The Elephant Chaser's Daughter Read online

  Cursing wasn’t the only bad habit I had picked up. Whenever Grandmother took tobacco leaves from the pouch she hid around her waist, I begged her to give me some. She would chew the pungent leaves for a while, then pinch a little from her mouth and place it in mine as a mother-bird would for her chicks. When people came to Grandmother’s house to buy liquor, I would chatter away through a mouth dyed red from tobacco, like an all-knowing old woman. It bothered Grandmother.

  By afternoon the streets would turn drowsy and still with men grazing cattle in the woods or brewing liquor by the lakeside and women toiling in the landlords’ fields. Except for the little ones left running about, playing with insects in the gutters and creating a big nuisance for their grandmothers, nothing would break the dreary rhythm of village life.

  Thankfully, as the sun descended over the horizon the village would come alive, taking on a carnival-like atmosphere as men and women returned to their huts along the narrow road, herding cattle or riding on bullock carts. This was when anything could happen; the night offered possibilities for the unexpected. I often saw men brawl, usually over money, and heard loud arguments between drunken husbands and their exasperated wives who begged for some peace at home.

  Violence was hardly a stranger in my home, either. Joseph Thatha used to beat Arpuda Ajji almost every other night when he returned from the field. I saw Appa slap my mother whenever he got angry with her. At times Appa came home drunk to his bones with no money left in his pocket to buy vegetables. At first, Amma would fight with him. Then, realizing there was no use quarrelling with a drunken man, Amma would scoop out a handful of ragi from the sack stacked in a corner and boil it into a tasteless porridge. Each morning Amma squeezed the previous night’s leftover ittus—cooked ragi rolled into a ball—into a liquid concoction, added some onions and chilies, and gave it to me for breakfast. Usually, lunch was no more than rice or ragi served with a watery vegetable curry, and dinner was ittus again. It was much too little for the entire family, especially considering Appa’s ravaging appetite. When I whined about food, Amma sternly reminded me that there were times when she had gone hungry all day without even ittus to fill her stomach. Appa never bothered to comfort me, and I didn’t question him. From a young age, I was conditioned to think that men knew more about life in general, that they had good reasons for whatever they did, and that a woman’s opinion didn’t count for much.

  Life at my school was so different. Each day we followed a structured routine. Perhaps the biggest change I enjoyed was the food. In my new world, we gathered for breakfast in a nicely decorated room with tiny chairs and tables and were given a variety of Indian dishes, from idlies to hot puris. Vegetables and tasty curries were served for lunch and dinner, and salt biscuits, fruit salad, or fried groundnuts for snacks in the evening. We would often crowd around the kitchen window, greedily breathing in the warm smell of fresh-baked bread and cookies. After eating the same thing day after day at home, food had suddenly become a joy for me. I was in a wonderland where everything was plentiful.

  I recall the first time we were served a dark brown liquid instead of milk for our evening snack. ‘Please sit down. You are going to have cocoa,’ Ms. Ruth announced. All of us hurried to our seats. Sensing that we were impatient to try the new drink, she quickly poured it into each of our mugs. I tried to say the word ‘cocoa,’ an unusual English word certainly alien to us. It sounded just as bad as it tasted. From that day onward, cocoa was served every evening. Some of my classmates instantly fell in love with it, but I found the taste strange. Within a few days, however, I too began to like the new drink, and in time, it became one of my favorites.

  Food and play were the best parts of our lives. We began our days exercising to nursery rhymes in the early morning sun. Shortly after, we had lessons on alphabets, numbers, and music. In preschool and a year later in kindergarten, we ran around in the gardens, listened to classical music, watched videos about phonetics, and played with toys. I loved to touch the dark nose of my little doll and stare into its glass eyes that always returned my gaze. Playing on the plastic slide and see-saw outside the dorm was always great fun, even if it was the source of many fights among my classmates.

  We learnt English, absorbed innumerable words, and listened to stories with pictures. Our first teacher was Mrs. Law, the one who had brought me from my village. She greeted us with a cheerful look and a bright ‘Good morning.’

  Pretty soon, we learnt to respond, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Law’ in proper English.

  During the first few weeks of class, I pushed past the other children to find a place up front on the floor near Mrs. Law’s feet while she sat on a chair and read to us from a picture book. Holding a book in one hand, she read out its title, the author’s name, and then started the story. In the beginning we couldn’t understand what she was reading, but we followed along. She was speaking the foreign language of our new world. She showed us the pictures and acted like the characters in the book, her gestures exquisitely expressive. We heard with great delight The Three Little Pigs, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Snow White. I would laugh out loud every time she called out in an eerie voice: ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair.’

  We tried to imitate her but it took months for the sluggish weight of our Kannada and Tamil accents to wear off. Over the years, my English got more and more polished. Today it has a distinctive character that I am rather proud of—a clear amalgam of Indian and Western accents. Whenever I was back in the village, speaking English commanded respect. No one could understand me, but they were curious to hear me speak the language only important people could. It made me feel rather important too.

