Tikkipala (45 page)

For a while Maw continued to stand, facing her, his palm open, as though the Ama stone still lay on it. He was trembling. ‘They say it kills god, so be careful,' he said.

‘Oh, Maw,' laughed Devi. ‘After all these years of living with civilised people, surely you don't still believe all those superstitions.' She felt completely happy and confident because she held the Ama in her hand.

After Maw had gone Devi gripped the package in which lay the stone and pressed it against her heart. Its beat was a little faster than her own.

The Raja had to return to Bidwar. Devi felt relieved, for she felt sure he would make a fuss about her taking the baby up to the high jungle. Because his little brother had been lost all those years ago he was extra cautious about his grandson. He would not even allow the baby to be left to sleep alone in his pram outside. ‘The ayah must stand by my boy for every moment,' he instructed. ‘My grandson must be watched non-stop.'

‘What are you worried about?' Devi laughed. ‘Who would want to hurt a little child?'

But the Raja had looked serious. ‘None of the people here are to be trusted. Those villagers are the most villainous kind of bandits. And as for those tribal people up there, I can see hatred in their eyes in spite of all I have done for them.'

‘It is because that is not what they want,' she said.

‘Rubbish,' he would snort. ‘Now they are properly fed, have modern medicine and their children are getting an education. They are just being worked up into discontent by those old people, who resent having lost their power over the rest. When the old generation have died out the younger generation will be able to see how much better off they are.'

‘I will be going up to the high jungle in a week,' Devi told Khan. ‘I shall be taking Baby and staying the night so please have the car ready.'

Khan was shocked. He had thought that now Madam was a mother and a married woman, she would have given up her crazy ventures. ‘Madam has already spent one night in these timber people's camp,' he complained, ‘and might remember the inferior sleeping arrangements and also the bad state of the food. This is not a suitable environment for a young child.' But of course his comments were ignored.

‘The road is much better now that the monsoon is over,' soothed Devi. ‘You might even enjoy the drive this time.'

‘The monsoon may be over but the ruts made by the timber lorries are now rock hard and perhaps the suspension is not up to it.'

Devi glared at him.

After she had gone he stroked his beloved car and tried to prepare it for its suffering. ‘I will try to care for you, dear car, but it may be impossible to prevent giving pain to you,' he whispered.

For the first time in three years the people of the tribe began preparations for a naming ceremony. Since the day their culture had been destroyed, they had tried once or twice to summon up the energy and to find the materials necessary and each time a dreadful hopeless lethargy had overcome them and they had been unable to do it. Not one child born in the last three years had been given a name. In the first year following the disaster, children under three were called by the first sound they had made, Goo Goo, or Mumum or Swoosh. After the children began to attend the Coarseones' school they started choosing their own names, ‘Pizza', ‘Posh', ‘Beck' and ‘Hamburger' being the most popular. Then the parents began to use the names of the timber men for their new born children and there were now several Arups, Dilips and Harishes.

But Maw had put new heart into his people. The subtle ones began to create, without proper tools, at least the basic requirements for Maw's child's naming. The elders had sat together for hours on end, trying to put together again the sacred sounds required for such a ceremony. Men, women and children were sent out into the jungles to bring back the oils, crystals, ligaments and metals needed for that holy night. Hope began to return to the people of the tribe as they hunted through the rocks to find the chemicals and minerals they needed. Children missed school and instead went up into places where the trees still stood and gathered oils and flexing strand. Old people carefully sifted gravel from the streams and took out sacred metals. Because very little of their ancient subtle equipment had survived the destruction of their homes, they had had to make do with cruder tools and materials.

The thags were annoyed when Devi told them that while she and her family were in the high jungle, they must make no sound nor light any lights. ‘Maw says this is
essential for the ceremony and also we will be able to appreciate it all the more if the rest of the night is dark.' The thags had hoped to get in a few days of business while the Memsahib was away, but how can you do that without light or sound? They wondered if sex would be possible in the dark and if their customers would obey them if they were instructed to copulate in silence. Perhaps it could be managed if there was no arrak on offer this time.

