Fireflies in the Night: A Coming of Age Historical Novel Read online

  My mother says, ‘Only if you hold his hand and not let him out of your sight.’

  ‘I will, Amma. I’ll take good care of my little brother.’

  I run to Arun’s crib where he lies quietly, sucking his big toe. I lean to tickle his feet. I hook my arm around his small shoulders. Arun raises his chubby arms to loop them around my neck. As I lift him out of his bed, he nuzzles my ears and I laugh.

  My mother sighs and goes to check on the cooks in the kitchen.

  The next day, Krishnan thumps a large book on the dining table.

  ‘Come, Devi,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you where our home is going to be.’ He flutters the pages until he finds the right spot. ‘There,’ he says, pointing.

  Devi leans her elbows on the table. ‘Assam,’ she says slowly, saying it aloud for the first time.

  It sounds strange. The sound leaves a strange taste in her mouth.

  ‘Yes. Capital Shillong. Land of thick forests, tea estates and the Brahmaputra. That’s the place where the tea you like so much grows. And Cherapunji. It’s the wettest place on earth. Guwahati. Agartala. Jorhat. Tinsukia. Silchar. Tezpur. Close to Manipur, which has a king and Nagaland. I’ll have to tour those places, you know. It’s also near the border to China. So army people too.’

  ‘So far away,’ Devi murmurs. ‘And so many mountains and rivers to cross from here to there.’

  ‘Three days by train to Calcutta. From there it’s only two days. That’s all.’

  ‘That means no more trips to Kerala.’ A shadow falls across her face.

  ‘Not immediately. I don’t think there will be much money left to buy four tickets every year. You know just as well as I do since you do the accounts.’

  She bites her lips as the shadows in her eyes deepen.

  To follow him wherever he is sent: That is her duty as a good wife. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. The cards have been dealt. She has to go along.

  As a good wife, she has to put together a delicious menu, drape silk saris around her and wear those jewels he’s given her, and play hostess at least once a month. Now she has to learn to serve tea and cucumber sandwiches to those British wallahs. There will be plenty of them still in Assam around the tea estates and country clubs.

  From the first day that he brings her to his home in the city, she manages the kitchen and the servants as if she’s been doing it all her life. This too, she knows, she’ll take in her stride.

  It has never been her choice. She does not know what her choice would’ve been if she had one. All she knows is this feeling. This feeling creates a hole, a small one right now, but it will grow into a deep, empty well right in the middle of her body. Already her heart is a lump of lead in her chest. There will be no coconut palms in Assam and no sand. And especially no ocean. All at once, she realizes she will miss the ocean the most. Miss it more than being lonely.

  ‘Acha! Acha!’ I come skipping in, followed by Arun, Anupama and Rufus. ‘Can we see, can we see?’

  ‘Yes, of course, molu, darling girl,’ my father says. He pulls me on his lap and points to the eastern arm of India.

  Arun raises his arms to my mother, who pulls him onto her lap, while Anupama stands by her side.

  ‘Shillong. Guwahati. Dibru… Dibru…’ I read the names out loud. ‘What’s this word, Acha?’

  ‘Dibrugarh. That’s where we’re going.’

  ‘How far away is that?’ Anu wants to know.

  ‘At least five days by train,’ my father smiles as he says this. He knows I love trains.

  ‘Five days? Five whole days by train?’ Anu’s eyes are round with wonder. ‘We’ve never been that long on a train before!’

  ‘No, never,’ I pipe in. ‘Neither has Rufus. I hope he doesn’t get sick like he did the last time.’

  ‘That was not the train, silly,’ Anu replies. Being older, she remembers better. ‘It was because he gobbled up the huge portion of chappatis and potato curry Amma had put on the windowsill to cool.’

  My parents glance at each other and smile at the memory.

  ‘Sometimes he can be really stupid, can’t he?’ my father says, stroking the dog’s head. ‘Did he think that all those chappatis were for him? Did you, you greedy pig?’ he holds Rufus’ head between his hands.

