THE MAGICAL PALACE (35 page)

‘Rahul?’ I was startled by the familiar voice. ‘I was out on the terrace and thought I heard you. What is the matter? Are you all right? Come on up. Don’t sit there, boy.’

I looked up to see Colonel Uncle peering at me from the top of the stairs.

‘Come on up,’ he repeated, his voice gentle, holding his hand out.

I slowly climbed the remaining stairs, clutching the note in my hand, feeling relieved and ashamed at the same time.

‘When did you come back, Colonel Uncle?’ I asked.

‘Just a couple of days ago,’ he replied.

‘Were you at your estate?’

‘Yes, I was. It is good to be back, Rahul.’ Colonel Uncle smiled comfortingly at me. He looked as if he was ready to go to a tea party. He wore a cream-coloured shirt with dark-brown woollen pants and shiny, patent-leather loafers. His maroon-and-cream Argyle sweater added a dash of colour to the ensemble. His military moustache was trimmed neatly.

Colonel Uncle held my hand in his and put his other arm around my shoulder. The door to his apartment was open and we stepped in. When Colonel Uncle had visited us, he had commended me for being almost a young man and I was trying hard to act like one. But his gentleness moved me and I started to cry instead.

I tried to smother my rising sobs, embarrassed by my childish behaviour, and ended up gasping for breath.

‘Rahul, what is the matter? Come, come,’ Colonel Uncle said as he led me to the sofa and sat next to me. He stroked my hair with one hand and held me to his shoulder with the other. ‘Shh … It is all right. You can tell me,’ he crooned softly as I shed my tears all over his lovely Argyle sweater.

Calming down at last, between sobs, I told him what had happened at school. I was dying to tell him about my other great fear—that I was abnormal—but I did not dare.

Colonel Uncle took me by the shoulders and looked straight at me. ‘Did you steal Ranjan’s pen, Rahul?’

‘No, I did not. I am not a thief.’

‘I know. I wanted to ask you myself before I take care of this matter. I am on the board of Trustees of the Hyderabad Royal Academy, you know. My family has been a prominent donor to their scholarship fund for decades.’

I nodded. ‘Will you please speak to Mrs Joshi?’ I pleaded.

‘Yes, I will. Do not take this to your parents. I will handle this. Have you eaten? Your face looks so thin. I baked a cake this afternoon—would you like a slice?’

I nodded, suddenly aware that I was hungry since I had not eaten since lunch break at school. Colonel Uncle went into the kitchen area and reappeared bearing a plate with a generous slice of chocolate cake on it. It was the best cake I had ever eaten.

‘I have to go to a party,’ Colonel Uncle said as I walked to the door, daring to hope that perhaps the nightmare was over. ‘But don’t worry about anything, Rahul.’

I went back downstairs with a kindling sense of relief. I knew that Colonel Uncle would be as good as his word.

‘Rahul, where have you been?’ Ma was annoyed. ‘I have been calling for a while now. You know it is cold and dark outside. I don’t like it when you go away like this.’

‘Sorry,’ I muttered as Rani smirked into her plate of food.

By bedtime, my sense of apprehension had started to build up again. What if Miss D’Souza asked for a signed note in the morning? I slept badly that night, tormented by strange dreams.

When I walked into class the next day, Ranjan and Suresh Khosla, who were in deep conversation, made it a point to
lower their voices while looking at me and then laughed out loud. Soon, the first class started, but Miss D’Souza did not call out my name. Ranjan looked disappointed by mid-morning. He asked Miss D’Souza if he could move to a different seat to protect his belongings and she let him. I wondered if he was angry with me because he suspected something about me and Shubho. Or perhaps he was just angry because he would not get the bicycle his mother had promised him if he came first in class.

The day went by without incident. So did the next. In a few days, it was clear that Colonel Uncle had settled the matter. I hoped he had spoken to Mrs Joshi in his steely voice. It was deeply satisfying to think of that.

After the incident, I avoided talking to Ranjan altogether. I simply did not trust him any more, and he spent more and more time with his new friends. I felt a familiar sense of anger and helplessness grow within me every time I saw him. Even Miss D’Souza had believed him, not me. I wanted to ask him why he had lied to get me into trouble. Dr Bose had been the secretary of the PTA in past years and she and Mrs Joshi were friends. Obviously, Mrs Joshi was not going to punish Ranjan. And, besides Colonel Uncle, there was no one to stand up for me. Though I had not been punished further, the whole class still thought I was a thief. What if Colonel Uncle had been away that day? Would I have been expelled from school? I felt very alone for the next few days, unable to confide in anyone at home about my near-catastrophic experience.

