Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

  He would have to escape. But how? How could anyone manage this? They would not let him go. If he descended from the tree, they would catch him. If he stayed, things would only get worse. He recognized the old feeling of being caught in a trap …

  Oh, but he would have to leave! How, how, how? He thought, but his thoughts found no resolution and merely revolved, more and more of the same, around and around in his head. At last, from what the devotees could observe, he fell into a sort of stupor.

  ‘Let him be,’ said his father. ‘On the morning of 30 April we will bring him down and, before he knows it, it will all be over.’

  ‘All be over …’ Sampath heard, as if from very far away.

  22

  A few days after Mr Chawla had proposed his plan, it was put into action. The monkey catchers began to be trained at a furious pace, even though nobody was quite sure what exactly the training should consist of. The Brigadier, who was still holding a grudge because his own idea had been passed over in favour of this weak and messy plan, shouted orders at his suffering men through his megaphone, putting them through their paces, making them leap from trees, slide down ropes, do handstands and sit-ups, and go running for miles up and down the hillside, so much so that people complained that not only were the monkeys disturbing the peace but those wretched army boys were as well. Thudding across gardens and trampling flowers, they ran through private property and left trails through flowerbeds and vegetable fields, waking people at dawn the next day, and every day after that, by resuming these disgraceful activities. The very ground trembled as they approached; it was like the approach of an earthquake.

  But when the Brigadier received complaints, he explained how, had he been allowed to pursue his own proposal, he would have no reason to submit his men to this charade. They all knew how to fire guns. They would have gone to the orchard and, a couple of hours later, the job would have been done. Now, since they had not supported him right at the beginning, they would have no option but to suffer. ‘Situp, double march, hop to it, somersault,’ he ordered. And: ‘The sooner this is all over the better,’ mumbled the townsfolk.

  Meanwhile, the police were luckier than the army men, for it had been generally agreed upon that they were incapable of taking an active part in something on such a great scale as this and instead they had been given the job of preparing the nets that were to be used to catch the monkeys. Under the gentle jurisdiction of the superintendent, they sat lazily outside the police station with a pile of fishing nets and metal rings, needles and nylon rope, not at all sure of what they ought to be doing, but enjoying themselves like old fisherwomen fussing with the nets in the afternoon sun. ‘Arre, Chottu,’ they called to the tea boy. ‘Arre, over here,’ to the sweet-potato seller, the peanut man and the cold-drink cart. Thus they made the most of this time and were content.

  About Sampath’s tree there was a feeling of the air being stretched tight and wrapped around and around him. When he peered down, all he could see was an ugly sea of humanity. Nobody respected his visiting hours any more. Several men marched about the periphery of the orchard, banging the ground with sticks and blowing upon whistles in a round-the-clock watch instituted by Mr Chawla to give warning of any disturbance. These dangerous days, who knew what would happen, what they would have to watch out for, which unexpected happening? They were not safe. Also, of course, they had to keep a watch for the monkeys. What would they do next? At the slightest rustle in the night, they shone bright torches into the trees; often Sampath found himself awakened by a searchlight-like glare. If only these watchmen would fall asleep at their posts the way watchmen were known to do, thought Sampath. But no, this lot were an insomniac brigade, tireless and unnervingly zealous in their duties. At the first hint of dawn, the crowds arrived with their loudspeakers and he was enveloped once again in slogan-shouting and argument.

  How, how would he manage his escape?

  He was practically ill with worry and nerves by now, unable any more to sleep and unable to eat. His mother tried this and that to tempt his appetite, to resurrect his fading rosy cheeks, but nothing seemed to work … not the little river fish he so loved, not the fiery chillies from her own especially fiery chilli bush, not the plump, sleepy pigeons with their tender melting flesh, not an enormous goldfish she caught in the ornamental pond in the convent grounds. Never mind … never mind. Soon she would offer him something altogether new, something to spark his spirits and jerk him to life. On Monday, the thirtieth day of April. She began to put together the ingredients for the feast to come. It was a hard process, for the main ingredient was an entirely new one, of course, and still mysterious to her. She had no idea of its savour, its toughness, its heaviness or lightness, its darkness, or its power as a catalyst to bring other flavours to fullness. Her preparations would have to be made with only instinct to guide her, the sureness of instinct, buoyed by a bringing together of all her expertise, all her talents, to make a triumph of what might be her only chance to cook this creature …

  Sampath stared up into the mountains, tilting his head all the way back, to look upon where there was not a trace of civilization. There, up high, as if tumbling from the sky, a waterfall cascaded down sylvan slopes, so pale, so distant he did not know if it was real or merely his imagination melding with the power of sight to produce a trick upon him. There there were no villages, no houses, no people … Just sunlit forest and rock, and the living rough white water. Jealously, he looked back at the birds that fluttered about him searching for crumbs: these small creatures with their delicate ribs, their beating wings that scooped hearts light as snow through the clarity of air. His face bore a desperate, hunted look.

  ‘He is in another world,’ whispered the devotees reverently, while Sampath paid them no attention, just stared out over their heads, let them lift his foot and lay it upon their heads as they claimed his blessing. These days it turned his stomach, now that the whole business was not lighthearted any more, but mean and complicated.

