Between the Assassinations

  The next morning the signs were gone. Intentionally wiped out. When he got to school, he scanned the obituary column of the newspaper and couldn’t believe his eyes – a man called ‘Nathan Xavier’ had been murdered the previous night at the Bunder! He was convinced at first that he had come upon some secret society planning a murder. A darker anxiety beset him soon. Maybe Chinese spies had written those words? Years had passed, but the mystery remained, and he thought about it each time he passed that crack.

  ‘Do you think Pakistani spies did it, sir?’ Girish said. ‘Did they kill Nathan X?’

  Mr D’Mello grunted. He felt he shouldn’t have revealed the memory to Girish; he felt, somehow, he had compromised himself. Teacher and student walked on.

  Mr D’Mello watched as the rays of sunset fell through the banyan leaves in large patches on the ground, like the puddles left behind by a child after a bath. He looked to the sky, and involuntarily spoke a line of Hindi poetry: ‘The golden hand of the sun as it grazes the clouds…’

  ‘I know that poem, sir,’ a little voice said. Girish Rai repeated the rest of the couplet: ‘… is like a lover’s hand as it grazes its beloved.’

  They walked on.

  ‘So you have an interest in poetry?’ D’Mello asked. Before the boy could reply, he confessed another secret to him. In his youth he had wanted to be a poet – a nationalist writer, no less, a new Bharathi or Tagore.

  ‘Then why didn’t you become a poet, sir?’

  He laughed. ‘In this little hole of Kittur, my learned friend, how could a man make a living from poetry?’

  The lamps came on, one by one. It was almost night now. In the distance Mr D’Mello saw a lighted door, his quarters. As they got closer to the house, he stopped talking. He could hear the brats from here. What have they smashed today, he wondered.

  Girish Rai watched.

  Mr D’Mello took off his shirt and left it on a hook on the wall. The boy saw the assistant headmaster in his singlet, slowly setting himself down on a rocking chair in his living room. Two girls in identical red frocks were running in circles round the room, bellowing their lungs out. The old teacher ignored them completely. He gazed at the boy for a while, again wondering why, for the first time in his career as a teacher, he had invited a student home.

  ‘Why did we let the Pakistanis get away, sir?’ Girish blurted out.

  ‘What do you mean, boy?’ Mr D’Mello screwed his nose and brow together and squinted.

  ‘Why did we let the Pakistanis get away in 1965? When we had them in our clutches? You said it in class one day, but you didn’t explain.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Mr D’Mello slapped his hand against his thigh with relish. Another of his favourite topics. The great screw-up of the war of 1965. The Indian tanks had rolled into the outskirts of Lahore when our own government cut the ground beneath their feet. Some bureaucrat had been bribed; the tanks came back.

  ‘Ever since Sardar Patel died, this country has gone down the drain,’ he said, and the little boy nodded. ‘We live in the midst of chaos and corruption. We can only do our jobs, and go home,’ he said, and the little boy nodded.

  The teacher exhaled contentedly. He was deeply flattered; in all these years at the school, no student had ever felt the same outrage he had, at that colossal blunder of ’65. Lifting himself off the rocking chair, he pulled out a volume of Hindi poetry from a bookshelf. ‘I want this back, huh? And in perfect shape. Not one scratch or blotch on it.’

  The boy nodded. He looked around the house furtively. The poverty of his teacher’s house surprised him. The walls of the living room were bare, save for a lighted picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The paint was peeling, and stout-hearted geckos ran all over the walls.

  As Girish flicked through the book, the two girls in red dresses took turns at shrieking into his ears, before screaming away into another room.

  A woman in a flowing green dress, patterned with white flowers, approached the boy with a glass of red cordial. The boy was confused by her face and could not answer her questions. She looked very young. Mr D’Mello must have married very late in life, the boy thought. Perhaps he had been too shy to go near women in his young days.

  D’Mello frowned and drew nearer to Girish.

  ‘Why are you grinning? Is something funny?’

  Girish shook his head.

