White Man Falling (9 page)

“Yes Amma.”

“And?”

“Yes Amma?”

“And did the boy reply?!” Amma splutters in frustration.

“Yes Amma.”

“I knew it!” Amma crows.

The parents of Mohan might have given up on the union of Jodhi and their boy, on the grounds that such a match would be straightforward utter lunacy, but Amma is not convinced that
straightforward utter lunacy is an insurmountable bar to marriage. What she is convinced of is that Mohan is smitten with Jodhi, smitten beyond the furthest creaking strains of logic and reason.
She knows a thing or two, does Amma. Her husband might have been flattened by a flying white man and held to ridicule by the entire town and then subsequently abducted in the back of a Mercedes by
two enormous goondas under the unobstructed gaze of the parents of Jodhi’s boy during the pre-engagement meeting – but it will take worse than that to force Amma into giving up.

“You come with me,” she instructs Jodhi, ominously.

“Hello Appa,” Jodhi says, with something like longing.

“Hello Appa,” Pushpa tries too.

Swami looks up from his book, gazes at both girls in turn and smiles for some seconds wistfully – but only with his mouth, a forced smile of apology and submission. Then he disappears back
into himself like an alcoholic turning to the bottle.

“I want to sit with Appa,” Jodhi complains, as Amma mutters in disbelief at what her husband has come to.

“Does a bird sing to a stone?” Amma says brutally, and pulls her inside the bungalow, into the bedroom, where they both sit down cross-legged on the floor.

There would be a kind of wisdom
, Swami realizes, very, very slowly,
in being a stone…
and his mind strays far, far away, playing in the shadow of this little idea.

“Give me that, that, that thing, that
email
thing,” Amma is demanding of Jodhi in the bedroom, as Leela and Pushpa and Kamala eavesdrop in the living area without a giggle,
or a sound, or a smile – somehow, with Appa being silent as a stone and Amma being obsessed with Jodhi’s boy, nothing in life is funny or fun at the moment.

Sighing, Jodhi takes a printout of an email from her bag and hands it to her mother.

Amma unfolds it and scans the English words. “Well? What does it say?” she asks with an anxious look.

“It’s all nonsense,” Jodhi says sullenly. “It’s too embarrassing to read it Amma, please don’t make me!”

“
Read!
” Amma orders, thrusting it at her.

“‘Dear Jodhi, I am thousand times grateful to you that you are replying to my unworthy humble email,’” Jodhi translates in a sheepish monotone, as a look of beatific
satisfaction settles on Amma’s face, “‘I am more than thousand times grateful to you, I am thousand times a thousand times a thousand times grateful to you. That is one billion
times.’”

“He’s besotted!” Amma declares.

“Amma, it’s you who’s telling me exactly how to reply to his emails,” Jodhi responds with a certain slyness, “maybe he’s besotted with you.”

“Don’t be so stupid my daughter!” Her hands fly up in irritation at Jodhi’s insolence. “I am a tired mother with a stone for a husband and six ungrateful daughters,
while you are a beautiful young girl who speaks English and goes to university and sends emails and – what do you understand about everything and anything?” Amma cries, placing her
fingers on her temples, fingers that have prepared thousands of meals for her family, fingers that have pounded and kneaded and chopped and sliced and washed and stirred and mixed and whisked and
beaten and blended and stuffed and shredded and minced… Her tear-touched eyes express every trial and tribulation and indignity of her life, each hardship, disadvantage, compromise, defeat
and hard-won advance. “What you understand about everything and anything is exactly nothing and nothing, that’s what you understand about everything and anything! Now read me some
more!”

“No Amma,” Jodhi begs, “I don’t want to, I want to eat and forget about all this.”

But Amma is thirsty for the unexpurgated wit and wisdom of Mohan. “Read!” she orders.

“Amma,” Jodhi tries, in a cunning and desperate rearguard action, “isn’t obedience to parents very important?”

“That is the most important thing there is,” Amma agrees.

“And being truthful?”

“That is also the most important thing there is.”

“And accepting fate?”

“That is another thing that is the most important thing there is.”

“Amma, they can’t all be the most important thing there is.”