  He stared at the sky. The silvery evening air seemed to distil itself into the armour of the fish that steamed gently before him, into the powdery hair of the langurs sitting in his tree, still unaware, it seemed, of all the plotting and planning that was going on against them. There they were, chattering, playing, grooming each other as usual. Little did they know …

  23

  Trapped in his room, aunties and sisters keeping watch out of every window, the Hungry Hop boy paced up and down. From a distance, he could hear the noise of the protesters and demonstrators, and he felt it was unjust that he should not be allowed out to take part in the excitement.

  ‘I’ll take the van,’ he pleaded. ‘It will be such good business.’

  But no, even this was not enough to shake his family’s conviction that he should be kept firmly locked up, allowed to emerge only if rooted in the honourable state of wedlock. In the matter of a few days’ time, the Hungry Hop boy had been demoted from a life of self-imposed imprisonment to one of family-enforced detainment and he felt as if his pride were being overlooked and insulted. He paced up and down his small room, wondering about Pinky’s fate in the midst of all the monkey trouble, about his own fate … Up and down. And whenever he stopped to listen, with an indignant ear pressed against the door, he could hear the babble of marriage negotiations rising up the stairs from the living room down below. Time was running out. They were resorting to the oldest trick in the book.

  He smuggled an urgent note to Pinky via the faithful milkman, who delivered it when he returned home on the same bus Sampath had taken when he had first left Shahkot six months ago. ‘Very little time to lose,’ the note read, a little runny from a leftover bit of buffalo milk in the canister where the milkman had placed it. ‘Marriage is in the works.’

  As he waited for a reply, he paced the length of his room with greater and greater vigour. From time to time, he stopped and tossed back his hair, a thrill running through him like an electric current. Here was his life, just like in a sce
ne from the movies. He felt grateful for the glamour; his heart hung suspended as if dangling from a mountain ledge.

  By the next morning he had a response from Pinky who did not believe in delays. In a firm hand, she proposed they escape in the Hungry Hop van and drive far away, to a new town, a new place where they would not have to bother with his unreasonable family. That seemed the only available option. ‘On Monday, 30 April,’ read her practical note, ‘they are going to catch the monkeys. Everybody will be busy and paying no attention. Meet me under the big tamarind tree on the street leading to the orchard-bazaar road at 5.00 a.m. in the Kwality van, and from then on we will see.’

  Monday, 30 April … that was only three days away! Seized by courage, Hungry Hop wrote back with a trembling hand: ‘Without fail I will be there.’

  Although, once she received this note, Pinky was caught up in her own absorbing affairs of packing her belongings and getting ready to leave – all in secret, of course – she could not help feeling sorry for her brother. It did not seem quite fair, she thought, that just when her life was blossoming and flourishing, his should be cut down and curtailed. This she felt, even though her own feelings towards the monkeys were so different from his. Generous in these days of love, she climbed up the ladder against his tree. ‘I have an idea,’ she said.

  But Sampath, back to his old ways of barely speaking, merely looked blankly at her and said nothing at all in response.

  ‘You know,’ she continued, ‘perhaps you can come along with the Hungry Hop boy and myself, for, you know,’ she whispered loudly, ‘we are planning to elope, you know.’

  Who knows why she had to put in so many ‘you know’s?

  ‘I am not going to climb down from this tree,’ said Sampath.

  ‘But why not?’ said Pinky, climbing back down the ladder hastily when she saw the Cinema Monkey approaching to sit in his accustomed place by Sampath on the cot. ‘We can go all over in the van and travel from one place to another.’

  Sampath thought of endless roads in the endless sticky summer that would arrive so very soon to stretch before them, of trucks billowing out exhaust, the vibration of engines through his head, nausea rising from his stomach, and he felt unbearably hot and then cold as ice. He thought of his old life in the post office, of the people milling about him, pushing him, shoving him in the streets, and he felt as ill as when the officials had visited him. In fact, he almost lost his balance and fell from the tree. In the background a loudspeaker crackled and the words ran into a nonsensical blur. His face had gone white.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Pinky, alarmed.

  ‘Thank you for asking,’ he managed to say. ‘But it is better that you go on your own.’

  ‘Why is it better?’ Pinky demanded, exasperated.

  ‘Because it is,’ he said loudly and angrily, suddenly irritated by all of it and everybody. They would kill him. He would just die. ‘Leave me alone, I am going to be sick. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone …’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Pinky, going away. He was very whiny today, wasn’t he? Who would have thought he would ever have had the enterprise to run away from home and into a tree? For a little while her brother had shown some character and now he was going backwards, as usual …

  Little did she know of the events going on in the Hungry Hop household at that very moment, or she would not have been wasting her time talking to him in this fashion.

  The day before Hungry Hop was to elope with Pinky, he was introduced to the girl his relatives had picked to be his future wife.

