Chapter 16 #2
Andrew’s smile was lugubrious. ‘There’s some stuff I need to tell you,’ he said.
My back straightened, and I leaned forward. He wanted to talk about us!
‘Noelene had been in a relationship with a man above her station.’
I blinked.
‘She was 22, and he was 25, he couldn’t marry her, he was always honest about that. Noelene was sure she would get him to change his mind.’
In journalism, I was taught that every story came with an intro. ‘Who?’ I asked. I meant, what.
‘He married shortly after, and they continued to meet clandestinely. Noelene’s lover was generous with money, and initially, his time, too. Then Noelene became pregnant,’ Andrew said, pausing briefly. ‘Their daughter, Sarah Ann, died 20 years later in childbirth.’
She was his mother! Sarah… Sarah something… Sarah Ann. Oh god! Andrew laid out the facts like it was the loose sketch of a film script.
He took a sip from his glass. I took a gulp.
I waited before asking, ‘Have you met him, your biological grandfather?’
Andrew shook his head before taking another sip and placing the glass on the table.
‘Does he still live in Bengaluru?’
Andrew shrugged before picking up the shakers.
Andrew had asked Noelene about his mother. She had told him that Sarah Ann had passed away when she was giving birth to him.
‘I didn’t like the sound of what I had heard. I remember that clearly,’ Andrew said. ‘I was just a boy, so I pressed. I asked if my father had been upset with me at the passing away of his wife.’
I was nodding, but I wanted to cry.
‘Noelene told me my father didn’t know that my mother was with a child,’ he said.
‘Much later, I understood that to mean that my mother didn’t know who exactly the father of her child was.
’ There was a pause, a pronounced one, before he added, ‘Maybe she didn’t want to know, my mother was stubborn. ’
‘So unlike you, Andrew!’
Andrew laughed out loud.
At that moment, it occurred to me that Andrew’s ‘rejection’ comment was linked to his roots.
I thought it was rejection that Andrew had told me on the evening he had caught me on my run.
‘I want you to read something,’ Andrew said, passing me his iPhone. He had been fiddling with it for a while.
I wondered briefly if it was the one Meena had bought him almost a decade ago.
I laughed. Sometimes, in the middle of a difficult discussion, I laugh. It’s a release.
‘What’s funny?’
I flicked my hand at the testy bloke beside me, telling him there was something on my mind. He didn’t ask me what it was but said, ‘I have no dates. It must’ve been the early forties.’
I reached for a glass of water before seizing his phone. I was looking at a photograph; it was a handwritten paragraph on parchment paper.
I looked up at Andrew.
‘This is a diary of a young girl. Her name is Bhumika Velu. I think she was a friend of my great-grandmother, Catherine.’
Bhumika Velu Me.
Em prety gril. Everybody sayed to me. Me appy gril. I no. Only I gril no englis in dis vilge.
Andrew reached for his phone, saying he’d read it out to me. ‘It can screw your head,’ he added.
I’m a pretty girl. Everybody said to me. Me happy girl. I’m the only girl who knows English in this village.
I moved closer to Andrew as he read. I wanted to see what this Bhumika had written. I liked her name.
Lots of rain in barracks one day. Water is like river go, go, go down. Red mud all place, on road, it’s like mehendi design on my white leg. On my blue colour langa also came mud.
When I down, I walk in front of the Black Bridge and see the other side every time. Too much tree. I check to see if the bad board is there. ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed beyond this point’. This board makes Bhumi very very angry.
Andrew’s free hand was on the backrest. I let his fragrance envelop me. It felt good.
My appa is a school master. I can’t go to school. Bhumi is a girl, so appa teach Bhumi in house.
Suddenly one day appa told me I’m getting married.
I not have any amma, she dead. Bhumi 16 years, appa told me.
My good father name Tilakanathan Velu Sir.
He told me we have a proposal from white English Sir.
White English Sir paying appa money. Englishman Sir not married.
I was lot happy. I go to the other side of the bridge and break bad board.
The more Andrew read, the more I liked this woman. I looked at Andrew to ask how he had gotten hold of these pages.
‘I found them when I was looking for papers of the house back when I was in school,’ Andrew said, as if he had read my mind.
‘Did you ask Noelene?’
‘I asked her if Catherine was my great-grandmother,’ Andrew said. ‘She nodded and said it was all in the notes.’
On marriage day, the last one day of the weekend, me wearing langa white dresses, Bhumi never saw like this. Langa white dresses came in ship.
I met Englishman Sir husband one day before marriage day.
He asked to Bhumi for marriage day to cut hair short.
I likes long hair, but I cut it. I wear lots of many flowers on my hairs.
Standing side to side with Englishman Sir husband on my wedding day, I smile big.
No one else smiling. My appa no smile, my thangachi sisters, no one coming.
Only I Bhumi in marriage and many other white peoples.
Catherine Brown wedding in garden in front of big house.
‘They must’ve been good friends,’ I said. This was giving me scary vibes. It was not making sense.
Before I come for marriage, my appa say, Bhumi Englishman Sir marry you, no one else. My friend having two kutti from another one Englishman Sir. He not her husband man Sir, no one her husband.
My appa say, my house. I say, Englishman Husband Sir house. The lawn I’m standing on is in front of the house, my favourite camanti pukkal flower on the side.
‘Marigold?’
Andrew nodded.
I wanted to hug Bhumi tight.
