Chapter 8-

THE SKEFFINGTON Coffee Estate rises beyond the Bebbur Mound over the Bear's Hill, and hanging over Tippur and Subbur and Kantur, it swings round the Elephant Valley, and, rising to shoulder the Snow Mountains and the Beda Ghats, it dips sheer into the Himavathy, and follows on from the Balèpur Toll-gate Corner to the Kenchamma Hill, where it turns again and skirts Bhatta's Devil's fields and Rangè Gowda's coconut garden, and at the Tippur stream it rises again and is lost amidst the jungle growths of the Horse-head Hill. Nobody knows how large it is or when it was founded; but they all say it is at least ten thousand acres wide, and some people in Kanthapura can still remember having heard of the Hunter Sahib who used his hunter and his hand to reap the first fruits of his plantation; and then it began to grow from the Bear's Hill to Kantur Hill, and more and more coolies came from beneath the Ghats, and from the Bear's Hill and Kantur it touched the Snow Mountains, and more and more coolies came; and then it became bigger and bigger, till it touched all the hills around our village, and still more and more coolies came-coolies from below the Ghats that talked Tamil or Telugu and who brought with them their old men and their children and their widowed women-armies of coolies marched past the Kenchamma Temple, half-naked, starving, spitting, weeping, vomiting, coughing, shivering, squeaking, shouting, moaning coolies-coolies after coolies passed by the Kenchamma Temple, the maistri before them, while the children clung totheir mothers' breasts, the old men to their son's arms, and bundles hung over shoulder and arm and arm and shoulder and head; and they marched on past the Ken- chamma Temple and up to the Skeffington Coffee Estate-coolies from below the Ghats, coolies, young men, old men, old women, children, baskets, bundles, pots, coolies passed on-and winding through the twists of the Estate path-by the Buxom-pipal bend, over the Devil's Ravine Bridge, by the Parvatiwell Corner-- they marched up, the maistri before them, the maistri that had gone to their village, and to the village next to their village, and to the village next to that, and that is far away, a day's journey by road and a night's journey by train and a day again in it, and then along the Godavery's banks, by road and by lane and by footpath, there he came and offered a four-anna bit for a man and a two-anna bit for a woman, and they all said, 'Is there rice there?' and he said, 'There is nothing but rice around us'; and they all said, 'That is a fine country, for here, year after year, we have had neither rain nor canal-water, and our masters have left for the city'; and so he gave them a white rupee for each and they said, 'This is a very fine man,' and they all assembled at night, and Ramanna the elder said, 'Now we will go, a four-anna bit for a man and a two-anna bit for a woman,' and they all said, 'There, there's rice'; and the pots became empty of water and the sacks began to grow fat with clothes, and the pots on their heads and the clothes in their arms, they marched on and on by the Godavery, by path and by lane and by road; and the trains came and they got into them, and the maistri bought them a handful of popped-rice for each and a little salted gram for each, and he smiled so that they all said, 'It will be fine there, a four-anna bit for a man and a two-anna bit for a woman,' and the maistri said, 'You will just pick up coffee seeds, just pick them up as you pick up pebbles by the river. Is that all, maistri?''Of course, what else? And the Sahib there, he is a fine man, a generous man-you will see. . . .'; and the trains moved on with the coolies, men, women, children; then plains came with dust and desert and then mountains rose before them, blue mountains, and the trains sneezed and wheezed and snorted and moved on; and the coolies all came out at Karwar and marched on, by the road and street and footpath, and they passed this way beneath hanging mountains, and that way over towering peaks, and the streamlets hissed over their shoulders and purred beneath their feet, and they said there were tigers and elephants and bears in the jungles, and when the children cried, the mothers said, 'I'll leave you here with the tigers; but if you don't cry, I'll take you over the mountains where you can have milk like water- just like water,' and the child stopped crying; and the nearer they came, the harder became the road and the stiffer the maistri, and when they had all passed by the Kenchamma Hill, the young men, old men, old women, children and mothers, the maistri stood at the back, and when they had all passed by the Estate entrance, one by one, he banged the gate behind him and they all walked up, coolie after coolie walked up, they walked up to the Skeffington bungalow. And when they had sate themselves down beneath the hanging banyan roots beside the porch, men, women, and children, the bundles and baskets beside them, the maistri went in, and came out with the Sahib, a tall, fat man with golden hair, and he had spectacles large as your palm, and he looked this side at the men and that side at the women, now at the arms of Pariah Chen- nayya and now at the legs of Pariah Siddayya, and he touched Madhavanna's son Chenna, then but a brat of seven, with the butt of his whip, and he laughed and he wanted everyone to laugh with him, and when the child began to cry, he looked at the child's face and began to laugh at him, but the child cried more and more, and the Sahib rose up suddenly and went in, and came out with a round white peppermint and said he was not a bad man and that everybody would get a beating when they deserved one and sweets when they worked well. Tell them that-repeat them that,' he said to the maistri who was standing behind him, and the maistri repeated, 'The Sahib says that if you work well you will get sweets and if you work badly you will get beaten--that is the law of the place'. And they all rose up like one rock and fell on the ground saying, 'You are a dispenser of good, O Maharaja, we are the lickers of your feet. . .'; and the women rose behind the men, and they stood fleshy with joy, and turning to the Sahib, Madanna's widow Sankamma says, 'Sahib-we shall have a two-anna bit for each woman- hand and a four-anna bit for each man-hand?' And the maistri grew so fierce at this that he howled and spat at her and said his word was the word, and that he hadn't a hundred and eight tongues, and Sankamma simply put her hand upon her stomach and gaped at him, while the Sahib said, 'What is all this,

