Tiger Hills (20 page)

“How much do you love me?” she asked him once, impetuously. They were lying side by side in the fields, the paddy waving bright green all around them. Buffaloes wallowed in the stream, and now and again there was a gentle splash as a fish jumped, breached the waters, then fell back in. Butterflies, tiny, pastel winged, flitted here and there, and herons skimmed the afternoon currents.

“Who says I do?”

“Oh, come now. Say it. Tell me how much you love me.”

He shook his head in amusement.

“Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

“Why don't you tell me instead? How much do
you
love
me,
huntress?”

She was silent so long that he opened his eyes to look at her. She had sat up and was staring at the sky, her eyes dreamy. “Loving you is like having wings. Like a massive pair of white wings have been attached to my back, so that my feet no longer touch the ground.” She turned to him, her face aglow. “You?”

He shut his eyes again. “You're going to get an answer out of me, aren't you?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

He shook his head and sighed. “Like running.”

“Running?”

“Yes. Through a forest.”

She waited, and when there was nothing more forthcoming, she began to bristle. “Like running? You love me the way you like a sport? Like
running?
”

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Devi … ”

She was storming to her feet.
“Running?”

He reached over and caught her in his arms. “Ayy, tigress,” he said gently. “Yes, like running. Like running through a forest, faster than anyone else can, than anyone ever has. When I run so fast that the trees begin to blur together, when I can almost see the shapes of the veera in their shadows. When my feet move so fast
that time, distance, everything else falls away, when all that is left is the magic of the moment, that one moment when I'm carried by the wind.” He looked steadily at her. “This is like that. Time, distance, it all seems to fade, all that matters is this one moment, this time spent with you.”

Chapter 14

I
n Bangalore, the first term drew to a close and it was at last time for the Freshers Ball. Father Dunleavy kicked off the festivities with his address. “No more,” he warned from the podium. “Ragging season is done, boys.” He looked pointedly at a bland-faced Martin. “I expect all of you to treat each other cordially, as professionals and as gentlemen.”

Later, he summoned Martin into his office. “I have my eye on you, Thomas,” he told him. Any more untoward incidents and proof or not, Martin would have him to answer to. If Devanna in particular were to walk into one more door, he would have no choice but to suspend Martin. Martin had blustered angrily at the unfairness of it all, but had been unable to meet the Father's eyes.

“Tattletale!” he later raged at Devanna, spittle flecking the latter's face. “Bloody snitch, I'll get you for this.” Not daring to lay another hand on Devanna, Martin let it be known through the hostel that from now on, nobody was to acknowledge Devanna's presence, let alone speak to him. If he saw anyone so much as glance at Devanna, there would be hell to pay.

So thankful was Devanna to be done at last with ragging, or so he believed, that at first he didn't even realize that he was still being singled out. The Freshers Ball was over, was it not? Ragging season was finally over. He had taken it like a man, paid his dues.
He reveled in the stillness about him, at being able to walk the corridors without having to peer anxiously over his shoulders. At being able to have a full night's sleep without dreading what new torture the day ahead held twisted in its palm.

He turned away from the ordeal of the previous months, willing himself to compact the awful memories, the flailing rage, the bitter hatred he felt for Martin into a hard, dark pellet buried deep inside.

It was finally over.

Slowly though, he began to notice it, the hush that descended as he entered a room. The hubbub would begin self-consciously again, but as soon as Devanna attempted to join a group it melted away. When he sat at a table in the mess, it emptied; when he tried to speak with someone, it was as if his words had fallen on deaf ears. Finally he turned to one of the Indians in his batch, a slight, hardworking student with a prominent overbite. The boy attempted to brush past Devanna, ignoring his questions, but the naked bewilderment in the latter's expression stopped him. He told him then, hugging his books to his chest as he glanced nervously around him, about Martin's decree.

Devanna stood shocked as he watched the boy scuttle away, the hatred that he had tried to bury fermenting into a slow, dull fury. What had he ever done to Martin? He would go and demand that he treat Devanna fairly, he would beat Martin's head in with the heaviest rock he could find, he would—

No. This was beneath him. He took a deep, slow breath, willing himself to calm down. Mission-Devanna knew what he had to do. Let his actions speak for him. He would do nothing, say nothing in retaliation, except for making sure that he was the finest student this college had ever seen.

Yes. He would earn, he would
command,
the respect of the college.

Devanna pushed himself as hard as he could, but he grossly miscalculated the results. For the more attention the professors lavished on him, the more annoyed his classmates became. The sympathy they had harbored toward him in the previous term was
rapidly eroded by the sight of Devanna's hand in class, perennially in the air. They started to jostle past him in the corridors and openly gibed at him in the dorms. Teacher's pet, they called him, insufferable brownnoser. Once there was a dead frog in his bed; another time someone poured sulphuric acid over his book of practicals. And still nobody would speak to him.

Confused, Devanna soldiered on, too proud to do any differently, carrying all the while an acid taste in his mouth. He sailed through the final exams and then, finally, it was the last day of the school year.

Devanna set out immediately for Coorg, thinner and taller than when he had left, a scar over his ribs and a permanent discoloration on his lower back from an especially vicious thrashing. Gundert rushed beaming from his study, where he had been standing by the window for the past half hour, ostensibly going through his correspondence but truly waiting for the first glimpse of Devanna at the gates. The novices gathered around Devanna, making much of him, marveling at how tall he had become, but Gundert had immediately noticed the gauntness of his face. There was a tautness about the child, like a spring coiled too tight.