  The teacher continued. He spoke of other things that made his blood boil. Once India had been ruled by three foreigners: England, France, and Portugal. Now their place was taken by three native-born thugs: Betrayal, Bungling, and Back stabbing. ‘The problem is here…’ – he tapped his ribs. ‘There is a beast inside us.’

  He began to tell Girish things he had told no one – not even his wife. His innocence of the true nature of schoolboys had lasted just three months into his life as a teacher. In those early days, he confessed to Girish, he stayed back after class to read up on the collection of Tagore’s poetry in the library. He read the pages carefully, stopping sometimes to close his eyes and fantasize that he were alive during the freedom struggle – in any one of those holy years when a man could attend a rally and see Gandhi spinning his wheel and Nehru addressing a crowd.

  When he got out of the library his head would be buzzing with images from Tagore. At that hour, electrolysed by the setting sun, the brick wall around the school became a long plane of beaten gold. Banyan trees grew along the length of the wall; within their deep, dark canopies, tiny leaves glittered in long strings of silver, like rosaries held by the meditating tree. Mr D’Mello passed. The whole earth seemed to be singing Tagore’s verses. He passed by the playground, which was set into a pit below the school. Debauched shouts jarred his reveries.

  ‘What is that shouting in the evenings?’ he asked a colleague naively. The older teacher helped himself to a pinch of snuff. Inhaling the vile stuff from the edge of a stained handkerchief, he had grinned.

  ‘’tripping. That is what is going on.’

  ‘’tripping? ’

  The more experienced teacher winked.

  ‘Don’t tell me it didn’t happen when you were at school…’

  From D’Mello’s expression he gathered that this was, indeed, not the case.

  ‘It’s the oldest game played by boys,’ the old teacher said. ‘Go down and see for yourself. I don’t have the language to describe it.’

  He went down the next evening. The sounds became louder and louder as he descended the steps into the playground.

  The next morning, he summoned all the boys involved – all of them, even the victims – to his desk. He kept his voice calm with an effort. ‘What do you think this is, a moral school run by Catholics, or a whorehouse?’ He hit them with such violence that morning.

  When he was done, he noticed that his right elbow was still shaking.

  The next evening, there was no noise from the playground. He recited Tagore out loud to protect himself from evil: ‘Where the head is held high and the mind is without fear…’

  A few days later, passing the playground, he saw his right elbow trembling again in recognition. The old, familiar, black noise was rising from the playground.

  ‘That was when the scales fell off my eyes,’ Mr D’Mello said. ‘I had no more illusions about human nature.’

  He looked at Girish with concern. The little boy was stirring a large grin into the red cordial.

  ‘They haven’t done it to you, have they, Girish – when you play cricket with them in the evening? ’tripping?’

  (Mr D’Mello had already let D’Essa and his over-developed gang know: if they ever tried that on Girish, he would skin them alive. They would see what an ogre he really was.)

  He watched Girish with anxiety. The boy said nothing.

  Suddenly he put his cordial down, stood up, and advanced to his teacher with a folded piece of paper. The assistant headmaster opened it, prepared for the worst.

  It was a gift: a poem, in chaste Hindi.

  Monsoon:

  This is the
wet and fiery season,

  When lightning follows after thunder.

  Each night, the sky shakes, and I wonder,

  What could be the reason

  God gave us this wet and fiery season?

  ‘Did you write this yourself? Is this what you were blushing about?’

  The boy nodded happily.

  Good Lord! he thought. In thirty years as a teacher no one had done anything like this for him.

  ‘Why is the rhyming scheme uneven?’ D’Mello frowned. ‘You should be careful about such things…’

  The teacher pointed out the flaws of the poem one by one. The boy nodded his head attentively.

  ‘Shall I bring you another one tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘Poetry is good, Girish, but…are you losing interest in quizzes?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘I don’t want to go any more, sir. I want to play cricket after class. I never get to play, because of the—’

  ‘You have to go to the quizzes!’ Mr D’Mello got up from his rocking chair. He explained: any opportunity for fame in this small town had to be seized at once. Didn’t the boy understand?