Anthony?' and Anthony said something to the Sahib in the Christian tongue, and the Sahib said, 'You all go and settle down in your huts-and to- morrow be ready for work at five!' And they all fell down to kiss the feet of the Sahib, and the Sahib fetched a few more peppermints and the children all ran to him and the women came running behind them, and the men put their hands shyly between the hands of the women, and at this the maistri grew so furious again that he beat them on the back and drove them to their huts by the foot of the hill. And each one took a hut to himself and each one began to put up a thatch for the one that had no thatch, a wall for the one that had no wall, a floor for the one that had no floor, and they spent the whole afternoon thatching and patching and plastering; and when the evening came they all said, 'This will be a fine place to live in,' and they slept the sleep of princes.

And the next morning they rise with the sun, and the men begin to dig pits and to hew wood and the women to pluck weeds and to kill vermin; and when the sun rises high, and one rests one's axe for a while to open the tobacco-pouch, or one rests one's basket to open the betel-bag, there he is, the maistri, there behind some jack, and he says, 'He, there! What are you waiting for? Nobody's marriage procession is passing. Do you hear?' and when you do not pick up your axe or put your hand to a coffee plant, he rushes down the hill, crunching the autumn leaves beneath him, and up there by the bamboo cluster the red face of the Sahib peeps out, and they all swing their arms this way and that and the axes squeak on the tree and the scissors on the leaves. But when the talkative Papamma opens her Ramayana and speaks of the leaks in the roofs and leaks in the measures and leaks in the morals, there's a crunch of feet again, but it dies away into the silence only to rise on the top of the other shoulder of the hill. And they have hardly begun to work again when Lakkamma cries out, 'Hè, Hè, Hè, a snake! a huge snake! a cobra!' and rushes away to hide be- hind a tree. And they all leave their work and come to see if there is a snake and what he looks like. But he has disappeared into the bamboo bush; and Pariah Siddayya, who has been in these estates for ten years and more, says never mind, and explains that cobras never harm anyone unless you poke your fuel chip at them; and seating himself on a fallen log, he tells you about the dasara havu that is so clever that he got into the Sahib's drawer and lay there curled up, and how, the other day, when the Sahib goes to the bathroom, a lamp in his hand, and opens the drawer to take out some soap, what does he see but our Maharaja, nice and clean and shining with his eyes glittering in the lamplight, and the Sahib, he closes the drawer as calmly as a prince; but by the time he is back with his pistol, our Maharaja has given him the slip. And the Sahib opens towel after towel to greet the Maharaja, but the Maharaja has gone on his nuptial ceremony and he will never be found.

