Tiger Hills (5 page)

Thimmaya burst out laughing. “Where do you pick up such nonsense, woman? If you're so worried, send a brass pitcher along with Devi, she can carry it with her to the toilets there.”

It was Tayi who brokered peace. When had education ever harmed anyone? she asked. Devi was fortunate to be given the chance to attend such an expensive school. “It is the Lord's grace,” she said, “that our child is getting this opportunity for a modern education. One must move with the times.” And what were they here for, the elders of the household? Was it not their responsibility to ensure that Devi grew up well versed in the Coorg traditions? “Don't worry,” Tayi reassured Muthavva, “you and I, we'll see to it that she learns all our customs, and the seven shastras, too.”

The two children were enrolled in the first year at the mission school. The novices directed Thimmaya to the piece goods store in Mercara, where he bought two yards of Cannanore checked cotton. “Cheh,” said a scandalized Tayi, when Thimmaya brought these to her with specifications for a half-sleeved shirt and pinafore. She cut up an old sari, attaching generous lengths to the shirt until its sleeves flapped over Devi's wrists. She then added a broad swath of fabric to the pinafore so that its hem swirled modestly about her ankles. The missionaries were so pleased to have the pretty little girl, only the fifth to have enrolled in the entire school, that they overlooked the liberties Tayi had taken with the uniform.

With Devi by his side, Devanna stopped sniveling and discovered a vigorous aptitude for school. He soaked up his lessons, like dried beans in a thunderstorm, immersing himself in his books like a fish dancing through the floods. He mastered the alphabet, learning to read effortlessly, much to Devi's annoyance as she struggled syllable by syllable. He quickly grasped the labyrinthine principles of mathematics while the other children were still muddling through multiplication and division, able to solve sums almost quicker than the teachers could write them on the blackboard.

His teachers were unstinting in their praise, pointing time and again to the quality of his homework and his impeccable cursive handwriting as a benchmark for the rest of their students to aspire to. At first the class bullies whipped around as soon as the teachers' backs were turned, glowering at Devanna and, sotto voce, promising him a thrashing when school was out. Devi, however, soon put an end to that. Eyes flashing, she would mouth silent abuse back at them until, awed by her vituperation, they returned meekly to their books. It wasn't long before they left off taunting Devanna altogether.

Teacher's pet Devanna may have been, but nobody doted on him more than Reverend Gundert, the head of the mission.

Hermann Gundert had arrived in Coorg over three years earlier. Three years, five months, and sixteen days, to be exact. When the authorities had suggested he start a mission in Coorg, Gundert had known it would be a waste of time. The Coorgs were stubborn, toddy-loving sybarites too attached to their pagan ways to change. They picked and chose among the traditions of the Hindu faith that prevailed in the rest of the country, refusing to budge from their own primitive beliefs in their ancestors and the spirits of the land. Nonetheless, Gundert had acquiesced. After more than a quarter of a century in India and having requested to be transferred every third or fourth year, there were few places left for him to go.

He had gone about setting up the mission with his usual efficiency, successfully petitioning for the land adjoining the Mercara Church. Then he plunged into learning about the Coorgs and their land. He spent hours picking the brains of local Europeans, sifting through their opinions: charming, but somewhat boorish; militant, best to keep a certain distance; hotheaded, but honest to a fault; a handsome race and winsome women. He visited the local library, where he read the accounts of the judges, soldiers, administrators, and other upholders of the Empire who had happened upon Coorg. He employed a tutor to teach him the local language and held lengthy discussions with the mission staff and the town residents. Gundert maintained extensive records of these conversations, distilling all that he had heard and observed into a series of notes.

Note 1: The race is a handsome one of unknown origins. They constitute a highland clan, free from the trammels of caste, with the manly bearing and independent spirit natural in those who have been, from time immemorial, true lords of the soil. [See
A Bird's-Eye View of India, with Extracts from a Journal Kept in the Provinces, Nepal, etc.
by Sir Erskine Perry. London, 1855.]

Note 12: There is a distinct social hierarchy, with great
respect accorded those older than oneself. The touching of an elder's feet is a sign of respect and an opportunity to receive the blessings of one who has lived for a longer time. Every older male must necessarily be referred to as “anna” (pronounced un-nah), or elder brother, and every older female as “akka” (uk-kah). The labourers and the servants must address their masters and mistresses, irrespective of age, as anna or akka. All mothers-in-law are called “maavi” (maavee) and fathers-in-law, “maava” (maa-vaa). The truly old are considered universal grandparents, being referred to by all as “tayi” (tah-yee), or grandmother, and “thatha” (thah-thah), or grandfather …

Note 36: Akin to other highland races, the Coorgs share an unshakable sense of kinship. Each person owes allegiance to his or her family, and each family is bound to every other family and to the land. One is born first a Coorg, and only then an Indian or even a Hindu. Nonetheless, there is a vast pantheon of heathen gods to whom they pray, the two most powerful being Lord Iguthappa or Iguthappa Swami, the God of the hills, and Ayappa Swami, the God of the jungle.

