The Hills of Angheri , livre ebook
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English
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2005
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235
pages
English
Ebook
2005
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
24 août 2005
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789352140879
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
Publié par
Date de parution
24 août 2005
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789352140879
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
Kavery Nambisan
THE HILLS OF ANGHERI
Contents
About the Author
Novels by the Same Author
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Two
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Three
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE HILLS OF ANGHERI
Kavery Nambisan is from the Coorg district of Karnataka. She graduated from St John s Medical College, Bangalore, and did her surgical training and FRCS in England. Since then she has devoted most of her working life to practice in rural India and has worked as a surgeon in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. She is now surgeon and medical adviser to Tata Coffee Limited.
Kavery Nambisan is the author of several children s books and four novels. She is married to journalist and poet Vijay Nambisan.
Novels by the Same Author
The Truth (Almost) About Bharat
The Scent of Pepper
Mango-Coloured Fish
On Wings of Butterflies: A Novel
This novel is for my teachers- Hasmukh Mehta, Michael Bansod, Sheel and Kamal Sharma, S. Gyanchand and Sir Robert Shields- who taught me the facts and influenced the fiction
Prologue
Appa was already in the bus, carrying his string bag filled with turnips, onions and a coconut. He was returning from the market. I shoved my way to the seat next to him.
Three rupees, he said, staring ahead.
Um.
The price of oranges.
The bus lurched past the railway station, under the bridge and past Cheluvamba Park where children swung crazily on red-and-yellow swings. Beans one-fifty and avarekai four rupees. I did not buy any avare.
Um.
His voice became stern. What s happened to you today?
Appa? It s . . . the laudable pus, I blurted.
What?
I drained a gluteal abscess. When the pus gushed out, Sripathi Sir said laudable pus . That s a surgical expression- praiseworthy pus. Deserving glorification because it is out of the body.
Appa gave me a severe look and I shut up.
A couple of hours earlier I had drained my cup of too-sweet coffee and picked up the white coat draped on the back of my chair. Mani the canteen boy scraped his feet and coughed his unique, toneless cough to remind me I had not paid. I handed him the fifty paise and made my way to the Theatre complex. Butterflies in my stomach played gaily with the coffee, my seventh cup for the day. I was three months into my internship and about to perform my first surgery, a gluteal phlegmon, more honestly called a boil on the buttock.
Twenty minutes, two reminders and endless pacing of the Theatre corridors later, the anaesthetist arrived. Without a word, he went to the doctor s room and was puffing on his second Charminar when my boss appeared.
I scrubbed, soaping lavishly to the elbows-once, twice, and then with the nailbrush. The yellow, stone-hard soap chafed my skin till it burned. What s she scrubbing for, plastic surgery? said the anaesthetist, loud enough for me to hear. I battled with the gloves and got my index and middle fingers into the same opening. The world snickered as I struggled to get it right.
The ward boy swung the overhead light until it focussed on the abscess. Gloved hands held over my chest, I advanced towards the operating table and gazed admiringly at my medallion: suffused, glowing, its purplish hue enhanced by the pink antiseptic the scrub nurse had used to clean the skin. A comely little abscess. The boss nodded and the nurse held out the scalpel. I cut, pushing the tip of the blade through the skin. Pus oozed out, thick and queasy-green.
Laudable pus!
That was my boss, and he sounded pleased. Don t just stand there! he said. Index finger in. Break the loculae. Sweep in. Firmly. Nurse, give her a ribbon gauze. Dip it in acriflavine . . . Splendid smells of fruity, over-ripe pus filled the air. The anaesthetist gagged. The ward boy was grinning, I could tell by the bulges beneath his mask. The nurse acknowledged my thank yous and Sripathi Sir muttered approval. I entered details in the Theatre register as lasting proof of my surgical feat. Two hours later, I trudged to the bus stop, weary and exultant. The world cheered.
At home, I described the charming details of my first surgery until my sister Sujju said, shut up, we re eating, and you smell of rotten fruit. I had to bathe and change before I was allowed to sit at the table. Later, Appa told Sujju to have a proper talk with me about my future. Which, if you were a twenty-two-year-old from a traditional family, meant only one thing.
But I had already made the second important decision of my life. Laudable pus had done it for me.
part one
You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange.