'Now,' continues Pariah Siddayya, mopping his face, now as for water-snakes, take my word, they are as long as they are silly, like the tongues of our village hussies. They just hang over a streamlet or pond, as though the whole world has closed its eyes. You can pick them up by their tails and swing them round and round, once, twice, thrice, and throw them on the nearest rock you find. If they don't die, they'll at least leave basket and bundle for ages to come. But the snake that is as short as he is wicked is the green snake. You would think it was a rope, but when it is beside a bamboo, you would say, "Why! it is a bamboo leaf!" That's how our Sankamma, gathering cow-dung, put her hand out to remove a bamboo leaf, and what should the bamboo leaf do but hiss and fall upon her arm, where by Kenchamma's grace she had her dung- basket, and he, furious, ran back into the thicket like a barking puppy and left a palm's-width of poison on the ground. 'He is bad enough, the green snake, but you haven't seen the flying snakes of this country. Now you know the cobra, the python, the green snake, the water-snake, the krait, and the rattlesnake, and you know how they move. They move like this on the earth, like all living creatures. But here there's another monster; he flies from tree to tree, and when your turban is just a little loose, and say your pate uncovered, this fine gentleman merely hangs down and gives you a nice blessing. But thank heavens it is not with us here that he is often found. He likes the sumptuous smell of cardamoms and his home is amongst them. That's why, all these cardamom-garden coolies wear, you know, a slab thin as a cloth on their heads. There was that fellow Mada who died leaving three children and a yelling wife. There was also that Bent-legged  Chandrayya. He died God knows how, but they found him in the garden, dead. This flying snake, I tell you, is a sly fellow. He is not like the cobra, frank in his attack and never aggressive. Why, the other day there was Ramayya pushing the maistri's bicycle up through the Wadawalè Ghats, for the maistri had come up in a passing lorry, and the bicycle was left down at the Sukkur Police Station, and the maistri says "Go and get it, Ramayya ". So Ramayya goes down that night, and the next morning he says to himself "Why go by the main road, there's daylight and I have the bicycle- bell to ring if there's anything coming". And so he takes the Kalhapur Tank-weir path, and crossing into the Siddapur jungles he is pushing the bicycle when he sees the flat footmarks of a tiger that must have feasted on a deer somewhere, and he says to himself, "This might be difficult business," and begins to ring the bell. Then, as he is just by a flowering aloe, what should rattle up but a huge cobra as long as this- that the bicycle-wheel had run down. Ramayya cried out, Ayyo... Ayyoo ." and ran away. And after a whiff of breath and a thousand and eight Rama- Ramas, he comes back and there is no cobra nor his dirt there, and he takes the bicycle, and looking this side and that side, he runs with it along the footpath and no cobra pursued him.

'Never, I tell you, has a cobra bitten an innocent man. It was only Chennayya's Dasappa who ever died of a cobra bite. But then he went and poked his stick into the hole, poked and poked, saying he had the eagle-mark on his hand and never a snake did harm him, but within six months Father Naga slips right into his hut, and, touching neither his grown-up daughter nor his second child, nor his suckling brat nor his wife who lay beside him, it gives him a good bite, right near his bloody throat, and slips away God knows how or where. Barber Ramachandra comes in and wails out this chant and that chant, but he was not a very learned man in his charms, and Dasappa bloody well croaked. And so he goes on, Siddayya, telling story after story, looking to this side and that for signs of the maistri, and they all lime their betel leaves and twist the tobacco leaves and munch on, when suddenly there is neither crunch nor cough, but the maistri's cane has touched Vanamma and Siddamma and Puttayya, and everyone is at his axe or scissors and never a word is said. And they work on with axe and scissors till the sun's shadow is dead, and then they go back to their huts to gobble ragi paste and pickles, and when the maistri's whistle pierces the air, they rise and go, cach one to his pit and plant. But the afternoon sun is heavy and piercing and as each axe splits the wood or as each pick tears the earth, from head and armpit and waist the perspiration flows down the body, and when the eyes are hot and the head dizzy, Rachanna and Chandranna and Madanna and Siddayya lean back against the trunks of the jacks, and the freckled, hard bark sweats out a whiff of moisture that brings out more perspiration and then the body grows dry and balmed; but when the eyes seek the livid skies across the leaves, there is something dark and heavy rising from the other side of the hill, something heavy and hard and black, and the trees begin suddenly to tremble and hiss, and as Rachanna and Chandranna and Madanna and Siddayya strike their axes against the wood, there is a gurgle and grunt from behind the bamboo cluster-and the gurgle and grunt soar up and swallow in the whole sky. The darkness grows thick as sugar in a cauldron, while the bamboos creak and sway and whine, and the crows begin to wheel round and flutter, and everywhere dogs bark and calves moo, and then the wind comes so swift and dashing that it takes the autumn leaves with it, and they rise into the juggling air, while the trees bleat and blubber. Then drops fall, big as the thumb, and as the thunder goes clashing like a temple cymbal through the heavens, the earth itself seems to heave up and cheep in the monsoon rains. It churns and splashes, beats against the tree-tops, reckless and wilful, and suddenly floating forwards it bucks back and spits forward and pours down upon the green, weak coffee leaves, thumping them down to the earth, and then playfully lounging up, the coffee leaves rising with it, and whorling and winnowing, spurting and rattling, it jerks and snorts this side and that; and as Rachanna and Madanna and Chandranna and Siddayya stand beside the jacks, the drops trickle down the peeling bark, then touch the head; then the back and the waist, and once when the trees have all groaned down as though whipped to a bow, there is such a swish of spray that it soaks their dhotis and their turbans, and they stand squeezing them out. Then somewhere there is a lightning again and suddenly the whole Himavathy valley becomes as clear as under the moon, and in Kanthapura the smoke is seen to rise from every house and curl round the golden dome of the temple, and the streets look red and clear and flat, except for a returning cow or courtyard cart. Then the darkness again and the trees bend and shiver and the bamboos creak.