The little boy began to jump up and down and laugh when they reached the high jungle and he saw the preparations the people of the tribe had made for his naming day. ‘Look look,' he shouted. ‘Balloon moons.'

‘We should have had a smoke that you can model with your hands,' Maw told Baby, and to Nirmal. ‘And the statue made from it should be standing in the centre.'

The sculptor's eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘Is there really such a thing? How I would love to have a chance to create with it.'

‘The smoke is gone from us,' said Maw. Ever since destruction day, three years before, the people of the tribe had watched, helpless, as the mouth of their gigantic pressure place became sealed away and the sacred smoke became lost to them.

One of the first things Sita Timbers had done was to make a cover over this sacred place. Sweating and complaining of the heat that rose from it and from the black sooty substance that got in their eyes and stained their clothes, workers had put great slabs of concrete over the deepest hole on earth, over the hole that had taken two thousand years to make. Sometimes, because they had never seen her since destruction day, the people of the tribe would feel afraid that Tikki had been sealed inside her creation place and would never be able to come to them again.

As Maw had predicted, the Coarseones did not seem to notice any lack in the ceremony. Their only response was cries of happiness from the child and what seemed like silent awe from the adults.

It was as though the people of the tribe had come alive again because of Baby's name day. Their eyes shone, their faces were animated and even the children had put aside their baseball caps and jogging trousers and their naked bodies glistened with oil and strings of minerals. The people of the tribe wore their hair loose again this day, so that it hung down to their feet, and was pinned here and there with bright bird feathers, small bones and beads of metal. You could hardly believe these were the dull despairing people who sat, listless, in the little porches of the breeze block quarters.

Maw lifted Baby on his shoulders and carried him among the tribal people, who had freshened their mouths with flowers, and breathed ‘huh, huh, huh,' into Baby's face.

‘They are blessing him,' Maw told Devi.

And then the moment came.

‘What is the name of this child?' asked the elders.

‘They are asking what his name is,' Maw told Devi. ‘I am now going to tell them And to the people he said, ‘This child shall be called, Tikkipala.'

There came a sudden silence. The people of the tribe shifted nervously. A little shiver ran through them.

‘What?' asked Devi, suddenly anxious. ‘Has something gone wrong?'

Baby began screaming.

‘But he is human,' whispered the people of the tribe.

‘Pala was human,' whispered Maw.

‘What name was he given?' Devi asked Maw later. ‘We could not understand.'

‘Tikkipala,' said Maw.

‘Oh dear.' This was as bad as anything Nirmal could have come up with, thought Devi.

The family returned to Bidwar a week later. Nirmal decided to come too, saying he could not even remember that he had wished to remain at the hill palace. The Raja felt irritated and disappointed by his son-in-law's decision, but Devi felt glad.

Back in Bidwar, in the year that followed, Nirmal started becoming a sought after artist. He created what he wanted and whatever it was, galleries implored to be allowed to show it. People bought whatever he had made for enormous prices because it had been made by him.

As Nirmal's success grew, the Raja began to feel tiny twinges of pride for his only son-in-law which grew and grew till in the end he was saying, ‘I knew from the moment I set eyes on the fellow that he was heading for success. Even when he was a scruffy student, and despised by all and sundry, I saw his potential and that is why I arranged for his marriage with my daughter.'

Nirmal himself seemed perfectly unaware of his increasing success and thundered on, having fantastic ideas. Everything he produced was a new astonishment. He made colossal pieces that moved, spat, shat and blinked and tiny invisible pieces that whizzed and squealed. Some of his work was hollow and big enough to walk in, you could climb through other pieces. In some of his pieces you could stand among warm entrails and feel the heart throbbing, be squeezed by lungs heaving, see the world in a unique way through the extraordinary eyes.