“Yes they can. That shows how very important they all are,” says Amma.

Jodhi shakes her head.

“If obeying parents and being truthful and accepting fate are so important, why are we encouraging Mohan to go behind his parents’ backs, and why are we deceiving him, and why
don’t we just accept that he is not for me?”

“Questions, questions!” Amma splutters. “Haven’t you heard what the elders say? ‘A thousand lies may be uttered when a marriage needs to be solemnized!’
– that is what the elders say! Just you obey me, and you be truthful to me, and you accept the fate I get for you! That is the most important thing there is! That is enough for us! How can I
control what the boy does? He’s half-mad with love for you, nothing can stop him, not even if there is a third pre-engagement meeting and Appa does something terrible like,
like…” But Amma, her mouth open, her head shaking, her arms waving in the air helplessly, is not able to conjure up any hypothetical catastrophes worse than the real catastrophes that
have already taken place, it is too tall an order, and so she is forced to settle for “…something very very very very bad! Nothing can stop this boy, his parents will realize that, one
day! I know these things! Daughter, you will be the daughter-in-law of that family! Now read me some more!”

* * *

K.P. Murugesan may have a singularly impressive moustache, but it is also the case that in times of unusual stress he sometimes experiences a twitch on the left side of his
upper lip. If it weren’t for the moustache, you’d hardly notice this affliction, but when his anxiety levels are too high, then the effect of the tic is exaggerated by the magnificence
of the moustache, so that the outermost edge of the hairy edifice quivers up and down a good inch. It is an arresting spectacle. Murugesan fervently wishes that he didn’t have this tic; it is
very inconvenient to have his most anxious states signalled so transparently. However, he wouldn’t dream of solving the problem by shaving off the moustache. Let’s be sensible about
this – a man without a moustache would be a laughing stock in Mullaipuram.

Once more he is making his way to Swami’s bungalow on a delicate mission. Though questions about the fate and identity of the dead white man have receded from Indian and foreign
consciousness after a couple of weeks of official obfuscation and delay, yet the issue of what, exactly, retired Sub-Inspector R.M. Swaminathan is up to in connection with the case is coming to the
fore. It is a matter of acute interest to some of Murugesan’s fellow police officers, because one of them saw Swami being taken to the home of D.D. Rajendran – being chauffeur-driven in
a Mercedes, no less – and other officers, the ones with more reason than most to worry about the ramifications of the white man’s death, have the feeling that Swami’s visit to DDR
does not bode well for them. It is well-known that DDR himself had been complaining in vociferous terms about some halfwit retired crippled cop poking around in matters that didn’t concern
him – and yet now that same fellow has been observed travelling by Mercedes to DDR’s house! Has Swami not only indulged in a freelance investigation, but stumbled across some
incriminating evidence? Why else would DDR turn from treating such a lowly fellow with contempt to treating him with elaborate respect?

While such speculations about Swami were raging for a day or two between factions within the station, a new detail emerged about DDR’s apparent fear of Swami, a detail so striking as to
convince even Murugesan, Swami’s closest colleague within the Mullaipuram police, that his old friend might be posing a danger to them all. As soon as this new information had come to light,
a couple of hot-headed younger men had wanted to pay a visit to Swami, but wiser, older heads had prevailed; which is why Murugesan, upper lip poised on the edge of twitchability, is threading his
way through Mullaipuram to Swami’s house.

Murugesan puffs his chest out and brushes his khaki shirt smooth as he strides past Hotel Ambuli – there it is, that’s the place where all this trouble started. How typical of a
westerner to eject himself from a window at the slightest provocation and cause all this trouble, Murugesan thinks. Murugesan has never been to Europe or to the United States, but he can’t
help feeling that in such strange places there must be countless people forever hurling themselves out of open windows in their despair at not having been born in the sacred
Punyabhoomi
,
the beloved
Bharata Mata
, the incomparable Mother India. The streets must be knee-deep in corpses, he thinks, shaking his head sadly.