-A.K. Ramanujan, A Poem on Particulars
1
Nalli opened the door and peeped into the room. Sunshine streamed in and touched the bride. Hands on her lap, Sujju sat before the mirror while Amma and Chikkamma looped jasmine through her hair. How beautiful she looked, delicate and longboned, with light eyes that took on the mauve tints of her sari. In less than an hour the groom s party would arrive.
Standing on her toes, Nalli was trying to get a look in the mirror. She looked beautiful too, though no one said so. In her parrot-green langa with its neat row of golden elephants, the tight-fitting blouse and the davani in flaming orange. Standing behind Sujju, she preened. Would anyone notice if she borrowed the lipstick and dabbed it on her cheeks and lips?
Less than half an hour for the wedding party to reach the village.
Ajja! Nalli stood in the doorway, holding the gathers of her langa to show off the elephants marching around her ankles. Ajja was busy adorning the wedding mandap with mango leaves, dasavala, jasmine and parijata. But he came up to her, rubbing his hands. Very nice, he said.
In spite of being so old, Ajja had excellent taste. It was Ajja who bought the three and a half yards of green silk for the langa and the two yards of soft, best-quality georgette for the davani from Mysore. Nalli showed him her green stone earrings and her green bangles. She had just raised her langa to display the silver gejje on her ankles when she saw the look come into his eyes. Ajja had large eyes which swelled out of their sockets and now they looked like they might fall out. You have been painting your nails . . . and your face! And your lips! Kapi! Hitching her langa, Nalli ran to the back of the house where Gaja the maidservant dabbed soot on her forehead to keep away the evil eye.
The wedding party arrived. The groom was handsome, the bride resplendent, the food first-rate. A perfect wedding, the guests said. It would be talked about for a long time. One by one they left, lips tinged with the pleasing red of betel nut. But Nalli was not happy. Ajja had endorsed her prettiness but Jai, back after ten long months in medical college, had ignored her completely. All because of that village lovely, the slant-eyed Veena. It was a custom in the village for the girls to serve the guests at a feast. The older women would replenish the vessels in the smoke-filled kitchen and hand them over. The men ate first, the women next, and the bride s family last of all. Jai sat with his friends and tossed out wisecracks for Veena to simper over. She blushed and minced about, serving pickle. Trust her to take the smallest dish while the other girls struggled with vessels of sambar and kootu.
Nalli in her beautiful green langa, her davani of soft georgette, and green bangles scoured with gold lines. Very nice, Ajja had said. Who knew better than him? Jai was going to ignore her, was he? She would show him. Carrying the vessel of sambar, she walked past him. Sambar here! Jai called. She smiled at no one in particular and served everyone else. Not that she was jealous. Ever since she could remember, her sister had bewitched Jai, as she had most boys. Now because Sujju was getting married, there was no need for Jai to start flirting with another girl. When she snubbed Jai that day, it gave her a bit of pleasure, not much.
Something more important happened after the wedding party left.
Ajja s younger brother Gappu Mava, his wife and their seven children had come down from Kolar. It was late afternoon when they sat down to eat. Even Ajji had come out of bed to sit with the family, which she did only on special occasions. Gappu Mava said, looking at Nalli, So, it will be you in a few years.
Nalli shook her head. I m going to study to be a doctor first.
She could ever recollect the moment when she said it and the thrill she felt each time she spoke it aloud, which was fairly often from then on.
Gappu Mava turned to Appa and said, You re not going to allow it, I hope. Beda kano. Five or six years of college and then it won t be easy to find a husband. Appa was silent. It will be a mistake, the old man persisted. She s pretty enough. She ll meet some useless sort in medical college.
How can a doctor be useless? Nalli asked hotly, in defence of her husband-to-be.
Gappu Mava laughed his ho-ho-ho laugh and went on eating. Appa reproached Nalli with his headmaster eyes and later that night told her that she should respect her elders. He left the matter alone after that.
But with Ajja it was not easy. Nalli sat on the lower step leading from the kitchen to the backyard, with Ajja on the top step. The last rays of the sun loitered on the rounded slopes of Jenubetta. Ajja poured coconut oil into his cupped palm and rubbed it into her scalp, a
