Mistress: A Novel Read online

  The nurse tucked the sheet around him. ‘The fishermen told Doctor that if anyone could help, it was him …and they were right. Now you lie here quietly and I’ll fetch Him.’

  Him. Doctor Aiyah. God incarnate to the villagers. Miracle worker of Nazareth. Father figure. Sethu was to discover that Dr Samuel Sagayaraj would be all this for him as well. But first, Dr Samuel was to play priest at his christening.

  ‘How are you?’ the doctor asked.

  Sethu looked at the man by his bedside. So this was his saviour. This man with a square head and even features. His skin was smooth and moustache trimmed. His eyebrows were the only unruly vagrants in the otherwise well-groomed face—furry, thick caterpillars locking horns at the bridge of his nose. The hands that held Sethu’s wrist were strong and capable. The doctor wore horn-rimmed glasses. He radiated a presence that made Sethu want to turn himself over to him and say: Look after me. I need your protection.

  ‘Can you tell me which year we are in?’ the doctor asked in Tamil, his accent more neutral than the woman’s.

  ‘1937. It is 1937, isn’t it?’

  The doctor nodded. He allowed his mouth to soften into a smile and asked, ‘Do you remember what happened?’

  Sethu licked his lips. They felt dry and crusty; salty, too.

  ‘No,’ Sethu said. ‘No, I don’t remember.’

  Sethu wasn’t lying. He didn’t want to remember.

  ‘And what is your name?’

  ‘My name,’ Sethu hesitated, groping for a name that was familiar and yet wouldn’t give him away, and he thought of what the American missionary in Colombo had called him, ‘is Seth.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sethu said in English. This would tell the doctor that he was an educated man. A man of means. ‘My name is Seth. I used to work with the health department in Ceylon.’

  Seth. It was an unusual name for an Indian. But it was a common Christian name and one that Dr Samuel recognized. And so Dr Samuel’s eyes widened. Was this the miracle he had been waiting for? A Christian health worker!

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Seth. Is there an address you’d like to give me? Your family must be worried. We must inform them about your whereabouts. What about your employers?’

  Seth closed his eyes. Home? ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am an orphan. And I quit my job some months ago. There is no one waiting for me …’

  ‘Don’t say that, Seth,’ Dr Samuel said quietly, patting Sethu’s arm. ‘For those who have none, there is God. Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Ruth 1.16.’

  Nurse Hope nodded approvingly.

  ‘Give him the Bible, Sister. Let God be with you as you recover, Seth. Don’t forsake the good book and it won’t forsake you. God’s word will guide you where your heart doesn’t. It will be as is said in 1 Kings 9.7: A proverb and a byword.’

  Sethu swallowed. How long could he keep up this pretence?

  As he lay there, he wondered what it was about him that drew these types. These men who wished to take him by the hand and lead him down what they considered the chosen path. First Maash, then Balu, and now Dr Samuel. Why did he allow it to happen? He felt a great weariness settle over him and it seemed so much easier to sleep rather than think.

  When Sethu woke, the Bible was at his bedside and two beaming Nurses Hope. Sethu blinked.

  ‘This is my sister, Charity,’ Nurse Hope said. ‘She is training to be a nurse. I have one more sister. Faith. She’s a nurse, too.’

  She straightened Sethu’s bedclothes, rearranged the medicines and then stuck a thermometer into the mouth of a man in the next bed.

  ‘Two days and you’ll be out of here,’ Nurse Hope said suddenly.

  ‘I’ve brought you the Bible,’ Nurse Charity said shyly. He shifted and turned his head away. Her gaze unnerved him. Why does she look at me like she’s never seen a man before, Sethu thought, feeling the weight of the Bible in his hands. On the flyleaf, printed in copperplate, was her name: Charity Vimala Jeyaraj. ‘You shouldn’t have,’ Sethu said.

  ‘Oh, I can share Akka’s Bible. Anyway, this is the only English Bible apart from Dr Samuel’s.’

  Sethu thought of what the man in the next bed had said earlier. ‘I wish the kondai sisters would pay me some attention. All three of them were here while you were asleep, hovering around you all the time, while I lay wide awake groaning for a bedpan.’

