Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Back Bay Books

CHAPTER ONE

... before

THE DAY before Abhay shot the white-faced monkey, he awoke tofind himself bathed in sweat, a headache already cutting its way intohis skull in a razor-thin line across the middle of his forehead. He laystaring at the slowly-revolving ceiling fan that picked up dust witheach revolution through the hot air, adding another layer to the blackstains along the edges of its blades. Much later, he rose from the bedand stumbled to the door, rubbing his face with the flat of his palms. Ashe looked out at the sunlit court-yard with the slightly-dazed eyes ofthose who go away laughingly on journeys and return only to findthemselves coming home from exile, his mother swayed across the redbricks, carrying a load of freshly-washed clothes on one hip, andvanished into the stairway leading up to the roof In a room diagonallyacross the court-yard from where Abhay stood, his father's ancienttypewriter beat out its eternal thik-thik, creating yet another urgentmissive to a national newspaper about the state of democracy in India.A single crow cawed incessantly. Abhay forced himself out into thewhite, blinding square of heat, feeling the sun sear across the back ofhis neck, and hurried across it to the damp darkness of the bathroom.He stripped off his clothes and stood under the rusted shower head,twisting at knobs, waiting expectantly. A deep, subterranean gurgleshook the pipes, the shower head spat out a few tepid drops, and thenthere was silence.

`Abhay, is that you? The water stops at ten. Come and eat.'

When he emerged from the bathroom, having splashed water overhis arms and his face from a bucket, his mother had breakfast laid outon the table next to the kitchen door, and his father was peering at anopened newspaper through steel-rimmed bifocals.

`We could still win the Test if Parikh bats well tomorrow,' said MrMisra sagely, `but he's been known to give out under pressure.'

`Who's Parikh?' Abhay said. He could see, in a head-line on the frontpage of the newspaper, the words `terror threat.'

`One of the best of the new chaps. Haven't been keeping up withcricket much, have you?'

`They don't have much about it in the American press,' Abhay said.`When does the water come back on?'

`Three-thirty,' said his mother as she emerged from the kitchen bearinghot parathas. `I thought of waking you up, but you looked so tiredlast night.'

`Jet lag, Ma. It'll take a week or two to go away.'

`Maybe,' Mr Misra said, folding his newspaper. Abhay looked up,surprised at the sudden quietness in his father's voice, wondering howmuch change his father recognized in his eyes, in the way he carriedhimself A quick movement on the roof caught his eye, and he cranedhis neck.

`It's that white-faced monkey!' he burst out. `He's still here.'

`Oh, yes,' said Mr Misra. `He's a member of the family now. Mrinalinifeeds him every morning.'

The monkey hopped onto the roof from the branches of the peepultree at the front of the house, loped up to the laundry line and, with asweep of its arms, gathered up a sari, a shirt and two pieces of underwear,and raced back to the tree. It waited, firmly seated in the spreadingbranches, as Mrs Misra went up the stairs and laid two parathas onthe wall that ran around the edge of the roof and stepped back somefour or five paces. The monkey, moving with assurance, as one movesduring the performance of a familiar ritual, swung back to the roof,dropped the clothes, seized the parathas, and clambered back into itsfamiliar leafy territory, where, after it had seated itself comfortably on asuitable branch, it proceeded to eat the bread, cocking its head occasionallyto watch Mrs Misra as she gathered up the clothes and putthem back on the line.

`It's still terrorizing you after all these years,' said Abhay. `You shoulddo something about it.'

`It's just trying to make a living, like the rest of us,' Mr Misra said,`and it's getting old. He's moving pretty slowly now, did you see? Forgethim. Eat, eat.'

Abhay bent his head back to his meal, but straightened up everynow and then to peer at the peepul tree, where the monkey was intentlydevouring its daily bread. Somehow, even as he savoured the strangelyunfamiliar flavours of his mother's cooking, Abhay was unable to shakethe conviction that the animal, secure in the cool shade of the peepultree, was enjoying its meal more than he was, and that there was somesecret irony, some occult meaning in their unwitting sharing of food.The monkey finished first and sat with its head cocked to the right,peering intently at the family below, a puzzled look on its face. Itscratched at an armpit, turned and swung itself deeper into the recessesof the peepul, stopped and peered at the sparkling white house with itslittle square court-yard, and then abruptly slung itself away into thetrees on the adjoining maidan.

That afternoon, in the course of his meanderings over the roof-topsof the city, the monkey found himself in a tree on the maidan again.More out of habit than from hunger, he negotiated his way to thepeepul and vaulted onto the roof Below, Abhay was seated at thekitchen table, sipping from a glass of cool nimbu pani, speaking haltinglyand somewhat formally to his parents about his travels and timesin a foreign land. As the monkey began his customary gathering ofgarments, he was surprised to see Abhay jump out of his chair and dashup the stairs to the roof. Moving as fast as his ageing limbs wouldpermit, the monkey propelled himself off the roof and onto a branch,clutching just one piece of apparel. A moment later, a nasal howl ofpain burst from his lips as a jagged piece of brick shattered into smallerfragments against his rump. Pausing only to bare his yellowed fangs inthe general direction of the roof-top, the aged monkey disappeared intothe trees on the other side of the expanse of open ground in front of thehouse.

`He got my jeans,' Abhay said. `The son of a bitch has my jeans.'

`Well, what did you expect?' Mrs Misra said, a little stiffly, irritatedby the sudden violence inflicted on a member of the tribe of Hanuman.`You scared him away'

`Will he bring them back? Cost forty dollars.'

`No, he'll probably drop them somewhere and forget all about it.You've lost those pants.'

She walked away, into her bedroom. As Abhay descended from theroof, suddenly aware of the perspiration streaming down his sides andhis mother's displeasure, he felt an old adolescent anger awaken, sensedan old bitterness tinged with resentment and frustration leaping upagain, ancient quarrels and terrors and reasons for leaving raising theirheads, unquiet, undead, effortlessly resurrected.

When the trees extended serrated shadows across the maidan, under afew gaily-coloured kites that hung almost motionless in the air, tiny bitsof red, green, yellow and orange against a vast blue, Abhay walked in ahuge circle, over the tufts of grass and through the teams of barefootboys engaged in interminable games of cricket. To the south, in thecrowded lanes and bazaars of Janakpur, his past waited, eager to confronthim with old friends and half-forgotten sounds and smells. ButAbhay hesitated, nagged by a feeling that he had been away for severalcenturies, not four years, afraid of what he might find lurking in theshadows of bygone days, and suddenly he felt his soul drop away, felt itwithdrawing, leaving him cold and abstracted. So he watched himself,as if from a great height, watched himself...