'He, this wretch! What's all this noise about?' asks Madanha of Siddayya.

'Ah, in this country it's like this,' says Siddayya. 'And once it begins there is no end to her tricks..

'Hm!'

And from the bamboo cluster the voices of women are heard, and high up there, on the top of the hill, the Sahib is seen with his cane and his pipe, and his big heavy coat, bending down to look at this gutter and that. The rain swishes round and pours, beating against the tree-tops, grinding by the tree-trunks and racing down the waving paths. It swings and swishes, beats and patters, and then there is but one downpour, one steady, full, ungrudging pour. And somewhere is heard a whistle, the maistri's whistle, which whines and whines, and Siddayya says to Madanna, That's for us to go home,' and 'Hè-ho,' 'Hè-ho,' the husbands call to their wives, fathers to their daughters, mothers to their sons, and elder brother to younger brother, and through slush and stream they move on, men and women and children, squeezing their clothes and wiping their hair, and the rain pours on and on, a steady, full, ungrudging rain.

'It's like this in the mountains.'

'How long?'

'One day, two days, three days. . . . And till then eat and sleep with your woman, sleep with woman and cat. . . . your

'Fine thing this rain....

It poured just three nights and four days-the south-west rain. And when the days became broad and the sky be- came blue as a marriage shawl, men and women and children rose again with the whistle to go to work- but for Rachanna's child, Venki, seven years old, and Siddanna's wife, Sati, the same who had had the stomach-ache in the train, and Sampanna's sister-in- law, and Mada's two children. They all lay on their mats; for on the night before, they all had chills, and the chills rose and rose, while every dhoti, coat and turban and blanket was heaped on them, and yet the chill was piercing as ever. And then came fever, leaping, flaming fever, and the whole night they grinned and grit their teeth, and they cried for water and water and water, but the elders said, 'No, no one drinks water when he has fever,' and with the morning the fever went down, but a weakness remained which made their heads dizzy and their stomachs nauseating.

'Oh, it's the fever of this country,' Siddayya ex- plained. 'It's always like this. It harms no one. It comes every two days and goes away, and when you know it better, you can work with it as well as any."

But this morning they would not work. It simply made them vomit at every step. When the Sahib heard of it he sent a new man, who looked just as tall and as city-bred as the maistri, and he gave them eight pills cach, eight pills for two days, and said if they took them, well, the fevers would die away. But Don't bother to swallow them,' explained Siddayya. 'They are as bitter as the neem-leaves and the fever will come just the same. The Sahib says that in his country they are always used for fever. But he does not know our country, does he?' And the women said, 'That is so ---what does he know about us?' And Siddanna's wife,

Sati, asked her neighbour Satamma, who had lived there for one year and more, what goddess sanctified the neighbouring region, and when Satamma said it was our Kenchamma, she tore a rag from her sari fringe, and put into it a three-pice bit and a little rice and an areca nut, and hung it securely to the roof. And, of course, she woke up the next morning to find no fever at all, though Madanna's second child still had it, hot, very hot. Oh, it's the grace of Kenchamma,' she said to Madanna; so Madanna did the same, but the fever would not go. And so he said he would try the Sahib's pill, but his wife said, 'If the gods are angry-they'll take away not only your children but yourself, Oh, you man... and he, frightened, beat his cheeks and asked pardon of Sri Kenchamma. But he had had a wicked thought. Kenchamma would not forgive him. Fever on fever came, and the poor child's ribs began to show and its belly to swell, and one day as he was just going to sleep, the child began to say this and that wildly and they all said, 'Go and call the Sahib,' and when the Sahib came, the child shivered and died in his arms. And the Sahib grew so fierce that he gave Madanna a whipping there and then, and ordered that everybody should by his command take six pills a day. Some took them but others threw them into the back yard, and the maistri-looking man who had brought them said, 'If you don't take it, it does not matter. But never tell the Sahib you don't, and let me use it for myself'; and the women said, 'Of course! Of course!' But one by one in this house and that, in this line and that, fevers came, and when it was not fever it was stomach-ache and dysentery, and when it was not dysentery it was cough; and one thing or the other, such things as were never heard of in the plains.