That Year at Manikoil , livre ebook

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Aditi Krishnakumar

That Year At Manikoil
Contents
That Year At Manikoil
 
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Copyright
Chapter I
April 1944
On an April day when I was nine years old, I had my first inkling that my world was going to change.
I woke at dawn, as I did on most days, to the sound of my mother singing the Suprabhatam. She had excellent lungs. Her voice carried to every room of the house and edified passing traffic on the road outside. I sat up in bed, folded my hands and sang along.
This show of piety had an ulterior motive. I had my maths exam that day. With no illusions about my abilities in that direction, I was willing to take any help going, including Venkatachalapathy’s.
My older sisters, Vasantha and Valli, whose mattresses were already rolled up in the corner, laughed unkindly. In maths, as in most other subjects, I was the exception in my brilliant family. In class after class, I had failed to live up to the shining example set by my sisters. The expectation held by my parents, siblings and teachers was that I would continue to do so.
Vasantha, at fifteen, was a star of St Catherine’s and a great favourite with the principal, Sister Bridget. She was only a year away from finishing school. I , many years from that happy time, envied her, but Vasantha didn’t appreciate her impending freedom. She intended to curb it by enrolling in Queen Mary’s College to study mathematics.
Valli—properly Kanakavalli, which was too big a mouthful for everyday use—was two years Vasantha’s junior. She was famed in school for ignoring such foolish directions from examiners as, ‘Choose any four of the following six questions.’ Valli chose all six and got them all correct. I knew this better than anyone, because my teachers never failed to bring it up when I chose only three and got two of them wrong.
I was four years younger than Valli. My academic abilities were far worse. Sister Bridget’s excitement over Vasantha’s future career was matched by Sister Irene’s despair over any possibility of mine. (I hadn’t yet graduated to Sister Bridget, and hoped she would take her well-earned retirement before that dark day came.)
‘I don’t understand ,’ Sister Irene would say, clutching her brow. Sister Irene had a flair for the dramatic. ‘I don’t understand how you can make such atrocious mistakes. Your sisters never did.’
I was so used to doing all the things my sisters had never done that, on a normal day, the comparison between their academic excellence and my mediocrity was only mildly unpleasant. Exam days were different. I might plead. I might coax. I might give my parents solemn assurances that I would not in later days regret my lack of schoolgirl laurels. I didn’t want to be a college principal. The examples of Marie Curie, Annie Besant and Sarojini Naidu left me cold. All I wanted was to get through my schooldays with as little trouble as possible.
It made no difference. My parents were adamant. I would go to school. I would take every exam for which Sister Irene in her optimism was willing to enter me. And I would have a respectable showing, or they would know the reason why. (In my father’s case, he meant this literally. When I brought returned exam papers home for a parental signature, Amma adopted an attitude of philosophic composure. Appa went over each paper question by question, getting to the bottom of every mistake I made in the vain hope that I would do better next time.)
‘Praying won’t help you,’ Vasantha told me that day. She’d already bathed and was plaiting strings of jasmine into her hair. No exam-day nerves for her . ‘If you have enough time to sing, you have enough time to revise.’
You might think that Vasantha was being bossy because she was shortly going to be a college student. (She was also engaged to be married to the son of my father’s lawyer friend, but this was a secondary consideration. I couldn’t see anyone, leave alone a mere husband, standing in my sister’s way if she decided she wanted to be a college principal.) This is not true. As far as my memory stretched, I couldn’t remember Vasantha passing up an opportunity to tell people what to do. She was wont to say it was the privilege of an elder sibling to instruct. If so, it was a privilege exclusive to her: she bossed around our older brothers, Gopu Anna and Kittu Anna, as freely as she did me. Some people are born givers of orders.
‘She doesn’t have time,’ said Valli. ‘The Sanskrit vadyar will be here in half an hour.’
‘What?’ I yelped. ‘Today is a free morning.’
‘Free mornings are for people who don’t mix up their verbs when Appa quizzes them.’ Valli gathered her bundle of clothes and went to the bathroom. ‘Appa’s asked him to come every morning until he’s satisfied that you’re making progress.’
Unaware of my horror, my mother sang on.
