Tiger Hills (18 page)

The dimple flashed briefly in his cheek, his eyes still locked with hers. “You look far more presentable in the moonlight.”

She flushed. “Do you have something to say to me or not?” she asked tremulously.

He looked down then and taking a deep breath, ran his hands
thickly through his hair. “Yes. We … Devi, there can be nothing between us.”

Pain knifed through her. “Am I … am I not to your liking?”

He laughed, a low, bitter sound. “Are you not to my liking. Are you not to my liking,” he repeated, his eyes lingering on her mouth, the fullness of her lips. “I haven't been able to sleep since the Kaveri festival. Not a single night's rest have I had, not since I saw you.” His voice, like lush, full-bodied moss. “Why should it be so, I do not know. All I know is that I can neither hunt nor eat nor drink in peace; all I can think about is you. So to answer your question, yes. Yes, I find you to my liking. Nonetheless, there can be nothing between us. I am spoken for.”

She stared at him, stricken. “Who … ? How? Who is she?”

“It's no woman.” He told her then about the vow he had taken. In an impulsive bout of gratitude over the tiger that Ayappa Swami had allowed him to fell, Machu had vowed not to take a wife for twelve years. Celibate he would remain, just like his God, for twelve years, two years for every lobe on the killed tiger's liver. Nine had passed, with less than three to follow. It had never mattered, his vow, not until he had met Devi.

“A vow?” Devi asked, such a wave of relief washing over her that she felt almost light-headed. “So it was true, the rumors … a
vow.
So? We can still be betrothed.”

“What difference between a betrothal and an actual wedding?” No, he said, he could not, would not, extend a formal commitment to any woman until the twelve years were over. He swore Devi to secrecy. To reveal a vow diluted its potency; her he had needed to tell, but nobody else could know.

She was silent for a while, then smiled. “I'll wait for you.”

Hope blazed across Machu's face for an instant but then he shook his head. “How are you to wait for me without a formal betrothal? On what grounds will you refuse the other proposals that will come your way? When you continue to refuse, if you can, they will start to say things about you. List imaginary defects where there are none, claim you are unsound of mind—or worse, sullied of character.”

“So?” she asked softly. “I'll wait for you nonetheless. And when you finally come to claim me, they will be silenced.” She stepped closer to him, so close she could feel the heat from his body. His shoulders tensed, his breathing ragged as he stood his ground. “You're the one for me,” Devi said quietly. “The only one.”

“You are placing your reputation at stake.”

“I have never cared very much for what people say,” she said, smiling.

“We will not be able to see one another,” he said, proudly lifting his head. “I'll not meet you like this, in secret, slinking about behind everyone's back.”

“I waited years without knowing if I would even see you again.” Devi raised a hand to his face, amazed at her boldness. She rested her palm against his cheek, registered the sharp intake of his breath as she traced a finger along his jaw. “Come to me when you can, when you will. Once a month, or a year, it doesn't matter. I will wait.”

“No,” he said stubbornly, his breathing hoarse as he removed her hand. He gripped her fingers tightly in his own. “You don't know what you are saying.” How would she stay potential suitors, he asked, how long could she keep turning them away? The pressure would build at home for her to be wed. Her father seemed a good man, but even he would run out of patience. Devi was already older than a lot of brides in Coorg; three years was a long time. What if something befell him? What would happen to her then?

“Make sure nothing does,” she replied calmly.

Her head was buzzing, her heart beating as if it might explode, and yet she was filled with stillness. Here. This was where she belonged. So natural, so right … so unthinkingly right for her to be by the side of this man. Doubt, despair, conviction, anticipation all laid momentarily to rest, a sea of glass with all tides soothed. Raising her other hand, she laid it gently against his cheek. Her eyes filled with sudden tears, surprising even herself.

“Mine. You are mine. I will wait for you forever.”

Chapter 12

1897

We're all a bunch of faggots

Our arses stuffed with maggots

We bugger one another,

Brother to brother

Faggotty, maggotty, bleedin' arse FAGGOTS.

Devanna dully belted out the lyrics of the verse. It was late, the windows of the darkened hostel firmly shut to prevent the sound of voices carrying over to the masters' quarters. Once again the first years were aligned naked in rows, like the tracks of some perverse railroad.

Martin Thomas and his cronies stood leering at the head of the column. “Louder,” they commanded. “Louder, fags, we can't hear you.”

Why hadn't the Reverend warned him? Devanna wondered bitterly again. He had painstakingly prepared Devanna for his first term at college, preordering his textbooks from Higginbotham's so they could review the course material together. He had accompanied Devanna to Bangalore, meeting with Father Dunleavy in order to introduce Devanna personally to him, much to Devanna's embarrassment. He had even settled Devanna into the
hostel and, as he was leaving, clasped him in a brief hug. The unaccustomed show of emotion took Devanna by surprise. He had promised to visit as often as work would permit, slipping Devanna ten rupees—“pocket money,” he had murmured over the latter's protests, something small to tide him over until the holidays. When he had done so much, why then had the Reverend neglected to prepare him for ragging?

It had started that very first night. Martin and his gang had waited for the warden to finish his rounds, then they had swooped upon the new students like vultures spotting carrion, rousting the first years from their beds and gathering them in the hall. “Strip,” they had commanded. Devanna had gingerly got out of his pajamas, like the rest of them, but it hadn't ended there. The seniors had handed out wooden rulers, and ordered the first years to measure one another and tabulate the results. They had looked at each other, the freshers, and someone had giggled nervously. It was a joke, it had to be. For a few seconds, nobody moved. A hockey stick flashed through the air and a fresher slumped groaning to the floor. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get to it, fags, unless you want some more of that.”

