White Man Falling Read Online Free PDF Page A

three
murukku
as everyone watches admiringly.
    “You see,” Mr P begins in a new and solemn voice, “now that we are having such a jolly time, the thing is, you see, dowry is the thing, we’d better think about dowry
situation, that’s the thing.”
    “Dowry situation,” murmurs Amma with a head-wobble like a Thanjavur doll, as though there is nothing that can make her feel more soporifically at ease than this matter, as though
there is scarcely a topic under the sun or even beyond the edges of the known universe that she would enjoy investigating further than this one, at this time, in this place, under the
tongue-lolling, neck-craning, eye-bright scrutiny of her neighbours. “Husband better come first,” she says.
    “Who is your favourite English author and what-all?” Mohan blurts out at Jodhi. He is on a roll now. He is not so very interested in the dowry situation.
    “I don’t know,” Jodhi answers, startled. “I like Graham Greene.”
    “I can make world-champion-beating anagram out of Graham Greene. Possibly several,” her suitor confides.
    Jodhi isn’t sure what to do with this information, but she nods gratefully, and the two Ammas share their little smiles. And then there is some shouting and commotion outside, a turning of
heads, something of a small-scale bungalow-constrained non-fatal stampede, an “Oh my God!” from a startled Kamala and a bum note from Granddaddy and a booming “The little
monkey!” from Mr P as Leela fights her way into the room, panting “Amma Amma Amma!” She trips over an ankle and dives full-length into the throng, shouting:
    “Amma, a flying white man fell on Appa!”

 
3
    Swami – bare-chested, slack-breasted and yawning – is standing in the doorless doorway of the bedroom, still in his sheetlike lungi, looking out at Amma and Kamala.
The mother and daughter rose half an hour ago, bathed themselves in the cool dark, and then went outside to pour water from a vessel and pray to Surya, the sun, who was rising too. Women of
Amma’s caste do not normally worship in this way. Maybe that is why she does it. Now she and Kamala are performing puja to the family gods who live in the little wall-mounted shrine. For
every dawn of her married life, Amma has sought to see God and to be seen by God in this way. Later, the other three girls will get up reluctantly, and Kamala will draw a
kolam
design on
their doorstep with rice-flour paste.
    Swami loosens his lungi so that he can tighten it again around his waist – it is something he has learnt to do with one hand.
    But how many times has the sun risen, Swami thinks. By how many people has the sun been worshipped? If you multiplied the one number by the other number, what kind of number would you get? Swami
is always thinking thoughts like these, but what else has he been thinking about during this past week? Of how Jodhi has lost her chance of a very good good boy because of him? Of course. Of how
his wife is embarrassed by him? Yes, that too. Of how he’d like to lie down on his sleeping mat, and go to sleep, and never wake up, just like the white man, the dying white man who said
“I didn’t know…” as he left this world for some other place? Yes yes, all these thoughts and more have come to him often in his misery and his wonder, as well as strange
ruminations and meditations concerning death gazes, the strange pink-white whites of a white man’s eyes, and that moment when the balance of power between a new brief light and an old one is
superseded by a dull glaze.
The fellow just – went away…
“I’m here,” Swami had said to him, from some part of his mind he hadn’t known was there.
“I’m going,” the man had responded.
It was neither speech nor thought, it was transparent communication, it existed outside any frameworks I understand, it was…
And the curious thing was, Swami had felt so calm as the white man was dying. Only later, under the indignity of everyone’s fascination,