THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

2001

T
he crows squawked at the break of dawn. From their invisible hiding places in the trees by the road. From atop the broken telephone pole by Komati Satyam’s well. They squawked while hopping from one fallen guava to another under the trees that lined Avadhani’s field, pecking at each fruit in turn for a tiny taste. Now and then, a hesitant koel would take advantage of a precious interval and call out, but all he got in response was a medley of screeches, each one angrier than the last. After a few failed attempts, the koel gave up.

Chanti walked to the side door looking out to the toilets and opened it. Two crows were perched on the telephone pole, trading pecks and scratches in their fight for territory. The day was going to be a clear one, but the sun had not yet risen. Chanti saw the flapping, jousting birds silhouetted against the grey sky.

He put on his slippers and went down the stairs. Beyond the toilets, he saw Chotu standing with his back to him. He was looking out at the parched field with his hands crossed behind his back. In the direction of the sun. In the direction of Ellamma Cheruvu.

The first line of orange appeared on the horizon. The land was featureless in that direction as far as the eye could see. Chanti ambled up to the gate and stood on the opposite side, hands folded, head resting against the chewed wood.

Chotu showed no sign of noticing him. His feet were bare. He stood in the manner of a commander surveying his troops. Even his white pyjamas and kurta did not detract from the image.

Then he said aloud, ‘Nothing has changed. Nothing.’

Half the sun was visible now, the orange glow more pronounced. The dust that had settled over Avadhani’s field shone in an orange light. Chanti looked back at the telephone pole. The two crows were no longer fighting. They had instead given in to reluctant compromise, each taking one half of the top. But they still moved around in circles, twitching and shoving and jostling.

‘Nothing?’ asked Chanti. ‘Did we always have so many crows?’

‘Oh it’s a dead village,’ said Chotu. ‘Crows come to a dead place.’ His eyes hardened against the sun. ‘Dead.’

‘And this dust? This yellow dust?’

Chotu raised his feet and tapped them against the ground with a soft thud. His voice, deep and contemplative, cut through the smell of fresh coconuts that came from Komati Satyam’s field nearby.

‘Dead,’ Chotu said again. ‘Dust gathers on dead things.’

‘That has changed though, hasn’t it? Palem used to be alive when we were here. But now…’

‘Was it, though? Was it really alive?’ His voice gained a notch in volume. He turned to Chotu and pointed at the house. ‘We grew up here.’ He waved his arm in a sweep to include the field, the lake, the guava trees. ‘We played here!’ He stared back at the house and his voice dropped. There was a little quiver on his lips. ‘We sat there, listening to Thatha’s
stories…’

Chanti followed his gaze and saw the swinging, empty bulb holder on the porch.

‘We used to drink water from that well.’

Chanti looked at the well, once the pride of its owner, but now blackened with soot, grime and age. On the powdery earth next to it, a broken pail lay on its side, rope tied around its rusty handle.

‘We grew up here, Chanti,’ said Chotu. ‘Back then, we didn’t know anything else about the world. This was all we had. But now… now if I ask you to draw yourself a drink from that well, would you do it?’

Chanti shook his head.

‘Heck, even I wouldn’t do it. Now we need our Bisleris and our filters, you see.’ He looked down at Chanti’s feet. ‘Look, you don’t even come out without your slippers.’

Chanti said, ‘Thatha’s
field used to be fertile. He used to grow peanuts. And chillies and pulses and wheat and corn.’

‘That was when he was strong enough to work on it, Chanti. Did you see the old man? Does he look like he has it in him to look after this?’

The sun was out completely now and the crows were beginning to quiet down. The top of the telephone pole was empty. Chanti felt a little smarting of the left side of his face, the side that faced the sun.

Chotu grinned at him. ‘He still eats Manikchand and Crane. That hasn’t changed.’

Chanti smiled and nodded.

‘And you don’t speak much, even now.
That
hasn’t changed.’

Chanti shrugged.

‘And Ramana came late.
That
hasn’t changed either.’

Chanti looked up. Chotu’s face had hardened. His jaw muscles were taut and what played on his lips was not an easy-going grin but a sardonic smile of contempt.

