‘May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also?’ –E.M. Forster

Listen Ramu. Your village may have told you rumors of my demands, or they may have told you nothing. Adwaita has been in our family for generations, since my great-grandfather’s boyhood. Do you understand how long is that?

One way of responding is to say nothing, thinks Ramu. He nods vigorously, his dark curly-topped head streaked in grey wobbling like a ripe guava being furiously pecked by a hungry kingfisher. A half-hearted protest forms, but he thinks better of it and bows his head low as a show of respect.

Two hundred and fifty years, Ramu. Think of it. He pronounces it Ramooo. Ramu blinks rapidly–the only sign he shows that the estimated age of the very old relative has to be miscalculated. No one could ever be as old. Why, even Appachi who breathed his last only ten months ago had been just ninety-nine, and no one in the world was older than Appachi, not after the way he spun top with every youth in the village of far less dexterity. Surely the Governor was mistaken.

You’ll go down in history as the best medicine-man in all of Fort St. George. Ramu shudders at the implication, whether in jest or fancy snobbery he is not clever at interpreting. Counterfeit remarks pass over his head like ink blots on tracing paper. He is not the best. Neither is he a medicine-man. Far from it. His eyes cloud over in dark memory processing what stands him apart.

“When will you ever learn, Ramu?” Bapu had often expressed in that exasperated voice he was noted for. It was the time a severe epidemic called rice-water had devastated their little village. Unable to cope with the loss of those stricken, including that of his beloved parents who had succumbed, Ramu had fled with his father’s precious medicinal records–a booty preserved on thirty nadis palm-leaf scrolls. He was fifteen. It had set him up for life recruiting from a small band of backward volunteers willing to explore the curative secrets hidden in plants and trees that flourished abundantly in the jungles.

The Governor pulls his shaggy brows together. Can you understand the turmoil of a family man about to lose a beloved family member? Ramu could. Memsaab is prostrate with grief, and so may we add are the children.

Ramu ponders this fact gravely. He is in a dilemma. He understands the emergency. He wants very much to help, to reassure the Governor that the face of adversity takes many forms, that sickness comes to all, that it scares half the people to death even the healthy ones, that decay starts the moment one is born, that the glory of life is complete only with suffering, but that he is not the right person to circumvent fate, moreover to treat a super-double-centenarian. In wrong hands Adwaita could die.

The tall important looking Governor frowns, looking upon him belligerently, willing him to speak. Ramu trembles. A sweat breaks on his brow. He came to us when he was little, Ramu, the Governor cups his hands, stowaway from the exotic Seychelles in one of Memsaab’s forefather’s finest spice ships. It breaks her heart to contemplate life without him. You do see, don’t you, how the loss of Adwaita would destroy us. Our collective hearts are heavy. They bleed.

When in doubt meditate. Ramu maintains a stoic silence like he has fallen asleep. He is in awe of the grand personage. He contemplates the oceans, a good place to start when demystifying what is inconclusive. His thoughts turn to sand crabs and riverine turtles–the creatures he intimately knows. They sun themselves on the river’s edge, swimming away when the monsoon floods breach the banks. They lie deceptively still for ages, without movement, same as Ramu is doing, moving their necks, snapping their jaws, for food or when chasing seabirds. He has played with them often as a boy. 

Impelled by the dreariness of the Governor’s monotonous ramble, trying hard not to fall asleep, Ramu dreamily concludes what the Gora Sahib is delivering are the oceanic exploits of his famous forbear, one seafaring Adwaita, bigger than a gharial. Gharial? Ramu shakes his head, blinking himself awake. A riverine crocodile by all measures is larger than two Ramus put together. This simply cannot be. The Governor must mean aami. Poor Adwaita he calibrates, two hundred and fifty, getting on in years, shrunk in size no bigger than a turtle.

Some aspects of demystification have no limit. Ramu senses a smile tug at the image he conjures. The experience is mortifying. His unhappiness mounts. He wishes the Governor would repeat whether he means a gharial. To ask him to repeat would earn severe reprimand. Ramu knows nothing at all of treating a gharial, or for that matter an aami. His mind made up to speak, he opens his mouth. What comes out is a whisper of protest so quiet an old sea dog like the Governor hardly hears. The moment passes–into eternal nothingness.

What I am about to ask of you Ramu is your expertise. I place Adwaita’s life in your hands. You are a respected man of medicine about town. I would not reasonably pursue you otherwise. The risks involved are great, you do understand. But the two of us are the last hope for our dearly beloved. Undoubtedly the matter at all times is one of absolute discretion. No one must know. The Home Government is centralizing all Governors mansions. What this means is my imminent transfer to Bengal. Naturally Adwaita will follow me. And that is the dilemma I face. He must be fit to undertake the journey’s rigors. None of the other medicine has worked. Not even alcohol and opium the mendicants from London and Glasgow have been administering this past year and more. It will be on his gravestone–his painful history. There is a new treatment my administration is expecting out of Leipzig. But I’m afraid it may arrive too late. In the meantime I have been applying myself with extraordinary zeal all down the Coromandel coast to Fort St. David–for local experts. That is how I found you. Save Adwaita. The rewards are substantial. In fairness you will find I can be as generous as King George. Go now for there is no time to be lost. I will grant you three days to return with the miracle cure. No more. My man Fletcher will meet you at the barricades.

