White Man Falling (7 page)

How should this triumph be described? The guests are enraptured by their host’s erudite display of grace and hospitality. Mr P can’t stop braying like a drunken
donkey, and he’s
still
saying “Off by heart! Off by heart, is it?”; Anand, who is in love with literature even though he is one of the worse poets ever to scrape nib
across paper, is saying “respect, man” in English; Devan is nodding profoundly; Mrs Devan is muttering “couplet eighty-two”, as though meaning to lodge it in her memory; and
Mrs P looks to be close to tears that someone has said something so beautiful to her family.

Amma wobbles her head, as though to confirm “Yes, this is my husband – pre-eminent scholarly genius in Mullaipuram and all South India”. Even Swami, chronically depressed as he
is, has to work hard not to beam with satisfaction.

“What is the nectar of immortality?” Mohan asks.

“Go!” his father tells him, “get the milk, and then we will find out!” He pushes him out of the room, and Amma trails Jodhi behind him, and away they go together, the two
young people, loping awkwardly down the street.

* * *

It is 9 p.m. on a Friday evening – the family priests had been particular on the timing of this unorthodox second pre-engagement meeting, which has to be so overtly
auspicious as to counter the debacle of the first – and Mullaipuram is throbbing with people who are shopping and promenading in the cool night. The traffic is nose-to-tail on every road, at
every junction, with pedestrians cramming into the space between the cars and the shops: whole families, old friends, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters and sons, girls walking in pairs with
elbows linked, boys walking in threes with their forearms across one another’s shoulders, all of them milling around and weaving in and out of the mass. There are strings of lights over every
stall, music blaring from shops, resting cows, altercations, some drunks, a street drama taken from the
Mahabharata
, large insects butting into lamps, bats tumbling overhead in the night
air. Jodhi, burning with embarrassment, in mortal fear of stumbling into a friend, leads Mohan off the main street and down a side road, where the Tamil Nadu Milk Board has an outlet.

Mohan takes a sly sideways glance at Jodhi’s figure, and gulps involuntarily from an excess of admiration. Jodhi takes a quick peak at Mohan, and has to admit to herself that he is
certainly a handsome boy. She waits for him to speak, but he does not speak. She realizes that she must speak, but speech has deserted her. Walking side by side, both of them building up to saying
something, they pass a tethered goat chewing on a plastic bag, and at last Mohan is inspired to break the silence. It’s true that he is the holder of the
Sri Aandiappan Swamigal Tamil
Nadu Information Superhighway Endowment Scholarship
, and it’s true that he can write computer programs in C++ of dazzling elegance and utility, but…

“Goat,” he says.

Though mining remote nooks and crannies of their brains, they arrive at their destination without excavating any further conversational jewels. In silence Jodhi buys a floppy plastic sachet of
milk from the sullen boy sitting in the open hatch of the Milk Board outlet. As soon as it is in her hands Mohan snatches at it, blurting “Let me carry it!” as though her life will be
at risk if he doesn’t – but his reaction is so abrupt that Jodhi instinctively steps backwards. In the confused tussle, Mohan’s grab at the milk sends the sachet flying down the
street.

“So sorry!” Jodhi cries, mortified.

“It didn’t explode!” he exclaims in relief, and scampers off to recover it; then he takes it back to the boy selling milk, and barks, “Wash this dirty thing!”

Following this little adventure, they set off for home, still incapable of finding anything sensible to say. Just as they get back, he whispers, much too late, “What is your email
address?”

“Ah, here are the young wanderers!” says Mr P, slightly annoyed – he had been on the verge of raising the subject of the dowry – “Here they are, talking talking
talking, talking away!”

Jodhi takes the milk into the kitchen, and Amma rushes in after her. She clatters around in a frenzy for a few moments, then “Yes?” she whispers, “yes?”

“Amma?”

“Yes?”

“Amma, yes what Amma?”

Amma rolls her eyes as she opens the valve on the gas canister under the bench and lights the one-ring hob.

“What do you mean with your ‘Amma yes what Amma?’” she hisses, “what did he say!?”

“Nothing.” Jodhi cuts a corner from the sachet, then pours the milk into a vessel as her mother looks on ominously.

“What do you mean, ‘Nothing’? You tell me now everything he said!”

“But Amma—”

“No but-butting, speak Daughter!”

Jodhi leans back against the wall and wraps her arms around her ribs, shrugging.