  ‘Who?’ Sethu had asked.

  ‘The kondai sisters …who else?’

  Sethu smiled. The ‘bun sisters’. ‘Is that what they are called?’

  ‘The whole town refers to them as the kondai sisters. Periya kondai, chinna kondai and jadai kondai. Their hair buns are the only way to tell them apart.’

  Sethu felt a chuckle gather within him. It was true. Big bun, little bun and plaited bun …but where was the plaited bun?

  Sethu felt his chuckle grow into a fit of giggles and so hastily, he began reading the Bible even as they stood there. Perhaps they would leave him alone then.

  Why had he chosen to give himself a new name? It wasn’t as if he was a Known Defaulter. Or was he one now? KD. Synonym for rowdy, hooligan, criminal, anti-social element. How could you, Sethu, Uncle would ask. How could a member of my family become a KD?

  Sethu was fourteen years and three days old when he ran away from home. He didn’t know what else to do.

  He stood staring at the school noticeboard. He had failed in his exams again, for the third year in succession, and now he would be expelled. The headmaster had said as much to his uncle the previous year. ‘We don’t keep a student if he fails for two years in the same class. In Sethu’s case, I’m willing to make an exception. You see, his marks are good enough in all the other subjects, but how can I promote him to the next form if he doesn’t even scrape through in mathematics? I don’t understand it. He has an amazing memory. All he has to do is look at a page just once and he can tell you everything there is on it. Yet, in mathematics, he is worse than the worst dunce in his class. I don’t think he is applying himself. What else can it be?’ He turned to Sethu and said in a voice that was meant to scare him, ‘This is your last chance. If you don’t work hard enough, I’ll have no option but to expel you. Do you understand?’

  Sethu nodded. He always did when he had nothing to offer by way of explanation or comment. Even then he knew that mathematics would crush him.

  On their way home, his uncle didn’t speak a word. Later, when they sat down to lunch, he said, ‘You heard what the headmaster said, didn’t you? If you want to make something of yourself in life, you need an education. Or, if you’d rather be a farmer like me, you can quit school tomorrow. It is your decision.’

  This was his uncle’s way. Other men would have torn a young branch off a tamarind tree, stripped it of leaves and then stripped the skin off their wards’ back. Not Sethu’s uncle. He stripped the skin off Sethu’s soul with his quiet reproach. Sethu said nothing, feeling the heaviness within rise to his eyes and clamp his throat.

  Sethu didn’t understand what it was about numbers or water that defeated him so. It wasn’t as if he didn’t try hard enough. He did. He worked, he wheedled, he did everything he could to make them heed his bidding. But neither the numbers nor the waters of the river succumbed to his advances. They mostly ignored him, or merely let him down. Like now. Sethu knew he must flee his uncle’s reproachful eyes and the waters of the river that questioned his adequacy day after day.

  He walked along the riverbank. Sometimes, he felt a great surge of restlessness and he would walk along the river not knowing where he was going or what he would do if he got there. It was just enough that he was walking. Then his legs would tire and he would turn back, glad to go home.

  Now he walked towards the railway station. He would take the train to Madras. That’s where everyone ran away to. In Madras, he would make a life that didn’t require him to master numbers or water. Or ever encounter the disappointment in his uncle’s eyes. Pe
rhaps he might even meet his father, who had gone away to Madras five years ago and never returned. His mother had a new husband now, and Sethu hoped his father would take him in.

  He patted the pocket of his shorts. He had some money. His fees and book money for the next year, and some money his mother had given him to buy a pair of sandals and a few groceries in town. It wasn’t much, but there was enough to buy a train ticket to Madras and a meal or two till he found a job.

  He didn’t have to wait long for the train to arrive. He got into a carriage and found a seat. Opposite him sat a man and a woman. The woman smiled at him. He smiled back and let his eyes drop. The train began to move and Sethu turned to look out of the window. ‘Where are you going?’ the woman asked.

  Sethu dragged his eyes away from the window, where the landscape seemed to have acquired a certain beauty he hadn’t noticed when he lived there. ‘Madras,’ he said absently.

