?"

"While he sits on a tree branch, hidden by leaves?" Saji Stephen added.

Two servants hurried to the veranda, but Saji Stephen waved them away. For several minutes, he sat in uncomfortable silence while his brother stared out into the dark.

"We are wonderful men from a great family," Boban Joseph finally said. He hefted himself back down onto his father's Persian carpet. "Perhaps what mother meant to say was that an increased show of generosity could further stretch the good will that already exists between the village and us. It is true. That could actually extend the reaches of our business."

"I take no part in the business because no part is offered me," Saji Stephen said with a pout. "But I wish I had thought to remind Mother that I alone contributed sons to carry on the family name. Two fine Varghese men, and they have given me two Varghese grandsons. So far."

"And I provide for all of them," Boban Joseph reminded him. "Quite generously, I might add."

On the last day of her life, Parmar Ruth Varghese had told her sons the truth.

6

May 1946

F
or three days after her grandmother's death, Glory Anna refused to come out of the room that the two had shared for as long as she could remember. She opened the cupboard and lifted out each one of her grandmother's
saris,
all thirty-nine of them. Tenderly she unfolded them one by one. The purple and white silk—so luxurious and soft. It was the one her grandmother had worn to weddings and funerals. The scarlet one, thickly embroidered with gold thread all around the edges and up the front. Oh, how beautiful her grandmother had looked in that one! Like Queen Esther in the story from the Bible. The blue and green
sari.
Sometimes Grandmother had dressed Glory Anna up in it. The orange
sari
. . . The yellow
sari
trimmed in brown . . . Glory Anna buried her face in each one and breathed in the singular scent of her grandmother. The sweet fragrance of love.

The girl restacked the
saris
on the cupboard shelves, carefully laying each one back in its place. But before long, she returned to the cupboard and lifted them out all over again. One at a time. All thirty-nine of them.

Parmar Ruth had many lovely things, and each one held memories for her granddaughter. The gold jewelry she always wore—rich and beautiful, though not so many pieces as she used to wear. A silver brush and comb and a mirror to match. A music box carved with a jungle scene and a tiny ivory elephant inside that spun around in time to the music. A shelf filled with books, all of them in English. Her leather-bound Bible.

Glory Anna moved from one thing to the next to the next, caressing each one but leaving them all in their places. All except her grandmother's Bible. That she slipped behind the cupboard where no one would find it should they come to take her grandmother's belongings away.

On the fourth day, Glory Anna dried her eyes, changed into her grandmother's blue and green
sari,
and stepped out of the room.

From the back of the Varghese house came sounds of rambunctious family life: the wife of Saji Stephen's elder son shouted her disagreements with the wife of his younger son, while Saji's three grandchildren ran in circles around the two women, yelling and laughing. Boban Joseph, seated cross legged on the veranda, growled his displeasure.

"Will no one quiet them?" he exclaimed in disgust.

Back when his father had sat on the veranda, everyone who passed by on the road would pause to bow low and call out a respectful greeting. No more. Now, when people passed by Boban Joseph, they averted their eyes and hurried on their way.

His irritation growing, Boban Joseph turned to bellow an order at Saji Stephen's noisy family, but at that moment he caught sight of Glory Anna drifting by in the blue and green
sari.
Her black hair hung loose, and her red-rimmed eyes shined dark and sad. Heartrendingly melancholy. So, so lovely!

"Devi!" Boban Joseph gasped, his voice strange and breathless. He reached out his arms. "Come to me, Devi!"

Glory Anna stopped and stared at her uncle. What was she to do?

"Please, Devi. Come to me!"

Her whole body trembled, yet Glory Anna found it strangely pleasing that her uncle should speak to her at all. He had never done so before.
If
he had actually spoken to her now. What was that name he said?

"What did you call her?" Saji Stephen demanded.

Boban Joseph started at the sound of his brother's angry voice.

"
What
did you call Glory Anna?"

Boban Joseph shook the dreams from his head and croaked an awkward laugh. "Would you deprive an old man of his memories?" he asked.

A cold fear settled in the pit of Glory Anna's stomach.

"I would deprive a disgusting old man of yet another young girl!" Saji Stephen spat.

With a gasp, Glory Anna turned and dashed back to her room. She slammed the door behind her. Then she shoved her grandmother's heavy chest in front of it.

"No, no, Ashish!" Zia insisted. "You must not take our Shridula to the house of the landowner. You must not!"

Ashish looked at the ground. "What is my choice?" he said. "If I do not take her myself, a servant will come and carry her away from us."

"But we must not allow her to be so close to Young Master Landlord!" Zia cried. Panic rose in her voice.

Ashish laid a hand on his wife's arm. "It was not Master Landlord Boban Joseph who sent for her. It was his brother, Saji Stephen."

"But Young Master Landlord is right there," Zia said. "Who will protect our Shridula from him?"

"I will," said Ashish, though he shuddered at the memory of that house.