“He said ‘Goat’, ‘Let me carry it’, ‘It didn’t explode’ and ‘Wash this dirty thing’.”

Amma’s eyes goggle in her head.

“What are you talking about, you stupid girl!”

“Amma, this is what he said.”

“Nothing else?”

“He asked for my email address.”

Amma stirs the tea over the gas ring with triumphant vigour: “There,” she crows, “I knew it, he’s mad about you!” But on a whim she stops stirring and points a
finger at Jodhi accusingly: “You don’t have an email address do you?”

“No Amma, of course not.”

Amma nods and goes back to her stirring, then stops mid-stir and jabs another finger at Jodhi: “Why not? What is the matter with you, how can you expect to impress a boy like that if you
don’t even have an email address? The boy can build computer-supers before breakfast!”

“But Amma, it was you and Appa who wouldn’t let me have an email address because of all the dirty doings in the internet caf
és.”

“How can you expect to bag a boy like Mohan if you don’t have an email address, you silly girl?” Amma accuses her, wide-eyed. “You get hold of an email address
immediately! How much do they cost? Where do they sell them?”

In the living area Mr P, after a significant glance from his wife, is about to come to an important matter. He clears his throat tactfully and gives his moustache a tweak or two:

“So you see,” he says, “so you see, we have come to the time when certain issues must be talked about.”

Oh no
, Swami thinks, as he nods sagely.

“What I mean to get at is that, as you know, the normal thing to do, in these circumstances, at this stage, before any firm ideas occur as to whether the two young people will, will,
will…”

Everyone hangs on his words, two gaggles of family members open-mouthed with interest at this meeting point of marriage and money.

“…come to an arrangement,” Mr P continues, “as I’m sure you understand, is this business of the dowry situation. Dowry situation must be under
discussion.”

Oh God
, Appa thinks.

Amma, who has come back in to make some space for the tea, wobbles her head.

There is the noise of car doors being slammed outside, directly in front of the bungalow.

“So we were wondering if you are wanting to give us best indication,” Mr P suggests, “about your, ah, ah, ah-hm, your, hm-hm, your, that is… position.”

Dear God…

There is a knock at the front door; Kamala gets up from the floor and answers it. Everyone gets a brief glimpse of two very large gentlemen on the doorstep before Kamala steps out, easing the
door closed behind her. Swami looks across at Mr P, rather miserably.

“Dowry,” he says, “dowry,” as everyone waits for more, “Thousand—”

“What what?”

“—Fifty-nine!” he manages to blurt out in a rush.

Mr P is calling for
The Sacred Couplets
with some enthusiasm once again, but here is Kamala, stepping back inside, tugging at Swami’s arm and whispering that he should go
outside.

“Who is it?” Amma asks.

“Two gentlemen,” Kamala says, “very urgent business.”

“Most sorry,” Swami says, struggling to his feet.

“He will go and then come,” Amma says.

“Yes, please go and then come,” Mr P agrees.

Everyone watches Swami limp across to the front door, and sees him greeting the visitors in the moment before he closes the door behind him.

“So sorry, he will return as soon as possible,” Amma says.

“Damn police business,” says Swami’s brother reassuringly.

“They’re still asking his advice?” asks Mr P.

“Relentlessly,” says the brother. “Only the other day he travelled to Madurai to offer important pointers in a tricky case.”

“Investigation was in complete deadlock,” Amma confirms.

“He is certainly a very clever fellow,” Mr P says. “But what about this couplet, please be reciting,” he implores Amma.

As soon as Swami goes outside, he knows something is wrong. The expressions on the faces of the two gentlemen are only arbitrarily polite, and the car waiting for them on the side of the road
– back door open, engine still running – is a Mercedes.

“Sorry for the disturbance,” one of the goons says. “Mr Rajendran wants to talk with you.”

DDR? Owner of Hotel Ambuli? Wants to talk with me?

“Yes?”

“Please come,” says the other goon. “Mr Rajendran will explain.”

“But—”

“No buts. Mr Rajendran is very busy.”

“Daughter!” Swami pleads, pointing back inside, eyes bulging in panic. “Wedding! Hour,” he says, “then you,” he tries, “you then,” he says,
“then then,” he finishes.

“Let’s go,” says one of the men, and he grabs Swami’s arm.

“Then,” says Swami, spluttering.

“Let’s go,” says the other fellow, grabbing him firmly.

