Shades within Shadows: Excerpts

Shades within Shadows is a story of the Mangalorean Christian community set largely in the turbulent months of Tipu's siege of Mangalore fort (1783-84) and its immediate aftermath. The story begins with their emigration from Goa and settlement in and around Mangalore and ends with the terrible trauma of their captivity.

The story centers around two families, Diogo and his son Konngi in urban Mangalore and Jaki and his family in its rural outskirts. The time frame of close to a year of the siege is used to weave the story through the major activities of the year, its seasons and festivals, and bring alive many instances connected with the community's unique identity: the sowing and harvest of crops; the traditional lunch on Monti Saibenichem Fest; the preparation of Christmas kusvar; the arrests and deportation; the aftermath.

Shades within Shadows is a very human story of human foibles and quirks, weakness and inner strength, adversity and survival, exuberant youth and the loneliness of the ageing and their death. External developments related to the story are cleverly brought to the reader's attention by short, pithy extracts from historical references: Tipu's arrival in Mangalore; the August armistice; the English victory of 1799. So too the community's life in Tulunad's rich cultural world: the huli vesha; Aaati Kalenja; the bhutakola; balis to Panjurli and Pilchandi.  

The characters emerge alive and very real: little Paulu afraid of the ancient village banyan tree for what it might harbour; Foka, his irrepressable brother and their friend Hannu; odd job man Bastaio with his addiction to drink; the old maid servant Natalami; pompous Konngi and wily Kukladi; Kunntto Pasku and Bokulbai. Many of their lives end prematurely on the road to exile and in the city of exile, Srirangapatna. Only Joao returns to find his home occupied by strangers, the village church desecrated and destroyed, the cemetery neglected and in ruins.

Many incidents enliven the tale: a haunting; encounters with the musth; escape from the Goan Inquisition; the friendship between Paulu and Chiku, the home-grown pig; Natalami’s possession and exorcism. Peppered throughout the book are little lively diversions into the animal and avian world that make the book so much more readable: Ghonn and Crow; Cat and Rat; Snake. The language is simple and elegant, with a rhyme and rhythm that adds a lilting touch to its prose.

Chapter excerpts

A REFUGE BETWEEN TWO RIVERS

In his garden, Diogo sat and watched his time pass by. In his garden, like the flower that had bloomed, and the fruit that had ripened, he faded; the distant look settled in his eye. His legs weakened, step faltered; the time came when he could but watch from his window. That was where Pilip, his only son, placed his bed. That was from where Diogo looked out at his garden, at the flowers and the fruits, the birds and the squirrel; that was where, one morning, to the twittering of the sparrow and the rustling of leaves, he closed his eyes and quietly died.

DAY’S DAWNING

The resident tom was of patchwork black and white, with a touch of orange behind its ear, and at the tip of its tail. He was a docile, lazy feline, fattened by the easy and plentiful availability of food: rats in the attic; scraps from the kitchen; cockroaches; shrews in the yard; sluggish lizards soaking in the morning sun. He had no interest in females, for in one swift moment of agony, he had been denied the role nature had designed for him. As a kitten, not quite beyond his suckling days, he had been snatched from his mother’s teats, and his head and forequarters roughly shoved into the hollow of a brass pot. Rude thumb and fingers probed for and pressed on his tender testicles and roughly pulled them with their inchoate sac. Confused by this first encounter with aggression, and confounded within the echoing darkness within the pot, panic overwhelmed him. He scratched and meowed within the colso, intimidated by its stale metallic air. His protest was in vain. The inconceivable pain of a sharpened knife cutting through the folds of his taut skin and severing his testis, shot through his senses, and left him in throbbing agony.

SWEET POTATOES AND LAITHAON 

Pilip never came to know his mother; she had died in giving birth to him. It was his great head, they said, that had caused her death. When her time had come and she lay down, his head appeared below her bloated belly and remained there, refusing to emerge. They urged her to push, she pushed, but it stayed there like the swollen seed within a fruity skin that had split but wouldn’t give. All they could see was a bald bulge; it wouldn’t budge. When she tired and ceased pushing Pilip slipped back into the cocoon within her womb, loath to leave. Diogo grew frantic and sent for a mid-wife of some renown. She told him to push on her belly while she tugged at the head; Pilip emerged in a coating of red. He did not bawl, did not cry; he wetted his lips with his little pink tongue and observed them all with his discerning eye. With his pink skin and swollen head, someone said he looked like a giant sweet potato.