The threat of the pale English lady. It had protected him all his life, and now he counted on it to protect his daughter, as well. Miss Abigail, at the English Mission Medical Clinic. Many years had passed since he had actually seen her, but once long ago she had stood up against Boban Joseph's landlord father, and had proven that she was stronger than he. The pale English lady—who had the power of the entire British Empire behind her—was the only person the landlord feared. And she had promised to watch over Ashish. Miss Abigail . . . and the British Empire . . . and the Christian God. Shridula would be in their care.

Shridula followed her father down the path, past the farthest field and to the back of the landlord's fine house. She gasped out loud at the sight of it.

"All this is the house of the landlord?"

"For his family, yes."

"It is wonderful," Shridula sighed.

"No." Ashish struggled to pull his mind away from the harrowing memories of that place, and of his childhood tormentor who forced him back. "It is not so very wonderful," he said. "In fact, it is not wonderful at all."

Ashish and Shridula took care not to step their polluted feet onto the landlord's veranda. Her father stood still, his head bowed, but Shridula gazed around her in wonder. She couldn't help herself. Flowers and blooming vines and trees heavy with fruit. Glorious birds with magnificently colored plumes—green and red sunbirds, majestic trogons, and iridescent blue peacocks eager to show off their extravagant tails. Perfume drifting on the breeze from mango blossoms and jasmine in bloom.

"Hello, Ashish." Saji Stephen, bathed and oiled and scented with sandalwood, stood before his childhood playmate. The sun shone bright against the pure white of Saji's silk
mundu
and set the golden threads of the edging to glimmering. Ashish pulled self-consciously at his own dusty garment, just as he had as a child.

Although Saji Stephen was gray-haired and pudgy around the middle—no longer the spoiled child of so many years ago—Ashish stepped back, half expecting him to throw a rock at his stomach.

"This is your daughter?" Saji Stephen asked.

Ashish stood mute.

"She looks small. Still, I suppose she should be adequate to tend to the girl and raise her spirits." Saji Stephen clapped his hands and a servant appeared. "Take this girl to Glory Anna," he said.

Standing at the edge of the garden, among spinach and onion plants, Ashish fought his memories. He had not seen that garden since the day he held Devi's baby and watched Devi break off sunflowers to celebrate the end of his smallpox duty.

"My Shridula must never be far from me," Ashish said.

Saji Stephen stiffened and his face grew dark.

But Ashish stood tall and looked Saji Stephen full in the face. "We are laborers only. You have no other rights over us. If that is not so here in this place, the pale English lady will want to know."

"Come, come!" Saji Stephen said with a sudden laugh. He motioned around the corner of the house to a patch of dirt alongside the veranda. "Sit! You can hear her call from here."

Saji Stephen stepped on up to the veranda and settled himself in a shady spot on his father's expensive Persian carpet. Boban Joseph—seated on the other side of the veranda, his father's leather-bound book of accounts open on his lap— didn't bother to look up.

"My boyhood playmate!" Saji Stephen called to him with a smile. "Remember the mischief we made together?"

Ashish kept his eyes down and his mouth closed.

"We would run out into the pouring rain to that big mango grove on the side of the house and pull ripe fruit off the tree. We would gorge ourselves! We didn't care a bit that water streamed down and soaked us. Remember, Ashish?"

Ashish remembered. One of Saji Stephen's favorite torments was to force him out into the downpour and up into the tree. It was Saji who ate the mangoes. Ashish got the whip.

"Oh, the joys of our childhood!" Saji Stephen said with a laugh.

Boban Joseph looked over at his brother. "Do you think that poor wretch does not remember how you tormented him? Do you think any of us could forget?"

"We have a friendship, he and I," Saji Stephen said to his brother. He spoke as though Ashish were not even there. "He thinks of me as his guardian, and I look on him as my child. His kind is always in need, of course. They could not live without us. If they are good to us, we are good to them."

"But if they offend us, we make their lives impossible. Is that not so?"

"Yes, yes!" Saji Stephen agreed. "Exactly."

Ashish sat silently in the dirt, his eyes fixed on his hands folded in his lap. He could feel Boban Joseph's eyes on him.

"Ones like him do not need anything," Saji Stephen said to his brother, "because they have never had anything. They are not like us, you see."

All day, Ashish sat in the dirt beside the veranda, listening for Shridula's voice. Saji Stephen came and went, but Ashish sat in his place. A servant brought trays of food, which Boban Joseph and Saji Stephen ate noisily. Not a morsel was offered to Ashish. He continued to wait in motionless silence.

"Uncle." Rajeev Nathan, Saji Stephen's elder son, stepped out onto the veranda and bowed first to Boban Joseph, then to Saji Stephen. "Father."

"Sit, sit!" Boban Joseph said with an air of impatience. "Eat."

As Rajeev Nathan reached his hand to the food platter, he glanced up at Ashish and raised his eyebrows. "A Harijan from the fields? Sitting at our doorstep?"