Tikkipala (32 page)

One said cautiously, ‘Those who have accepted the food have saved their own lives and the future of their children.'

But the ancient elder shouted louder. ‘Heretic. Such lives are not worth saving. These people must die or our tribe is finished.'

‘But, Lord,' asked a woman elder. ‘This is all very well, but how can we, who have nothing, carry out such a killing?'

‘We must ask the Tikki to do it,' said the elder.

‘But she has turned her back on us and refused our sacrifice.'

‘Perhaps our Maw will find a way, in the world of the Coarseones, to create a sacrifice to satisfy her,' one of the subtle ones said.

‘We all know how he came back wearing the garments of the Coarseones and also that his cheeks were fat with the eating of their food. We all know too that his hands were naked, showing that he no longer cared about the things our people find so sacred. Our Maw has gone the way of the impure heretics,' the bearded one roared. ‘He is fouled and filthy now and it is the duty of the people of this tribe to destroy him. One day, when our people become strong again, we must send our young people to hunt him down and kill him.'

‘But how do you know he is not working down there to save us?'

‘Because down there is the arsehole of the world,' shouted the elder. ‘And anything coming from there is foul and filthy. Because he has forgotten us.'

Most were starting to agree with the old man, though some began to whisper to each other, ‘This elder is asking us to destroy ourselves. He is telling us that we must not even try to survive. He is asking us to abandon hope.'

‘But what should we do? What is there to do?' whispered others.

‘We must find the Tikki. Meet her face to face. Ask her why she no longer likes our sacrifice. Find out what she wants.'

But the old man had heard. ‘We must beg her to kill the people of our tribe who are now impure. Beg her to hunt down and destroy our traitor, Maw.'

The Raja had started the fertiliser business twenty years earlier because he was determined to do something to help India's peasant farmers. He had made enemies by selling his product at cost price. He had received death threats and other manufacturers of NPK would accost him and furiously accuse him of ruining their business. ‘Just because you are rich you can afford to give away this stuff to the feckless peasants, for us it is a living and you are depriving us of it.' He had increased
the price a little, to please them, and invested the profits in a feeding scheme for the local schools. Fortunately, so far this had annoyed no one except some of the children who had been forced to eat carrots.

Usually he tried to employ young people who would not otherwise have had a chance in life. Employing Nirmal Rao had been against all his principles. In fact if it had not been for his sisters-in-law's persuasion, he would never have done so. And after the disaster in Parwal, he wished he had not done. He would have liked to sack the young man, but because Queenie was a friend, kept Nirmal on and had him packed off to a small district in East Bengal, where, thought the Raja, he would be able to do minimal harm.

Nirmal felt deeply depressed on his arrival in Dattapukur, the Bengali town to which he had been sent to continue his career in fertiliser. After he had been ushered into his hotel room, he sat on the edge of his bed and became overwhelmed with sadness. He longed to be back in Bidwar and reflected that while he sat, morose and lonely, his grandmother, Queenie, was probably telling everyone, ‘Nirmal is doing very well in Bengal and is earning a crore a year. He will probably be given a management post by spring.'

After the disaster of Parwal he had hoped that he would be sacked. When he told Queenie that he did not feel in tune with fertiliser, she had been unmoved and firm. ‘In our country, Nirmal, there is so much unemployment and your school results are so poor that that you must make the most of what you have got. And what do you think it is like for me when people ask me what my grandson is doing and I have to say, making statues in Bidwar? I'm sure you will start enjoying the job once you have settled down and though I have never been to Bengal I hear it is very nice.'

So here he was in a bland place, with a broiling climate, among boring people, doing a dead end job, and his grandmother telling him how lucky he was. He looked out of the hotel window, onto an endless land of sun-ravaged land crawled over with emaciated people and wondered if he could be bothered to go on living. At least this was not a dry state, he told himself, as he ordered another bottle of Indian brandy. He had only bought the bottle two days ago and it was nearly finished already. He pulled down the blinds so that he could not see outside, unscrewed the top, took a deep swig and emptied the bottle. Even by the time he was wiping his mouth he was starting to feel better. He rang the bell and ordered the bearer to bring a fresh bottle.