“No!” Swami shouts.

Inside the bungalow, they all look up.

“Some disturbance,” Amma says. She slips to the front door and peers out. As she opens the door, Swami is sitting down in the dusty road and pleading “No!”, while the two
men are trying to pick him up and bundle him into the car. Amma screeches, and everyone rushes outside or to the window.

“Appa!” Swami’s daughters are screaming and wailing, “Appa!”

“Oh God oh God oh God, what are you doing, where are you taking my husband?” Amma moans, wringing her hands.

“We’ll bring him back soon,” one of the men says, getting in next to Swami as the other one takes the driver’s seat.

“HUSBAND!” Amma wails, hurling herself at the Mercedes just as it lurches off. She drops to her knees in the street in a cloud of dust, where her daughters join her, sobbing and
pleading, “Appa, Appa, Appa!”

DDR – Mr Mullaipuram himself – enjoys his wealth. His extensive business interests have secured a life of luxury and influence for him and his family, and he has
built himself a very large house with generous lands on the outskirts of town. It is called Mullaipuram Mansions. Standing by the electric gates of the compound are two uniformed security guards
who spring to attention whenever a Mercedes goes in or out, as one does now, with a very anxious Swami inside it. Roaming the grounds behind the gates are peculiar breeds of dog of complicated
European lineage, which snap and scrap nervily in the shade of a vast old banyan tree. And as Swami is escorted gravely through the many chambers of the house, he sees dozens of household staff,
all bowing and scraping about their business as they serve their master and his clan: men in suits whispering into mobile phones, old retainers in dhotis and lungis, servants cleaning and
polishing, right down to a small boy who is improbably propelling a handcart down a long hallway, in which handcart slumps a dog. This is Bobby, DDR’s favourite pet, an obese and ill-mannered
paraplegic dachshund; the boy’s role in life is to wheel Bobby backwards and forwards between various family members for tickles, and to give Bobby hourly massages and limb stretches.

How DDR, with all his quirks and oddities and his very modest natural abilities, became and remains rich is a question for which logic is of limited use; he is as irrational, inconsistent,
bad-tempered, emotive, vain, far-fetched, sentimental and credulous as many other inexplicably rich people in this world. At the helm of his business ventures he deals, bullies, bribes, invests,
sells, employs, rewards, intrigues, patronizes and punishes according to his own anarchic impulses – and who knows how it works?

Why this formidable figure has abducted Swami is easy to speculate upon, although Swami himself, waiting in a little office where he’s been deposited, has no idea as yet. The truth is,
although DDR is rich, he is not happy, and the anxiety this causes him can make him suspicious about everything to the point of paranoia. A white man falling out of his hotel has not exactly helped
things. So when he came to know, via sources unfamiliar with the real context of the incident, that Swami went to Madurai to view the body of the white man, he got it into his head that Swami is
conducting an independent freelance investigation into murder.

When it comes to white men, DDR is indifferent, he takes little interest, he is neither for them nor against them; but in this instance there are one or two small details behind the fatal
descent of the snow-faced sky demon that might be best left unexplored, especially since he is manoeuvring to be a candidate for one of two linked yet competing political factions in the
forthcoming State Legislature elections, and so cannot allow a whiff of scandal to develop – at least, not a new whiff that is appreciably worse than the background whiff attending him
generally. He has spent a small fortune on his democratic ideal of being elected no matter what, and he is not about to see this commitment to the worthy voters of Mullaipuram – proven, after
all, in hard cash – be jeopardized by the misguided bumblings of some loose-cannon law-enforcer of yesteryear.

Swami was served a glass of tea by a kindly looking servant long ago, and has finished it. He has been waiting for nearly an hour. His need to go to the toilet is becoming acute. There are pains
shooting down his left side. As for his emotional condition, it is not bearing up –
so humiliating, so humiliating, so humiliating
, he moans to himself, a memory loop playing back in
his mind time after time, one which has him bundled into the Mercedes while the appalled family of the Mohan boy looks on –
and they were all admiring me so much!
But what can he do
right now but wait, and try (but fail) not to think about his humiliation, his bladder, Jodhi, Mohan, Amma,
The Sacred Couplets
, a Mercedes with the engine running and the back door open,
and whatever unknown ordeal may lie ahead of him…
Afterwards
, he tries to tell himself sternly,
afterwards I can break down, but right now I must endure.