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by F.G. Pluthero

"Cat on a tin roof, dogs in a pile, nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile...."

- He's Gone

Lord Murugan looks uneasy. Or it may just be the way the tropical moonlight is playing across his polished face and making his golden spear tremble in the dappling glow. He could be excused for being anxious since even a granite god would be discomfited by having a stick of dynamite lodged in his fundament, with a pair of wild-eyed demons standing alongside trying to ignite the fuel of one cheap Indian lighter with the spark from another in order to strike a flame under the end of a dangling fuse. Finally the butane blueness flickers, the twine hisses to golden life and the rakshasas back hastily towards the door of the shrine, their faces locked on the image out of respect and on the fuse in awe of the blasphemous deed they have set in motion. And thereby hangs a tale....

Nungu's death is as good a place as any to begin, since like much of his life it was a mix of low comedy, high drama and frenzied, futile activity. He had just returned from a visit to the seaside city that was home to both his Mata and the wife he had ensconced in a comfy flat in hopes of keeping the breadth of the subcontinent between them, even if it was only the narrow bit near the tip. The visit had been yet another stressful scene in an ongoing drama of domestic decay which had already reached the point where mummy and daddy lived apart and the kiddies were off at boarding school for most of the year. Daughter spent her holidays with Mata and mama in stuffy Madras while her younger brother took every opportunity to escape to papa, the dogs, the servants, the fishing pond and the lush tangle of coffee-bushes, pepper vines, shady trees and gazebos of his plantation hidden in the Western Ghats in the leafy island of Coorg. The vision of that cool oasis beckoned to Nungu throughout his sojourn on the scorching coast, and so did the distant call of the lady who waited for him back home.

She was, as they say, a woman with a past, although not such a remarkable one as first appeared. Like many a foreign visitor her mind had been blown by India when she wafted in during the mid-eighties, and she was no sooner home when she was planning another trip, back to a new life in an old land with a curly-haired Tamilian. His name was Vinayak, and he had been a pal of Nungu's since the days when they had attended and been kicked out of some of the best private schools in the south, including one with an RAF fighter plane propped on the lawn like a boy's model. They shared a natural bond of sorts in being the eldest sons of wealthy families where the fathers had drunk themselves to death; Nungu's at the ripe age of 42 with his patrimony intact, Vinayak's somewhat later after most of the money had been spent. Vinayak claimed to have given Nungu his nickname within the gang of idlers and unlikely-to-do-wells they fell in with after they had run out of schools - the name was alternatively explained as a kind of nut and a character in a children's book - and according to legend they got up to "some seriously heavy shit" in those days, including the hardest of the hard drugs.

Nungu and Vinayak were up for anything as they bummed around the seedier parts of Madras (a place that gets as seedy as anyone could want), ran a hippy-dippy coffeeshop in the tourist trap of Mahabalipuram for a few months and broadened their acquaintance with an assortment of hustlers and villains. Eventually they decided to go north to rub cannabis buds for charas in the Himalayas, and it was there that Nungu was inspired by the tales of a friend who had hopped into a van one day with $20 US and made it all the way to Greece before his money, luck and skill at evading visa restrictions ran out. When the season's dope had all been rubbed Nungu took his share of the profits and headed north for Europe and adventure, while Vinayak back headed south to become a dealer in a shady hill resort. That was where he eventually hooked up with his European wife, and they settled down around the same time that Nungu was lured back from France and trapped into an arranged marriage.

Both unions produced two children - Nungu's a daughter followed by a son, Vinayak's the other way 'round - and both families enjoyed a few years of calm in their respective retreats, one the former ashram of Theosophical heavyweights, the other a sprawling yet cosy mud-brick plantation house. But it did not take long for things to start falling apart. Nungu got happy feet and started spending more and more time on trips abroad: to Malaysia to oversee the family's rubber interests, to Europe and Brazil to learn organic farming techniques, to America in search of adventure, the Grateful Dead and the legendary Magic Spot (which he found somewhere in the southwest). For Vinayak the problem was not so much happy feet as heavy hands; he took to abusing his slender wife, threatening the kids and getting into more than his fair share of scrapes around town, which seldom turned out well for him being a bit of a runt even by Tamilian standards. So while Nungu became adept at fleeing his family, Vinayak grew used to watching his family flee. Sometimes they stayed with neighbours for few days or with friends for a few weeks, and then one day they left for good. A little while later Vinayak discovered after a few calls that his wife had become Nungu's lady, and he was soon to be divorced.

Like most of the important developments in Nungu's life it all happened rather quickly and without any plan, but for once instead of shattering into disaster the pieces fell into place to produce a situation unlike anything he had ever experienced. He settled down, calmed down, stopped bingeing and took a real vacation for the first time, travelling to Italy and Switzerland to catch some rays, drink a little wine and get an organic certification for his plantation. The house that once rang with the constant hectoring of diffident servants became a calm retreat where everything ran smoothly under his new lady's supervision, and there were plans afoot for a funky guesthouse on the plantation and perhaps even a modest restaurant in town like the one she had run with Vinayak in happier days. Old friends were continually dropping by from across India and around the world, and as they reminisced about old times everyone marvelled at the new mellowness of life on the plantation, where the peace was pleasantly interrupted every now and then by gatherings that always began with rambles, converged for boisterous banquets and concluded with roaring bonfires under the clear Coorg skies. Even Nungu's diabetes seemed to have gotten into the spirit of things by allowing itself to be controlled with a modest herbal remedy instead of injections. In short, he was the happiest he had ever been in his life just before it ended.

The first warning sign came just after Nungu arrived home from the ten-hour train and car trip via Mysore. After a pleasant reunion with his lady and a light supper he suddenly felt fatigued, which was not too surprizing since the train from Madras had left at dawn. His stomach was also bothering him so he retired for a brief nap, and everything felt better when he awakened a little while later and they went out into the garden to watch the full moon rise above the tall trees. The small fragrant flowers of the raat-ki-rani (queen of the night) were just starting to open on the shrubs planted around the house and a few fire beetles were still winking here and there to add their bit to the magic, leaving an air of mystery when they occasionally disappeared in mid-flight into the maws of darting bats. After sharing a joint Nungu and his lady went back inside the house, where once again he felt the grip of fatigue and settled onto a couch. He asked for water, and by the time she returned with it his face had become a mask of pain as he rolled forward with a groan. She was just able to catch him before he fell off the couch, and as she pushed him back his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out. At that point her experience as a nursing assistant kicked in and she immediately tilted Nungu's head back and began administering artificial respiration, calling for help between breaths in hopes that the plantation supervisor or one of the workers staying in the bungalows nearby would hear.

After a few minutes Nungu came round again, and after a bit of sputtering he felt well enough to get up and go to the bathroom, wending his way past the antique four-poster bed they had bought from the Maharajah's summer palace in Ooty. Everything seemed fine when he returned to find the plantation supervisor and his assistant standing anxiously at the door, with the car already running and the driver waiting in the courtyard outside. They wanted to take him to the hospital right away, but Nungu told them to hang loose and set about making some espresso instead, grinding the roasted coffee by hand with a grinder chosen from a collection ranged on shelves along the wall. They drifted back outside the door while he made his way down the hallway to the kitchen, where his lady was filling water bottles for the anticipated trip to the hospital.

He tried to calm her down as he filled the tank of the espresso machine and she followed him as he headed back along the hall to the heavy dining room table where the machine was located. Leaving Nungu to his little chore she went out onto the porch to speak with the supervisor, and as they were discussing how to convince the master to go into town they heard a pitiful groan from back inside the house. When they entered Nungu was sitting on the couch with his head tilted back in a grimace of pain while he clutched his stomach with both hands. Without opening his eyes he said "I'm dying, man" and slumped to his left. Those were, rather appropriately, his last words.

It would of course not have been in character for someone like Nungu to have a calm and peaceful end, nor for his death to lack controversy, contention or creativity. This was a lad who had been expelled from some of the best schools in India, a youth who had bummed around France for several years with no marketable skills besides a few self-taught flute tunes, and a husband who was so high during his own wedding - which he only agreed to attend because Mata threatened suicide - he could barely remain upright. This was a planter who had defied all protests and sacrificed several years of profits to create the only certifiably organic arabica plantation in the district, a host who had converted his home into a hostel for wayward friends and a father who had made the plantation into a wonderland for his children and those of his lady. Granted, chucking his wife and taking up with another woman was not much of an innovation among well-heeled Chettiyars, but taking up with a white woman certainly was. Of all his boundary-testings that was the most adventurous, and even after over a year of cohabitation he had not dared to take his new lady back to the old family haunts. Indeed he had actually pushed her head down and skulked out the back way when they had chanced upon Mata in a supermarket one time during a visit back home.

Of course Mata was not unaware of what was going on at the plantation, since many of the workers were faithful family retainers. Nungu's wife had also caught wind of what was up, and her profanity-laced telephone tirades had become daily features - she would rail on for ages while the receiver was left lying on the desk by the door. Even Vinayak added to the fun with his occasional threats to come and get his wife back, although his calls became increasingly feeble as time went on and his mind wandered to other things. Fortunately, each passing breeze seems to drop a branch somewhere on the 20 kilometres of phone line dangling between the plantation and the nearest town (although the risks decrease every day thanks to the miracle of buried fibre optic cable), so there were days on end when the house was free of jangling disruptions. Unfortunately, it was during such a blackout that Nungu collapsed, so there was no way to phone ahead before he was bundled into the big white Safari station wagon for the winding half-hour race to town through the plantations, paddy fields and fast-gathering darkness.

As she had done earlier, Nungu's lady wanted to administer artificial respiration, but his retainers would not let her near their master as they held him across the back seat, dabbed cloths on his dry forehead and wailed with effeminate ineffectiveness. When they reached the best hospital in town one of the underlings raced in, and before they could bundle Nungu out a nurse emerged and had them prop him up in one of the seats. She checked his wrist for a pulse, scowling, then checked for a carotid pulse with her fingertips and finally used her stethoscope to confirm her diagnosis. "There is nothing we can do." she announced plainly, before adding what everyone already knew. "He is no more."

And that was that. No doctor came out, no official note was made of the time of death, no notice was taken by anyone in the empty lobby or parking lot as Nungu was returned to the back seat embrace of his retainers, now wailing and sobbing pitifully. The plantation supervisor had the presence of mind to go inside the hospital and phone Madras, and he was also able to contact the plantation since the line had come back to life in their absence. Nungu's lady made her own panicked call to the only source of aid she could command in a suddenly hostile environment, and so it was that several carloads of ghouls, rakshasas and other assorted demons were already converging on the plantation by the time Nungu and his lady began their last ride home.

They laid him out on his favourite rattan lounge on the veranda, head slumped to one side as if in sleep, and all around him the chorus of women and girls who had magically appeared from the plantation and surrounding area set up a wail so loud that it reverberated off the mud-brick walls to slap the ears like a jackhammer. Inside the house phone calls were being continually made and received over both lines and servants were rushing about with their usual ineffectiveness. Nungu's lady tried to call Madras, but old Mata was not interested in talking and her underlings repeated the same brusque message: keep out of it and be on your way. It was plain that the protective bubble Nungu had been building had burst before it was strong enough to hold without him, and those who had been confidants in his enterprize soon reverted to their role as family lackeys, filling the house with long, dark faces and hard, dark eyes. Who knows what they would have done if the neighbours had not been there, or if the rakshasas had not arrived.

The first pair rolled in not long after the others had returned from the hospital, and the wailers on the veranda marked them as they lurched out of their dirt-caked Sumo jeep, one a vast-bellied Gatotkatcha with wild hair and a thick moustache, the other a stocky ferenghi pale as an ash-streaked corpse, hiding his bearded features beneath a faded saffron hat. After pausing to pay their respects to the laid-out corpse the rakshasas went into the house to size up the situation and look for whiskey. They found a neighbour couple comforting Nungu's widow - not the Madras haranguer but the slender lady he had exchanged rings with by the sea - and on the table was a fresh bottle of Bagpiper Gold and a mickey of rum. The phone kept ringing, neighbours kept arriving and slug after slug of liquor poured down the gullets of the demons as they roamed about the house like wolves, eager for some sort of action.

Finally the local king of the rakshasas appeared with his captain, and together they began to assess the situation. They knew that Mata's ghouls would already be en route, and that when they arrived they would certainly take Nungu away and they might try to shift his ferenghi bitch out as well. Such things may be against the rules of dharma and the laws of the land but the demons knew how ghouls operate, and they also knew that the only sensible course was to try and minimize the damage. They set about planning a response while more of Nungu's cousins arrived, and soon there was a sizeable gang of rakshasas barging about the place going mad with grief and alcohol. Guns were brandished - which is not such an unusual thing in Coorg where everyone seems to have one - knives glinted, clubs were hefted and there were rumblings of a Viking funeral for Nungu in the courtyard, propped up in his Safari like a chieftain with bags of coffee and his hidden cache of sandalwood logs as fuel. They finally settled for cranking up the car's stereo system full blast to blare his favourite blues to the sky, punching a hole through the keening of the professional mourners.

Mata's retainers watched glumly and left the demons to their own devices as they flitted about in the shadows, acting under instructions from Madras. They carried the body inside where the nostrils were stuffed with cotton, the chin was tied up with a cloth and a white shroud was laid over everything but the feet and head. Incense was ignited, candles were lit and a few silent women set up a vigil, watching the rakshasas warily as they shambled about the house, flexing their muscles and grumbling as the whiskey and rum ran out. It was not long before the first ones to arrive started to sober up, and as they did their hunger for action returned. They began by helping Nungu's widow to gather up her essentials. Passports, valuables, clothes, letters, documents, pictures and books went into two big suitcases while the bulk of her possessions - ranging from the children's books and toys to a gleaming new pasta machine she had brought from Bangalore - were left behind. Or so she thought. The rakshasas were worried that anything left in the house would be pillaged as soon as the chance arose, so in their addled state they set about stuffing their vehicle with all of the lady's possessions that would fit, along with a few things of sentimental worth, such as Nungu's prized music tapes.

The demons were part way through their labours when, as their king had predicted, the Chettiyar ghouls arrived. Their buff-coloured Tatamobile rolled silently up the drive through the late-night mist, its windows fogged with dripping condensation, and a rat-faced figure emerged. The demon king - himself a brahmana - pointed the new arrival out as a pundit in mufti, and even in shirt and trousers there was no missing the sacred thread and topknot. The pundit gave the mourners, servants, neighbours and rakshasas a disdainful glance as he followed his nose to the incense-ringed body, trailed by a ferret-eyed accomplice, and after a quick survey of the scene he re-emerged and directed the vehicle to back up near the door of the room where Nungu had been laid in state. In a matter of minutes they had him wrapped up and in the back of the car, and without further discussion they disappeared into the mist with their cargo, which could just as easily have been a murder victim or a sack of rice for all anyone knew. Not that anyone would bother them on the long ride ahead, because to do that would be to risk losing a job for nothing except the empty satisfaction of interfering with people with high connections. The kind of connections which ensure that ghouls travel untroubled while rakshasas get trapped.

Being creatures of action rather than reflection it hardly dawned on the demons that Nungu's departure had changed everything, nor did they realize that their enemies had the night and shadows on their side. The king of demons took his leave soon after the ghouls had departed and he advised the others to do the same, but the pair that had taken charge of Nungu's widow were still scurrying about. They were almost ready to go when they became preoccupied with getting into the plantation office, which one of Mata's minions had locked up before disappearing with the key. He refused to reappear despite Gatotkacha's roaring, but since the office window was only closed with a showcase lock the pale demon soon had it off with a flick of his dagger. That manoeuvre allowed him to do Mata the favour of removing a stash of home-grown that would have given the authorities ample cause to seize the entire property if they had found it - not that he expected any thanks from that quarter - and since there was no way of putting the lock back on they decided to take the modest sound system Nungu and his lady had recently purchased for safekeeping. Then they finally decided that it was time to leave, but by then it was too late because the gates had been locked and the gatekeepers had vanished into the night.

Coffee and pepper are valuable commodities and sizeable amounts had been known to disappear from unguarded plantations, so the gate to Nungu's compound was much too strong to yield to the charging jeep no matter how hard Gatotkacha gunned the engine. He let out a roar as he sprang from the vehicle and went raging off into the night while his partner stalked back to the house in search of a key, a crowbar, a hacksaw, some boltcutters or dynamite. There was nothing of use to be found and the minions had all melted into the night, leaving their fires to collapse in embers and their half-eaten meals to congeal on banana leaves left scattered in their wake. Nungu's widow called softly into the shadows but no-one would not emerge, and her only company was a neighbour who had remained at the gate, warily watching the road beyond. Then from somewhere in the plantation Gatotkatcha's mighty roar rang out again, accompanied by screams and the sounds of a brief struggle and a hasty dismemberment. At least he got one, thought the pale demon as he flashed his dagger in the moonlight and dared the ghouls to come out of the shadows. None of them took the challenge, and by the time he made it back to the gate there was another jeep outside. Someone had called the cops.

Nungu's widow and the neighbour had already begun to converse with the constable, who had zipped up his green sweater and pulled the inner wool lining of his hat down over his ears against the predawn mist. He was regarding the ferenghi woman with a patronizing air when the pale demon emerged, concealing his dagger at the last second, and then Gatotkatcha suddenly staggered out of the shadows as well, dragging the terrified plantation supervisor along by the ear. The scene was filled out by shadowy forms and glinting eyes that began appearing from various directions along on the road outside the gate, and the tableau remained silent for a few seconds while the bemused constable contemplated his prospects for making an arrest, watching a lynching or returning to the bed he had been roused from. Then the spell broke. The supervisor screeched, Nungu's widow gesticulated, the neighbour cajoled, Gatotkacha roared and the pale demon glared at the shadows gathering outside the gate as they muttered under their breaths. Finally a compromise was reached: the rakshasas would back their jeep up to the house and the constable would wait for his superior to arrive and sort things out.

Grumbling and cursing, Gatotkacha reluctantly released the supervisor - who scurried off like a rat and was not to be seen again for days - and began to back the jeep up the long, bumpy driveway. Halfway up he thought to make another charge for the gate as it was opened for the police jeep, but for once discretion got the better of him, which was just as well because a few seconds later another vehicle arrived with the anticipated officer. When they were all back in the courtyard another round of discussions began, and the situation became so confused that the officer in charge finally threw up his hands and ordered the rakshasas' jeep to be emptied. A cadre of thin-armed workers suddenly appeared to form an antlike line as each took his mite from the hoard into the house, and except for the two suitcases none of them could lift and the bag of contraband that was safely tucked under a seat everything went back into the house to join the possessions Nungu's widow had left behind, most of which she would never see again. But they were trifles compared to the life she had just lost, and it was that loss that tore her heart as she climbed into the jeep with the Rakshasas and they roared off into the glimmering dawn, looking for peasants to run over.

If this was not a story about Nungu it would be necessary to go into the things that happened after his death, but few of them are important and fewer still were worthy of his lusty life, save the wakes that spontaneously sprang up among his friends across the world as they wept, roared and reminisced. Mata and her ghouls acted according to their nature as they jealously transacted the last rites, suppressed investigation of the death in favour of their own cynical theory, consolidated their property and made mean-spirited mischief for Nungu's widows, taking special care to insult and harass the one who had made him the happiest he had ever been. