THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM Read online

  ‘If all you wanted to do was leave, boy, why did you come in the first place?’

  ‘I came…’ Once again he stopped and stared at the wall. Then he shook his head. ‘I… don’t know why I came.’

  The air outside was now filled with a smokescreen of dust. A constant stream of people were walking along the path in great hurry, in twos and threes, excitedly talking among themselves. Thatha propped himself up on the edge of his chair and peered out.

  ‘Avadhanayya!’ A man called out from the gate. Soot-black. Bare-chested. Big teeth. Booming voice. ‘O Avadhanayya!’

  Thatha didn’t respond. He raised his hand and cocked his head as if to say ‘what’. His breathing became more hoarse.

  ‘Didn’t you hear? Just behind the school.’

  ‘Haan? School? What happened behind the school?’

  Chanti felt a tiny but distinct ripple down his spine. Why did the mention of the school make him so… afraid?

  ‘A boy, Avadhanayya. From the town. Maybe even from the city.’

  Now it was no longer a ripple. It was a wave. Had Thatha not mentioned that Venkataramana was seen at the school? And all these men and women running along in that direction. Ramana was supposed to have come to the village in the afternoon. Why had he not arrived here yet?

  ‘A boy? A boy, did you say?’

  Oh, stop shouting, you old man! All you can do is hiss and breathe and spit out half-chewed gutkha at the window. Now, Ramana…

  ‘Haan, Avadhanayya. A boy from the city. He is—oh, Avadhanayya, why don’t you come and see for yourself?’

  Aravind continued to stare at the wall. Sarayu and Chotu were now standing by the window, looking out at the miserable, fidgeting wretch at the gate. Thatha was groaning and hissing—stop groaning you old man—and he was trying to get onto his feet but the armchair was too deep and he kept sinking back in—come on, get up you old man—and the chair was creaking and tapping against the wall and Sarayu and Chotu were staring at each other and Aravind sat staring at the wall with smoke billowing out of his nose and the smell… the smell of washed mud from the Godavari’s banks mixed with Manikchand gutkha in Thatha’s mouth and the smoke from Thatha’s beedi… oh the smell of disease and decay and death…

  The smell of Palem.

  Chapter Ten

  1984

  The first thing Venkataramana had done on opening his eyes that morning was to close them again in the hope that the dream would return. It didn’t.

  Dreams that ended abruptly like that irritated him to no end. It was like that time when they were all watching the movie at Saraswatamma’s place. Chiranjeevi’s family (his grandmother, his two brothers, his nephew and his sister-in-law) were tied to a metal plate on the ground and the villain operated a crane which brought a heap of white rock hovering on top of them. As it descended, Chiranjeevi finished fighting the last of the villian’s minions and started running towards his family. His family members looked at him and called out for help. His grandmother was crying. His nephew was screaming. Chiranjeevi was running in slow motion, which actually meant, as Venkataramana knew from his movie-watching experience, that he was, in fact, running very, very fast. The block of rock kept descending, and in the background, the villain—a horrible, black, bearded fellow—grinned devilishly.

  And then what had happened? The picture had stopped. Saraswatamma’s husband tried to work the projector but apparently something was wrong with the movie recording itself. (‘We did not get the last reel’, Saraswatamma had said.) So Visheshwar Rao, who had seen the movie the year before in town, had stood up in the audience and told them how the movie ended. Which was better than nothing, but nowhere near as good as watching it would have been.

  This dream was something like that. In fact, this was worse, he thought, because in this case, nobody else could tell him how it ended.

  To top it all, he felt as though someone were plucking his eyes out. He had slept soundly—he usually did—but all he could think of was when he would be able to go back to bed again. He had only woken up an hour ago, and yet he felt like he had not slept at all through the night.

  He stifled a yawn and picked up his pace. The others would be there already by now. And Aravind did not like waiting.

  He cut across Komati Satyam’s house and Avadhani Thatha’s field that stretched behind it. Thatha was harvesting peanuts that season. In one corner of the plot, he saw a black langur tied to a tree. His tail rose into the air over his head and curled in on itself. Monkeys were always a big threat whenever a farmer cultivated peanuts, and everyone knew monkeys stayed away when you had a langur on the grounds. Langur catchers came down from Dhavaleshwaram every harvest season to rent their animals to farmers.