  ‘First go to the quizzes, become famous, then you’ll get a big job, and then you can write poetry. What will your cricket get you, boy? How will it make you famous? You’ll never write poetry if you don’t get out of here, don’t you understand?’

  Girish nodded. He finished his cordial.

  ‘And, tomorrow, Girish… You’re going to Belmore. I don’t want any more discussion about that.’

  Girish nodded.

  After he left, Mr D’Mello sat in his rocking chair and thought for a long time. It was no bad thing, he was thinking, Girish Rai’s newfound interest in poetry. Perhaps he could look out for a poetry contest for Girish to enter. The boy would win, of course – he would come back heaped in gold and silver. The Dawn Herald might put a picture of him on the back page. Mr D’Mello would stand with his arms proudly on Girish’s shoulders. ‘The teacher who nourished the budding genius.’ They would conquer Bangalore next, the teacher-and-pupil team that won the all-Karnataka state poetry contest. After that, what else – New Delhi! The president himself would award the two of them a medal. They would take an afternoon off, take a bus to Agra, and visit the Taj Mahal together. Anything was possible with a boy like Girish. Mr D’Mello’s heart leaped up with joy, as it had not done for years, since his days as a young teacher. Just before he went to sleep in his chair he pressed his eyes shut and prayed fervently: ‘Lord, only keep that boy pure.’

  Next morning, at ten past ten, by the express order of the state government of Karnataka, a throng of innocent schoolboys from St Alfonso’s with surnames from O to Z rushed into the welcoming arms of a theatre of pornography. An old stucco angel crouched over the doorway of the theatre, showering its dubious benediction on the onrushing boys.

  Once they got inside, they found they had been tricked.

  The walls of Angel Talkies – those infamous murals of depravity – had been covered in black cloth. Not a single picture remained visible to the human eye. A deal had been struck between Mr D’Mello and the theatre management. The children would be shielded from the Murals of Sin.

  ‘Do not stand close to the black cloth!’ Mr D’Mello shouted out. ‘Do not touch the black cloth!’ He had everything planned. Mr Alvarez, Mr Rogers, and Mr Bhatt went among the students to keep them away from the posters. Two attendants from the theatre – presumably the dispensers of tickets to the blanket-covered men – helped in the arrangements. The boys were split into two groups. One group was marched to the upstairs auditorium, one herded downstairs. Before they could react, the boys would be sealed off inside the auditoriums. And so it was done: the plan worked perfectly. The boys were inside Angel Talkies, and they were going to watch nothing but the government films; Mr D’Mello had won.

  The lights cut out inside the upstairs auditorium; a buzz of excitement from the boys. The screen glowed.

  A scratched and fading reel flickered into life.

  SAVE THE TIGER!

  Mr D’Mello stood behind the seated boys along with the other teachers. He wiped his face with relief. It looked like everything was going to be okay, after all. Leaving him alone in peace for a few minutes, young Mr Bhatt then moved up to the assistant headmaster and tried to make small-talk.

  Ignoring young Mr Bhatt, he kept his eyes to the screen. Photos of tiger cubs frolicking together flashed on the screen, and then a caption said: ‘If you don’t protect these cubs today, how can there be tigers tomorrow?’

  He yawned. Stucco angels stared at him from the four corners of the auditorium, long peels of faded paint rising from their noses and ears, like heat-blisters. He hardly went to the films any more. Too expensive; he had to get tickets for the wife and the two little screamers too. But as a boy, hadn’t films been his whole life? This very theatre, Angel Talkies, had been one of his favourite haunts; he would cut class and come here and sit alone and watch movies and dream. Now look at it. Even in the darkness the deterioration was unmistakable. The walls were foul, with large moisture-stains. The seats had holes in them. The simultaneous advance of decay and decadence: the story of this theatre was the story of the entire country.

  The screen went black. The audience tittered. ‘Silence!’ Mr D’Mello shouted.

  The title-shot of the ‘bonus reel’ came on.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL WELL-BEING

  IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN

  Images of boys showering, bathing, running, and eating, each appropriately captioned, began flashing one by one. Mr Bhatt came up to the assistant headmaster once again. This time he whispered deliberately: ‘It’s your turn to go now, if you want.’

