Tiger Hills (4 page)

Tayi affectionately patted Gauru's arm. There was plenty of time, she thought to herself. She would pick another moment to talk sense into the girl.

Two days later, Gauru jumped into the family well. The servants found her when they went to draw the morning water, floating facedown, her waist-length hair fanning about her like the tendrils of a water lily.

The Nachimandas went to the Pallada house along with the rest of the village to offer their condolences. Not that she deserves it, the hussy, huffed the village, but we owe it to Pallada Nayak. The body was laid on a reed mat in the courtyard, and people
paid their perfunctory respects. When it was time for the cremation, there was a to-do. Where was Devanna? It was the son's duty to light his mother's pyre. Where had that child hidden himself now? They hunted throughout the house and courtyard, the servants even dispatched as far as the fields to look for him. Pallada Nayak bellowed angrily for his grandson, but of Devanna there was not a sign.

Devi slipped her hand out of Muthavva's grasp and went to find her friend. She knew the secret places where adults would not think to look. She searched in Gauru's closet, already bare of saris, behind the copper water vessel in the kitchen, and in between the lantana bushes, and finally found him lying on his back under the chicken coop.

She squeezed in beside him. Devanna ignored her, but Devi knew instinctively there was no need for words. She scrabbled in the dirt until she found his fingers. She took his hand firmly in hers and there they hid, complicit in their silence as the adults shouted themselves hoarse. They had to cremate Gauru without Devanna, a cousin lighting the pyre instead. And still they lay there, the two children, arms intertwined, amid the mud and chicken droppings, as the afternoon lengthened and the funeral drums fell finally silent.

Pallada Nayak had the servants fill in the well and plant a banana seedling on top of it. There was no mistaking his tone as he addressed his daughters-in-law. “What's done is done. Manage the house with the water from the stream for now; I have summoned the water diviner, who will find us an alternative source of water until such time as the well is purified. There will be no more ill talk of Gauramma or her boy.”

The Kambeymadas came to take Devanna home, but plagued by a vague but persistent guilt, Pallada Nayak suggested that it might be better for all concerned if the boy were raised where he was, under the care of his maternal grandmother. He would return to the Kambeymada home when he was older. It was a convenient
arrangement. Devanna's father readily agreed, with the caveat that he would send a monthly stipend of fifteen rupees for the upkeep of his son. He married again shortly thereafter, a plump, pretty girl from his own village who promptly set about bearing him a brood of children. His visits to Devanna grew infrequent, although it was made clear that the Kambeymada house awaited its son with open arms; Devanna could return whenever he chose.

Devanna took his mother's death as might be expected. He started to wet his bed, waking in the middle of the night whimpering for her. The women of the house would stroke his arm, sadly telling him that Gauru had done the best thing she could; her death mitigated the shame she had brought on the family. “Our raja kunyi, our king child,” they crooned as they tried to get the boy to sleep, but the only thing that quieted Devanna was the promise of a visit to Devi in the morning. It happened so frequently, and he was brought to the Nachimanda house so often, that it wasn't long before Tayi suggested that it might be easier if he simply stayed there. A mattress was laid down for him, alongside the other boys in the house, and here he slept peacefully through the nights. Gradually, Devanna stopped asking for his mother altogether.

They became a staple sight in the village, the pale-skinned firebrand and her scrawny worshipper; if Devi had fascinated him before, Devanna now clung to her like a bedraggled puppy. Devi, in turn, was his guardian and protector. No child dared look askance at Devanna or poke fun at him if Devi was around. “You good-for-nothing louts,” she would howl, launching herself on the offenders, kicking, scratching, and boxing until they begged for mercy. The Nachimanda household accepted this latest plaything of Devi's, absorbing the boy into its fold.

Still too young for the village school, both children frolicked all day long, roaming the fields and the adjoining woods with Tukra and the other servant children as they took the cattle to pasture. The Poleyas taught them to craft slingshots from the fibrous bark of the bairi tree and darts from porcupine quills; they
led them to the secret places where the juiciest mulberries and thickest mushrooms grew. They showed them the sticky honeycombs in the hollows of the kabba trees and the sun-swept rocks where fantastic jewel-hooded king cobras mated at night, or so it was said. They taught them to find the grassy burrows where wild hares lived and to catch crabs using loops of chicken gut for bait.

The crab stream lay at the foot of the fields, a body of rippling water that looked sometimes blue and sometimes the palest green, depending on the light. Devi and Devanna would wade into its shallow end as tiny red, green, and yellow frogs, each no larger than a coin, hopped, alarmed, out of their way. The water lapped warmly at the children's shins as they lowered a rope of intestine into the water, a pink end held firmly in each of their hands. They would wait, grinning in anticipation, as the stream shone around them, the gleam of its surface broken now and again by a movement from some underlying fish. The crabs would scuttle toward the intestine, digging their pincers into its length. Sometimes three, sometimes nine or ten, and one glorious afternoon no fewer than thirty-three crabs. Devi and Devanna had lifted the length of gut from the water, together, in one fluid movement, the crabs clinging unawares, like dark gems along some strange, pendulous necklace.

The rains came. Tayi simmered mutton bones seasoned with onions and peppercorns for hours over the fire to make warming bowls of broth. Mushrooms sprouted around the trunks of trees, and the trail that led to the Nachimanda house turned into mud. Devanna was content to stay indoors, warming his feet by the fire and playing games of cowrie shells and marbles, but Devi fidgeted nonstop, going time and again to the windows to stare out at the water pelting down, slipping out to the verandah to thrust a hand into the rain despite Muthavva's exhortations not to get herself wet.

