Tell A Thousand Lies (10 page)

“Curse my wife. She ran away with her lover,” my teacher said, face hard. For the first time in my life I felt intense distaste for gossip.

The postman shoved the teacher aside, and fell at my feet. “Find a good groom for my daughter, Oh Pullamma Devi!”

If I had those kinds of powers, I’d have got one for myself, wouldn’t I?

Devamma pushed through to making an offering of guavas. The very fruit my friends and I had routinely stolen from her tree, and had our ears twisted for.

Murty
garu
watched for a while, then took charge. “Form two lines, one for the ladies and the little ones, one for the men. No need to trample each other. Don’t fall on Pullamma, stay back, stay back.”

A few men separated from the crowds, and started herding people in lines. The line moved in a ‘U’ – people came from one side, made their offerings, and exited from the other. Finally, I felt as if I weren’t suffocating.

The day lengthened. I sat in a daze, feeling removed from it all. This wasn’t happening to me. That didn’t seem to dampen the ardour of my devotees. They came, and they came, and they came. Lakshmi
garu
must have guided my hands in blessing to a few hundred heads that day. She didn’t seem to tire, because she had a constant smile on her face.

I didn’t say a word. After a while the faces began to blur.

I blanked my mind, trying to visualize myself walking by the river, stick in hand, chasing Chinni and her goats. The sounds outside my head swirled around, not touching me, leaving me in a curious vacuum.

I felt myself being shaken. I blinked.

“Look,” Ammamma hissed.

I found Kondal Rao
garu
at my feet. He lay prone for quite a few minutes before being helped up by his swarthy henchmen. He raised a hand at the clamorous crowd. The noise died away. Turning partially toward me, still facing the gathering of devotees, he began to sob noisily. “Oh Pullamma Devi,” he cried. “You have showered me with such blessings. By making an appearance in your earthly form in my constituency, you have shown the world my chosen path is the right one.”

“Jai Kondal Rao
garu
,” a henchman roared. Long live Kondal Rao
garu
.

“Jai Kondal Rao
garu
,” the crowd roared back.

A man hobbled up on crutches.

Kondal Rao
garu
stepped back.

The cripple touched my feet. “My legs have failed me. Cure me, Oh Devi.”

Lakshmi
garu
guided my hand to the top of his head.

The cripple closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, he bowed to me, and rested a foot on the ground. An expression of wonder swept over his face. He shoved one crutch aside, then the other.

The crowd watched with bated breath.

He took a step, then another, then another. He walked ten steps, circling back to me. He fell at my feet. “Pullamma Devi has cured me. For the first time, I can walk.” He was overcome.

“Jai Pullamma Devi,” Kondal Rao
garu
said.

“Jai Pullamma Devi,” the crowd roared back.

I
had cured him? I had those kinds of powers? I looked at Ammamma.

She stood to a side with Lata and Murty
garu
, face ashen.

First the baby, then this cripple. When the first miracle occurred, I’d been too innocent to recognise it. One miracle, I could overlook. But two? A sense of awe at my own power enveloped me. Kondal Rao
garu
was right. I was a Goddess. I sat up straight, filled with sense of purpose.
Maybe I should stand up to give my devotees
darsanam
.
Everyone deserved an audience with me. I struggled to my feet. Hours of sitting in the same position had caused my legs to go numb.

Ammamma rushed forward and grabbed my arm. “Pullamma Devi needs to meditate now,” she announced to my devotees. She started to drag me into the house.

I tried to pull free. “Ammamma, I need to cure the suffering of these poor people. They need me. I can’t just walk away –”

Ammamma held my arm so tightly, it hurt. “She will give audience again at seven a.m. tomorrow.”

Kondal Rao
garu’s
nostrils flared, but he stepped aside.

“This way,” Murty
garu
said, pointing a hand at the gate. Obediently the devotees bowed before me, and began to file out of the courtyard.

Kondal Rao
garu
joined the exodus.

I watched the leaving devotees with a sense of panic. What was my grandmother doing? “Ammamma! Everyone’s leaving.”

“Not now, Pullamma.”

Why was Ammamma doing this? What would happen to my devotees? How could I let them down? All of a sudden I felt deflated, unable to move, unable to respond. Thoughts seemed to have been sucked from my head. Ammamma walked me past the huge piles of offerings – sweets, coconuts, money, gold and silver ornaments, hair.

I could hear soft sounds of weeping. It occurred to me much later that the person weeping was me.

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Over the next few days, the news of my miracles trickled in. A woman whose jaw I’d touched was cured of cancer. A man, on whose documents I’d hovered a finger, won his case after a twenty year fight in the courts. Four miracles that I knew of. How many others that I knew nothing about?

Ammamma wasn’t letting me do anymore audiences. She had told the devotees that I was in meditation, and was not to be disturbed. What could I do? My poor devotees were desperate for an audience with me, and here I sat, trapped by an unreasonable grandmother.

Ammamma had no cancer I could cure, no court cases I could help win. How was I going to convince her that the powers I possessed were very real?

