Teatime for the Firefly (22 page)

I found Kalua had charged us again for another two dozen eggs. Expensive eggs they were, too.

“Why are eggs so expensive?” I asked.

Kalua looked like a smacked puppy. A small twitch appeared in his left eye. “
Chotasahib
eating only best-quality egg.”

“Does the
Kiyah
store have any vegetables?”

“No, memsahib, only potato and onion.” Then he added brightly, “I buy vegetable from local
haat
, tomorrow, memsahib. Tuesday, local
haat
day.”

“Why is the
mali
not growing any vegetables in the
malibari
?” I asked. There was a good-size kitchen garden at the back of the house. The soil was excellent. There was no reason why we should not be growing our own vegetables.

“
Mali
is lazy donkey, memsahib,” Kalua said viciously. He obviously had a grudge against the fellow. “He not doing any work. Only smoking bidi
under mango tree
and going home.”

Which
mali
was he talking about? I wondered. There were three of them. All three were monkey-faced and were seen puttering around the far reaches of the garden like gray ghosts in the early morning, but they vanished before the sun was fully up in the sky.

“I having a son, memsahib, making good
mali
boy...” Kalua said.

“I will speak to
Chotasahib
about the
mali
,” I said quickly, not wanting to get into a conspiracy with Kalua without knowing what the issues were. “So what else is on the
Kiyah
’s list?”

Kalua’s list for the day included a storage tin for sugar to keep out the
cheetis
(ants), potatoes, onions, kerosene, flour, cooking oil, rat poison and something that sounded like “figitin.” He pointed to the page in his
khata
and said we owed the
Kiyah
a balance of three rupees and four annas from the last time. Everything he had written on the page looked like cauliflower florets floating in space. Kalua had circled the owed sum, and signed his initials in English—KP—with a dainty flourish.

I looked at him in surprise. “Three rupees for what?” I thought we gave him enough money each time he made a
Kiyah
trip, which was every other day.

Kalua frowned, studying the torn page. “For potatoes, onions, kerosene, flour, cooking oil, rat poison and ‘figitin,’” he said.

I made him read the list for the week before. It was for kerosene, rice and “figitin.” And before that for rope and “figitin.”

“Figitin” seemed to be the most indispensable item on the list. What was even more puzzling was the price of “figitin” fluctuated wildly from week to week. One week it was three annas, another week one rupee and six annas.

“What is ‘figitin’?” I asked finally.

“I...figitin,” said Kalua, rolling his eyes dolefully.

“Flit?” I ventured. Maybe Kalua was talking about the mosquito spray. But as far as I knew, Flit spray was one of the items we picked up from Paul & Co., not the
Kiyah
store.

“I...figitin,” Kalua repeated, looking more wretched than ever.

I sighed, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. Manik had appointed me as the financial controller. Manik’s club bills were exorbitant, the
dhobi
’s charges made no sense, we always seemed to owe the
Kiyah
money for something or the other and now there was “figitin.” Keeping track of Hal and Kal’s slippery maneuvers was exhausting. It was impossible to verify any of their expenses. Their explanations were labyrinthine, meandering in circles and finally getting lost in a bog.

After some detailed questioning it turned out “I figitin” was Kalua’s attempt at English: “I’ve forgotten,” which was the balance left over after buying all the items on his list. It was Kalua’s way of rounding up accounts. No wonder we never got any change back. “Figitin” took care of that.

* * *

The kitchen was a small independent building set a little ways from the house. On one side was the
malibari
,
or kitchen garden, fenced in by barbed wire. On the other side of the kitchen were the servant quarters, a row of three small houses where Halua, Kalua and Potloo lived. They each had their independent accommodation where they lived with their families and domestic animals. From the pantry, only the top of the three thatched roofs could be seen, the rest covered by clumps of banana trees and other vegetation. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of a small child, or a chicken pecking in a corner of a dusty yard.

One early evening after tea, I decided to check out the kitchen garden. I opened the back door to the pantry and almost tripped over a small girl child sitting on the stairs playing with empty shotgun cartridges. She sang in a tuneless voice as she lined them up. Some were filled with pebbles, others with sticks and marbles. The child could not have been older than three. She was brown as a berry and dressed in a ragged pair of knickers with nothing on top. Her uncombed hair trailed a pink ribbon and fell over her eyes. She heard the pantry door swing open and turned around, staring at me with very big, very black eyes.

