Miss Timmins' School for Girls (34 page)

“And then we'll go up and
finish her off, just as we did with all the others,” Shobha would cackle,
rubbing her gnarled hands. Akhila would hoot with glee, the shadow of her
hooked nose and pointed chin thrown large against the wall.

I was walking to Aeolia, my heart thudding against
the brown-paper-covered Hindi notebooks clutched to my chest. I had passed the
Government Holiday Home, the garage of the chained cheetah, and the last loop to
Aeolia, where the streetlights stopped. Murderers were passing before my eyes
like jerky early film clips. The schoolgirls, Mr. Blind Irani, Shankar, and even
the plate-throwing little Jacinta, mewing because of our illicit love.

My legs began to shake violently, and I sat down in
the middle of the road under the last streetlamp. I could turn around and smile
my way back into Merch's room. He would never even bring it up.

Good teacher that I was, even when I flounced out
of his place, missing the swing of my plait behind me, I had remembered to take
the books. I looked at them lying in a neat pile on the road and, on an impulse,
took the first one and flung it up in the air and watched it land spread-eagle
in the culvert beside the road. The moonlight filtered in through the swishing
silver oaks that the British had kindly planted for our benefit.

And then I threw up another book and another, and
then I stood up and started flinging them with abandon—some like discuses,
slicing through the air, some simply launched as high as they would go. When
only one book was left, and I still wanted to rip and hurl, I began to tear the
pages and make them into arrows or crumpled balls and fling them around with
passion. I could not quite read the name, but the writing seemed to be that of
Ranjana Kothari. When I finished, the road was strewn with papers, and
brown-paper-covered books lay around me with gay abandon.

When I started the throwing, I fully intended to
pick them up and chastely take them home. But now that I had torn and destroyed
one, there was no point in saving the rest.

There was no point in going back tomorrow. There
might not even be a tomorrow, for I might die tonight. I might as well burn my
bridges, I reasoned. I went back to the brown notebooks lying scattered like
dead soldiers on a medieval battlefield, lit a match and set one afire, and then
another and another and another. The wind picked up, and burning leaves were
churning around me like Diwali rockets gone awry.

They would be found tomorrow. By which time I could
well be choked or bludgeoned or pushed off a cliff.

The burning had calmed me down. I felt clear and
strong. I could not go on trembling with imaginary ghosts.

I could always shout for the family of the drunken
mali. The eldest son was a strapping lad, and he would not be drunk. He would
handle Kushal or Raswani or the girls or the Hound of the Baskervilles. I
considered taking him with me. But I thought of how I would have to knock on the
door of their hut and then they would shout, Kaun hai, who's there, and I would
lean close and whisper, Charu from next door, but they would not hear, and so
they would shout, Who? and then I would have to shout back loudly, Charu, it's
me, Charu from next door, and then she would shout Who? and with all that noise
my stalker would slide out and stalk another day. No, I must know tonight, once
and for all.

I could creep into my room without switching on any
lights. There were two knives in the kitchen, both blunt and rusted. I could die
of stab wounds or tetanus if the mystery interloper should run out with a sharp
object too. I remembered Merch's Swiss Army knife that he forgot in my room the
other evening after using it to burn off a chunk from a ball of hash. I would
walk with my soft flat Kolhapuri slippers without a sound. I would walk with
swinging arms down the paved passage to the kitchen with the pocket knife
pointing out. I crept into my room.

I found the knife, and found that my hand was
shaking as I pried it open. Merch had bought it from a Rajneesh hippie at Poona
Station, and he was very proud of it. It had the full sixteen attachments,
including the bone toothpick. I decided to open all the instruments on one side.
The knife, the corkscrew, the scissors, and some others, all sharp.

And then I thought, Kushal will be much more wary
this time around. He'll probably gag and bind me before I can lift a finger. I
would be better off going in with a bullhorn, like the one Miss Manson used on
sports day, so I could shout for the mali before I was gagged. If I had thought
this through, I would have picked that up off the hook in the staff room.

