A House Called Askival Read Free Page B

crowd.
    â€˜Fight! Fight! Fight!’ they chanted. James felt his cheeks go hot.
    â€˜Nah, I’ll bring another one tomorrow,’ he mumbled.
    â€˜Coward,’ said Raymond.
    â€˜Am not!’ James hissed.
    â€˜Prove it,’ the other boy smirked.
    â€˜FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!’ the mob shouted.
    â€˜I don’t have to prove anything ,’ James said, ‘but since you’re so desperate —’ and he shook his stone carrier from the box into the empty desk. Raymond ran a pencil down his stag’s back and it reared like a demon. Someone jabbed James’ stone carrier, making her whip round. Then the pencils prodded and poked till the beetles were forced to run into each other, buzzing madly, pincers snapping. They thrashed about, circling and grappling, backing up, rushing in, till suddenly Raymond’s tore off James’ feeler. The smaller beetle pulled back, but too late. The stag sunk its pincers into the stone carrier’s thorax and as her outer wings flapped helplessly, a thick brown liquid oozed from her side. When she fell limp, Raymond plucked out his champion stag and held it aloft as the crowd cheered.
    Fighting tears, James lifted the stone carrier and rested her back in the box. That night he and Verghese buried her under the giant deodar behind Askival. Verghese read the 23 rd Psalm and said a long prayer. James said nothing.
    Paul Verghese was staying with the Connors that week because his mother was in prison and his father had disappeared. They were not, by most peoples’ reckoning, criminals or low-lifes. Hailing from Kerala, his father, Thampan Verghese, had degrees from two American colleges and was professor of history at Lucknow University. His mother, Mariamma, was a vociferous campaigner against multiple social ills and had set up a school for untouchable girls. They were both Christians from the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church that traced its roots back to AD54 when the disciple Thomas himself (evidently no longer doubting) came to India and planted the faith. It would be hard to imagine a pair more worthy of admiration by the British authorities, yet these very authorities had – just two weeks’ previous – clapped MrsVerghese in jail and were hard on the heels of the Professor. The reason was simple: the couple were long-standing activists in the freedom movement and had just stood with Mohandas Gandhi in his Quit India campaign.
    Thampan’s agitating for liberty in India went right back to his student days in Madras. It was 1919 and the British had brought in their Rowlatt Act, licence to convict suspected “terrorists” without charge, trial or appeal. It incited protest across the country and Gandhi’s call for the first national satyagraha , the “truth force” by which he intended to bend the will of the British. When troops fired into a street march in Amritsar it was a flame to the touch paper. In the burning and bloodshed that followed, five Europeans were killed and Brigadier General Dyer sent to take charge. He banned gatherings and upon hearing of a large assembly at Jallianwalla Bagh, set forth with his Gurkha and Indian troops. He did not wait to discover that the group was mainly village people come to celebrate the spring festival of Baisakhi , nor was he deterred, upon arrival at the enclosed compound, by the sight of many women and children in the crowd. Without threat from them or warning from him, he ordered his troops to fire till their ammunition was exhausted. Then he turned heel and left. Behind him, over a thousand people lay wounded, over four hundred dead.
    It was a turning point for India and for Thampan. The twenty-year-old felt his love of the Biblical Exodus story and his love of country converge in a torrent of righteous wrath that swept him to the twin protests of street march and printing press. In this latter campaign he met Mariamma, whose father was the printer. Inky