  Though it is usually customary for the boy’s family to visit the girl’s, due to the unusual circumstances regarding Hungry Hop, his family arranged for things to be done the other way around instead. Before this chosen girl arrived, sandwiched fondly and closely between her parents in a rickshaw, Hungry Hop surpassed himself by throwing the biggest tantrum he had ever subjected his family to. They grew nervous at his fits of temper, the slamming of doors, his locking himself up, his emerging to shout something down the stairs, his locking himself up again …

  ‘But she is a very sweet girl,’ they pleaded. ‘Just take a quick look. She is pretty and good-tempered and you will like her.’ Really, his character had changed since he had been bitten by Pinky. Never did he used to lose his calm … They shook their heads over it all yet again.

  ‘If you like her so much,’ he said rudely, ‘marry her yourself and let her give you bother and trouble.’

  ‘But, son, just …’

  ‘You are eating my head,’ he interrupted, slamming another door.

  But in the end, curiosity got the better of him and he went downstairs quietly enough when the girl arrived. He would look at her and then, with even a greater number of arguments to boost his point of view, he could, in all fairness, refuse her. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and, still a little thundery-looking about the eyes, he entered the room.

  And …

  Oh, but oh, who can plan against the powers of fate?

  What a girl! What a girl he saw sitting demurely between an ugly Mummy-Papa when he stepped around the curtain hanging in the doorway of the room! She surpassed anything he could have ever expected. So plump, so pink and white! A complexion like that under the Indian sun! With such a sleepy face and sleepy eyes, such a good-natured sleepy smile … He could not believe his eyes! Her sari was rosebud-coloured, her cheeks were like vanilla pudding, her mouth like the rose on top of the icing of a birthday cake … Yes, he thought, she was exactly like a birthday cake, a pink and white birthday cake … The pearls in her ears and about her neck and wrists were like the little silver decoration balls. He opened his mouth and stared.

  All about the room, his sisters and aunties, his grandmother and mother nudged each other. This girl had failed every examination she had ever taken, it was true, but there was something to her, wasn’t there? They were very pleased and proud with the good job they had done despite the difficult circumstances.

  Hungry Hop retreated, his head in a whirl. When she left, his family closed in upon him, filling his ears with talk, bribing him with promises of a Maruti car and television, a wedding party of two weeks in duration … Stop! he thought to himself. How can I do this? But they continued and a pleased look could not help but show through the grumpy one he tried hard to maintain.

  When they left, all his doubts filed back into his brain and that night he did not sleep a wink. He tossed and turned until his sheet wound uncomfortably and tightly about his legs. His thoughts tumbled and jumped, interrupted each other and became entangled in themselves. On one hand, he had given his word he would meet Pinky the next morning and he was a nice boy, after all … On the other hand, just think of how easy and pleasant it would be if he stayed … But yet, he felt embarrassed to give in so easily after he had made such a fuss before his family and held out for so many days. He thought of Pinky and all her notes and presents, her biting his ear and hitting him on the jaw. It was true, Pinky had something to her too. Nobody could deny that. And just that morning, it had seemed so exciting – he would jump into the van and drive away. But now … he didn’t know … he didn’t know … There was the girl like ice cream, like birthday cake, like wedding cake … Oh, look, now he was saying wedding cake, not birthday cake, and that seemed heavy with peculiar significance … even though they would not have wedding cake at his wedding, of course, but laddoos.

  At 4.00 a.m. he rose, his mind still not made up, and sneaked out to the van. Amazingly, as if by fate, nobody heard him – they were sleeping soundly, sure of work well done and a safe future for their son. They slept and snored as if resting after months of unease and worry. Quietly he pushed his van down the road and only when he turned the corner did he start the engine and get in. He would drive to the tamarind tree and there, depending on how he felt, he would tell Pinky that this was impossible, or he would sweep her up and drive away in the Hungry Hop van … He took a maze of little side streets instead of the
one-way main road so he might have plenty of opportunities to turn quickly around and return home, if that was the decision he made, or to move to the main road, if that was what he wanted. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’

  Deliriously, he drove in circles through the shadowed streets, when, all of a sudden, he became aware of a huge grey group of people and cars coming up fast behind him and remembered with a start that this was the day they were to catch the monkeys. No doubt these were the monkey catchers themselves, on their way to the orchard just like him!

  ‘Get out of the way,’ they shouted at him. ‘Get out of the way.’

  Urgently he tried to turn into another street, but it was very narrow and his van got stuck. Such things are wont to happen at crucial moments in one’s life, of course, and it took him quite a while to turn into yet another side lane, to embark upon yet another loop of his journey. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’ Or nobody, for that matter! Nobody! They were making his life a misery.

  24

  By 4.00 a.m. in the District Collector’s bungalow, the DC was awake and dressed so as to be ready when Mr Gupta arrived, which he did soon after, bundled in a copious number of woollen scarves and a cheerful yellow hat, knocking excitedly in staccato fashion on the door. Together, they were to go in the government jeep to the cantonment area. Here they would join the army, who would be armed with the nets, and together they would proceed to the orchard, where they would meet the police, who were to be on special alert for any disturbance that might interrupt these sensitive operations. Sampath would be brought down from the tree into police custody, the nets would be unloaded, the soldiers would get into the battle formation drawn up by the Brigadier and capture the monkeys. By the time the sun was properly in the sky, it would all be over.