Ramu took off like his lungi was on fire. He dared not disobey. But three days?! Each morning, pressed for time, he dutifully arose in the pre-dawn hours, woken by the loud honking of the peacocks bu-girk-bu-girk, taking with him his sharp penknife and a woven reed basket to disappear into the nearby forests where the murungai leaves grew. Each day he ground the dark green leaves to life-changing cures in a thick paste for poultice. He knew those trees and the trees knew him in his small village of Vepery. If he spotted so much as a dung beetle crawling through the drumsticks he would kill it. Although he scarred many a moringa tree to gather the leaves he protected them from people and fire. His jungle had burnt only once in his lifetime. He was proud. His leaves had cured many a wounded and sick. He was prouder. Once a cow had suffered a deep gash in the side of its neck gored by an irate water-buffalo. The cut had bled profusely. He had cleaned the wound with a salt water-indigo solution. His poultice had worked miracles mixed with some turmeric roots.

Today is a good day. Even the cicadas are silent, taking their complaints elsewhere. Sick people have been queuing in long lines since morning outside his modest home waiting their turn to drink the bitter sap, or for the leaves to boil into soupy broth. Ramu has been tireless. He never complains though time is moving slowly. He does not wish Adwaita to die. He has been combing the jungles in a frenzy, gathering, boiling, tying the ground murungai leaves into a cloth pouch he keeps for such purposes as a band around his waist. In the daily grind of his routine activities he has lost count of days.

It is late evening when Fletcher storms into Ramu’s small house bearing devastating tidings. Ramu is too late! Adwaita has collapsed. Ramu’s heart sinks. It is as he has always feared–the execution of immortality. He tries to elicit more. But the chaprasi is tight-lipped. Ramu fears for his very soul, imagining the worst to befall his village. Once, his father had told him a strange story of a Captain of the Guards in a tearing hurry who had mowed down some dogs and villagers asleep on the dusty roads. The merchantmen with their wares had escaped in the nick of time the cruel hoofs of sweating horses neighing loudly in protest. A village panchayat was held, the local Raja asked to intervene. Despite the arbitrariness of the prevalent legal codes and the voices of traders raised in protest the matter was forgiven. The Captain had been racing with all possible speed to save their very own Madraspatnam under attack. Ramu’s acceptance of Adwaita’s unfortunate death is the same as signing his own death warrant. He must follow the foolish Fletcher it seems for he has been summarily summoned to the Governor’s mansion. The haughty manner in which the command is delivered indicates that the perverse bearer of the bad tidings is rather clumsily laying all guilt directly in the lap of the village doctor.

The trek by bullock-cart takes over half a day. Ramu has never been summoned before. The realization that tragic suffering can knock at the hut of the poor is baffling. He knows in his bones it will bode ill. By the time the Fort St. George enclave is reached, the sun is sizzling in a nearly cloudless sky. The noisy goats are bleating as people crowd into the streets near Madraspatnam. It is market day–traders and merchants selling their wares–spices, fabrics, attar from Arabia, brassware, sandalwood and artifacts made of ivory. Ramu leans into the shade of the spreading banyan tree, resting his tired bulls. A few more miles to trudge. He is unnoticed, buyers and sellers too busy haggling and peddling their stuff.

He hums tunelessly trying to appear nonchalant, wiping sweat off his forehead, nibbling hungrily at a piece of dry roti he has prepared with his own hands over a charcoal stove in the early hours. He is afraid. He looks down upon his dusty garments which the veil of night could hide from view but the sun of day reveals. It occurs to him that his hand-woven cotton tunic he has hurriedly worn is frayed and not suitable for the grand mansion. He has left in haste. In the semi-brightness of the kerosene-lamp he has picked the wrong clothes. The karma of his behavior will have inadvertent implications. He must turn back. By far the more serious is how crucial is his outfit hanging in the balance.  But he is meant to be at the mansion. The brown and ruddy earth swims into his eyes, swallowing into oblivion his illusion of his humble garb. As a village doctor the lessons he has learnt is to not be afraid to know his obligations, however terrifying.

The Governor’s mansion is reached, an imposing brick and mortar structure with stone columns and a high roof, Ramu gawks at in awe. Feeling numb-struck he averts his gaze. He has no eyes for the beautifully carved wooden balustrades or the huge banquet halls and high ceilings of such splendor Ramu is afraid to look. He has never been to a Governor’s mansion before. Fletcher is at the gates. Follow me is all he signals with an imperious snap of his fingers.

The upper floors are silent and gloomy. Some massive doors open. Ramu finds himself in one of many receptions chambers meant for parties and soirees. It is walled with mirrors. Damask and velvet drapes cover the windows and doors. Massive paintings of dour looking men and women in white wigs and satins and laces, wearing tiaras, dripping in jewelry cover the rest. He looks around in bewilderment at such grandeur wondering distractedly which of them is Adwaita.

