Overture

An accident, they said. An old man not looking where he was going, missing his step, keeling over. And then toppling, plunging to his death. It is the obvious conclusion. Old men being definitively unbalanced - one way or other - and conclusions being notoriously expedient. Nine times out of ten. Anyhow I’m going along with it because it suits me too. So he fell. So be it. An accident? Oh, absolutely. No question. We’re nothing if not logical in this family. All excepting me, of course. But I don’t think I’m being fanciful here when I say I doubt this was an accident. In fact, I fear it wasn’t. If it was then it was aided. In effect, he was pushed. It was an accident only inasmuch as he and one other (the perpetrator? avenger? redeemer?) were accidentally there in the same place at the same time. I suppose one could say that life in general is driven by accidents of time and place. And of course that other mysterious force that can turn the coin – reverse time, disappear the place - in a nanosecond. Fate.

There is one other possibility, though, which also isn’t as farfetched as it sounds, and which adds the dimension of cognitive action to time and place. I refer to the possibility of wilful self-propulsion – forcing the hand of fate. In other words, he jumped. Jumped to his conclusion. (Cheap, cheap, Kaveri!) Anyhow, jumped would be the less awful conclusion.

For whom, though?

The thoughts scrabble round and round, looking for a foothold. Did it happen because he wasn’t all there? Or because he was all too there? Or because somebody was opportunely there?

I don’t say anything. One shouldn’t always say what one believes. Nor, for that matter, believe all one thinks. One shouldn’t speak one’s mind, that is. The mind is such a dodgy tool! And no truth is incontrovertible. So this is not a signed statement. It’s a hypothesis. (But death is not a hypothesis!) It’s a, what, soliloquy. Who would have the old man had so much blood in him? Only there was no blood. Just a trickle from his chin. He didn’t split open. He fell cleanly and considerately. Like a well-secured mail sack.

But here’s the smell of blood still. And all the perfumes of Araby…Hell is murky indeed.

Ramu is looking at me. It seems he too is thinking. Although his face is empty as a crater. But I hold back, don’t ask him as I’m palpitating to, have you talked to Jana yet?

The weirdness grows and grows. The marble is so very white. The light is so very bright. The incense is so very cloying. Everything is so festive still. After all the function had been every bit as grand as Meenakshi had said. The flowers, the ceremonies, the food, the finery. Lilamami’s famed diamond necklace. Devimami’s brocade sari. Meenakshi’s freshly burnished hair. 

It was to be a housewarming to remember - and it would be remembered.                                                         

The day had begun as propitiously as our astrologer had predicted. Two colourful canvas marquees, pandals, had been rigged in the U court of the building – the yellow-and-red one for the ceremonies, the blue-and-green for dining. Live music, the exuberant pipes-and-drums of the south, had roused the street early in the morning and had been playing without let-up, a tape recorder taking over when the musicians paused for coffee. The lobby floor and the staircase landings were decorated with kolam – the arcane patterns of rice flour and red clay drawn for auspicious events, and the doors to the new flats daubed with turmeric and vermilion paste. Strings of mango leaves festooned the lintels. Marigolds abounded, draping doorways, curtaining windows, woven in straw to spell WELCOME, (orange on yellow) for the banner over the gate.

At the entrance to the main marquee three small girls, in tinselly, toffee wrapper finery, pranced around. They were detailed to greet the guests with silver trays of sugar candy and roses, silver bowls of turmeric and silver dippers for scented water, and they were working themselves into hysterics, now force-feeding each other the candy, now splashing the scented water around, chasing after those who forgot their rose or candy... Every now and again they collapsed in a huddle of gauze and giggles, and got scolded and shooed back to their duties by their mothers.

Meenakshi, Mani and I had been bidden to come early - Meenakshi to usher in the guests, Mani to engage them in conversation, (the worthies, that is) and me, well, because I am part of the package, appended to them as fingernail is to finger, and, as Lilamami stated in her unchallengeable way, hadn’t I come all the way from Delhi for this? Although Devimami had sniffed, I was a big shot now, why would I come for a boring thing like this. And Uma had snorted that in her opinion I hadn’t really come for this, I never had a straightforward reason for anything. (But then who’s to dispute that, for lies are my stock-in-trade.) Then Jana had whispered, oh, Kaveri! Why did you come? They’re so angry with you! And the wretched Bharat, said, well, this has always been your bolthole. And, you’re running away from something, aren’t you? But at least he’d been glad to see me. Of course Mani and Meenakshi were glad too, more than, but then their gladsomeness or indeed feelings about anything concerning me is suspect – they’re so hopelessly biased.

Anyhow we were bidden to come early, Mani and Meenakshi and me, and from long-standing habit we have obeyed. We were instructed to await the guests in the main pandal, which was filling up faster with smoke than with people. So here is Meenakshi cutting yards of strung jasmine to equal short lengths for the women to wear in their hair and here I am laying out the bits in a basket. There is Mani sipping pineapple crush and steadily ignoring the conversational overtures of the worthy sitting beside him. He is (ostensibly0, interested in the rituals on the platform - although his chair is turned slightly to block them out. He is listening to the mantras however, with, going by his expression, the exasperated attention that is so typical of him. For Mani, as I like to tease, is a non-practicing agnostic. A backsliding sceptic – although he will not admit to that. He has a high regard for the philosophy of the Vedas but it needed more substantiation of its subtleties than the simplistic construal provided by its largely ignorant exponents. Such as these priests. And he certainly didn’t care to hear them chant, that is, rattle off the sublime verses as if they were multiplication tables. It was nothing short of sacrilege.

Three priests were mauling the mantras today, on a two feet high platform striped white and ochre – the colours of purity and austerity. The platform was cluttered with the paraphernalia of their trade. Silver jugs, silver lamps, silver chalices, silver dippers. Baskets of flowers. Trays of fruit. Incense. Holy water. Dried grass. Coloured rice. A wood fire inside a square of bricks was pumping out the evil smoke that was now choking everybody and irritating poor Meenakshi’s sinuses. Mani’s uncles, Balumama and Rajumama were feeding it with ghee from a folded leaf at the end of every stanza while their faithful wives, Lilamami and Devimami, sat coughing and sneezing beside them. But they had to endure it – after all it was their home being consecrated today. “Suwaha,” boomed the priests. “Suwaha,” mumbled Rajumama, carelessly flicking his leaf. The priests stared him down; Devimami scooped up a double ration of ghee and thrust it at her husband; Rajumama meekly poured it over the quiescent embers. There was an angry hiss and a fist of smoke made straight for his face. Damn, he muttered

                                                                            ~*~