White Man Falling Read Free Page A

crumbling compound wall of the Indian Police Service bungalows. For five rupees
an hour the boy bounces him across the potholed streets. “What are you doing, squandering our daughters’ dowries on that stupid beggar boy?” Amma is always complaining. She has a
soft spot for that boy. She sneaks him snacks like
vadai
whenever Swami isn’t looking.
    Alexander earns ten rupees today, because none of the girls is available to push Swami into town. They are too busy being harangued, beautified and instructed by Amma, for this is a very
important day. In only one hour, that mighty young god of the Information Technology Era, Mohan P, B.Sc. – holder of this year’s illustrious
Sri Aandiappan Swamigal Tamil Nadu
Information Superhighway Endowment Scholarship
– is due to descend on Swami’s family with his direct relations and indirect relations and maternal confidantes and household
neighbours and every Raman and Krishnan from Thenpalani who has a nosy nature and an hour to spare.
    Swami has promised Amma that he will be back in plenty of time to wash his face, comb his hair, change his shirt and look distinguished. Alexander is pushing him down Station Street, in the
shadow of the rock. Swami is thinking about the shocking age of that great outcrop, which mocks the living matter swarming around it. And that, you know, is a consolation. They are returning from
the police station, which Swami likes to visit once a week or so to listen to the latest goings-on. There is a long-running case gripping Mullaipuram. The dissolute son of a state politician long
known for his extreme Eve-teasing and sexual harassment of young women has been charged with rape, and although the best and brightest brains of the Indian Police Service have been assigned to the
case, it looks as though the accused might not get off scot-free.
    “
Shaani
,” Swami warns periodically, as the cow pats loom up; Alexander, absorbed in the hostile press of the crowded street and the sheer effort of wheeling a grown man down
the rubbish-strewn road in the high heat of the day, has a habit of stepping into them in his bare feet.
    Swami looks at his watch. “Hurry up,” he grunts.
    * * *
    Amma, Jodhi, Kamala, Pushpa, Leela, Granddaddy, Auntie and Uncle on Appa’s side, Auntie and Uncle and Auntie and Uncle and Auntie and Auntie and Auntie on Amma’s
side, two of Amma’s close cousins (fellow gurus in the mysterious arts of matchmaking), and an unmanageable number of random well-wishers and gossip-ravenous neighbours are all crowding the
little bungalow of Number 14/B. Jodhi has barely said a word from the moment she woke up this morning until now, patiently submitting to whatever Amma tells her to do, even when what Amma is
telling her to do is incompatible with everything else that Amma is telling her to do. Granddaddy too does not speak. Ever since his wife, Amma’s own mother, died ten years ago, he has
preferred music to people, obsessively playing his flute all day long. It is a special flute, fashioned by his own hand from a storm-damaged sacred peepul tree in his ancestral village; it is a
flute which he regards as god – god whom he can carry tenderly in his hands, god whom he can render his very breath to and worship with music; it is a flute that he resents being parted from
for any longer than it takes to swallow the meagre amount of rice and pepper water that his family can persuade him to eat for the sustenance of his scrawny frame, because who in his right mind
would voluntarily divide from god, even for a minute? As he plays, everyone else except Jodhi is talking non-stop. None of them can imagine the chaos that is shortly going to be unleashed.
    “Why did you wear this when I told you to wear that?”
    “What time will they come?”
    “Give it to me Auntie, I’ll do it.”
    “Where’s Appa?”
    “Respected Granddaddy, please stop playing your flute, my head is hurting.”
    “Father, now remember what I said, as soon