  The woman looked at the man. He leaned forward and said, ‘But this train doesn’t go to Madras.’

  Sethu felt as if someone had kicked him in his gut. ‘But this is the train to Madras,’ he said, willing it to be so. ‘I checked the timetable.’

  ‘No, this isn’t the train to Madras,’ the man repeated in a gentle voice. His eyes were sympathetic. ‘The train to Madras is an hour late. All trains on this line are. Didn’t you hear the announcement? This train goes elsewhere and the compartment we are in will be attached to another train in Coimbatore. This is the Rameswaram compartment.’

  ‘What do I do now? I have very little money left.’ Sethu’s voice crumpled.

  How could you, Sethu, a voice muttered. His uncle’s voice, full of reproof and sorrow. How could you? How could you be so silly as to not read the train’s name? Or ask where it was going? Speaking of which, how could you run away and abandon your mother, your family and me? How could you?

  It was the thought of encountering the voice and those eyes that caused tears to emerge in the eyes of fourteen-years-and-three-days-old Sethu.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ the man said, rising from his seat. He patted Sethu’s shoulder and sat by him. ‘What is the need to cry? Will crying help? Tell me, is anyone expecting you in Madras? An uncle, an older brother, someone?’

  Sethu shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to go back home?’

  Sethu shook his head again. ‘No, no.’

  ‘In which case, come with us to Rameswaram.’

  ‘But what will I do there?’

  ‘Do you have a job waiting for you in Madras?’

  Sethu shook his head again.

  ‘We are going to Ceylon. To Colomb,’ the woman said. ‘Come with us.’

  Sethu stared at them. All his life, he had shuddered every time someone mentioned Colombo. It was as if the very word resonated with the boom of the ocean. Wave upon wave piling on to the shores of a tiny island. Wave after wave conspiring to suck in boats and lives that rode on it. Colombo. But how easily she said it. Colomb. As if, by swallowing the ‘o’ at the end of the word, the waters that surrounded the island disappeared down her throat. Freeing the journey of his worst fear. Water.

  ‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘We’ll take you to Ceylon and I’ll find you a job there.’

  Sethu swallowed his fear of crossing the ocean with the countless questions that danced at the tip of his tongue. But all he would ask for now was why. His uncle’s voice wouldn’t let it rest: How could you trust a total stranger so?

  So Sethu cleared his throat and asked in his most polite voice, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?’

  The man smiled. He looked down at his fingers and said, ‘I don’t know. I am not an impulsive man. But something about you makes me want to be impulsive. To help you find a place where you can stand on your feet. I am not questioning my impulse; perhaps, neither should you.’

  So Sethu rode the train and crossed the waters, buoyed by an impulse. And there in Colomb—for he too swallowed the ‘o’ to erase the thought of the swirling waters—he found it was possible to make a life. Despite the unruly numbers. Despite the unforgiving waters.

  Later in his life, when and if Sethu ever referred to those years, he would say cryptically, ‘Maash was a good man.’

  He called the man in the train Maash. Master. Mentor. ‘Maash and his wife looked after me very well. I never needed for anything in their home,’ he would say if anyone probed further. ‘Maash found me a place in the health department. I had to do a health inspector’s course, then a year of training, and by the time I was eighteen, I was actually earning.’

  How could Sethu tell anyone of everything else that those years had been made of? Like the ‘o’ in Colombo, they existed even if he never spoke of them …Until Saadiya, that is. Saadiya. Saadiya Meherunnisa. Good Girl. Peerless among women. Light of the skies. Saadiya, who lit a beacon and demanded that he trail it through his past. But that was to be many years later.

  First, Sethu had to cling to the new name that was his lifeline and be born again. Sethu knew that for a while, at least, he would have to be Seth and let the good book lead him to light and a place in Dr Samuel’s kingdom.

  A high wall ran around Dr Samuel’s house. Instead of a gate, there was a door painted green. A door with a padlock and chain. Within those walls Sethu felt safe.

  When Sethu was well enough to leave the hospital, Dr Samuel offered him a job. ‘I need someone like you’ was all he said.

