White Man Falling Read Online Free PDF

had he felt even worse than before. For when Swami
tries to convey the deeper resonances of his responses – to his wife, to his relatives, and to any of the neighbours and acquaintances who have been coming by to enquire after his welfare
– they don’t listen properly. They don’t want to hear him mumbling about abstract topics, it’s too difficult. They want to know what it is like to have a white man fall on
top of you. No one takes a blind bit of notice when Swami grits his teeth in frustration and tries, for the hundredth time, to explain that the white man did not fall
on
him –
“Not fall
me
,” he fumes. They want to ask yes-no questions as to whether white men bounce, and if the fellow was bleeding, and whether he had blond hair; they want to know what
she looked like, that spittle-flecked mother who beat the dead white man over the head with her husband’s tiffin can, while the little boy in her frenzied grip was sent lurching this way and
that. As for Amma, what she really wants to know is this: “How could this happen at such a time? How could he do such a thing?”
    Who knows if it is the white man she is referring to, or Swami.
    When there is no hunger or pain or fear, what is peace or its absence except a state of mind one chooses? Swami knows this, but
I can’t endure any more
is the background mantra
playing over and over in his mind at this moment as he watches his beautiful wife at prayer; he is at the mercy of fore-thoughts that ricochet between half a dozen extreme problems: the white man,
Jodhi’s prospects, his crippled future, ultimate meanings, his humiliation, his wife’s anger – and partly, it is true, his breakfast.
    When he was a newly married man many years ago, and he used to watch Amma’s morning puja, he would tease her afterwards, saying, “Yes yes, this early-morning high devotion is all
very well in Tamil Nadu, where the sun gets up with us, but there are places on this earth where the sun gets up at 2.30 a.m., and then what would you do?” In reply, she would coyly hint at
how hard it would be to leave her husband’s arms at that time – but she would do it, because his welfare and the welfare of their family depended on the protection of the gods. But
there have been few such teases and loving hints since Swami lost the ability to say four words together in the right order, and there have been even fewer since Jodhi’s divinely handsome and
accomplished mate was marched out of the pre-engagement meeting by his mortified family because of the rollicking embarrassment of a white man falling on the father of the prospective bride. Though
the
Vedas
and the
Brahmanas
and the
Upanishads
make no reference to snow-faced sky demons plummeting from the firmament to expire on innocent Hindus, though the
Mahabharata
and the
Ramayana
and the
Puranas
contain no indication as to what such incidents may portend, though the 2,685 verses of the
Lawbook of Manu
are
incontrovertibly silent on this topic, nevertheless the parents of Mohan have taken a broad view that such an event is not auspicious.
    The small, roughly made cabinet of the family shrine is fixed halfway up the living-room wall. On the inside of the open doors are cheap prints of Ganesha and the eight Lakshmis. Within, on a
shelf, amongst flower petals and brass plates showing scenes from the sacred texts, and next to a small stock of oil, wicks, clarified butter and lamps, are murtis of Murugan and Mariamman –
little statuettes representing the Gods. Samayapuram Mariamman, the feminine power who conquers evil and heals disorder, went wooshing up the family worship rankings shortly after Swami’s
stroke, when Amma desired sight of a god who could really understand her family’s plight. But as for Lord Murugan, the youthful warrior god, he can never be displaced in Amma’s
affection. The protection he affords is all-encompassing, and the boons he grants are legendary. And anyway he is so handsome and