A few days later, I saw Mrs Joshi walking in the corridor. ‘Good afternoon, Teacher,’ I said.

‘Good afternoon, Rahul,’ Mrs Joshi said tartly, slowing down. ‘You were lucky the last time. I will not tolerate bad-
character boys in this school. I will be watching you closely. If I hear any more complaints, you are out,’ she hissed. Her spindly fingers were clenched in frustration and her eyes glittered through her glasses. I could hear the thin gold bangles rattling against her bony wrists.

I kept walking, glad that no one else had been there to witness the scene. If Ranjan told her I was a homo, she would surely contact my parents directly.

In the coming weeks, as the examinations drew closer, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the incident of the lost pen. Everyone except me. The threat of more accusations loomed so great that I barely spoke to anyone any longer.

Meanwhile, the cold snap ended as suddenly as it had begun. After the incident with the spectacles, the monkey became very bold. We started hearing reports of the Mint factory workers’ tiffin boxes being stolen by a very aggressive monkey. I was sure it was the leader of the group living on the grounds. The monkey would watch the workers when they arrived in the morning and wait for lunchtime. Then he would swoop down, grab the tiffin box out of his unsuspecting victim’s hands and run up a tree. He would open the tiffin carrier, which was no mean feat considering that it involved turning knobs and opening locks, ignore any meat or animal products and help himself to all the vegetables, dal and chapattis. Once he was done, he would fling the tiffin container at its owner and leap from branch to branch to disappear into the green trees. From there, he would attack again, jumping on another victim. He had a voracious appetite and would also share his food with
the other monkeys in his troop, who were too timid to steal like him. So, in the course of a single day, numerous attacks would take place.

‘Sahib, this monkey is making life miserable for us,’ Mr Sayeed said one evening, echoing the complaints of his colleagues. Mr Sayeed worked at the Mint in the Metallurgy Research Department. He had made a special trip to Mint House after work to discuss this very urgent matter since it was not work-related. He stood respectfully in the portico, his bald head shining with sweat from the exertion of the long walk from the back gate to the front of the palace. His hands were clasped behind his back, his fingers interlaced and twitching with nervousness.

‘What to do, Mr Sayeed,’ my father said.

But this response did not appease Mr Sayeed. His eyebrows furrowed in frustration and he shook his head dolefully.

‘Maybe you need to scare him so he stops doing this,’ Baba added, anxious to get back to his tea, which was getting cold. He was delegating and putting the matter back in Mr Sayeed’s hands.

The next day, Shankar came up the veranda stairs and said to me, ‘Sahib, come and see what fun Mr Sayeed is having with the monkey.’

I threw my schoolbook down on the table and ran out.

Taking my father’s suggestion to heart, Mr Sayeed had decided to teach the monkey a lesson. He had taken a banana and peeled the top. Then he had taken some chicken droppings and applied them to the banana and replaced the peel. He had taken the banana and put it into a container in his tiffin carrier and was now walking around, looking nonchalant. The tiffin carrier swung to and
fro in his hand. As expected, the monkey leapt down from the tree at lightning speed and snatched the tiffin carrier from his hands. The group of factory workers watching the incident clapped their hands, knowing that their plan was swinging into action. They watched as the monkey leapt up confidently to the lowest branch of the tree. He opened the tiffin carrier and took out the banana.

When I joined the crowd looking up the tree, I saw that the monkey sitting still with a piece of the banana in his hand. His nostrils were flared and he was looking with dismay at his hand smeared with chicken droppings and banana pulp. He raised his hand to his nose, wrinkling his face in disgust. He wiped the offending substance from his hand and smelt it again, still looking revolted. As he proceeded to wipe and smell his hand over and over again, he found the smell of chicken droppings was still there. He began to wipe his hand with increasing madness.

‘Oh, Mr Sayeed! What have you done? This is taking it too far. He will cut his hand open if he continues,’ said Mr Radhakrishna, a devout Hindu. He was a soft-hearted man and much more tolerant of the monkey’s antics than the other Mint employees.