“Oye!” she greeted me happily.

She abandoned her playthings and followed me to the kitchen garden, touching my sari every now and then, but if I asked her anything she just sucked her dirty thumb and stared at me with her big, round eyes.

The kitchen garden was overgrown with weeds. A small hoe lay in one corner with a few rusted tin cans, an overturned bucket and a split rubber hose. There was not much growing in the garden except a small clump of sugarcane and a banana tree that had fallen on its side. There was, however, one neatly tended patch of healthy vegetation in one corner: a splayed leafy plant that I did not recognize. I broke off a leaf, and crushed it between my fingers. It smelled vaguely familiar, but I could not place it.

Weeds grew in profusion, proving the soil to be rich. We could easily grow our own vegetables, I determined. I imagined neat rows of tomato, eggplant, okra and green beans, and decided to speak to Manik about it.

Wanting to peek into the kitchen, I pushed open the netted spring door. Halua was sitting on a ratty cane ottoman in his undershirt smoking a
bidi. Kalua was on the floor grasping the head of a skinned chicken with his feet. He had a butcher’s knife poised in the air and was about to hack its head off. When they saw me, both Halua and Kalua sprang to their feet. Kalua’s knife clattered noisily to the floor, and Halua threw the bidi butt to the side and flapped his arms madly to rid the air of smoke. They both looked horrified. They salaamed
,
then stood ramrod straight against the wall as though they were facing a firing squad.

Too late, I realized I had overstepped my boundaries. The kitchen was not the memsahib’s territory—she was not expected to pop in. I was appalled at how filthy the kitchen was. It was sooty and dark with the smell of stale frying everywhere. There was a beat-up table in the center, but most of the pots and pans lay on the floor. The only window in the room looked out toward the servant quarters. It was grimy with grease, with dirty rags tucked into the broken windowpanes.

The child was peeping into the doorway from behind my sari. I saw Halua’s eyes widen when he saw her. He made small angry gestures to shoo her away, but she just stood there stoutly behind me.

“What is this plant?” I asked, holding up the leaf.

Halua and Kalua looked like shifty-eyed twins. In their undershirts, without their uniforms, they looked astoundingly alike.

One of them scratched his oily head and cleared his throat. It was Kalua, I realized, because he had the twitch in his eye. “We are not knowing, memsahib. It is I thinking some
junglee
plant.”

“No, no, these plants are not
junglee
. They are being grown by someone,” I said.

“Memsahib, I am thinking it is the Potloo putting the plant,” Halua said, fidgeting. Why would the night watchman be tending the kitchen garden? I wondered.

“Whose child is this?” I asked. The child clutched my sari and cowered behind me.

“Mine, memsahib,” Halua said, giving her the stern eye.
“Budni, ghar jah!”
he hissed sternly, pointing his finger and motioning her toward the servant quarters. He advanced menacingly, but little Budni clutched my sari tighter and whimpered.

“That’s all right,” I said, “please go back to your work.” I closed the kitchen door. I walked around the side of the bungalow to the front of the house. The small girl skipped along.

I settled in the cane chair on the veranda and poured myself a cup of tea. The child sat on the front veranda steps and clapped her hands and sang a tuneless song. I gave her a tea biscuit, which she munched happily, feeding the crumbs to the ants. When Manik came home he almost tripped over her as he bounded up the stairs.

“Oh, Wendy!” he exclaimed.

“Salaam sahib,” chirped the little one, saluting smartly, raggedy knickers and all.

I was curious. “What’s her name? I thought it was Budni?”

Manik laughed. “Larry calls her Wendy.
Budni
means
Wednesday
, as you know, so she becomes Wendy. Right, Wendy?”

“Bhendi,” lisped the little girl.

I told Manik about my kitchen visit. Manik had never visited the kitchen end of the house. The only time he had gone there was a year ago, when a herd of elephants had come and trampled the
malibari
. Not that there was much to trample there.

I showed him the leaf from the plant growing in the
malibari
. It was a little wilted now.

“Ganja,”
Manik said, sniffing it. “Marijuana. The one time I tried it, I missed
kamjari
and got hell. I suspect it’s that scoundrel Potloo’s doing. That fellow is always in la-la land. I used to think he was unusually dim. He can’t even find the latch to the front gate some days.”