When he reaches Swami’s house a while later, he sees Swami on the verandah, gazing into a book in what appears to be a condition of profound serenity. He feels more awkward than he had
imagined he would, and tries to remind himself that this man is his old friend. He would never knowingly harm me, Murugesan reassures himself; there must be some innocent explanation behind all his
trouble-making – unless his suffering has just made him go plain mad.

“Well Brother, reading the ancients as ever,” is Murugesan’s greeting as he mounts the battered steps to the verandah. “And what do the ancients teach us this evening
about this complicated world of ours?”

Swami looks up; Swami gazes at Murugesan without surprise or expression; Swami looks at Murugesan for some time – Murugesan’s smile fades from his face as he waits for a response but
does not get one – and then Swami looks away from him, into the traffic.

Swami is in the lattermost stages of despair and breakdown; he is going to kill himself today.

Murugesan’s moustache twitches at once. What is this, he is thinking. Swami isn’t speaking to me? Swami won’t acknowledge me? Swami is so appalled by this dirty business with
the white man – dirty business in which I was barely involved at all, dirty business that he might have been part of too if the stroke hadn’t got him first – that he despises
me?

Murugesan sits down on one of the steps, in front and to the left of Swami, the better to conceal his moustache which is now twitching every few seconds. An instant tide of sweat is surging over
him, the kind of sweat that can only be produced by a man who has experienced a shock of dismay in thirty-eight degrees centigrade at ninety per cent humidity.

“My old friend Swaminathan,” he says at last, looking over his shoulder at the immobile, unresponsive Swami. “I know how it must seem to you, this business, I know you’ve
looked into it, this white man’s death, I know you watched him die…” Murugesan strokes his moustache sagely, in order to fetter its independence. “You looked into his eyes,
he granted you his last look on this earth, I know that. He has made big impression on you. And I know that you wanted to know everything about it, but we wouldn’t tell you much. Yes, that is
our fault, my fault. I should have told you everything. I didn’t want to trouble you.” He takes his hand away and the moustache is off again. A small boy walking past slows down and
takes a good long look. “What I want to tell you now, what I promise you, is this – there is no killer of this white man. The white man killed himself. That is the truth.”
Murugesan waits for a reaction, but gets none, not for any part of his admission; he has already said more than he intended, but there is something about Swami’s silence that leads him on to
say more, and more, and more; his hands grope the air as though trying to find the right way to shape his explanation. “What you should know is that the fellow was not only a drug addict but
a 100% guilty VGS, a dirty rapist. A year ago he raped a chambermaid in a Chennai hotel. Okay?” Still no response from Swami. “An Indian would have ended up in prison, definitely, but
being a westerner the evidence had to be absolutely pukka. So, you see? It was like that. This VGS of the very highest order walks free because he is white, and then one day he comes passing
through Mullaipuram – what to do? A couple of the men paid him a small visit, he panicked, he jumped. That is the 100% truth of the matter. Brother, what is the point of looking into all this
and stirring up trouble? Brother? Swami? Why won’t you speak to me? Me, your friend and brother for more than twenty years?”

Swami hasn’t heard a word. He knows he’s going to kill himself, almost immediately – but how? On the outside he is without expression, as calm as the corpse he intends to
become, but on the inside his thoughts are turning over the practicalities. How? How does a man who can’t walk more than a quarter-mile from home kill himself? How does a man who has half a
dozen daughters tracking his every move kill himself?
Even in
killing myself I need help, but there is no help for this.

“Swami? Brother?”

Murugesan looks at his old friend, bewildered, but his old friend isn’t looking back. His old friend is studiously ignoring him. Murugesan puts a finger on his upper lip to stop the
quivering once more; he has never felt so dismayed. He gets up, walks around Swami tentatively, as though not sure what to expect. Then he knocks on the door and slips into the bungalow.

Amma comes out of the kitchen wearily, saying, “Welcome, Brother, did you get through to him?”

“Get through to him?”

“My husband is talking to you?”

“He won’t say a word to me,” Murugesan admits, shamefaced, wondering what Swami has told his wife, wondering how much she knows about the death of the white man and the conduct
of the police officers of Mullaipuram.

“For five days now he is silent like this,” Amma tells him. “I don’t know what it is. He is on strike or something, but on strike from what? He wasn’t doing
anything anyway!”