Mr Sayeed and the rest of the people watching were, however, doubled up with laughter. They were very happy to see the monkey’s discomfort.

The poor monkey could not stop wiping his hand clean. Small flecks of blood had appeared on his hand now. Suddenly, he stopped and looked at the laughing crowd. He seemed to understand what was happening. He lay down, both his arms clasped behind his neck, his legs propped up on the branch, and closed his eyes and proceeded to sleep, looking incredibly human.

Mr Sayeed decided that the monkey had learnt his lesson. Indeed he had, for the attacks stopped after that.

And then, there were just two weeks left before the final exams. Ranjan and I were still not on talking terms. Everyone was preoccupied and I was relieved that the other boys were leaving me alone. We only had half day at school each day and spent the afternoons studying at home.

One Saturday morning, my studies were rudely interrupted by a cacophony of screeching and howling.

It appeared that a troop of travelling rhesus monkeys had moved into the palace garden and attacked the resident troop. Now there were two troops of monkeys in the garden and they were fighting over territorial rights. The leader of the invading monkey troop was smaller and younger than the leader of the resident troop. His face had greyish markings and he looked very mean to me. But as he fought the leader of the resident troop, I realized that what he lacked in size he appeared to make up for in strength and viciousness.

Open-mouthed, I watched the monkeys battle it out. Bites, scratches and blood appeared on their bodies and inhuman howls rent the air. The males of the invading troop were trying to forcibly copulate with the resident females and the babies were screaming in terror. I shouted at the invaders, worried that our monkeys would be seriously injured. At first, our monkeys seemed to be losing but, though severely hurt, in the end, they managed to route the invaders. The ground was littered with leaves and broken branches. The mothers tried to soothe the wailing babies.

Then, one of the invading monkeys snatched a baby from its mother and flung it to the ground. It hit the earth with a sickening thud. The mother went crazy, attacking the monkey that had snatched her baby.

I ran to the baby to look at it. I lifted it up, but its head fell to one side like a rag doll, its neck broken. A faint trickle of blood flowed from its nose, otherwise it looked like it was sleeping peacefully. The mother hurled herself at me, stopping a few inches away, baring her fangs.

‘Rahul!’ Rani screamed. ‘Come back or she will attack you!’ Scared, I put the baby back on the ground and stepped away.

The mother grabbed her limp baby and leapt up to a high branch, away from the fight that had started again.

‘This is so sad,’ I cried. ‘Why are they so cruel to each other?’

‘They belong to different troops and only care about their own. There is nothing we can do, Rahul. It is nature and the law of survival,’ Rani consoled me softly.

I did not eat that night, haunted by the image of the dead baby in its mother’s arms, where she held it for the rest of the day. The leader of the resident troop was hurt as well.

At school too, the boys had formed their own troops. The Muslim boys hung out together and did not invite any of the Hindu boys to join them. Ranjan and Suresh Khosla spent a lot of time in the playground, laughing at their own jokes and smoking cigarettes during the lunch break with other members of their posse. If Mrs Joshi knew about this, she turned a blind eye. I tried my best to stay out of situations where I could be harassed, but, not satisfied with accusing me of theft, Ranjan continued to make trouble for me.

The last week before the final examinations started, I went out to the schoolyard one day for the afternoon break. Ranjan and his new friends were crowding around the edge
of the yard and I could hear them whispering as I walked by. Then, suddenly, Suresh Khosla called out: ‘Homo!’

My head swung around involuntarily.

‘See, what did I tell you?’ Ranjan hissed. ‘He does not ever look at Shubho’s girlfriend. He knows what he is. He turned around.’

How I wished to God I had not turned around.

‘Hey, Rahul! Did Amit Puri write you a love letter too?’

Suddenly, as if on cue, the entire schoolyard went quiet. The words echoed off the walls of the buildings, floated through the scalloped entrances, ricocheted off the pillars. I waited for the babble of voices to start again, but there was silence. Then the giggles started and turned into uneasy laughter. Suresh Khosla laughed the loudest. Soon, most of the boys were laughing and pointing at me as if I were a freak. I stood there, frozen, my ears burning. I hated everyone at that moment. Then I turned quickly and walked back to my class. I sat in my seat, my heart pounding, feeling guilty for no reason and hoping that no teacher had witnessed the scene.