He is staring in fascination at the high sculptured ceiling crowded with paintings of angels and clouds when he feels rather than sees movement. It is the Gora Sahib. He does not appear to be in mourning.

Ramu gulps. The Governor stands a distance away flexing and fisting the long fingers of his right hand like he is having sudden breathing difficulties or an attack of irreversible aphonia which prevents him from either breathing in the normal manner or issuing directives through his regular voice box–his mouth. Ramu untutored to stylish pantomimes or the complete mannerisms of the ruling-classes is having trouble understanding whether what the Governor is indicating is pulling out a broadsword or calling for his regiment of soldiers to take him away.

Just when all is hopeless he feels a shove in the small of his back. It is Fletcher propelling him with all possible speed in the direction of a flight of stone steps that lead to the arboretum. Several phoolmalis are pruning the hedges, tending to the extensive maze of flowers of all shades filling the gardens. No one pays attention to the pair, half-running, half-walking at a fair rate of progress.

Fletcher comes to a sudden stop. Ramu collides with a round and smooth monumental rock lying motionless under the shade of a spreading neem tree. He topples over. The air falls deathly still, the scent of jasmines and roses hanging heavy. Ramu obtains his answers sooner than expected. The dome-shaped rock ever so slowly starts to move. At first Ramu thinks it a trick of his tired eyes from the travels.

The rock stops, then slowly moves once more, emphasizing that the movement is not random but real. Adwaita introduces Fletcher without preamble, in a shrill singsong. Hari! Om! Ishvara! gulps Ramu intoning the three eternal power points, when swift communication with the divine highest is called for.

The Governor is nowhere to be seen. Fletcher has run inside the mansion or disappeared behind a thicket leaving Ramu quite alone. Left to his own ministrations and in the absence of a prayer mat he wildly casts around for a suitable corner of the garden to divest himself of his load of murungai leaves and other paraphernalia so he may pray in earnest for enlightenment.

The increasing agitation with which this is executed causes the slowly moving domed rock to flop onto the dry grass with a loud hiss. All movement thereafter ceases. Death comes at inconvenient times. A dreary calm prevails. Ramu approaches the difficulty cautiously, one small step at a time, hovering between initial shock and apprehension and the specificities on bringing dead bodies back to life. The nearer he draws the clearer he becomes that the apex of the dome is as high as his waist. When he is reassured that nothing untoward is forthcoming he tentatively stretches out a timid hand to touch the dome. It is cold to his touch. In the process he notices a cracked and dry protuberance from within the many folds of the mound, that oozes.

He understands. In a short while he is at work, rolling up his sleeves, his training re-surfacing. First he finds a well to draw water. He cleans the cut scooping out the cheese-like granules, plant debris and bits of dirt embedded in the cut. He washes out the rest. Then he applies his readymade poultice preparation. Remarkably, the giant tortoise shows no display of temperament, lying perfectly still throughout the procedure, despite obvious pain.

One time Adwaita stops breathing, its ability to hold breath for long periods although disconcerting, aiding Ramu greatly through the most difficult aspects of the cleaning process. It is as if the giant tortoise understands, permitting Ramu to fall into its rhythm as he works. If only the wound is not infected. If only he is not too late. If only

it’s time has not come so a doctor can do enough. Ramu drops precipitately onto the grass, using his nose to closely sniff the protruding leg. There is no unpleasant odor. He conducts a full examination, carefully searching the gigantic carapace for cracks, running his fingers gently for any sign of hairline split he may have missed along the line of the shell. He lets the clean water flow, searching for tell-tale bubbles. There are none. Signs could not be better.

Now comes the challenge. Where to place Adwaita? The safest location to fully heal would be in shallow water. But the phoolmalis have left. Night has fallen. Ramu does not know the mansion well, nor the layout of garden. How would he single-handedly carry six hundred and fifty pounds? He struggles extensively with the epic intricacies presenting, then resolutely sets off in search of the Governor, his chaprasi and some gunny sacks.

The matter is expeditiously executed. Under the glimmer of a ghostly full moon a highly decorated Gora Sahib, hero of multiple battles, his man-Friday Fletcher and a simple village doctor Ramu perform the impossible feat which eight men will struggle–that of physically lifting a gentle giant pet tortoise to safety, in a water lotus pond, one of several in the spacious gardens, there to live out it’s life among the lotus blooms.

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Rekha Valliappan is an award-winning multi-genre writer of short fiction and poetry. Her publication credits include a Pushcart Prize nomination 2018, the Boston Accent Lit Short Story Prize, Across The Margin Best of Fiction, Schlock! Quarterly Best Short Stories, words in Ouen Press (UK) prize winners anthology, Lackington’s, Aphelion, The Pangolin Review, Liquid Imagination, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and in over thirty different literary publications elsewhere.

Photo: Jordan Spalding