The only person who had ever asked him what he wanted to do with his life was that girl, Devi, in the Parwal Club a year or two before. As he sank back onto the hard bed and waited for more brandy to come he tried to remember what the answer had been.

The thags, who had been left in charge of the Parwal hill palace at first expected that Memsahib would return at any moment and kept polishing floors, scouring steps, shaking carpets, dusting lamps. But as the days passed into weeks, and the weeks to months, they began to feel forgotten. ‘We looked after her so well and protected her from the ferocious Animal yet she has no thought for us.' They began to feel bitter, to do little revengeful things like spitting on the china and urinating on the basket chairs. She had arranged for a small allowance to be paid to a skeleton staff as long as they kept the place in order and kept out squatters but the amount was not enough to live on. The thags realised they would either have to find some other source of income or return to their village and once again try to wrench a miserable living from the soil.
Nirmal reached a stage of such gigantic boredom that he could not even be bothered to get out of bed but lay there all day with the blinds pulled down, sipping brandy neat from the bottle. The manager came to see him after three days.

‘I am ill,' Nirmal told him. ‘Absolutely ill.'

The manager was shocked at the state of the young man, who had looked somewhat dishevelled on arrival but looked immensely more so now, unshaven, red eyed, and wearing his crumpled night clothes.

‘Is illness the only problem, Nirmal?' the manager asked, trying to sound sympathetic but in fact feeling annoyed. ‘If you have difficulties with the job please let me know for it is my duty to look after you.'

Nirmal rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I suppose I just don't find fertiliser exciting.'

‘But this is not the point,' said the manager, rather outraged. ‘When you do a job of work and are paid for it, being excited does not come into it.' He looked significantly at the brandy bottle, and waited to see if Nirmal would express shame.

Nirmal stared at it too, his expression gloomy.

‘If you are feeling lonely and far away from loved ones, perhaps you will like to come to come to my house and take tea with myself and wife,' offered the manager cautiously, at the same time rather dreading his wife's reaction to the presence of this untidy and drunken man.

He could see this place must seem lonely for someone used to the city. The only company here was himself and the lorry driver who took the fertiliser round the farms. ‘My wife makes a tasty chilli sugar omelette,' he added.

‘That is so kind of you,' said Nirmal. ‘But I am…' He sought around and ended up with a rather feeble, ‘…allergic to eggs.'

When the Raja began making preparations for going to inspect his factory, he was amazed and delighted when Devi asked to come with him. This was the first time she had shown any interest in fertiliser. Until now she had only been interested in those stones.

The small, rotund Bengali manager led Devi and her father into his office and ordered Pepsi cola to be brought to them. Sitting behind his wide desk he pushed his spectacles back from a shining forehead and said, ‘It is a very proud thing to see little Madam showing such interest in our little business.' He paused abruptly, fearing that this was not the proper way to address such a important person. But unable to think of any other, after a puffing moment he went on, ‘Is there any particular aspect of the work little Madam would care to know about?'

‘I am particularly interested in learning how the farmers in outlying districts make use of these fertilisers,' Devi said. ‘Please tell me, for example, how this stuff is selling in Bengal.'

‘Most certainly, dear Madam,' beamed the manager. ‘This is my own very county so I can give you all details.' He began hauling out paper, thrusting sales memos for her to see. He kept looking and looking at Devi, as though he could hardly believe in the sight of her.

‘And what is the name of the manager who is operating there?' asked Devi.

‘A Mr…' The little manager blinked and peered. ‘Ah, here we have it. A Mr Nirmal Rao.'

The Raja's face closed up. ‘Oh, that fellow,' he said sharply.

Before her father could go any further, Devi intervened. ‘I find this fertiliser business so extremely interesting. I would like to go to and see your Bengali operation.'

‘Ah, Madam, may I suggest you start with Gujarat?' protested the manager.

‘No,' said Devi firmly. ‘I have decided on Bengal.'