  Before evening snacks, we quickly changed into play clothes and put on shoes. None of us knew how to tie shoelaces, so the aunties showed us over and over again. We ran around in the small playground behind the dormitory, trying to catch each other. Heaps of mud collected from the construction projects were our best resource for games. We ‘built’ the huts we lived in before, and used rocks and coconut shells as cooking fireplaces and pots. I blew into the ‘fire’ with a stick as if it were the funnel made of a black hollow rod my mother used at home. My imagination ran wild, recreating everything that was our hut except for the roof.

  At night we were told to stomp while walking along the pathways to scare off snakes. We looked like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, well-armed in our warm, full-sleeved shirts, pants, and leather shoes ready to fight off our nocturnal enemies. A slight hissing or a rustle from the bushes would have us screaming, ‘Snake! Snake!’ Time after time, the security guards came running, only to find their torches shining upon tiny crickets or sleepy toads.

  On Saturday afternoons we were taken on nature walks to look for birds. Sparrows, hummingbirds, and kingfishers were common on our grounds. The bird nests appeared so much cozier for their chicks than our dingy village huts filled with smoke. I imagined them singing as they flew to the heavens. I often pictured being a bird, and flapped my arms as if they were wings. ‘Next life, if God permits me, I will be a bird,’ I’d say to myself.

  Sometimes we were taken outside the school gates to the nearby lake that brimmed with water after thunderous monsoon showers. We walked in pairs, holding hands, and watched the migratory birds that skimmed the lake in great flocks. The sight of white, long-necked cranes gracefully wading through shallow waters and picking up small insects in their beaks was thrilling. Avinash, a fair, chubby boy with an unusually large protruding belly, was usually my walking partner. He was quite a clown during these trips, entertaining us with clever tricks and his acting talents. Years later I learnt that his skills were acquired during his early years performing on the street of his village with his father.

  We were not allowed to walk where stones protruded from the shallow water in the lake. The aunties told us that these stones marked where bodies were buried, as that section of the lake had been a cemetery for the poor. In the distance, we could see groups of women from n
earby villages squatting upon rocks that jutted into the lake, washing clothes in the water, just as my mother did back home.

  What was especially heartening about my first year at Shanti Bhavan was the fun in all our daily activities. I looked forward to the next lesson, the next game, the next new flavor. As my new way of life started to set in, I thought less about my parents. I felt safe and protected in my new environment. Like colorless water innocence flowed, blind to where this new life was headed.

  As years passed, I often found myself feeling guilt-stricken at how I came to have so much compared to my family. While my father hauled sacks of liquor on his back, I was learning to sit at a table and eat with a spoon. While my mother was alone, with no one to talk to, I was greeting guests to our school with a smile and curious questions. No one in my family could read or write in any language, but I was learning English and how to add numbers. My brother, Francis, and the child my mother was carrying when I left her would live with whatever little they had. I, on the other hand, was learning to long for more of the good things I had already been given.

  CHAPTER FOUR: FATHER FIGURES

  The wait was unbearable. Three long months had passed and now I would finally see my parents again. They were coming to Shanti Bhavan along with other parents for an important meeting.

  I pressed my face against the window, searching for Amma and Appa among the crowd. The thoughts of being held in my mother’s arms, and being carried around by my father on his shoulders were enough to send me jumping about in the dorm with the same excitement I used to feel back home at the village fair. When the time came, we were taken to the dining hall, a large tile-roofed building that was still under construction, for the much awaited moment.

  We had been dressed carefully for the occasion—hair combed neatly and faces beaming at a high polish. Wild with excitement, we were finally let loose to run into the gathering of parents. Plenty of confusion erupted since some parents could no longer identify their children. We looked so different to them, dramatically transformed by our clean clothes, full cheeks, haircuts, and huge smiles. Some mothers embarrassed themselves by grabbing the wrong child. Fortunately, the mix-up didn’t run both ways; we easily recognized our parents. The aunties and teachers looked on, savoring the moment and laughing their hearts out at the confusion.

  I found Appa seated by the hall entrance. Screaming with delight, I ran into his open arms as he effortlessly swept me up from the ground. I held him tight around his tree-trunk neck with a force that surprised him. As always he smelled of sweat, piercing my senses, but it didn’t matter. I heard the crackle of a packet of biscuits in his pocket and reached for it. Appa smiled. It wasn’t every day he had a few rupees to spare for things like that; this was a special occasion.

  My attention quickly turned to the section of the hall where the women were gathered. Dressed in bright saris with jasmine flowers pinned in their braids and red bindis pressed on their foreheads, the mothers looked like a basket of bright marigolds. Amma was amongst them, waiting eagerly for me. She snatched me away from Appa before I could even eat one biscuit, and wetted my face with a string of kisses. ‘How are you, Chinna?’ she kept asking lovingly, waiting for me to say something to satisfy her. I closed my eyes, enjoying the warmth of her embrace after so long an absence, and took in with all my senses the scent of her hair and the softness of her skin. It was so good to feel loved, to belong to someone who was all mine.