Pin's whistle—I had Pin's whistle in the suitcase
below my bed. I had found it lying neglected in her cubbyhole in the staff room
after her death. I remembered her coming back from evening sports, her hair
ruffled, patches of sweat on her blouse, and the whistle still around her neck.
I had taken it in a sentimental fit when I was alone in the room, kissing it
because it had touched her lips. I slid the suitcase from under my bed and dug
it out. Pin's whistle would bring me luck.

With a whistle to my mouth and a sharp octopus
object in my right hand, I walked past the mali's smoking hut and was turning
the corner to the kitchen when I heard hoarse muttering. Was there more than one
person outside my room?

I followed the sound to the back of the kitchen
building and paused at the corner. It was a dark night, but by now my eyes were
open and I could see quite clearly. It was a woman in a sari, crouching. Her
gray hair was no longer in a bun, and her sari was torn and rumpled. She was
talking to herself. It was the Hindi teacher.

She appeared stooped and tired. She got up when she
saw me turn the corner, moved two steps in my direction, and then collapsed
against the wall. I could see that she was panting. She got up and tried to run
as I walked towards her, but she did not have the strength. I held her hand as I
led her to the mali's hut, but it was more for support than restraint. She
seemed broken by her time in the wilderness. She was nodding and muttering; she
did not look at me and seemed not to know or care who I was or where I was
taking her.

The mali's wife made her sit on a blanket in the
corner and gave her water in a tall steel glass. Raswani grabbed the glass with
both hands, drank the water in three greedy gulps. Then she lay down in a small
curled ball like a kitten and fell asleep.

The mali opened up the drawing room of the main
house, from which I phoned Inspector Wagle, who said he would gather his
hawaldars and arrive shortly.

But it was Merch who landed up first. I heard a
knock on the window of my room and then another. In the dark, from the small
slit of a window in the mali's hut, I could see nothing. I sent the mali's son
to look into the matter, and he came back with Merch in tow.

In the dim light of the single naked bulb, Merch's
eyes were bewildered, accusing. I don't even know if he registered the presence
of the sleeping Raswani in the corner at first.

“Why did you just run away without telling me?” he
asked in the angriest voice I have ever heard from him. “I thought you'd gone
for a walk, or to wait at Kaka's. I came here as soon as I could.” I could see
his breath still came fast. The mali's wife gave him water in the same steel
glass.

The Woggle was in a lather when he finally turned
up. He had no place to keep Raswani for the night. “Mahtari,” he said, snorting
in a derisive manner. “This Panchgani lockup was not designed for old women. I
will have to keep her in the school with a hawaldar on duty.” He muttered
morosely, not relishing the task of awakening those virginal white women in the
middle of the night.

As it happened, he did not have to. When he got
there in the white Ambassador car, with Raswani in the back between two
hawaldars, the school was in an uproar of blazing lights and scurrying girls in
flannel pajamas. Nandita had just been found halfway down the table-land cliff.
She was unconscious and in critical condition and was being rushed off to
hospital.

When she came to, Nandita named the murderer. It
was Miss Raswani, she said. Miss Raswani had pushed her over the cliff, shouting
garbled nonsense from the Bible, just as she had pushed the Prince.

When I had come upon her behind my kitchen wall,
she was returning from the struggle, exhausted and frightened by what she had
done. The roaring was finished. She had gone out like a lamb.

Her story was on the front page of the
Poona Herald
, and the third page of the
Times of India
. It was on the front page of the
Evening News
:

HINDI TEACHER ARRESTED IN GIRLS' SCHOOL

The recent mystery of the death of the
British teacher of Miss Timmins' School for Girls in Panchgani under suspicious
circumstances has taken another sinister turn with the attempted murder of a
student at the same school, a fifteen-year-old girl.

The girl, who is in critical condition at
Poona General Hospital, has stated that she was dragged by the hair and kicked
off the cliff of table-land, a plateau in Panchgani, by Miss Usha Raswani, also
a teacher in the same school.