A few days later when I looked back in the
malibari
, the plants had gone. The soil had been raked over and the surface was a barren moonscape.

CHAPTER 22

Dear Mrs. Deb,

I do hope you have fully recovered from the nasty hornet bite.

I have been wanting to invite you over for tea so we can get better acquainted. Are you available tomorrow morning around 10:00 a.m.?

Please send a word through Hussain, my driver, and I will send the car to pick you up.

With warm wishes,

Audrey McIntyre

The invitation was handwritten on an ivory note card with
I. W. McIntyre, Esq.
printed on the top. I showed the note to Manik. “Why is there
Esquire
after his name?” I asked. “Is Ian McIntyre some kind of nobility, like Alasdair?”

“
Conferred
nobility,” said Manik. “General Managers of Sterling Tea Companies are entitled to add
Esquire
after their names. I guess it goes back to the early days of tea when British companies had a hard time recruiting able managers to run the tea plantations. After all, which fool would risk his life to work in the jungles of Assam? And for what? The money is not great, the weather horrible. So companies tried to entice them with this English lord lifestyle with all its perks—massive bungalow, lots of servants, big-game hunting and a fancy title. Englishmen love titles. They hanker for social status. Make a man feel important enough and he will do anything. The tea companies understand this very well. But it’s also true that General Managers have a free rein over their gardens. Full autonomy. They can run it any way they choose. The company does not interfere as long as the garden delivers profits.”

“So when you become General Manager, you will be Manik Deb, Esquire?” I said.

“Correct. And you will be my
Esquiress
.”

“What nonsense!”

“Anyway, you will meet the Esquiress of Aynakhal tomorrow. I think you’ll like her. She’s a lovely lady.”

* * *

Audrey McIntyre was a tiny, birdlike woman with fluttering hands and an eager smile. She wore a rose floral-print summer dress gathered at the waist, with a white sailor’s collar. Her brown hair was cut in a short bob. She came quickly down the steps of the veranda to the carport, followed by a very old cocker spaniel with sad milky eyes that greeted me with a tired but friendly
woof
.

“Layla!” she exclaimed, holding out her hands. Her voice had a musical chime. She wore a hint of pink lipstick and smelled pleasantly of lavender. “How lovely to meet you, finally.” She kissed me lightly on both cheeks. Her blue-gray eyes crimped at the corners like miniature folding fans.

The cocker spaniel was licking my toe furiously.

“Shoo, Daisy!” Mrs. McIntyre said, giving the dog a pat on the fanny. “Oh, don’t mind her, dear. She’s rather old and completely blind, I’m afraid.” She led me up to the veranda. “Oh, do have a seat.”

She removed a copy of
Woman’s Home and Garden
from the chair and placed it on the coffee table. “It’s a shame Debbie can’t join us. She was really looking forward to meeting you. Emma is running a fever. The child refuses to stay with her new ayah.”

“Who is Debbie?” I asked.

“Debbie Ashton of Dega Tea Estate. She said Rob, her husband, met you in Silchar.”

“Oh yes, I remember. He is a champion tennis player, isn’t he?”

“Your husband, Manik, is not too far behind, you know. He won the Mariani runners-up trophy last year.”

“Did he really?” I had no idea. Manik’s letters had been full of his shikar exploits. He was modest about his other sporting abilities. I now remembered a few silver trophies wedged between books on the bookshelf. Manik never spoke about them.

I gazed at the garden in awe. The front garden was divided into flower beds in which tall gladiolas peeped over snapdragons, peonies and cosmos, planted in descending layers fringed by short rows of daisies and pansies in the foreground. The landscaping was impeccably planned and all the colors beautifully coordinated. Many segments were demarcated by midget hedges with multicolored confetti-like foliage. There was a circular rose garden with a birdbath and even a tree house tucked in the branches of a weeping willow.

“This is the most exquisite garden I have ever seen!” I said, thinking sadly of our bungalow’s garden with its overgrown hedges, random flowers and disobedient bougainvillea. Compared to this pruned elegance, ours looked a juvenile delinquent running amok. “It must take a lot of work and upkeep.”