  That first visit proved to be momentous in more ways than one. Not only did my parents get to see me again, but they were to meet the man I would later come to think of as Dad—different from father. Even years later, Appa had no difficulty describing that day in vivid detail. After all, it was an unusual experience—the first time he met the man to whom he’d handed over the responsibility of bringing me up.

  As the parents settled down, all eyes turned towards the entrance to the dining hall. Those who were chatting were nudged into silence as Mrs. Law made her way down the concrete stairs. Walking beside her was a tall, well-built man whose eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, giving him a sophisticated look. Everyone had expected our benefactor to be a fair-skinned foreigner. However, his light brown skin and sharp facial features, not to mention his large ears that stood out prominently, suggested he was of Indian origin. His black hair, sparsely sprinkled with white, was neatly parted to the left. Everyone knew his name was ‘Dr. George.’

  Except for a few scattered whispers, the gathering of staff and parents was reverently quiet. There was a palpable tension in the room now. This was the moment our parents had been waiting for; they needed answers to the many questions that troubled them. As in our village, suspicious neighbors and landlords everywhere had raised doubts about the true motives of the school and the man behind it.

  The stranger greeted the crowd with folded hands and head slightly bent in earnest respect. In a loud, uneven chorus, the parents returned the Namaste with the same adoration they bestowed upon landlords, priests, and moneylenders. But unlike those powerful men who made the families stand for a while whenever they arrived, this man said warmly, in English, ‘Please sit. Please sit.’

  Seeing a sea of blank looks, he gestured several times with his hands for them to sit down. The stranger couldn’t speak any of the local languages, so two staff members sat nearby to translate for him. They repeated his words in Tamil and Kannada, the two languages spoken in the states of Tamil Nadu and nearby Karnataka.

  Dr. George told me many years later, ‘I knew then that whatever was to happen that day would determine the future of our school.’

  Village landlords and leaders of slum communities were already spreading rumors that some children had been killed, their organs removed, and their bodies dumped in remote fields. These power brokers were afraid that their control over the poor would be lost if their children received a good education, obtained high-paying jobs, and transformed the economic conditions of their families. They were determined to undermine the school at any cost.

  Dr. George cleared his throat. ‘I am very happy to see all of you.’ His voice rang out with gentle strength. He appeared relaxed; casually, he crossed his legs.

  But things didn’t click immediately. I’m sure his addressing the parents in English struck everyone as odd, and the time waiting for translation made it even more unnatural. The parents were just as intrigued by his speaking a foreign language as they were curious about what he might have to say. He countered the intensity of their stares with a smile, not to let their gazes unnerve him.

  ‘It has been twenty-five years since I left India for America,’ Dr. George began. ‘In my younger days, I was an officer in the Indian army, but I left after suffering a hearing impairment.’ Touching his right ear, he said disarmingly, ‘I don’t hear very well.’

  Nobody uttered a word, so he continued.

  ‘After making some money in business, I decided to start a school to educate children from poor families. That’s why I am here.’

  He waited for the interpreters to do their work.

  Dr. George had been moved by the difficult lives led by the Monpa tribes in the Himalayan mountain ranges where he served as a young army officer. The poverty he witnessed during his travels in India inspired him to start the school. He was appalled by the caste discrimination that many endured, and it was his desire for social justice that had brought him back.

  He spoke with deliberate seriousness, but emotion lit his face. ‘I believe that all children, whether black or white or brown, rich or poor, are equal,’ he continued, constantly gesturing with his hands. ‘Everyone must have the opportunity to study at a good school.’

  He explained how he had assembled a team to make his life’s mission a reality. He purchased more than thirty acres of land in this distant village where poverty was rampant. Soon construction began in earnest for this residential school, our school, to be named Shanti Bhavan—Haven of Peace.

  It couldn’t have been clear to him whether
anyone in the audience really understood the meaning of what he had said, but they nodded as if they did and sighed just the same. Using simple language, facial expressions and hand gestures, he tried to make it easy for everyone to grasp what he was saying.

  ‘I live with my family,’ he said. ‘I have a wife and two grown-up sons.’ He paused and added with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, ‘Only one wife.’

  The interpreters tried to contain their smiles as they translated. The audience erupted in laughter. It was the kind of joke they enjoyed most. Though relationships involving a man and more than one woman were not uncommon in their communities, his openness about it was hilarious. Where we came from, rich folks seldom joked with the poor.

  Appa wondered why this stranger wanted to help his family. He was surprised to hear a man from phoren (foreign) say, ‘Your children will be tomorrow’s leaders. They should study hard in school and college. And when they get good jobs, they will improve your lives.’

  It was too farfetched for the parents to think that their children would be able to help them in a big way years later. Moreover, waiting so many years for their children to complete college education was simply beyond their comprehension. They probably didn’t have confidence in their children’s ability to study beyond a few grades in the local school. What made them suspicious was that he still hadn’t asked for anything in return.

  Finally, Dr. George asked if there were any questions. A few hands shot up. A young father stood, drawing the attention of the crowd. ‘In our village, many people are saying that you will kill our children and take their kidneys and eyes and sell them in America. We are afraid.’ Heads nodded in collective assent.