‘Well,’ Chanti said uncomfortably, ‘Thatha
did say
she
has come back. Maybe—’

Maybe what, Chanti? She killed him, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But how, Chanti? If she killed him, how did she do it? And that too in broad daylight.’

Chanti’s voice rose; not in the booming way Chotu’s had, but in a petulant whine. ‘I don’t know. Why are you asking me? I am not the one who knows everything about her.’

‘Are you saying
I
am?’

‘Well, you’re the one who—’

‘Enough! If I am the one that knows everything about her, she would have killed me first. Why didn’t she?’

‘I… I don’t know!’

‘I do.’ Chotu stepped closer to him and stared down at Chanti. ‘I
do. Did you see how Sarayu looked at Ramana when we went to the school last night?’

‘Er, no, I didn’t… I didn’t look.’

‘Well,’ said Chotu. ‘
I
did. She looked like she enjoyed watching Ramana,’ and his face contorted in a pained expression, ‘like
that
!’

‘Hey…’ Chanti said.

‘The bitch!’

‘Hey!’

Chotu grabbed Chanti’s shoulders with his massive hands. ‘Chanti, I’ve seen that look before. Way back when we were kids. She likes death. No, that’s not the look of
liking
. She
loves
it.’

Chanti wriggled free of the bigger man’s grip and stepped further back. ‘How dare you,’ he said, in the same sulky voice. ‘How dare you…’

‘I know. I know you like her. But I am asking you—no,
telling
you—to be careful.’

‘I do not!’

Chotu gave him a look that was part pity and part disgust. After making sure that Chanti’s face had sufficiently wilted, he continued, ‘I also know something about Aravind.’

‘Aravind?’

‘Yes,’ said Chotu. ‘Come on, Chanti, stay clued in, man! People say men who don’t speak much think a lot. You don’t seem to do either.’

The sun was a couple of inches above the horizon now. It was beginning to really
smart the skin.

‘Tell me about Aravind,’ Chanti said irritably.

‘You remember how he said he was at the Shivalayam yesterday afternoon?’

Chanti nodded. ‘Yes, yesterday when Avadhani Thatha
asked him.’

‘Good! At least you heard that! Now, I know for a certainty that Aravind was not at the Shivalayam yesterday afternoon.’

‘What?’

‘I said I know—’

‘I know what you said! I am just thinking how… why…’

I know because
I
was at the Shivalayam yesterday in the afternoon and I didn’t see him. That’s how I know he wasn’t there. As to
why
he is lying, I don’t know.’

Chanti rubbed the back of his hand against his forehead and grimaced. ‘It’s getting hot. Do you remember Palem being
this
hot?’

Chotu said, ‘But I can guess why he is lying. Because he was at the school at the time.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘Why? The school is on the way—between the place where the cart stops and Thatha’s
house. If Aravind did not take the round trip to the Shivalayam—
like I did—then he was likely at the school.’

‘Killing Ramana?’

Chotu held Chanti’s gaze simply, with no expression on his face.

‘Killing Ramana?’

Chotu shrugged.

‘But… but…’ Chanti’s puzzled expression gradually changed as he stopped and stared into the distance, and his brow cleared.

‘You understand, don’t you?’

Chanti did not answer. He kept staring, his tongue wedged in between his teeth.

‘Do you still think then, that it was
she
who killed Ramana?’

The breeze from the north picked up and the smell of coconuts grew stronger. Unlike earlier, now there were no sounds other than the sound of the guava branches swaying in the background. Occasionally, a ripe fruit fell to the dust in silence.

Simultaneously, both of them looked in the direction of the house. A hunched, topless figure stood in the doorway, shielding his eyes against the sun. His jaws, clenched tight, moved in a grinding, chewing motion. For a moment, the three of them stared at one another.

Then the figure raised his hand and beckoned.

‘How did you sleep, kids?’ Avadhani asked, slapping a handful of gutkha into his mouth. The two cane chairs in the front room were taken by Aravind and Sarayu. Chanti and Chotu stood by the wall, using their hands to cushion their backs against the rough brick-and-cement surface.

None of them said anything. Aravind thoughtfully nursed his arm with his thumb, and Sarayu blinked through darkened eyes.