“Oh, the
malis
do everything. I just instruct them on what to plant where. You need to closely supervise them, though. Garden upkeep, as you know, is a memsahib job.” Her eyes followed a fly on the coffee table. She picked up the magazine and swatted it, missing by a hair. Daisy the spaniel skittered to her feet and looked about in dazed panic, blinking her milky eyes. Mrs. McIntyre patted her head reassuringly till she settled down again.

Mrs. McIntyre rang a small, engraved brass bell. A tall bearer with a placid moon face and attentive eyes came through the doorway. He was dressed in a spotless two-piece white tunic with a burgundy cummerbund and wore a white turban. His feet were bare. Mrs. McIntyre spoke to him in heavily accented but clear Hindustani.

“Where did you learn to speak such good Hindustani?” I asked.

“Oh dear, I had no choice. I was forced to pick up the language trying to communicate with the servants.”

I was thinking about what Manik had told me. The menfolk, especially young assistants, had an easier time picking up the native lingo, it seemed. They took private lessons from nubile “teachers” in more intimate settings. The company encouraged them to take a crash course, and this unconventional method was condoned because communication was crucial in labor management. Some of the vocabulary young assistants picked up was colorful, though superfluous for a planter’s job.

“Would you like to take a walk around the garden, dear?” Mrs. McIntyre asked. “I can also show you our
malibari
. We have a fine crop of string beans and cauliflower this season. I was going to ask our
mali
to fix you a basket to take home.”

We walked across the lawn. The freshly mowed grass was springy underfoot. Daisy followed, sniffing at anthills. A warbler sang from the low branches of a Semul tree.

“Are you interested in gardening, Layla?” Mrs. McIntyre asked.

“Oh, I am, but I have no idea what to do or even where to begin. Our bungalow garden is such a mess,” I confessed. We passed through the arbor of trailing primroses, dense with fragrance.

“We are lucky—the soil is so rich here in Assam. All you do is throw the seeds down and nature takes care of the rest,” said Mrs. McIntyre.

“Where do you get your seeds and cuttings from?” I noticed the flowers were show-quality specimens.

“I order most from the Sutton’s Nursery catalog in Calcutta. The roses I crossbreed myself.” She paused beside a patch of dazzling red poppies on long graceful stems and fingered a velvety petal tenderly. “These Oriental poppies I got from Mrs. Gilroy. She is a master gardener.”

A Zebra Swallowtail butterfly, resplendent in black and white stripes with crimson and blue spots, quivered hesitantly on the petals of an orange cosmos, then flew off.

“It is amazing to think that Assam is home to sixty percent of the entire butterfly specimens of the world. We have some very rare and exotic varieties in the rain forests here,” Mrs. McIntyre said.

That was surprising information. I had lived all my life in Assam and never known that!

The
malibari
occupied the entire back of the house and covered almost an acre. Sugarcane, papaya and banana plantations fringed the far edges. A small thatched hut in the corner housed bags of fertilizers, spades, shears, watering cans and hoses. Big clumps of green tomato hung heavily on stout hairy stems, snow peas and string beans curled tendrils around crosshatched bamboo trellises and juvenile carrots sprouted frilly stems from the ground. The cabbage and cauliflower planted in neat rows were big as footballs. In the centre of the
malibari
was a long netted enclosure running lengthwise, housing delicate strawberry plants nestled in straw.

Mrs. McIntyre made me feel wonderfully at ease. She was gracious and kind without a bone of pretension. I told her about Potloo growing marijuana in the kitchen garden, our two-dimensional egg and chicken diet, and my rather awkward kitchen visit.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Mrs. McIntyre tittered, clutching a hand to her chest, “so much to learn for a young bride in such a short time.”

It seemed most bachelor assistants lived in the same abject condition as Manik. It was the memsahibs who made the servants toe the line. The servants were expected to dress neatly and behave with decorum. The company had provided all the uniforms, but if one did not keep an eye on them, servants would sell off uniforms to buy bidis or liquor and walk around looking like beggars. The memsahib’s job was beginning to sound like a cross between a schoolmarm and a jailkeeper.

“Did you know all this before you became a tea planter’s wife? How did you even know what to do?” I was beginning to feel a little panicked.

“I married Ian when he was a Junior Assistant, and his manager’s wife, Mrs. Barter, was a very kind and lovely lady. She took me under her wing and taught me everything. She was like my surrogate mother, really. I was very lucky to have her.”