The Coorgs had been hospitable to a fault, Gundert's visits invariably setting off a great fluster and flurry of activity within their homes as the women rushed about, hastily stoking the kitchen fire, donning fresh saris and a slew of ornaments in his honor. He would be received on the verandah with much warmth by the men, where a host of children with suspiciously clean faces and freshly slicked-back hair hung on to every word of the ensuing conversation. They plied him with food and drink, but as soon as he broached the topic of conversion, the Coorgs would turn haughty and distant, telling him in no uncertain terms to stay out of their private affairs. When he persisted, they looked at him incredulously, and then, acknowledging perhaps a kindred obstinacy, they reacted with amusement. They placed the crucifixes and rosaries he gave them with great ceremony among the other
knickknacks displayed in their homes—giving of course a wide berth to the nooks where their own Gods were installed. They then saw him off with reciprocal gifts of their own—sandalwood statuettes, a handsome pair of deer antlers, jars of hog-plum preserves—cheerfully bidding him to visit again. After a year of diligent labor, his only converts had been a gaggle of traders from the neighboring states who had now settled in Coorg.

The Reverend decided to change tack, realizing that the younger generation was the key to the success of his mission. He gave up all overt preaching, restating his primary objective as the establishment of a school in Mercara. The Coorgs had shown an immediate if cautious response, as the wealthier families began to send in their children in dribs and drabs. The quality of teaching was unquestionably better than anything else in the region, and as the months passed and they realized that their children seemed to be in no imminent danger of contracting Christianity, they had slowly gained confidence in the school. It was only a matter of time, the Reverend knew, before the rosters would be full. It was then that he planned to introduce Bible study classes into the curriculum, possibly even a weekly Mass.

The Reverend paid keen attention to his students. They were the hope of this country, its future, and he took his duty of educating them, of civilizing them in the finest traditions of the Western world, to heart. He set high standards, no tougher than the ones he set for himself. Woe betide the child who came unprepared to Hermann Gundert's class. “No,” he would state flatly. “
Nein,
you are incorrect.” The hapless student would make his or her way to the front of the class, where the Reverend would make them stand in a corner.

It was strange, the students marveled among themselves, that despite the fact he never took a cane to them or made them squat holding their ears until their muscles screamed, like some of the other teachers did, it was the Reverend's punishments that seemed the most unbearable. “It's the way he looks at us,” they said, shuddering, “with those blue eyes, the color of the afternoon sky.” It was the way he spoke to them, the controlled, almost too low
pitch of his voice, the refined precision of his disappointment, that reduced even the most callous bully to tears.

Gundert could never quite put his finger on what it was that first drew him to Devanna. Had it been a snippet he had heard, something the teachers had said about the boy's mother, God rest her soul, having taken her own life? But no, it couldn't have been that. Committing suicide was almost a way of life here, if one might pardon the pun. Gundert had discovered to his dismay, soon after he had arrived, that the Coorgs seemed to view taking their own lives as an honorable solution to a wide range of issues. Not a month passed without the news of someone or other having held a gun to their heads, swallowed their diamond rings, or taken a fatal leap into a swollen river.

It had been something else. There were other children more personable than Devanna, but there had been something about his pale face and apprehensive eyes that had made Gundert linger as he read out the roll call that day. He had contrived to sit in on some of the classes, noting with pleased surprise the boy's obvious intellectual prowess. When the mathematics teacher set the class an especially complicated set of sums that Devanna proceeded to solve in his head, without even needing to put chalk to slate, it had sealed the matter for good. Gundert took the child under his wing.

When Pallada Nayak summoned him, Devanna stood before his grandfather, trying not to tremble and wondering what he had done wrong. To his astonishment, the Nayak thumped him on his back, guffawing that things were obviously going well at school since the Reverend had sought the Nayak's permission to give Devanna extra lessons twice a week. It was clear that Devanna had been blessed with the Nayak's brains, quite unlike the rest of his dull-headed brood.

Devanna could scarcely believe his ears. The Reverend had asked for him. Him!

They sat across from one another, the graying Reverend and
his protégé, in the rosewood-paneled study, poring over texts from his personal collection. Devanna loved the feel of those books, the creaminess of the paper, their grainy, gilt edges and the naphthalene smell that rose from their pages, tickling his nose. He enjoyed the guttural sound of the Reverend's voice as he read aloud. Devanna could not understand all of the words, but the poems conjured up pictures in his head, wonderful images of green meadows and stone paths and flowers the like of which he had never seen, flowers with names like cro-cus-es and i-ris-es and daff-o-dils, that sounded to him as beautiful as one of Tayi's songs.

The Reverend was reading aloud one afternoon when something fell from between the pages of the book. Devanna bent immediately to retrieve it, noting curiously the ridged indigo stamp upon its back, “William Henderson & Sons, Photographic Studios.
Madras, circa 1861.
” He turned over the calotype. A much younger Reverend was laughing out at him. He stood beside another young man of stockier build, who seemed equally amused, who struck a pose with a hand on his hip and the other thrust into the lapels of his jacket. “Who is he, Reverend?” Devanna asked timidly, as he placed the calotype on the table. Gundert continued to read as if he had not heard, then stopped suddenly, midway through the poem.

“Olaf,” he said curtly, picking up the calotype and slipping it back into the book. “The man you asked after, his name was Olaf.” Glancing out of the window at the fading light, he shut the book with a snap and abruptly called an end to the lesson. Hurt by the Reverend's brusqueness, Devanna silently gathered up his slate and left.