INTO YOUR CARE, OUR PRINCESS

The porthapon, the dinner hosted by both families to formally acknowledge the help received from so many, signaled the conclusion of wedding festivity, and for bride and groom, the commencement of household thrift and husbandry. For Zuan and Jakki, it was too the commencement of the time when they gave of themselves to each other, entirely. The restraint imposed by custom and religious injunction succumbed to youthful indulgence. Together in their private world, the first tentative touches gave way to urgent caresses, to the stimulation of scents of private recesses, and to the passionate pressure of chest on breast. Afterwards they lay beside each other soaking in each other’s wetness, willing the moment stretch forever. Zuan, turning on her side, rested her head on Jakki’s outstretched arm and traced aimless patterns on his chest, gingerly picking out individual hairs and examining them from root to tip, while Jakki gently snored.

CHUKOO                                                                                                     

Chukoo had emerged unwilling from the womb of an aging sow, a little ball of squealing, protesting pink. He became one of the curling, uncurling appendages that attached and detached and re-attached themselves to the sagging underbelly of the sow when she lay down to feed them.  The litter rapidly was whittled down in number, some taken barely past their weaning, others a little later, to grace a wedding or festive table, as tender, crackling laithaon. They went trussed and squealing, with their wild bulging eyes scouring the smelly place they knew as home. All but Chukoo went; none returned.

A MEETING LATE AT NIGHT

They reached the camp that evening, wearied by the dusty walk in summer’s heat. Later, after the captains and ministers of the Sircar had left, Fr Joaquim was summoned to audience with the Sultan, within the temple courtyard. Joao waited outside, beneath a sheltering banyan, while the priest and his Sultan talked late into the night. Stale scents of incense clung to myriad recesses within the temple walls. Wavering lantern light brought to life a thousand idols carved in immobile stone, bedaubed in vermilion and saffron, and stained by smoky lamps. The light teased from the frozen sculptures dancing forms sinuous and lithe: threatening demons with bare-fanged faces; amorous couples in passionate contortions; mythical creatures bellicose and benign. A troop of elephants pranced its plinth, some romping and flapping their elephantine ears, some clutching another’s tail with their trunks, some trumpeting and twisting their trunks; all having a jolly good time. 

THE MUSTH COMES CALLING

A cool breeze tickled his thighs, and brought on a sneeze. Kandgi clung on to it, keeping the shade in sight. Kandgi widened his stance, and took a tentative step forward. The musth moved slowly to the other edge of the path. Perhaps it was true: the musth feared the sight of his penis. Emboldened, Kandgi stepped onto the middle of the path with a forward thrust of his hips, into the clear moonlight. His penis dangled in the dark, limp and fully exposed, fondled by the night.

THE MONTH OF MAY

May is a month of undying heat and dust, of sweat and thirst. Day breaks early and bright, with the promise of clear skies, intense sunshine and unrelenting heat to come. The heat seeps into the soil and lingers there; by noon, a remorseless sun has sucked even the tiniest traces of moisture from earth’s suffering surface. Stifling nights are best spent outdoors, to catch the smallest of straying breezes. Earth dries; shallow wells dry out; deep ones settle deeper. Trees shrivel, leaves brown and fall. Coconut palms droop listlessly and close-packed arecas lean toward and draw support from each other. Dogs seek the shade of mango trees and jack to lie with tongues lolling out, and pant the afternoon away. 

MONSOON MOMENTS

In the afternoon of a late May day, it crossed the shore, an enormous rumbling, tumbling darkness from over the sea; pregnant clouds propelled by gusty moisture-laden winds, heavy, black, and querulous, rent by sizzling streaks of jagged lightning. Straddling the turbulent sea, came mythical creatures and bizarre monsters from prehistory: mammoths and mastodons, griffins and unicorns, giant serpents slithering across the sky; whales and sharks, pterodactyls and archaeopteryx, raptorial birds of prey. Flickering flashes of light edged them in silver. Around them goblins and gremlins danced, and elves and fairies; exhilarated by this phantasmagorical display, they gambolled and fell over each other and raced to be the first.

The moistened winds crossed the shore and caressed the palms, bent them low, tousled their fronds. They leaned and lifted and leaned again, their coconuts clinging grimly on.

A  HAUNTING AND A KAKUS

Reverberations of a massive crash wrenched Kandgi out of sleep. He sat bolt upright with pounding heart and heavy breathing. This was too much, just too much; the perpetrator had transgressed all limits. He rushed to the yard, tightening his katchhe on the way. A world of green stretched before him, basking in the tenuous rays of a truant sun, peeping through a broken blanket of grey. Rain-soaked earth exuded its rich smell. Tender green leaves, smothering trees and bushes, preened in the silver and gold, emerald and ruby, of little droplets clinging to their tips and sparkling in the soft sunlight. 