Chapter 12

Headmaster Steps In

C
lang! Clang!

The wall clock clamoured twelve, shattering the stillness of the night.

Ammamma sat in one corner of the veranda breathing through her mouth, head thrown back, tracking the motion of the fan with her eyes.

Lakshmi
garu,
and her husband, Murty
garu
, sat next to each other, staring bleary-eyed in different directions.

I watched Lata’s head bob when sleep got the better of her, followed by jerky wakefulness – till her head fell to a side again. I huddled next to Lata, head on my knees, feverishly trying to come up with ways out of my predicament. The devotees outside were desperate for an audience with me. I had so much wisdom to impart to them, it was only natural they would repay me with gold, jewellery, silk saris, and money – so much money!

The Vedas, the Upanishads – all the ancient texts that had answers to life’s deeper questions – did they have nothing on dealing with unyielding, unreasonable, stubborn grandmothers? Did Ammamma not realise she was keeping me from the fame and fortune due to me?

To think I’d have been satisfied with a good husband, and a municipal water connection that supplied water during daylight hours.

The gate rattled. I looked up, exhaustion mingling with hope.

“Pullamma, go inside,” Ammamma ordered.

What, she was going to order me, a Goddess, around? At the look on her face, I scrambled to my feet. Lakshmi
garu
and Murty
garu
exchanged a quick glance.

“Let me see who it is,” Murty
garu
said in a fake hearty voice. “If it is the devotees, I’ll send them on their way.” Taking a deep breath, he headed to the gate, opening it cautiously.

It was just Headmaster
garu
. I sat down, heart settling.

“You!” Ammamma jumped up, blood rushing to her face, tiredness forgotten for the moment. “Didn’t I tell you not to blacken my doorstep with your face again?”

Headmaster
garu
was dishevelled, unusual for a man who took pride in his appearance. He was never seen in anything but a pristine white
kurta
and a stiffly starched
pancha
;
now, both these articles of clothing looked like they’d lost a bout with the frisky goat by the tea shack.

A tallish young man, dressed in citified clothes of pants and shirt, followed him in.

Lata bobbed her head from Headmaster
garu
to Ammamma, and back again.

“Please,” Headmaster
garu
said, palms of his hands joined together. “I feel terrible for the trouble Pullamma is in. I am only trying to help.”

“What trouble?” I said.

No one paid attention to me.

“God save me from the likes of you.” I could tell Ammamma’s heart wasn’t in the scolding. She raised her joined palms above her head. “Leave us alone to our misery. I don’t know why the
Yedukondalavadu
is testing us so.”

For Ammamma, every setback in life was a test set by the
Yedukondalavadu
, that God residing on the Seven Hills of
Tirupati
.

“Give me five minutes,” Headmaster
garu
begged. Pushing aside the rickety chair, he sank onto the straw mat on the floor. “Five minutes. That’s all I ask.” He leaned against the leg of the chair, and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms.

“Why should I?”

“Remember
Renuka
?”

“I remember my husband and son-in-law, too, those non-men. What of it?”

I shuddered and closed my eyes, trying not to think of
Renuka
pinni
, not succeeding. Three or four years ago I’d watched
Renuka
pinni
, childhood friend of my mother’s, run through the streets of our village – clothes torn, body full of welts – sobbing in terror as a frenzied mob pursued her. She fell at our doorstep, bleeding profusely, begging for shelter.

Ammamma closed the gate on her, and leaned against it, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Why didn’t you help her?” Malli cried, as Lata and I cowered behind our older sister.

Years later, Ammamma’s reply still had the power to haunt.

“She went beyond our help when she became a witch,” she said of the loving woman who’d helped keep our mother’s memory alive.

An hour later
Renuka
pinni
was dead – stoned by the hysterical mob. Ammamma’s intervention might not have made any difference, but at least
Pinni
would have known we cared.

Now Headmaster
garu
said, “Kondal Rao was behind that incident.”

What was wrong with Headmaster
garu
?

Ammamma snorted.

“It is true,” he insisted. “He planted the dead chicken, and the heap of
kumkum
at
Renuka’s
doorstep.”

I was shocked. In my mind the red
kumkum
powder belonged on the foreheads of married women. To think this, combined with dead chicken, was a sign of witches...

“But Shankar said his wife was behaving abnormally due to
Renuka’s
sorcery.”

“And I’ll say the angle of your nose is causing my granddaughter to come only second in class, instead of her normal first.”

Ammamma made a face.

“Easy to blame Shankar’s wife’s running away on
Renuka
. But the fact is she ran away because of brutal beatings by her husband.”

“But the villagers proved
Renuka
was a witch, didn’t they? When they demanded that she put her hand over fire as a test of purity?”

“Which person do you know whose hand won’t burn when put on fire,
hanh
?” He shook his head in despair. “That girl grew up with your daughters. How could you not believe in her innocence?”

“What can I do if the devil possesses someone’s soul?”

“Like it has possessed Pullamma’s?” he said softly.