  But what farmers did not know was that not all peanut-thieves were monkeys. And langurs did not scare humans.

  Venkataramana laughed and looked around him, standing on the far edge of the field. The sun was a perfectly round, orange ball, skimming the horizon. There was no one about. The village was only just stirring to life. Surely Thatha wouldn’t know if he… and even if he did find out, he wouldn’t mind…

  He walked along the edge, looking for a particularly ripe plant. When he found one, he crouched by it and dug the soil around it with his bare hands. When its roots came into view, he gripped the stem with one hand and shook it loose. The plant held firm at first, but after some more digging and shaking and pulling, Venkataramana was holding in his hands a plant with a thick bunch of raw peanuts hanging by the roots.

  He chuckled in delight. That should take care of breakfast.

  He heard a chattering to his left. It was his habit to feed the langur whenever he stole peanuts from a farm. He had heard Avadhani Thatha tell him once that a thief should always keep the watchman happy. Well, what better way to keep this watchman happy than to share with him his loot?

  He plucked two nuts from the plant and threw them in the langur’s direction. ‘I was not here. You did not see me. Okay?’

  The monkey broke open the nuts and tucked them into his mouth. While he chewed on his bribe, he pushed back his lips and bared his teeth. ‘Hoo, hoo, hoo.’

  Venkataramana took that to be a gesture of gratitude. ‘Okay, I am going now. Not a word to Avadhani Thatha.’

  ‘Hoo hoo hoo.’

  Turning away, he plucked out a nut for himself and put it in his mouth. Juicy. Everyone in the village said Avadhani Thatha’s field was the best. Even in the driest of years, they said, Avadhanayya’s harvest was at least twice as bountiful as the next man’s. Venkataramana could see why. He decided to keep some for the others too.

  The thought of the others suddenly made him realize that he had completely lost track of time. The sun was now at least two inches over the horizon. Aravind would definitely be mad.

  Walking wouldn’t do any more. He had to run. Fast.

  They were all there at Ellamma Cheruvu. Sarayu was sitting in her usual spot on the broken concrete slab. Chanti stood on the bank, expertly throwing stones into the water and making them jump with a flick of his wrist. It was Chanti’s area of expertise. Give him a flat one and he could make it skip all the way to the other bank. Only Aravind could give him a semblance of a fight, and that only on a good day.

  Today, Aravind did not seem too concerned about competing with Chanti. He was busy wagging his finger at Chotu a little further away, under the guava tree. As Venkataramana drew closer to the lake, Sarayu gave him a searching look. There were dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘Where were you all this time, you oaf? Do you know how long we’ve been waiting? Aye?’ she said. ‘What is that?’

  ‘From Thatha’s field. They’re very nice.’

  Chanti aimed another stone. It tailed away to the right and skipped four times, bouncing lower and lower each time until it slid away and disappeared. Sarayu put her hand out. ‘I am hungry,’ she said. ‘Aravind, come. Ramana brought us breakfast.’

  Aravind looked up at her, nodded, and gestured a
t Chotu to follow him. He folded up his lungi as he walked towards them. A matchstick danced between his lips.

  ‘Throw that thing away,’ Sarayu said.

  ‘I told you, Chotu,’ Aravind said, ‘you should have told me before you left that damned place. If something happened to you, do you think your parents would have left me? Your dad would have drowned me in this lake.’

  ‘I walk in my sleep, Aravind Anna,’ Chotu said slowly.

  ‘Well, don’t! Only cowards walk in their sleep. Are you a coward?’

  ‘N—no…’

  ‘Then? And you were holding Chanti’s hand, were you not?’

  ‘Yes, but—but I don’t know how…’

  ‘Yeah, that is what I am saying. You have to be aware of what is going on around you, Chotu. Your parents will kill me if something happens to you.’

  ‘But nothing will happen. I just went to Avadhani Thatha’s house.’

  ‘You did, thankfully. But what if you came here and walked into the damned lake? What then? Huh?’

  Another stone left Chanti’s hand and jumped merrily on the surface of the water. This one bent the other way. Chanti proudly claimed he could make them bend whichever way he wanted. He was probably right.

  Sarayu said, ‘Oye, stop now. You have been after the poor kid for the whole hour. Chotu, from now on, whenever we do something like this, make sure you tie yourself to one of us, okay?’

  Chotu nodded.

  ‘Come and eat now. I am hungry.’

  Aravind rubbed his eyes with both his hands and groaned. Chanti was grimacing at the water. Chotu looked ready to cry. By the looks of it, none of them had had any sleep last night.

  Aravind faced Venkataramana. ‘What about you, Ramana? Here we have been waiting the whole morning and you take your own sweet time to come. So that is how it is going to be, is it?’

  ‘He stopped in Thatha’s field to get us these,’ Sarayu said. ‘So don’t go on with him now. Sit down and eat.’

  They all sat down by the slab and started plucking at the roots. Only Chanti stood away from them, looking into the water.

  ‘Oye hero,’ Sarayu called out to Chanti. ‘You don’t want to eat? We are not going to leave anything for you if you don’t come and get it.’

  Yes, Venkataramana thought, watching her erratic movements, her bleary eyes and uncombed hair, she had definitely not slept well. And Aravind was closing his eyes as he sat leaning against the slab.

  ‘I had a dream,’ Venkataramana said at length.

  ‘Me too,’ Chotu said immediately.

  Aravind opened an eye and said, ‘Great, now we have to listen to these donkeys go on about what they dreamed of. Guess what, I had a dream too. I have a dream every night. But do you hear me tell you all of it? Do you?’

  Venkataramana looked away at Chanti. Another flick of the wrist. A perfectly flat stone left his fingers and flew into the river with a plop. It did not jump. Not once. ‘A different sort of a dream,’ Venkataramana said. Chanti was looking down at his wrist with a frown. ‘Yes, a different sort of a dream.’

  Chotu nodded. ‘Yes, yes, different.’

  Sarayu played with her hair and stared at the roots in her hand. Aravind did not say anything but his eyes were now half-open.

  ‘I… first thought it was just me,’ Venkataramana went on. Chanti was walking towards them, still looking down at his wrist intently. ‘But it looks like… all of us…’

  ‘No,’ Aravind said, and closed his eyes.

  Sarayu said slowly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You did too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A different dream?’

  ‘Yes… I was able to…’

  ‘Control it?’

  Sarayu looked up at Venkataramana. ‘No, not control it. But it was clear. You know? Not like dreams usually are. It was like I was watching a movie or something. And I was able to make him do things.’

  Aravind asked, ‘Him? Whom?’

  ‘My father. I made him write a letter.’

  Aravind laughed. ‘Your father doesn’t know a single letter of the alphabet.’

  ‘I know, but I made him write. And he did write. I know.’

  Chanti was now standing right next to them. Still looking down at his hand with a frown on his face, he said, ‘I had a dream too.’

  Venkataramana looked at Aravind. ‘Are you sure you didn’t have a dream?’

  Aravind leaned forward and stared back. ‘Yes, Ramana, I am sure.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve forgotten?’

  ‘I don’t forget my dreams.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes.

  ‘But we all went to the Shivalayam together, Aravind,’ Sarayu said. For the first time ever as far as Ramana could remember, her voice carried a tone of anxiety. Sarayu was a girl only by appearance. She did none of the things that the other girls in the village did. She never played with dolls, she never painted rangoli in front of her hut for Sankranti, her wrists were bare, she did not wear a nose ring; it was a surprise to Venkataramana that she wore anklets. Her favourite pastimes were to fly kites and ride bicycles and climb trees—things that boys enjoyed doing. The only feminine trait in her was her ability to boss people around with minimum effort.

  Given all of that, the tone of anxiety in her voice came as both surprise and relief—surprise because Venkataramana didn’t think she was capable of such an emotion, and relief because he himself was feeling anxious.

  Chanti said, ‘Do you think she… gave us the dreams?’