Devanna had squatted disbelievingly in front of a classmate's groin, trying to distance himself from the spongy squiggle of flesh brushing against his fingers. They each had to announce the inches they had claim to, to the strident mockery of the raggers. Then bunched together, they were marched through the hostel corridors. “We're all a bunch of faggots … ”

It had become a recurring ordeal—barely a night went by when the first years were not booted from their beds on some pretext or another. Those few who dared to protest were roundly thrashed; Devanna had immediately realized it was best to keep his mouth shut and walk fast. Even so, Martin had spotted him with the unerring instinct of all bullies for the more vulnerable of the herd.

A burly senior with green-brown eyes the color of ditch water, Martin Thomas was the offspring of a quixotic lieutenant posted with the Second Sappers and the daughter of his head clerk. Ginny had the brown hair of her English father and the voluptuous hips
of her Indian mother, and Lieutenant Thomas had been enthralled from the moment she swayed past him. He was shocked when three quick, sweaty trysts later she had announced she was pregnant, but ever a gentleman, he had pledged his troth. They had been married in the cantonment chapel, and at the party he had thrown for his fellow officers, Ginny and he had danced all night to the brass band. It hadn't taken long however, for disillusionment to set in; when the Sappers were posted to Malaya, it was a stroke of luck as far as Thomas was concerned.

Martin learned early on not to ask after his father for fear it would trigger one of Ginny's rages or hysterical bouts of tears. Country-born, the other boys called him, podgy Chee Chee Thomas. “Faster, Chee Chee,” they shouted, as he fielded their cricket elevens, “catch that ball, quick, or next time you can go play with your chokra brethren instead.”

His grandfather used his position with the forces to get Martin into the Army Reserve; Ginny lit three candles at the church of St. Thomas in gratitude. Military life suited Martin. Here, nobody cared about his Anglo-Indian parentage. He performed the training exercises with gusto, imagining his black boots landing with a satisfying crunch on his father's neck. Things began to happen to his body. The puppy fat melted from his frame, and in one summer alone he shot up four and a quarter inches. Veins popped from newly muscled arms, his shoulders widening and thighs thickening into a palpable physical presence that, to his astonishment, drew a wake of less-endowed cadets like magnets to his side.

Somebody suggested medical college; nobody was more surprised than he when he was accepted; this time, his mother ran a small advertisement in the
Madras Herald
to thank the Infant Jesus. Despite his bulk and the sycophants it immediately fetched him, Martin never publicly protested his own ragging. When a senior called him a coolie, asking if Martin had a thing for black velvet—native women—like his father before him, Martin had convulsed with laughter along with the rest of them.

At the Freshers Ball later that year, however, the event that officially marked the end of the ragging season, Martin and his
gang had accosted the senior alone by the lavatories. One of them twisted the senior's hands behind his back as Martin slammed the boy's face repeatedly into the wall. “Tell a soul,” Martin said to him genially, “and the next time, it will be worse. You hear me? I'll rip you apart, starting with your goolies.”

The following year, Martin set a whole new standard for ragging at the College. “This is for your own good,” he assured the freshers. “Survive me and there is nothing in the world that you will not be able to face like men.” It had been wildly addictive, the power he wielded, and the following year, despite becoming a third-year student, Martin had broken with tradition and continued to spearhead the ragging.

He could not have explained his loathing for Devanna even if he tried, except that it had been immediate and absolute. The few other chokras in the batch were replicas of those who had gone before them; brown-arsed runts who shivered at the very sight of him. Devanna's skin was lighter, almost exactly the same pale olive tint as Martin's; nearly pale enough to be white,
nearly,
but not quite, the olive undertones betraying the native blood pulsing beneath. He asked casually after Devanna's background. Rich family, he was told. Landholding hunter buggers from the hills.

Martin would never admit it, not even to himself, but there had been something about the tilt of Devanna's head, the quietness of his movements, that reminded Martin of himself. A privileged, refined,
could-have-been
version of himself.

At first Martin had merely watched Devanna out of the corner of his eye every evening, as he orchestrated the ragging. Devanna had not fought back like the more hotheaded of the freshers, but neither had he cracked. No matter how exigent the task, Devanna had undertaken it impassively.

Inevitably, one day he accosted Devanna himself. Had he dared look Martin in the eye? The blank surprise on Devanna's face had only made him angrier. “Don't try to deny it,” Martin barked. “Don't you know the freshman protocol? Do I have to teach it to you myself?” Solomon's Chair, he had declared, making Devanna bend his knees and extend his arms forward, just like a chair. He
had placed his tennis racquet across Devanna's arms. “Hold steady now, you hear ?”

Devanna had crouched stoically, as the pain in his knees grew unbearable. When they gave out eventually, Martin slapped him across the face, calling him a sissy. “What are you, chokra?”

Devanna's voice had remained even, although anger spurted in his eyes. “A sissy.”

The first years were too ashamed to discuss the ragging. They would return to their dorms from yet another nocturnal parade, shoulders thrown back in a belated show of bravado, careful not to look one another in the eye. It was only ragging, they exclaimed, a coming-of-age ritual. It happened to everyone. That was just what happened; one had to take it like a man.

Devanna, too, took it like a man. He blearily got out of bed, belted out the fresher anthem, performed all the inanities asked of him. He tried his utmost to stay out of Martin's way, succeeding for barely a day or two before, invariably, he would hear the familiar words. “Chokra!” Devanna would turn, heart sinking as he braced himself for whatever new humiliation would follow.