The House of Blue Mangoes Read Free

belonged, and the Vedhars – had a history of strife, and he had heard rumours that there might be unrest in the trouble-prone areas of the north near Melur. He hadn’t noticed anything untoward here but he would go and meet Muthu Vedhar, the leader of the Vedhar villagers, later in the day, to see if there was anything troubling him. The Dorai family had kept caste violence out of the village for generations. Solomon wasn’t about to see that change under his stewardship. The day was quite advanced by now, and he decided to cut short his stroll and head back.
    When he reached the Big House he was annoyed to find that the barber had still not arrived. One of the few things his father had taught him was the importance of being neatly turned out as thalaivar of the village. This meant a daily shave, whereas the average villager would be content with one every few days. Solomon was yelling for a servant to go and find the errant barber when his keen ears picked up a sound and he frowned.
    He turned to look in the direction from which it came and what he saw displeased him greatly: three bullock carts coming leisurely down the metalled road. Solomon could not believe that his order forbidding traffic from town on festival days was being so blatantly flouted. It was the deputy tahsildar, he thought, no one but that son of a prostitute would dare cross him! His rage grew. So what if Dipty Vedhar was the top government official in the region; it was he, Solomon Dorai, who ran the village. Who was the young donkey to disregard him? First, he had gone and built the new road through the village, and now with his hunger for profit he was ignoring the thalaivar’s orders. Solomon stood irresolute for a moment, then walked swiftly into the house and into his room. On pegs driven into the wall rested a prized possession – his Webley & Scott twelve-bore shotgun. Solomon lifted it down, crossed over to a wooden chest, opened it with one hand, rummaged around in it and unearthed a box of cartridges. He put the gun down, took out two cartridges, loaded the weapon, and walked to the entrance of the house. The carts were less than a hundred yards away when he raised the gun to his shoulder and fired both barrels. A storm of barking erupted, with his own Rajapalaiyams leading the chorus. Still holding the gun, Solomon ran, lungi flapping, towards the carters. The sight of the enraged thalaivar clearly terrified them and, as one man, they leapt off their slow-moving vehicles and were preparing to run when they were stopped by Solomon’s loud voice: ‘Run and I’ll cut you down like motherless dogs.’
    The carters protested ignorance of the thalaivar’s injunction. They were only following the orders of Kulasekharan, Meenakshikoil’s biggest dealer in palm products. They had been instructed to go down to the beach to bring back three cartloads of pure white sand, lately popular among townspeople for flooring wedding and religious pandals. The news angered Solomon further. Kulasekharan! His own kinsman! Ignoring his orders!
    He ordered the carters to turn around and told them to inform the trader that they were prohibited from entering the village for a week. Then he returned to the house, more irritable than ever. As soon as he had bathed, he would go into town and have it out with the deputy tahsildar. Even as the thought crossed his mind, it occurred to him that the barber had still not arrived. And he couldn’t have a bath until he had been shaved. The polluting touch of the low-caste barber had to be washed away.
    Fretfully, Solomon returned the gun to its rack and emerged into the courtyard. A few minutes of pacing up and down and he could bear it no longer; the day was advancing and he needed to bathe, shaved or not. What sins had he committed to be born in this ungodly time, where a kinsman could ignore his explicit ruling and where every ambattan thought he was a Pandyan king!

3
    The morning had begun in the usual way for