  The sun had come out, and was now beating down upon the water. Birds in the guava tree tittered incessantly. A breeze blew across the fields now and then, making the trunk sway and the branches rustle. The water in the lake sparkled.

  ‘This is crazy.’ The matchstick in Aravind’s mouth flitted restlessly from one end to the other. ‘She is dead. Dead, people! Dead!’

  ‘She came to me in my dream that night,’ Chanti said. ‘At the Shivalayam.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What did she say? Did she say she wanted to bite your head off?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘Stop,’ Sarayu said. ‘Stop! There is no need to fight. These are just dreams, after all. Ramana, when you had your dream, did you make a conscious effort to control the people in it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Chotu and Chanti nodded as well.

  ‘Good. It was the same for me as well. Now if we are to sleep well, it seems to me that there is only one way of doing it. We refuse to take part in our dreams.’

  Venkataramana and Chotu looked at each other. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Well, we made a choice to control our dreams last night. So by that token, we should also be able to reject taking control.’

  ‘We can try,’ Chanti said. ‘Yes, we can try.’

  Aravind stared out into the distance. ‘I don’t know what you guys are talking about. Really, I think all of you have gone crazy in one night.’

  Sarayu got up and the rest of them followed suit. Aravind was the only one left sitting. ‘Well,’ Sarayu said, ‘I have to go. Father will start shouting for breakfast anytime now.’

  ‘We… we have to go to school,’ Venkataramana said, looking at Chanti.

  ‘School!’ Aravind said. ‘What do they teach you in school? You need to learn from life, Ramana. Life!’

  After they had taken a few steps away from the concrete slab, Chanti bent down to pick up a stone. He held it in his open palm and showed it to Venkataramana. It was as flat as you could expect a pebble to be. With his thumb, he pushed it nearer the tips of his fingers and held it in the curve of his forefinger. He leaned down, stopped to look at Venkataramana for a moment, and then flicked his wrist, like he had done thousands of times in the past.

  Plop.

  He frowned at his wrist and shook his head. ‘Something is not right,’ he said. ‘I feel okay, but no, something is not right.’

  He had not missed a throw in seven years. Now he had missed three in the space of half an hour. Venkataramana nodde
d at Chanti. Yes, something was definitely not quite right.

  Somewhere in the distance, the school bell rang.

  Chapter Eleven

  What Happened Last Year on This Day in Palem

  AP Mirror

  | Feb 21, 2002|

  The first major event of this story is thought to have happened on the evening of February 21, 2001, when a schoolboy on his way home found the body of Venkataramana behind the school yard. He was found to be impaled by the spikes of a long-discarded school gate that rested at the bottom of the mound on which the school is situated. Venkataramana was last seen near the Gandhi statue in front of the school just before the first class began, at noon. And then he disappeared. He is thought to have walked around the building and stood at the head of the mound by the compound wall at the back. From there he either slipped or was pushed down the incline so that he rolled down, landing directly on the spikes.

  The young man had been away from India for three years and from Palem for as many as seventeen years. It beggars belief, therefore, to suppose he might have had some enemies waiting for him in Palem. Given that fact, it seemed likely at the time that his death was an accident. The fact that the ground around the school is slippery and that the area itself is very accident-prone supported the accident hypothesis.

  Of course, events that happened later on would cast an entirely new light on the matter.

  Chapter Twelve

  2001

  In the northwestern part of Rudrakshapalem, cosseted by Prabhakarayya’s general store on the left and Ibrahim Bhai’s flour mill on the right, stood a serene, white, single-storeyed square building. The black stone plaque that stood by the front gate bore in gold letters the name of Sudeshnamma, Saraswatamma’s paternal grandmother.

  She had been a woman of extraordinary character, going by the stories of men who had known her. Even though she could not read or write a single letter of the Telugu alphabet, she had an intuitive understanding of numbers and accounting, which made her incredibly hard to deceive in matters of money. Her husband, Janardhan Reddy, Saraswatamma’s grandfather, was the only child of his parents, and though he had had a town-bred English education (or maybe because of it), he tended to be loose-handed. The sharks in his family had been circling around him ever since he was born, and when he came of age and inherited all of his father’s lands, they prepared to close in.