Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson

Author:Julia Gregson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Touchstone

- CHAPTER 31 -

And it seemed for a while that it was the old Anto who came home: the one who made me laugh, who confided in me, the one whose beautiful tortoiseshell green eyes would squeeze shut when he laughed and open in a gleam of mischief, not the Anto in flight, distracted and grumpy, who was beginning to make me feel like a dangerous pet. His new job paid a decent salary of four hundred and fifty rupees per month. His title: junior physician at the Holy Family Hospital at Kacheripady in Ernakulam. He was also to work with Assistant District Medical Officer Dr. Sastry on a newly funded research trial, the details to be supplied later.

Later that week, Uncle Josekutty, the distinguished-looking Thekkeden who owned our house, asked if he could call on us. Our arrangement with him had never been properly finalized, so we were both shockingly nervous, thinking our good luck had run out, but when, at the end of a leisurely conversation, Anto asked if we could possibly secure a year’s lease, Uncle Josekutty, who was recently widowed and with no children of his own, said, “That’s what I came to say. I think you should buy my house at a peppercorn price.”

When Anto politely protested, Uncle Josekutty patted him on the arm. “That’s enough! I believe in giving gifts warm, not when I am cold in the ground.”

We danced around the kitchen once he had gone. Couldn’t believe it. Shortly after that, the deeds were handed over, the house blessed, and the entire family swung into action, not stinting with advice or help. Amma spent a day in the storage room behind the granary at Mangalath, a room crammed with rosewood and teak furniture, linen chests, mosquito nets, old mangles, Anto’s first cricket set. She found a beautiful old rosewood table for our main room, and a carved four-poster bed for the guest room that would only need a few repairs before it was serviceable, a lamp to hang in the hall.

She was fantastically bossy about where to put everything, and so happy that it made me think about my own Ma, with her fierce high standards about carpet cleaning and the right hangers and mothballs and mattress turnings. Amma, rapping out orders about how much air to leave around the furniture, telling us our bed should face either south or west for health and luck, suddenly reminded me of her. Uncle Josekutty’s workman came over to repair a couple of loose struts of wood on the veranda, where the men smoked their cigarettes. Thresiamma brought us a kindy, a brass utensil with a spout, filled with water, for cleaning the feet of those who enter the house. Pathrose came with fresh soil and cow dung and planted up the ankanam, the little courtyard, with hibiscus and jasmine and frangipani.

Exhausted by this whirlwind of advice and people, when they left, we sat on the swinging chair on the veranda. Anto put his arm around me.

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