When Tikkipala was three, he discovered the wonder of Nirmal's studio. He would dash in, escaping Ayah and ignoring her cries of horror. ‘Baby Sahib will become ill with all the dirt in there, Memsahib,' she would wail, ‘Baby Sahib will get completely stuck inside one of Nirmal Sahib's big statues and we won't be able to find him. You must put a stop to it, Memsahib.'

Nirmal and Tikkipala would emerge, paint daubed, plaster spattered, the pair beaming through masks of clay or saw dust. The artist began to use the toddler as an extra art aid, urging him, ‘Stick your fingers into here, Tikkipala,' Or, ‘Spit in this hole.' Even ‘Come and piss in this, Tik.' Several of Nirmal's art pieces were piddle-sticky and had Tikkipala's finger prints all over them.

The ayah continued to fret and worry. ‘It's not right, Memsahib. Nirmal Sahib is teaching him things a baby should not know.'

‘What sort of things?' laughed Devi. ‘Can art ever be harmful?'

‘Nirmal Sahib has shown Baby the place where a woman has a hole,' said the ayah.

Maw was over eighteen now. ‘One of these days we must start thinking about a wife for you, dear fellow,' the Raja said. ‘Because everyone can see, from the way you relate to my grandson, that you will be a wonderful father.' He had brought up this several times before and it always ended in the same way. His voice would tail away, because here, of course was a mighty problem. Maw was a tribal boy without a caste. What kind of woman could such a person marry? The Raja could think of no family in his social strata who would consider Maw as a son-in-law, no matter that the boy was clearly capable of going to university, getting a good degree, and ending up with a respectable and well paid career in science. For a while the Raja wondered if the best thing would be to suggest Maw went to UK or USA to complete his education, for it
was well known that families there did not mind about the backgrounds of their sons-in-law. In fact, he thought, it was possible that they might find the fact that Maw had been brought up among tribal people and in the trees attractive and exciting. But then he had another idea. As they made their plans to go up to the hill palace he cautiously brought up the subject of the tribal girls of the high jungle.

‘What do you think, dear fellow? They no longer live in trees and have learnt how to behave in civilised society. They have even had some kind of education. I have seen some of them and they look pretty enough now that they wear decent clothes. Shall we have a look at some while we are up there? You never know, one of them might make you a nice little wife. What do you say, Maw?' He was feeling quite excited, himself, at the idea of bringing a lorry load of pretty little tribal girls down for inspection. Who knows, perhaps one of them would suit him for a little while, as well. The Raja told Devi, ‘You talk to Maw for I can't see, either from his expression or his answer, what he thinks of this idea.'

Father Gomez, in spite of having been sternly forbidden by Mr Dar of Sita Timbers, was secretly having his little chapel built.

Although he did not approve of heavy alcohol consumption and he himself only took a little gin on festive occasions, he had discovered that these tribal fellows had a great appetite for brandy and he had bribed them with many bottles of it, to persuade them to do the work. The chapel was being made of wood, and when any of the timber people came upon him and his workers, the priest, who considered lying in the service of God to be a virtue, said that they were constructing a second latrine. ‘To speed them up in their ablutions. They will be back at work twice as fast after doing their toilet.' The company manager was impressed. ‘One must say for Father Gomez,
he is a practical man and knows exactly what is needed, and also knows how to handle these tribal people.' Father Gomez had to be very careful with the brandy. If his workers had too much they began to fall off ladders and smash windows and if they were given too little they refused to work. Also he was having a little trouble explaining why his mission should need brandy at all.

‘Whereas we understand you need some brandy for medical purposes, this new demand for two dozen bottles a month requires some explanation,' wrote the charitable organisation that was financing Father Gomez's ministry.

‘For sterilisation,' explained Father hastily. ‘Because up here the boiling of water is difficult, so the mothers are encouraged to clean infant equipment with alcohol.'

The charity felt dubious, but all the same sent a second crate.