“Everything is in order, Dev, yes?” he probed later, when they were alone in his study. He had placed a special order at the trading shop for the fruitcake that he knew Devanna enjoyed, but the boy had barely touched it.

“I wish I could have come to visit you,” he added. “Believe me, I very much wanted to, but it has been impossible to get away.”

Devanna nodded.

“Dev … ” Gundert tried again. “Is all well? Is there anything you wish to share with me, my child?”

For a split second, it was on the tip of Devanna's tongue. The brutality of the past year, the wash of black rage he felt whenever he thought of Martin.
Why me?
he wanted to ask.
What have I ever done to that lout?
The words locked in his throat, and he looked down at the floor instead. An ant had happened upon the crumbs
from the cake and was unsteadily carting its booty across the floor. A slight shift of his foot was all it would take to mash it into oblivion. He glanced briefly at Gundert. “I am well, Reverend,” he said flatly, and returned to his contemplation of the ant's progress.

“You know you can come to me with anything, child.” Gundert paused, troubled by the brittleness in Devanna's voice and searching for the right words. “I have known you since you were in half pants and about this high.” He smiled and held his hand a couple of feet from the floor, but Devanna did not notice. He nudged at the ant with his shoe, watching as the creature wobbled and then, righting itself, began to scurry across the floor. Gundert slowly let his hand drop. “Dev … ,” he said yet again, “if there is anything I can do, my son, any way that I might be of help, remember all you have to do is ask.” Devanna was silent, then he looked up at the Reverend and nodded. The ant hurried away, disappearing safely into a crack in the floorboards.

“Come,” said Gundert, trying to ignore his sense of disquiet, “a little poetry, that is what this evening has been lacking.” Selecting a volume from the bookshelf, he began to read aloud.

On a poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept…

At first Devanna merely listened, the familiar cadence of the Reverend's voice soothing him, sanding down the jagged, exposed snarl of his thoughts. Gradually, his own lips began rustily to move, keeping time with the beloved words:

He will watch from dawn to gloom,

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom.

He slept through that night, for the first time in a long while, lulled into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.

Still, it was only the next day, when he finally saw Devi and
heard her wild whoop of joy, that the shadows webbing his eyes began at last to lift. The sweep of the fields. Tayi's smoke-filled kitchen. The tiny mole by the side of Devi's mouth, a canopy of forest trees against a cerulean sky. These things seeped into his consciousness like rain into parched earth, bringing to life the words that had lain dormant within him all this past year. Devanna began to speak again. He talked almost without taking a breath, the sentences pouring from him in an unending, sometimes disjointed stream, as if they might bury the unhappiness of the past year in their stead.

At first Devi was all ears, alternating between amusement and fascination as he described endless, imaginary vignettes of college life. “So many friends I have there,” he boasted, “and I told you, didn't I, how I topped the last exams? You should see the way they all clamor after me. ‘Dev, come to dinner with us.' ‘Dev, interested in a spot of tennis, join us at the Cubbon?'”

Devi laughed fondly.

Egged on by her interest, he began to spin ever larger yarns, the sophistry of Bangalore growing by leaps and bounds in his accounts. “Really, Devi,” he said to her time and again, “if only you could
see
the city.”

“Hmmm,” she said at last, “I am sure it is very fancy there in the city, but surely our Mercara is not so bad?”

He stared incredulously at her. “
Mercara?
My dear girl, you know nothing. Once you have seen Bangalore—why, Mercara is nothing more than a sleepy, provincial little town!”

Devi jumped to her feet, stung by his pomposity. “Maybe I
like
sleepy little towns,” she retorted, “because I've no desire to see your precious Bangalore.”

He called, stricken, after her. “No, Devi, wait, that is not what I meant.” A lump rose in his throat as he scrambled behind her. “You don't know how much I wanted to … how I waited to … Devi,
wait
… ”

Much as she had been looking forward to seeing her old friend again, Devi gradually grew irritated. His never-ending stories. From daybreak to sunset, all he did, it seemed, was seek her out and babble on. She began to avoid him, slipping away when she spotted him come whistling up the path to the Nachimanda house. “Iguthappa Swami, but he is here yet
again.
Tayi, tell him … just tell him I have gone to visit a friend,” she would whisper, ducking out the back door.

“Cheh,” Tayi clucked, “is this any way to treat that poor boy? Making me lie to him … ” She would herd Devanna into her kitchen, baking him hot ottis, stuffing him with crab chutney and fried bamboo shoots until the blandness of hostel food was burned from his tongue, but it was poor consolation. The more he wanted to see her, the less time Devi seemed to have for him.

She was going to the shanty and no, he could not come, there was simply too much work to be done there.

She had to visit a friend.

She had a headache and needed to rest.

Once, despite her recriminations, he had stubbornly followed her. “Why can't I come with you?” he argued. “Anyway, the fields are deserted, can't you see? What is so urgent, what work so pressing that you must go there now, in the heat of the afternoon?”

Unless, he added only half jokingly, as a thought suddenly struck him, unless she had arranged a secret tryst with someone?

Devi burst into frustrated tears as he tried awkwardly to apologize. “Why can't you let me be?” she cried. “There, I won't go to the fields, are you happy now?”

“Sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that—”

“Stop following me around! Everywhere I look, there you are, like a shadow. Leave me alone, I beg of you, let me be.”