“Will you...? Can you please teach me the things I need to know?” I asked hesitatingly.

“Of course, duckie,” Mrs. McIntyre said, giving my hand a little squeeze. “I will show you everything. You will make a fine memsahib for your man.”

Tea had been served on the veranda. The bearer was laying out the food items on the glass coffee table. There was an iced chocolate cake, cheese straws and small rolled-up pastries with piped cream inside. He came around and placed a small plate with an organdy napkin and cake fork on the side table next to me.

Mrs. McIntyre poured a stream of strong, bright tea into the cups, gripping the handle of the teapot with a quilted parrot-shaped holder.

“That’s a beautiful tea set,” I said, admiring the old-fashioned bone china patterned with primroses.

“It’s an old Alfred Meakin set belonging to my grandmother,” said Mrs. McIntyre. “Oh, do try some of these.” She held out the plate with the rolled pastries. “Brandy snap, our
borchee
’s specialty.”

“Is your
borchee
a Mung cook?” I asked, taking a small bite of the brandy snap. It was light and gingery, with fresh whipped cream inside, and utterly delicious.

I knew Mungs were traditional tea-garden cooks. They were Buddhists from Chittagong in East Bengal and came from a proud culinary lineage and specialized in Anglo-Indian cuisine. Their recipes, closely guarded secrets, were handed down from father to son.

“Oh yes, he is a Mung. He worked in this bungalow since he was a boy. His father worked here before that.”

Mrs. McIntyre said she knew little about Mung cooks back then. “The old
borchee
was a true culinary magician. He made the most exquisite wood-smoked
hilsa
fish with all those wonderful Indian spices and served it whole, after removing every tiny bone.”

“I wonder how he did that,” I said.
Hilsas
were delicious river fish, with a rich buttery taste, but a mesh of curved, sharp bones made it impossible for foreigners to enjoy it.

“I believe he used a muslin cloth to trap the bones like hair. It’s a very ancient technique—only Mungs know how to do that. He taught our
borchee
, his son, every trick of the trade before he died. It was very strange how he died, too.”

“What happened?”

“It’s part of their tradition, I believe. They commit suicide because they don’t want to be a burden on their family. The old
borchee
had become very old and feeble and one day he came to take our leave. He said he was going away. His son would now take over. The way he put it, we thought he was going back to his ancestral home in Chittagong.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No. The old man walked himself to death. He was found weeks later by the jungle road. Withered as a leaf. The calloused soles of his feet had fallen off and lay on the ground neatly like sandals. And his body was covered with thousands of butterflies.”

“Butterflies?”

“Yes. Ian said a certain species of jungle butterfly feed off the salt on corpses. Ian fought in Burma during the First World War. There were corpses everywhere in the jungle covered with butterflies. Since then, Ian has hated butterflies.”

The ceiling fan ticked. Daisy sighed.

I sat there morbidly imagining a creeper-filled jungle full of corpses covered with butterflies and the calloused skin of their feet fallen off like old sandals. How many miles would it take for a man to walk to his death? I wondered. Ian McIntyre hated butterflies for the same reason I hated lilies—because of their association with death.

* * *

The factory siren wailed. It was four-thirty and Manik was home early. He played tennis with Rob on Mondays. It was also social night at the Mariani Planters Club.

“Debbie is waiting to meet you,” said Manik. He was sprawled on our bed in his underwear, his Bombay bloomers and sweaty workday shirt lumped on the floor. “I can drop you off at the Ashtons on my way to tennis and you can meet us at the club later together. What do you say?”

I was rifling through the hangers in my cupboard, pulling out saris, wondering what to wear. Yards of silk lay crumpled over the bed like a stormy sea.

Manik rolled up on his elbows, flipped a swath of silk over a shoulder and sighed breathily. “Look, I am Cleopatra!”

I ignored him.

“Wife, you are the big buzz in tea circles—the first Indian memsahib,” said Manik. “News travels quickly by the Jungle Telegraph in these parts.”

The Jungle Telegraph was an efficient conduit for local gossip. News traveled from garden to garden when memsahibs bumped into one another at the club store, cooks gathered at the local
haat
or ayahs chatted together at some child’s birthday party. No information was sacrosanct in tea circles. I had little doubt my arrival had been noted.