Finally, the clouds dispersed. The transplanting season, with its long days and backbreaking work, drew to a close, and the hunting season began. Devanna sat on the verandah of the Nachimanda house, hunched over a pile of bark from the kanni tree. Thimmaya
was taking Devi and him on the hunt the following day, but first he had set them the task of making wicks for the ancient matchlocks. Devi had soon run off, but Devanna had continued to work steadily. He rubbed the strips between his palms, twisting them into wicks, taking pleasure in the feel of their knobby woodiness and the faint smell of smoke from the kitchen hearth where they were hung to dry.

He sat back on his haunches and contemplated the growing pile. This part of the hunt he enjoyed. He could sit absorbed like this for hours on end, making sure that the wicks were rolled to exactly the same length and thickness. The cat sunning herself on the verandah stretched against his legs and he reached forward to gently scratch her head. It was the hunt itself he hated. The noises the dying animals made, the frantic pleading in their eyes, the smell of blood and the crunch of cartilage as the men skinned and quartered the kill. Suddenly restless, Devanna looked out toward the fields, wondering where Devi had gone.

They set off early the next morning. Thimmaya strapped Devi to his back with an old sari of Muthavva's, and one of the older boys hoisted Devanna onto his shoulders. They proceeded silently through the jungle that surrounded the village, keeping a watch out for snakes and the inch-long, rust-colored scorpions that inflicted such mind-numbing agony that even grown men had been known to pass out from the pain. Devi's brother, Chengappa, suddenly raised his hand and the party came to a halt. “There,” he whispered, pointing.

Devanna's heart began to pound. Turning his head away quickly, he fixed his gaze upon Devi. She was very still, nostrils flared with excitement, neck craned forward, the better to see. He stared at her, forcing his mind to think of nothing else, not the musket that was being raised nor its sights locking on to the target. There was a sudden, shocking crack, an orange flash of gunpowder. The jungle came alive, monkeys screaming in the branches overhead, birds taking frightened wing, cawing and calling as they fled. Devanna slowly exhaled.

The men usually gave the younger children the privilege of
reaching the downed animal first. This day too, Devi won. “I am the bal battékara,” she panted, exultant as she stroked the warm flesh of a spotted deer. “I am just as brave as the hunter, I was quickest to reach the kill!”

When the hunting party returned to the village, smug and a little bloodstained, Muthavva cried out in horror like she always did. “Uyyi, just look at this child. Iguthappa Swami, why can't she behave like a girl instead of a little ruffian?”

Picking up a pair of tongs, Tayi plucked some of the glowing embers from the kitchen hearth and placed them on a bell metal plate, adding a fistful of rice from the cooking pot and a dash of water. Quickly sprinkling the fizzing ash-water over the children's heads to thwart any malevolent spirits that might have accompanied them from the jungle, she thrust the platter at Muthavva. “Here, quick,” she told her daughter-in-law, “finish purifying the rest of them and the game before any pisachi take root.” With Muthavva distracted, Tayi whisked Devi and Devanna into the stone-paved bathhouse, away from Muthavva's wrath. Pouring pots of steaming water over them as they squatted giggling on the floor, she sang to them in her tuneless voice:

The beautiful girl is finally here

Come to visit her near-and-dear,

Rubies glittering about her neck

Anklets shimmering like the sun,

The beautiful one has come,

Drenched in a rainstorm she has come.

Devi scrunched her eyes closed as the water streamed down over her. To Devanna, she seemed just like the rain-soaked beauty of the song.

Chapter 3

1885

T
he earth that had been tipped into the well where Gauru drowned was dark and fertile; the banana seedling planted atop it took almost at once. The plant sent out whorls of fanlike leaves, then a thick purple tuber that unfurled to reveal row upon row of fragrant white flowers coiled tightly within. These in turn dried and fell to the ground, leaving the plant covered in bunches of tiny green fruit. When the bananas finally yellowed and ripened, the plant was chopped down and the well reopened. Its waters were now deemed to be purified and once more fit for human consumption.

The week after the well was uncovered, Pallada Nayak came to see Thimmaya. “As you know, Thimmaya,” he said, peeling one of the loose-jacket oranges that Muthavva had brought out to them, “I have enrolled Devanna in the missionary school at Mercara. Shouldn't I do at least that much for the boy, give him a good education? But look at the stupidity of this new generation—the fool keeps crying like a girl!”

He thumped his walking stick on the verandah to emphasize his disgust. Really, the boy was testing his patience. Devanna kept pleading to be allowed to attend the village school with Devi, but the Nayak was bent on following through with his plan. It was over four months now since the boy's father had been to visit.
Was Devanna not good enough for him? So what if the Kambeymadas were filthy rich? The Palladas were well off, too, were they not? The insulted Nayak was determined to fashion Devanna into one of the best-educated young men in all of Coorg; he would sculpt the boy into the pride of the Kambeymada clan. Now if only Devanna would show more sense. The Nayak had cajoled and reasoned, even resorted to a good thrashing now and again, but the boy would not stop his whining.

“Cheh … ,” he mused absently, spitting out the seeds of the orange into its peel. Thimmaya nodded sympathetically, wondering what all this had to do with him. “Harrh.” The Nayak sat up and, clearing his throat, decided to come to the point. “Thimmaya,” he said briskly, “why don't you enroll Devi kunyi into the school as well? No question of fees, of course, I will see to all that. Let the children go together and maybe then Devanna will settle down.”

Thimmaya was pleased. His angel would go to a fancy school, learn to speak English just like the white folk. He quickly gave his consent, but Muthavva was horrified. As it was, the girl was a handful. Would he spoil her even more by sending her to that newfangled school? Who knew what devilry they would fill her head with? Would he have his only daughter forget their own ways? “Why,” she whispered in an agony of embarrassment, “people say the missionaries don't even wash their bottoms!”