  Rufus sticks out a long tongue and licks his face. My father pats the dog on his head one last time and wipes his face with the end of his shirt.

  ‘That far?’ Anu’s voice is low. ‘Will we able to visit Muthashi during our summer vacations?’

  Muthashi is Thankamuthashi, my maternal grandmother.

  My father is quiet for some seconds. Then he takes a deep breath. ‘I know how you all love to visit your grandmother. I’m afraid that won’t be possible for some time. You won’t be able to do it every year like you did before.’

  At that a deep silence descends upon us, memories of Kerala flooding each mind.

  Ever since I could write, I’ve composed brief letters to Thankamuthashi. That evening too I write to my grandmother.

  ‘Dear Muthashi,

  We are going to Assam. Five days by train, Achan says. We will live in Dibrugarh and Anu and I will go to a new school. Achan says Assam is close to China and Tibet. These countries are near the Himalaya Mountains. The same mountains where Kailasa is in those stories you told me.

  How are the cows and goats? We are fine. Hope you are fine too.

  Your loving granddaughter,

  Kavita.’

  I love my Muthashi. Each time I see her and smell her, I get a knot in my stomach. The further we move away from Kerala, the fewer Malayalis we come across and the less chance I have to hear Malayalam spoken.

  Later, as I’m older, I realize it is because I don’t see her or Kerala for a long time after moving out east that I long for them. Although the move to Assam weakens my link to Kerala pulling out my roots little by little, my mind is filled with images of coconut groves and warm waters, of sandy earth and jasmine flowers, images untarnished by time. I have no bad memories of Kerala. It is the land of backwaters, temples and sandalwood, a place I yearn for with a longing that will never be satisfied.

  Sometimes I think it is because I have spent little time in Kerala that I have such a nostalgic view about it. A glimpse of a coconut palm in a picture is enough to transport me back to it.

  Krishnan stands on the veranda drinking his morning tea. He swallows scalding mouthfuls of it, rubbing his stomach with one hand and stares into the air for a second, his head bent to the side as if listening. He hopes to catch a rumble in his intestines. It will tell him that the visit to the lavatory will not be a disappointment again. He is a man full of hope. Every morning, he goes through the same ritual: a tumbler of tea, then twenty rounds of brisk walking around the house, and he is set for the day.

  But this morning it is not to be. When he has finished his tea and the twenty rounds, there is nothing but a solid lump in his bowels. During the day, the lump will condense further, eliminating noxious gases. It is going to be one of those days when he will have to sequester himself in his office.

  He holds the watering can under the tap jutting out of the wall and fills it. Kneeling near the roses, he reaches into a stainless steel pot with used tea leaves, grabs a handful and spreads it under the bush.

  ‘Darjeeling,’ he murmurs, kneading it thoroughly into the earth.

  The sharp fragrance typical of the Darjeeling tea wafts to his nose. With a clipper, he snips the faded blooms. Reluctant to throw the petals into the bin with garden debris, he crumbles them between his hands and sniffs.

  He looks around his meagre garden. Other than the four rose bushes and a solitary banana tree, it offers nothing else. Madurai is too hot for too long periods, and nothing has time to establish itself before the dry season hits the city. His roses survive only because of his tender, loving care. They droop under the weight of the pink blooms. My father touches the delicate petals.

  ‘Yes. It’ll be all right. I’ll plant new roses
in Assam. And maybe some other flowers too.’

  There is never any doubt in his mind. It is the life he has chosen. Without Devi and the children, it might have been difficult, not insurmountable, but difficult. Together with them, it is almost like an adventure.

  The bedroom is Devi’s favourite room. It is large and airy. Cream coloured curtains billow in the hot air, filtering light and trapping heat. A fan spins lethargically in the middle of the ceiling. Two tall, grey Godrej cupboards stand against one wall. The twin beds are covered with identical cotton spreads and Devi sits on the one to the left before a stack of magazines already a month old.

  They are in the two languages she is fluent in: Malayalam and Tamil. She speaks English too which she picked up during her husband’s first and second postings to Bombay and Delhi. She speaks Malayalam at home, Tamil with the servants and English with the wives of the other Income Tax Officers who all have different mother tongues.