‘Not very well, hain?’ Avadhani chuckled. ‘Had any dreams?’

Sarayu looked away.

Avadhani laughed again. ‘I know, kids, this is not a laughing matter. But I told you yesterday, she is back, and none of you believed me. Now Ramana is dead.
Now
do you believe me?’

Aravind said in a low voice, ‘But we killed her.’

‘Who is this ‘her’, boy? Who is she? We call her ‘she’ and we talk of ‘her’ because we don’t know anything about her. Do we know what she is capable of? Do we even know what she is, where she is from, anything? How does one know the unknowable?’

‘But we killed her,’ Aravind said again.

‘How do we know we killed her? We may have killed one part of her while other parts may have been growing all this time around the village.’

Chotu stirred.

‘What is it, Chotu?’

‘I… I don’t feel her, Thatha
.
’

‘Maybe you’ve lost the ability while growing up, boy. Maybe she has gotten more cunning. Maybe now she can hide her tracks better than she used to.’

Sarayu asked, ‘But how, Thatha? You yourself said that day that we’d killed her.’

‘I thought so, my girl. I
hoped
so. And after you left, nothing happened for a long, long time. Until a few months ago, in fact. Maybe she was growing up. Waiting for the right time to strike.’

‘What happened a few months ago?’

Avadhani spat into his tin can. ‘People started to sleep more.
I
started to sleep more. Look at the village now. Back then, at this time of the morning, everyone would be up and about. Look at it now. Everybody’s sleeping.’

Aravind said, ‘You woke up early. We all woke up early.’

‘I wind up my alarm every night and put it on the other side of the room to force myself to wake up, boy. And to keep myself awake, I chew my gutkha.’ He grinned, and his decaying teeth showed clearly. ‘If I stop chewing, I will go back to sleep. I know.’

‘And us?’

‘We all sleep,’ Avadhani went on in a dreamy voice, disregarding the question. ‘And when we wake up, the first thing we want to do is to go back to sleep again. Those people are dreaming right now, my boy. They’re dreaming of the future, and they’re controlling their dreams in ways that they cannot—will not—remember.’

‘But Thatha
,
’ Aravind said again. ‘What about us? Why isn’t she getting us?’

Avadhani shrugged. ‘You five are different, somehow. Remember how you had those first five dreams and you remembered all of them? You also remembered how you changed your dreams. I cannot. I don’t remember what dreams I get. And I don’t remember if or how I am controlling them. But you…
you
can.’

Aravind rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and crossed one leg over the other. He looked at Sarayu, Chanti and Chotu, and said, ‘But why should we care? If there is a being here that is controlling the future of the village, why should we do anything to stop it? Why don’t we just pack up and leave?’

Avadhani sighed and said, ‘Aravind, my boy, when she first came out—when
you
brought her out—how many people was she able to control?’

Aravind looked around him.

‘Five. The five of you. No one else. Yes?’

Aravind nodded.

‘And now? Now she has got the whole village under her and she is keeping them just barely alive. She is keeping them asleep for large portions of the day. Imagine how much of the future she is influencing through them.’

‘I am sure she is, Thatha,’ Aravind said. ‘But how is it any of my concern?’

‘It will be, my boy, when she spreads out of Palem. She will spread to Dhavaleshwaram. She will expand enough to be able to control events in a large enough area to suit her purposes.’

‘Her purposes?’ Chotu asked. ‘What are her purposes?’

Avadhani stretched and grimaced. ‘This bloody body pain. I need some rest.’ He reached into his dhoti
and brought out some more gutkha which promptly went into his mouth. ‘Ah, that’s better. What did you say, Chotu?’

‘What are her purposes?’

Avadhani shrugged and said, ‘We can assume she is a life form—a life form we don’t know anything about, but a life form all the same—and all living beings, as far as we know, think of two things primarily.’ He looked out of the window. ‘Survival and reproduction.’

‘Do we know anything of how she reproduces?’

‘Well,’ said Avadhani cautiously, ‘we can guess. That day you first brought her out, all of you carried a part of her back to your houses. Maybe those parts left your person and entered the ground surrounding your houses and started growing there. Maybe because we killed the
mother
, the growth of these
children
has been slow, and they’ve matured only now.’