The Sanskrit vadyar, as befitted a teacher of languages, was a fine orator. He let himself go on the subject of my half-learnt declensions. It was in a much-chastened mood that I went to the kitchen for breakfast.
‘Do you have your Saraswati?’ Gopu Anna asked me as I took my place.
He had given me a silver medallion the previous week, having been assured by one of his friends that it was guaranteed to fill the mind of the bearer with the highest gifts of the goddess of learning. Gopu Anna had, in my memory, bought several medallions, two rings with large and (even he had admitted) ugly pieces of crystal, and a small clay demon that now resided in our backyard because Amma had refused to have it in the house. How much divine assistance he had gained through these purchases nobody knew, but he still lit an agarbatti before the demon morning and evening.
Amma didn’t scoff at the medallion. Even my mother didn’t dare to scoff at Saraswati. But she looked as if she’d like to. Amma was the most robustly unsuperstitious person I knew.
‘If Raji hasn’t studied,’ she said, scooping rice and sathamathu on to my banana leaf with a vim that boded ill for me if I hadn’t, ‘Saraswati won’t help her.’
‘At least today is the last exam,’ I said. ‘It’ll be a month before I have to know how I did.’
Despite my words, I didn’t feel like eating, although lemon ginger rasam was a favourite.
‘Never mind,’ said Gopu Anna. ‘It isn’t given to all of us to get 120 per cent in exams. When I was your age, I failed one of my maths papers.’
My exclamation of surprise was echoed by Valli. The others, who had evidently known this, looked less than impressed.
‘You shouldn’t tell her things like that,’ Amma chided.
Gopu Anna shrugged and grinned at me. He rolled up his banana leaf and went to throw it away and wash his hands. He came back to the kitchen and nodded at his wife. Any more intimate farewell in Amma’s presence would be unseemly.
‘I’m going to get dressed,’ he said. Then, with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, he added, ‘I think I’ll have some news for all of you when I’m back.’
Vasantha looked after him as he left, and then transferred her quizzical gaze to Gopu Anna’s wife, Sumati, obviously wondering if the news was the imminent arrival of the grandchild Amma had been awaiting since their wedding the previous year.
Sumati looked as puzzled as I felt.
We were chaperoned on the walk to school by our cook, Pattu Mama. He was always glad to take escort duty. It came with the chance of stopping on his way home for a brief chat with his brother-in-law who lived in the next lane.
Pattu Mama was tiny but wiry. He wielded a large stick, which he waved with a total lack of discrimination at cows, dogs, children and passing bullock carts. If it moved, Pattu Mama would wave his stick at it.
He saw us in at the school gate with cheerful assurances that we would do well, and if we didn’t, it didn’t matter because that was life.
I wished my parents would share his attitude.
As soon as we entered, Valli said, ‘Something’s wrong.’
I wanted to ask what she meant, but the bell rang. We had to hurry—walking quickly but not running, lest we draw Sister Bridget’s ire—to leave our bags in our respective classrooms before morning assembly.
When I reached the playground, the other girls were standing in sombre silence. More than one showed signs of tears. I looked for my sisters. They were surrounded by crowds of their classmates. There was nothing for me to do but join mine.
‘It’s Kaveri,’ someone whispered as I found my place in line. I had time for a glance at the eleven-year-old before the second bell rang, bringing instant silence.
Sister Bridget, straight-backed as a soldier on parade, strode to the front of the ground.
I had once thought Sister Bridget must be at least 300 years old, but when I had mentioned this, Valli had loftily said she was probably no more than fifty. Framed by her grey habit, her face, tanned by the tropical sun, was covered in lines. What we could see of her hair was pure white. But her eyes, dark blue (Irish blue, Appa called them), snapped with vitality.
‘Good morning, girls,’ she said. Her voice carried in the silence. ‘I have some sad news to share with you today.’ Other people might have tried to break bad news gently. Sister Bridget never held back on difficult subjects. She said that she was there to mould useful women, not spineless milksops. ‘One of our number, S. Kaveri of Class VI, has lost her father. News came from the front last night. We honour him and his sacrifice for king and country.’
The front .
There was an outbreak of muttering. Even I knew what the front was. It was where soldiers— our soldiers— fought and died against enemies whose names we hadn’t heard a few years ago. I knew, also, that as there were many who felt that it was our duty to enter this fight on the side of the British Empire, there were just as many who felt that George VI had no right to involve us in a European squabble.
What did