I am writing after many time afterwards. My English is little bit improved. My Sir teaching me English. He better than my appa father. Many many time since I saw appa father.
I took a deep breath. I felt Andrew’s eyes on me. He had stopped reading and was looking away.
‘Seems to me that he fell in love with her beauty.’
Not the first man to love with his eyes.
My Sir came here many many years go. He went to Coorg and then very far away to Kolikata and then to my Coonoor village.
My Sir love this place quiet and nice place.
Yesterday when we walking I asked him if I pour paint on board, if he would let it be.
Ronald Brown Sir asked Why loudly. Me got scare.
‘You’re not one of them any more,’ he told, but he smile.
‘Here she’s talking about my great-grandfather,’ Andrew said. His face was sphinx-like.
I felt Bhumi’s victory and smiled, but I was also tearing up.
My Sir say he has sold house and garden, all the flowers the lawn and the marigold also. We are moving to another one place, in far way land. He told me, soldiers live there. I asked to him, with who we fight?
‘Are you following?’
I nodded.
‘They were shifting out of Coonoor.’
After my thangachi cousins stopped coming, in faraway place where soldiers live, children came. My appa never came to new big house. Not one time.
I make friends with white people, I not speak much but I listen lots. Sometimes I think of appa, where he is, my thangachis.
Are they marry? I ask My Sir about my father, he living? He answer all questions, not that one.
My Sir got smallpox. Catherine Brown also die. Bhumi alive.
‘They must’ve been really close friends? Were they cousins?’
‘I don’t think so. Nana didn’t say so.’
I took Andrew’s phone from him and flipped the pictures back and forth a couple of times, reading from a photograph. I returned the phone to Andrew, who placed it on the table before getting up to get us another round of drinks.
Who was this Bhumi of the beautiful name?
I had so many questions about Andrew’s family, though. Did Catherine see her grandchild, Sarah Ann, Andrew’s mother?
Did she know about Noelene’s affair?
Andrew had barely placed our drinks on the table than I grabbed mine. I didn’t need it; I wanted it.
I wondered about his father, and then my focus shifted to Noelene.
Which mother doesn’t ask her unwed, pregnant daughter that question? The one who had walked down a similar path, I guess.
I closed my eyes and settled into the settee.
My earliest memory of Andrew, which was from after I had adequately dealt with the attraction, was that of a man trapped in a boy’s body.
There was a sagacious stillness to him, which at that age was annoying.
I was no more than a girl myself. Whatever the situation, wherever he was, he rarely lost his mind.
He had an answer to every problem – big, small and exaggerated.
He scythed through the smoke of my anger or fear and arrived at a solution that made me seem small.
Almost everything I told him was met with an ‘it’s okay’, when it was really not okay and it would never be okay for the next hour. Maybe.
Naturally, I’d rebuke it; he was belittling my issues. Embroidered or otherwise.
Sitting here beside him now, emptying my glass too quickly, his story played out before me.
Catherine was his great-grandmother, whom he knew nothing about.
Noelene was her daughter, who had raised her grandson single-handedly.
Andrew had taken all that was tossed at him, every truth and unanswered question, and let it rest within.
Until he smelted it into his inner steel.
‘Since when have you been seeing the grandson?’ Andrew asked, changing track like one who owned the road.
So, this is what it was all about. Andrew Brown’s version of ‘Truth or Dare’.
I shrugged off the thoughts in my head and focused on the question. I had the perfect antidote. I narrated how and when we had met. Ravi had been there for me at a very difficult stage in my life. I underlined it with a french fry.
I noticed Andrew twitch. I hadn’t answered his question, only because I didn’t really know the answer myself. I’m not sure Ravi knew it either. My response had few details. Which wasn’t much unlike my relationship with the ‘adopted grandson’.
Ravi and I were like a pair of well-worn footwear on irregular feet, comfortable, so not easy to put away.
‘You met him the day of Auntie’s accident?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Thoughts of that day still filled me with a dread I cannot describe.
I have spoken about it to my father, who told me that with the passage of time, he was able to appreciate what they shared, how fortunate he was, that we as a family were.
I know I’m lucky to have had a mother like her, I was privileged, she took care of everything.
But that feeling, a heavy fog that clogged the arteries, hasn’t cleared over the years.
I looked up at Andrew. He was waiting for me to talk, finish what I was saying or what he wanted me to say, but I had said enough.
‘When’s the engagement?’ Andrew asked, before adding, ‘He’s adopted; I hope you know that.’ He shook his head just as soon as the words were out of his mouth. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
Andrew was taking aim at Ravi. I knew that.
‘Any more modelling assignments?’
Andrew smiled. ‘I was helping her out.’
‘I know! You are very helpful.’ I laughed.
‘Sudha introduced me to her,’ Andrew said. ‘Pooja lives on the floor below mine. She’s a persistent kid, and she just wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘I get all of that, Andrew,’ I said, ‘but polka dots?’
‘What could I tell her?’
‘I don’t know! But I certainly wouldn’t have said yes to polka dots if I were you.’
Andrew nodded.
‘And bare-chested.’ I was laughing. I just couldn’t get that roll of cloth out of my head.
‘Myraahh…’
He was calling me, cajoling me; he was trying to pick up the pieces. It was in his voice. Meena’s name sat at the tip of my tongue.
‘What are you going to do about your family?’ I asked.
It was why he had come back. I could finally see that, and Morning Herald not only allowed him to return home, but he could also see if the medium worked for him.