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Surrounding the walls of the Big House, as it is known, are
several trees that aren’t usually seen in the area — a tall
umbrella-shaped rain tree, a breadfruit tree with leaves that
explode in green star-shaped clusters and many jackfruit trees
laden with heavy, spiky fruit that spring directly from the
trunk. These are the result of the labours of Charity Dorai, who
does not come from these parts. In an effort to allay her
homesickness she began planting trees from her homeland. Twenty
years later they have altered the treescape of Chevathar.
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David Davidar
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Down to the
river from the Big House tumble groves of Chevathar Neelam, a
rare hybrid of a mango native to the south. The trees are
astonishingly beautiful, the fruit glinting blue against the
dark green leaves. The locals will tell you that the Chevathar
Neelam, which has made the Dorai name famous throughout the
district, is so sweet that after you’ve eaten one you cannot
taste sugar for at least three days. So the locals say.
The rest of the
village is quickly described. More coconut palms, the paracheri
to the southwest, a few shops by the bridge over the Chevathar
river, the huts of the Andavar tenant farmers close to the road,
and a dozen or so wells and tanks that raise blind glittering
eyes to the morning light.
The villagers
rise early, but as it’s some way yet before the fields are to
be prepared for the transplanting of rice, the men are not up
and about. Most of the women have risen before dawn and are
racing to finish their household chores. Today the village
celebrates the Pangunni Uthiram festival and they’re hoping to
snatch a few minutes at the festive market that’s being
assembled, bright and tawdry, by the walls of the Murugan
temple.
Movement on the
tarred road. Two girls, one thirteen and soon to be married, the
other a year younger, are on their way to the fair. They are
dressed in their best clothes, the older girl in a violet
half-sari, jasmine in her well oiled and plaited hair, her
cousin in a garish pink skirt. Their foreheads are adorned with
sandalwood paste, vibhuti and kumkumam from the Amman temple
where they worshipped before dayfall. They walk quickly, even
though they’re very early, their feet light on the deliciously
cool road, eager to get to the market. The older girl has been
given four annas to spend by her mother. It’s a small sum but
it’s more money than Valli has ever had before and she can
barely contain her excitement at what she might be able to buy
with it. Bangles? Earrings? Silk for a blouse perhaps, or might
that be too expensive? Parvathi hurries to keep up with her
cousin.
The girls pass
a grey outcrop of granite polished by wind and rain to a smooth
rounded shape that resembles the knobbly forehead of an
elephant. Anaikal, as it is called, is popular with children
playing hide-and-seek but they barely register this most
familiar of sights as they hurry onwards. They enter a short
stretch lined with banyan trees beyond which is the path that
leads to the fair.
And then the
younger girl notices them. ‘Akka’, she says, but the remark
is unnecessary for Valli has also seen the four young men
lounging under the big tamarind tree that shades Vakeel Perumal’s
house. The acute peripheral vision of the two girls, shared by
every woman under the age of forty in the small towns and
villages of the hinterland, is geared towards noticing just one
thing: men. Sometimes it is exercised to give them pleasure as
they flirt expertly even with eyes cast down. But more often
than not it is used to spot danger. No young or even middle-aged
woman is safe from the slyly out-stretched male arm that seeks
to brush and feel up, the crude insult, the lascivious eye, and
so they learn early to take evasive action before things become
unpleasant.
The two girls
quickly assess the situation. The men are about fifty yards away
and do not appear threatening. Still, there is no one about.
Every instinct tells them to turn and retreat to the safety of
their houses. But the promise of the new bangles is too strong.
After all, just a few yards more and they’ll be on the dirt
path which will take them to the market grounds.
The men under
the tamarind tree begin to move towards them and now the girls
are truly alarmed. They turn to hurry back in the direction of
their houses but it’s already too late. The footsteps behind
them gather speed and the girls begin to run. Terror sharpens
their senses. They register with unnatural clarity everyday
sights: the fire of shoeflowers against a limewashed wall, the
waxy green leaves of a calotropis plant by the roadside, an
orange butterfly on the road, and then everything begins to
blur.
The younger
girl keeps her head, or perhaps she just chooses right. She
stays on the road and runs as fast as she can towards the huts
of the tenant farmers barely half a furlong away. Valli veers
off the path and begins running away from the river, through the
acacia forest that clothes the uncultivated area by the Murugan
temple. The horny soles of her bare feet negotiate the rough
ground beneath her with ease but she is no match for her
pursuers. Remorselessly they overtake her. She feels hands
tearing at her clothes, hissed imprecations in her ears, she
stumbles, goes down...
From The house of blue mangoes
by David Davidar, Viking Penguin India Rs. 395.
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SPRING
1899. As the ordinary violence of dawn sweeps across the lower
Coromandel coast, a sprawling village comes into view. The
turbulent sky excepted, everything about it is tranquil. Away
to the west, a great headland, thickly maned with coconut
palms, juts into the sea, partially enclosing a deserted beach
on which long slow swells, clear and smooth as glass, break
with scarcely a sound. Beyond the beach, the waters of any
estuary reflect the rage of colour overhead. This is where the
Chevathar, the country’s southernmost river and the source
of the village’s name, prepares for its final run to the
sea.