  Devi hoards the magazines in a metal trunk by the window and reads only one each day, preferring to savour them slowly. Two new ones in Tamil have arrived earlier with the newspaper.

  She has learned the intricacies of Tamil because there is nothing else to do in the hot season. Tamil script has nothing in common with her mother tongue Malayalam, yet she masters it in a few months. She likes the Tamil serial novels better than the Malayalam ones. There is something raw and primitive about the language. Love, desire and joy are so vivid, my mother looks over her shoulder wondering if anyone catches the flush rising over her skin.

  She bites her lip as the memory of ‘that night’ rises before her eyes. What an ignoramus she’d been! Her only comfort was the realization he was just as nervous. The sound of giggles and suppressed laughter outside their bridal chamber only increased her sense of embarrassment. Even now, she can’t fathom how unprepared she’d been. But then again, who was there to turn to? Her unapproachable mother? Her aunt who lived in the side wings answering only to her sister? It had always been ‘Devi, you have to learn how to manage the servants.’ Or ‘Devi, you have to know how smooth the batter for the softest idlis has to be.’ It was what her husband expected of her: To manage the kitchen and house and to be fruitful and bear him children.

  Now, after twelve years and three children, the shadow of a doubt grows in her heart. There has to be more between a man and a woman than just the softest of idlis. When he turns to her at night, it can’t just be need. What about passion? And desire? She wishes once, just once, he’d hold her in his arms just for the sake of holding her. But Devi’s tongue is tied: tied in a hard knot by tradition and ignorance.

  She dreams of resting her head against his broad chest and of his arms tight around her. These dreams are silly. A fantasy ignited by what she reads. She will take them with her. Without them, she’ll lose her mind in the tea jungles of Assam. What will she do when he is on tour? She’ll have nobody to talk to! What is the language they speak over there? Assamese? Maybe she’ll learn Assamese the way she learned Tamil. Then she’ll be able to read Assamese novels.

  The clock in the living room chimes three and with a sigh, Devi gets up. She arranges her books back in the trunk, takes a key from the key chain dangling at her waist, and locks it.

  Time to prepare tiffin.

  In the wet part of the kitchen, Gopal grinds rice and lentils for the idli batter. She bends to swipe a finger in the batter spilling out from the round granite grinding stone and rubs it between her fingers.

  ‘Little more, Gopal,’ she says, rinsing her fingers in the jug of water next to him.

  ‘Hunhunh,’ he nods. ‘Maybe fifty strokes more, amma.’

  When Gopal is done, she fills the idli moulds with the batter and puts the stack of moulds in a large pot of boiling water. While the idlis steam, she prepares tea and Horlicks. Using a spoon, she transfers onion chutney from the rectangular grinding stone into a shallow serving plate. She opens a tall tin and takes out the fried chillies. Krishnan loves to crumble fried chillies in yoghurt to eat with the idlis.

  Krishnan dips the quill pen into the pot of black ink and signs his name on the bottom of the page. He is a government tax collector and is, at times also called upon to audit certain citizens.

  As Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, he has the power to do away with tax arrears of anyone he judged to have simply forgotten to pay their taxes and the government alert enough to remind them of their forgetfulness. Every audit is made to measure, leaving all parties happy. The government gets a share, and the citizen leaves his office feeling richer than ever. And never does Krishnan take a rupee for himself.

  ‘This Commissioner-sir is a very good man,’ they say and send him baskets piled high with Bombay Alfonso mangoes. Or it might also be barfis, laddoos and sonpapdi from the DeSouza sweetmeat store.

  All this, he accepts with an elegant namaste, for he has inherited the curse of the Namboodiripads: a sweet tooth. He now hits the bell on his large desk with the palm of his hand that always brings Ulagan, the peon, rushing in.

  ‘Good-morning, saar,’ Ulagan, in clean khakis, announces, saluting. He stands at attention by his side, his shoeless feet tight together.