‘But Bengal will not be suitable at present,' the manager tried. ‘We have an inferior manager there. Please wait, dear Madam, till we have someone who is not …is not…'

‘Inert,' supplied the Raja.

‘Inert won't do at all,' said Devi. ‘Definitely I must go there and perk him up. Please make arrangements for my trip.'

The Raja let out a tragic groan. She had hardly returned, and now it seemed she was off again. He wished he had not tried to enthuse her about his business. ‘There are no mineral stones there,' he told her. ‘I am pretty sure of that.'

‘I am prepared to give up some of my time to helping the poor people of India to grow bigger crops, Papa,' said Devi piously. ‘I think that what you are doing is very wonderful, and I would like to help as well.'

The manager sighed, said, ‘If you insist on it, Madam,' and began to make phone calls while Devi hung over his desk saying, ‘And make sure I have a first class coupe. I can't bear AI.' And ‘Please see that the hotel you book me in is within walking distance of the fertiliser outlet, because I refuse to go in rickshaws and I bet there are no taxis there.'

It was only at the last moment, as she was going out, that she asked quite casually, ‘Oh, by the way, where is this Mr Nirmal staying? Perhaps it would be a good idea to book me into the same hotel as him, because I shall need to have several meetings with him on the subject of fertiliser.'

‘Madam,' said the manager. ‘This is a small place to which you are going and as such has only one hotel, which is also the place in which Mr Nirmal is staying.'

‘That will do fine then,' said Devi, trying to sound casual.

Nirmal had occasionally appeared for work staggering a little. The manager could not understand him at all and reflected that there were ten thousand young men, his own son included, who would have revelled in the chance of such a job and done their very best to make it work.

He considered briefly telling the Raja of his doubts concerning this young man, but feared that the Raja would become angry, seeing in anything he said as a criticism of his friend's grandson. Best leave the fellow alone to stew and hope for the best, the manager decided.

But as days passed, Nirmal's behaviour had become worse until the manager began to wonder if the Raja would prefer that one his friends was offended, than his business be ruined. Nirmal advised a farmer to fertilise a cabbage crop that was almost ready for market. The spray burnt the leaves and the farmer had not only lost faith in Bidwar NPK but had advised other farmers not to use it either. And before this matter was solved even, Nirmal lost a whole trailer load of fertiliser by not hooking it properly to the tractor before driving it away from the store. The manager was still sending spies around the country side, hoping that sooner or later someone would tell him who had got the trailer. Sometimes the manager would wonder which was worse, the days Nirmal did not turn up at all and he had to do everything, or the days Nirmal did turn up and created yet more chaos.

There were days when Nirmal considered killing himself. Once he even drank awhole bottle of brandy in one go, expecting it to waft him pleasantly into permanent unconsciousness. But though he had been dreadfully sick and had got the ghastliest hangover, he had still been alive next day.

When the manager of the Dattapukur branch of Bidwar Fertilisers was told that that the owner's daughter had arrived in the village and was on her way to see Mr Nirmal, the poor man fell into a panic. He came running out of his office, with his hand still holding the pinch of his midday meal, the chapatti dripping mutton curry down his white panama. At first he could not believe that the woman with the hacked short hair and wearing sweat soiled trousers and a manly shirt was the daughter of the Raja. But at last, after some stuttering and panting, he told Devi, ‘Oh, Madam, Madam, the fellow you have come to see is unwell and unavailable for interview. Please be inclined to take a bed in my own house, and perhaps the fellow will be on his feet tomorrow and then I will arrange for a meeting with him for you.' If the daughter discovered that Mr Nirmal was still in bed at midday and had not come to work at all that day, the manager would probably lose his job.

‘Please don't worry, Mr Chakravati,' Devi said kindly. ‘I will go and find Mr Nirmal in his bedroom.'

The manager was feeling desperate. He tried dancing in front of Devi like a dog trying to prevent its owner from being attacked. ‘Mr Nirmal's disease might well be infectious. Please do as I say, dear Madam.'