  Mr D’Mello understood the words, but not the hint of secrecy in the young man’s voice. At his own suggestion, the teachers were taking turns to patrol the black-clothed corridor to make sure none of the over-developed boys slipped out to take a peek at the pornographic images. It had just been Gopalkrishna Bhatt’s turn to patrol the Murals of Sin. For a moment he was lost – then it all made sense. From the way the young man was grinning, Mr D’Mello realized that he had taken a quick peek himself. He looked around: each of the teachers was suppressing a grin.

  Mr D’Mello walked out of the auditorium full of contempt for his colleagues.

  He walked past the black-cloth-covered walls without feeling the slightest urge. How could Mr Bhatt and Mr Pundit have been so base to have done it? He walked past the whole length of the black cloth without the least temptation to lift it up.

  A light flickered on and off in a stairwell that led to an upper gallery. The walls of this gallery too were covered with black cloth. Mr D’Mello dropped his mouth open and squinted at the upper gallery. No, he was not dreaming. Up there, he could make out a boy, his face averted, walking on tiptoe towards the black cloth. Julian D’Essa, he thought. Naturally. But then the boy’s face came into view, just as he lifted up a corner of the black cloth and peered.

  ‘Girish! What are you doing?’

  At the sound of Mr D’Mello’s voice the boy turned. He froze. Teacher and student stared at each other.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir… I’m sorry…they…they…’

  There was giggling behind him; and suddenly he vanished, as if someone had dragged him away.

  Mr D’Mello rushed up the stairs at once, to the upper gallery. He could climb only two steps. His chest burned. Stomach heaving and hands clutching the balustrade, he rested there for a moment. The naked bulb in the stairwell sputtered on and off, on and off. The assistant headmaster felt dizzy. In his chest the heartbeat felt fainter and fainter, a dissolving tablet. He tried to call to Girish for help, but the words would not come out. Reaching out a hand for help, he caught a corner of the black cloth on the wall. It ripped, and split open: hordes of copulating creatures frozen in postures of rapes, unlawful pleasures, and bestialities, swarmed out and danced around his eyes in a taunting cavalcade, and a world
of angelic delights that he had scorned until now flashed at him. He saw every -thing, and he understood everything, at last.

  Young Mr Bhatt found him like that, lying on the stairs.

  Day Three (Morning): MARKET AND MAIDAN

  The Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Maidan (formerly King George V Memorial Maidan) is an open ground in the centre of Kittur. In the evenings, it fills up with people playing cricket, flying kites, and teaching their children to ride bicycles. At the edges of the maidan, ice-cream and ice-candy sellers peddle their wares. All major political rallies in Kittur are held there. The Hyder Ali Road leads from the maidan to Central Market, Kittur’s largest market for fresh produce. The Town Hall of Kittur, the new law court, and the Havelock Henry General Hospital, and both the premier hotels in Kittur – the Hotel Premier Intercontinental and the Taj Mahal International – are within walking distance of the market. In 1988, the first temple meant exclusively for the use for Kittur’s Hoyka community opened for worship in the vicinity of the maidan.

  With hair like that, and eyes like those, he could easily have passed himself off as a holy man and earned a living sitting cross-legged on a saffron cloth near the temple. That was what the shopkeepers at the market said. Yet all this crazy fellow did, morning and evening, was crouch on the central railing of the Hyder Ali Road and stare at the passing buses and cars. In the sunset, his hair – a gorgon’s head of brown curls – shone like bronze, and his irises glowed. While the evening lasted, he was like a Sufi poet, full of mystic fire. Some of the shop keepers could tell stories about him: one evening they had seen him on the back of a black bull, riding it down the main road, swinging his hands and shouting, as if the Lord Shiva himself were riding into town on his bull Nandi.

  Sometimes, he behaved like a rational man, crossing the road carefully, or sitting patiently outside the Kittamma Devi temple with the other homeless, as they waited for the leftovers of meals from weddings or thread-ceremonies to be scraped into their clustered hands. At other times he would be seen picking through piles of dog shit.