A BALLI TO PILCAANDI

Out in the open at night, the air was always fresh and crisp at this time of the year, when the sky was clear, and the stars sparkling bright. On warm nights the wind blew from across the river, and the cool air smelled of the forest, of the moist, mouldering vegetation on its floor, and the mushrooms and mosses that spawned in it. After sunset, and the washing of the day’s sweat and grime, and the evening meal of rice, cooked by Puddu, with a dish of fowl or fish from Zuan’s kitchen, Jakki sat on the veranda of the little house on a chair with his legs drawn up. Puddu stood or sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. Together they listened to the night settling in: geckos on the walls; the soft rush of a bat’s flight; crickets and frogs; the hoot of an owl; the barking of a village dog; rustling in the bushes and grass.

A PASSING INTO THE NIGHT

Then it was evening; she was sitting beside her mother, cross-legged, suckling a child, Mai’s brother, engrossed in some forgotten childhood amusement. Her mother’s warm scent and the baby’s suckling sounds brought her a sense of security and belonging. The dilemma of a while ago had been solved, she could not remember how, and troubled her no more. Dusk closed in. From the yard came her father’s familiar voice, announcing his return from work. Her mother left the dozing baby on the mat and went to light the candles. She was alone now in a house growing dark. She heard her mother greet her father and talk with him a while. Then their voices faded. It was dark now, silent and still, and her baby brother was no more there; she was all alone. She felt no fear; she knew she was home, and there was nowhere else to go.   

SURRENDER                                                                                                           

Rat lifted its nose and twitched its whiskers; a teasing smell tickled its buds and set its salivary glands flowing. Rat was not hungry, having fed a short while ago, but it had learned to eat when food was available, and never to miss an easy meal. It set off on the tantalizing trail of roasted coconut, along the shadow of the wall with its nostrils twitching, and hairless tail trailing on the ground. 

A NIGHT OF BITTER MEMORY

Twilight fell softly as a dry leaf, detaching itself from a branch, descends to earth, wafted on its inevitable way on gentle currents of cushioning air. On the parapet of her veranda, Zuan waited with the infinite patience of a wife and mother, for the return of her husband and sons, watching twilight turn to dusk. A flight of cranes, silent silver and white, flew in a wavering ‘V’ with even strokes of their fragile wings, with their thin legs pushed stiffly back against approaching night, and long necks stretched forward to catch the disappearing light. Zuan had watched them many evenings flying away from the darkening east to the reddening west, and she had watched them in the mornings flying back. They seemed so afraid of the night, forever chasing the light.

ASH WEDNESDAY

The arrests in the church; Bokoolbai escapes; Jakki taken, Paolu escapes; Nathaal alone in the house that Diogo built; Paolu visits his abandonded house; Fr Jaoquim taken away

On the crest of the hill, Jakki pushed aside the nudging arms and turned. A new day had dawned. Morning mists smothered his fields and ponds in soft, fluffy white and hid from him the sight of his ripening grain. His eyes misted over. He did not hear the eager call of the sparrows come to feed, and he did not see the breeze ruffle the leaves of the jackfruit tree from whose trunk and branches sprouted the beginnings of another season’s fruit. He did not see Puddu, cowering behind the tree, come to tell him the brown cow had calved, and all was well.

IF YOU COME THIS WAY

Upon the damp ground, in the heat, Jakki lay shivering and sweating; cramps gripped his belly, pain twisted his gut and drained his depleted strength down his shrivelling bowels. He remembered Zuan buried among the rocks, Paolu standing on the veranda of his house calling “Father”. He remembered his home and the salted breeze caressing it on a warm night, and his fields by the river, now ready for the plough. And he felt the cramp creep into his feet and up his legs, and Joao and Fokka gently ministering by his side, and he cried to himself, for he had no strength left to reach out to them and let them know how much he cared. And he lay there, upon the sodden earth, and died.

Joao and Fokka carried his body, withered flesh stretched on unyielding bone, to his shallow grave. No one was there to help; no one was able. With a stick, they dug the wet soil, loosened by a light drizzle, and piled it handful by handful over the wasted flesh.  Then they sat beside the mound and watched the water trickle down its loose soil, and remembered. The drizzle fell and flowed down their hair; they did not care. They watched over that patch of earth beneath which their father lay until darkness came, and still remembered. At some time, they did not remember when, they walked by the light of a wispy moon, back to the land of the living, and lay down, hungry, upon the wet earth.    

THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAY

Of a sudden, the crashing cascade of memory and emotion overwhelmed Joao. Tears rolled down and splashed at his feet. His vision blurred; he saw nothing where he stood, alone in this desolate place, beneath an indifferent sky with nothing but silence in between; Joao, the only one to return and remember, the last of his tribe, and the first, on this first day of the first month of the first year of the new century.