Miss Raswani, who had fled the school soon
after the murder of Miss Prince, had taken to wandering around the village at
night, it is reported. She has been apprehended and has confessed to the murder
of Miss Prince. She has been charged on one count of murder and one of attempted
murder, and is being held in Yerwada jail to await trial.

The second victim—whose name has been withheld
in order to protect her status as a minor—was, according to her police report,
lured by the accused up to table-land and then pushed off. It was the same spot
at which the British teacher, Miss Moira Prince, fell off the cliff to her
death. By good fortune the minor was rescued that night.

“We have to conclude that these are the
doings of an insane mind,” said the local inspector. “It is as much for her own
safety as for the safety of the community that she is being held without bail.”
Inspector Dhananjay Wagle had previously detained two others for the crime: a
local mali and the British principal of the school. The principal, Miss Shirley
Nelson, has been freed, her passport has been released, and she has left for her
native England this morning.

Miss Nelson had refused to make any comment to the
reporters who had mobbed the airport.

And I was free. As free as the
wind in the silver oaks.

Thirty-three

The Tuesday Sari

T
he whole school loved Nandita as they had never loved anyone before. She was a heroine, she had risked her life but solved the murder. Entire classes sent her individual handmade get-well-soon cards. Some third-standard girls sent her pictures of Jesus with inspirational poems. Teachers and matrons set up a sign-up sheet outside the staff dining room to ensure a steady stream of visitors, and her friends were allowed to miss school and go down to Poona to “cheer her up.” Her sisters went twice a week and were given special treatment.

Her spine was damaged, and the general opinion was that she would never walk again. Her father had brought in a Dr. Udwadia, whose name no one had heard before but who was now known through the length and breadth of Panchgani as the all-India authority on spinal neurosurgery. If he could not mend her spine, no one could.

Akhila was with me the day I visited her in the hospital. She was carrying a large number of little plastic-covered autograph books. “Now the whole of standard six has sent these books for her to sign. As though she has nothing better to do,” she grumbled, dropping one.

Akhila told me most of the story in Kaka's taxi, where we sat facing the Pearsall ayah, who was her chaperone, and a young boy with two kid goats who continued to have a baa-baa contest all the way to Vai, where they thankfully got off.

“That day, Miss Mathews took us behind table-land for a walk, and we were sitting behind, you know, just below the first loop of the path that goes to the top, and we saw these two village girls walking down to the valley, both wearing Miss Raswani's saris. The Monday and Wednesday saris. She's had them since we were in standard seven. The Tuesday sari is that horrible yellow-brown one.

“So of course we charged down and asked them where they had gotten those saris. They claimed the saris were theirs and tried to walk away, but Shobha caught the hand of the smaller one, and said, ‘You stole them. We will report you to the police. You are a thief.' The little one was so cheeky. ‘That's what you rich people always think. We people always steal. Go, go to the police, I'll show them where we found the saris.'

“We got them to show us instead. Behind a scrubby bush a little way down towards their shortcut path to their village, they showed us a black trunk. The girls had broken the cheap lock with a rock, it hung dented and loose. Inside we found four neatly folded cotton saris. The two silk church saris were at the bottom. ‘See, we didn't even take the silk. Just took two saris from the top. We were going to wash them and put them back soon,' they assured us.

“The rest of the trunk had petticoats and dressing gowns and some papers. There was one dirty torn sari wrapped into a bundle and pushed into a corner. It was her Tuesday sari.

“And she had disappeared on a Tuesday. And so, of course, we all got very excited. And then Nandita became all quiet. I knew she was up to something, because she stopped giving her opinions. We were all saying this and that, and she just nodded. At least if she had told us, this would not have happened.” Akhila then burst into tears.

We put on our cheery faces as we walked into the room, but Akhila cried as soon as she saw Nandita's broad smiling face popping out of the brace she was wearing. Then we all started crying.

Her body would turn fat on top as she grew older in a wheelchair, I thought, almost choking with pity. I was glad I was not her, though I knew that she was the heroine, and I was not.