  If he was wearing shoes, he’d have clicked his heels, Krishnan thinks.

  He’s explained to Ulagan that an Income Tax office is not the army and there is no need to salute him. All of it falls on deaf ears.

  ‘Take these files to the trunk that I will take with me to Assam,’ Krishnan says. ‘It’s in the front room at the house.’

  His office is a room in his home.

  ‘Right away, saar,’ Ulagan replies. He clamps the files under his arm, salutes and turns on his bare feet.

  ‘And send Thampi in,’ Kirshnan adds. Thampi, the head clerk, comes in soon after. Krishnan spends the next hour explaining to him how to initiate the incoming Assistant Commissioner.

  2

  Settling In

  It happens in fairy tales. If you displease a king or queen, they banish you to a land far, far away. My father does not actually displease a king or a queen. He is too honest to survive peacefully. So he is banished to far, far away Assam.

  I was born a year after India’s independence. There are many books on the slaughter following the division of India. And until 1962 and Assam, nothing historically significant happens. Too young to be aware of the agony of thousands, I go towards my destiny.

  As I grow older, I’m curious about this past of mine, a past which is history. Political history, to be specific, which boils down to a single five-letter word: power. And like every event happening in this world, my history has two sides and, unlike moral issues, either can be right. While morals are clear-cut and black or white, politics covers the grey area.

  There’s a limit to how far back my memories reach. But if I could pinpoint one significant moment in my life, it would have to be Achan’s transfer to Assam. This move is a turning point for I spend my childhood years there. And I know now that the breaking up of my family began with the move to Assam.

  Of course, if Achan had known what was going to happen then we wouldn’t have been in Assam. But life does not work that way.

  Assam has shaped me. Assam is why I am who I am.

  As a child growing up in Assam, I have no opinion about Tibet. As an adult, my thoughts about it are ambiguous. Assam is also the place where we all lose our innocence.

  Six months later, we’re on our way to Assam.

  Transfers have always been a way of life for me. Now and then we pack our belongings and move to a new city. A new school means another set of uniforms and new teachers. After Amma and Achan, teachers are the most important adults in my life. I make friends easily, so new friends are part of the usual agenda.

  When I look back at my childhood years in Assam, I can identify precisely the feelings coursing through each person in my family. They are primal and reflect the personality of each one.

  My father, at forty-four, is a man with strict moral principles. He is a Ph
ysics Honour’s graduate of the Madras Christian College and has the tools to face any challenge. The move to Assam is punishment for his honesty. My mother, at thirty-six, is more adventurous than she appears to be. She talks of learning Assamese and getting to know new people. Amma is a high school graduate from Cochin, and her beauty and poise will carry her through the change.

  My sister, Anu, at fourteen, is in a quandary: we won’t be seeing our grandmother in Kerala for a while, but she doesn’t voice the fears or doubts she carries deep within her. My brother Arun is too young to express any sort of feeling. He just roars through events followed by Rufus.

  As for me, I don’t know what is there to be afraid of. Amma and Achan are with us, aren’t they? I’m ten and I look to the change with anticipation and impatience. The train ride will be a long one. It will be cold in the winter months in Assam, Achan says, the land of wild rivers and tea plantations.

  We are a content and close-knit family in 1958. My father is comfortable in his career as a civil servant. He taught at the Madras Christian College for a few years before the spark of adventure lights up in him and he writes his Indian Civil Service exams. We are more at ease with English than with Malayalam. Achan also gets by in Hindi. I believe we children have inherited their genes for languages in their entirety. Anu and I pick up languages just as easily, and Arun will follow in our footsteps.

  My memories of Assam have a crystalline quality to them and each facet of the crystal projects a different phase in our lives there. As a child, I’m unaware of its history and do not concern myself with tragedy and suffering. I live in the present, with a practically non-existent past and a nebulous future.

  When looking at the map of India, my eyes never stray beyond the Himalayas to China. As an adult, I cannot ignore history. I try to layer this historical knowledge into my memories in the way an aquarelle painter slips in shadow and light, but my images of Assam remain uncontaminated by history.