  Sethu looked at the doctor’s face, trying to read the meaning of his words. ‘But I am not trained to do this sort of work,’ he said, suddenly afraid.

  Dr Samuel merely smiled. ‘You’ll learn as you go along. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Deuteronomy 33.25. Think about it.’

  Sethu sat outside the doctor’s room. He sat with the patients who were waiting to see the doctor. He looked around him. This was a small town, significant for the fact that a missionary organization had chosen to build a hospital here. The town saw many strangers: people who came in from the surrounding villages and the nearby districts. Births. Deaths. The town saw people come and go, and no one asked questions. Sethu stared at the floor. He thought of a line that he had chanced upon in the Bible: I have been a stranger in a strange land.

  Perhaps it contained a message for him. He would be a stranger in a strange land. Once again, life was throwing him a line. Don’t fight it. Let it be, he told himself. He would go with the tide.

  Dr Samuel gave him a room off the enclosed veranda that ran along the front of his house. It was a huge house with many rooms and much furniture. Dr Samuel barely used a couple. ‘There is enough space for the two of us here.’ The doctor laughed almost apologetically.

  Sethu wondered if the doctor was lonely. And what about a wife and children? Sethu bit back the words. He would ask the doctor no questions and hopefully the doctor would ask him none. He looked around him and said, ‘Thanks.’

  He thought he saw gratitude in the doctor’s eyes. The doctor was lonely, he decided.

  So Sethu found a home to house his new life. There, in the garden filled with mango and tamarind, papaya and coconut trees, he discovered a cork tree and saw that it thrived, a foreigner amidst the natives. He took comfort in the lesson. That behind the high wall with the door, there was a place for him, as there was for Hope, Charity and Faith, Dr Samuel’s acolytes. Sethu belonged, just as they did.

  As the days merged with the weeks, Sethu worried less and less that he would be discovered. Dr Samuel found him things to do. He was part secretary, part compounder of medicines, part dispenser of prescriptions, part odd-job man, part record keeper, part errand boy; his day had so many parts that he didn’t know where it sped. There, in Nazareth, enfolded in the all embracing arms of St Paul’s Hospital, Sethu knew content.

  When the days grew hotter and drinking water became scarce, Dr Samuel gave Sethu one more part to his day. Every morning, the women who lived in the houses around the doctor’s, stood in a line by the door in the wall and Seth
u would draw a pot of water for each of them. ‘They will have to walk miles to get the brackish water for everything else. As long as our well has enough water, we will give them a pot each. That will suffice for drinking and cooking. But you will have to see that they get only a pot each, or it won’t last very long,’ Dr Samuel said.

  Then the water level in the well began to recede too, and Sethu took the doctor to show him how much was left. ‘We have to stop providing water now,’ Sethu said.

  Dr Samuel peered into the well with a worried expression. ‘This might sound silly, but if the water goes below that level, we are in for trouble. I thought we would be spared this year, but if it doesn’t rain soon …’

  ‘Drought?’ Sethu asked, realizing for the first time the implications of a dwindling water supply.

  ‘Drought, and cholera. Just last year, this district suffered a cholera epidemic.’

  What next, Sethu wondered. What would a cholera epidemic be like?

  He soon knew.

  Where did they come from, these hordes with cracked heels and dry lips, oozing from their orifices, with cramps that gripped their bellies and bodies that craved for fluids and yet were unable to hold it in? Who were these people who emerged from a countryside that in all his viewings had seemed empty of life?

  They kept coming. Old men, young children, able-bodied men and matrons with a touch of grey in their hair, bound by a bacteria. Kindred spirits in suffering, they were stalked by a nameless dread: would it be their turn next?

  Then Sethu had no time to ponder. Dr Samuel drove them with his manic will. ‘We don’t have enough of anything—people, medicines or energy. But we must cope. We must manage somehow,’ he barked as he went about ministering hope and help.

  The beds were full and even the corridors were lined with palm-leaf mats. Every inch of space in St Paul’s was covered with disease and despair. Sethu had never seen suffering on such a scale. For the rest of his life, the odour of phenyl and palm-leaf mats would bring back to him the stench of cholera, the coming of death.