Everyone was crying a lot these days; it was a free-flowing kind of time warp. All three of us sobbed for a time, in separate sorrows. In the end, we hugged, she on the bed and I bending over her in an awkward way, wondering if she would ever make love.

But I felt the strength flowing from her body and knew that pity was the last thing she wanted.

And then we settled down on chairs, spent, and talked of unrelated matters and school gossip and
Macbeth
for quite a while, until it was almost time for us to leave. But I wanted to know. And I was not going to leave without asking the question.

I too had gone towards Raswani that day. I had just been luckier than Nandita. Look her in the eye and say what you want to say, I thought. Deformity we both know.

“Nandita, what made you stay behind like that?” I asked. Akhila was shaking her head vigorously at me from behind her friend, pigtails wagging, mouthing “no, no” and waving her hands in case I missed the other cues.

Nandita's voice took on a dry, neutral tone. “I thought at that time that she was not the murderer. I was quite sure it was someone else. I thought she ran away because she was afraid for her own life. When we were examining her trunk, I saw something move behind a bush, and I thought it just might be her, watching us. Raswani had confided in me once; I thought she liked me. I thought if I waited for her alone, she would come to me. I could get her back, and then they could talk to her. She knew everything and was afraid, that is what I thought.”

And then she said, as she would have to for the rest of her life, “I could only do it alone, don't you see? Raswani would never come close otherwise.”

We were all quiet after that. I wished I had not made her go through the pain again.

Nandita turned her face away from me. She nodded to Akhila and closed her eyes.

“She is tired,” said Akhila, smoothing her brow. “We should go.”

Outside the room, Akhila was reproving. “Don't you know you are not supposed to ask her about it?” she said to me sternly.

“No one told me anything about that.”

“Well, you aren't,” she said, huffily. “Now you have gone and upset her.”

“But don't you think she thinks about it all the time? Maybe she wants to talk.”

“We have been told not to. By those who know better. Her father and the doctor have said that it will hamper her recovery. Miss Wilson called our class to the drawing room. Her father was there, and he spoke to us. Now that Raswani has confessed, he said, there is no need for anyone to ask her any more questions about it. For now, at least.”

On the way back, in Kaka's taxi, with the school's chaperone ayah snoring beside us, and a newlywed couple bound for Vai whispering coyly in the front seat, Akhila could not lose out on the glory of telling the rest of the story.

It seems that, on their way down to school, Miss Mathews had broken the girls up into small groups and sent them to collect tadpoles in jars from the little brown puddles, for use in her science lab. And no one noticed that Nandita had slipped away.

They realized they had lost Nandita when they reached school. The girls went up and told Miss Wilson about the trunk and their missing friend. There was no Timmins car, so Miss Wilson and Miss Manson had borrowed bicycles from Shankar and Mallu the bearer and cycled up to table-land, the entire senior school crowding at the gate to watch them sail away into the evening.

Nandita had been finally discovered on an outcrop of rock halfway down the cliff, lying like a broken doll.

Nandita gave her police report. She stated that Miss Raswani had pushed her off the cliff. And then she said no more. Nandita had not told anyone the details of the incident. She refused to talk about it. Traumatized. That was the new word all the girls were using. Nandita had been traumatized and never talked about what happened on table-land.

“But that's what bothers me the most. Nandita is so cautious. What made her so reckless that day?” I said.

“It's because of you. She was so intent on saving you. She was blind to her own safety,” said Akhila with an accusing look, the resentment she had harbored all day bubbling up to the surface. “It's all your fault.”

“Come on, Akhila, do you really think I would want Nandita to be hurt because of me?” I asked. Akhila shrugged and turned her face and stared sullenly out of the window as we shuddered up the ghat.

The residents of Panchgani collected funds to buy the demented Hindi teacher soap and fresh milk in jail. Most agreed that these were the actions of a deranged person. A few said it was Raswani giving up her life for her idol, Miss Nelson. Everyone was relieved that the case was closed.

And I. I packed my bags and left for Bombay as I had always dreamt I would. I did not return to Panchgani until twelve years later, in the summer of 1986.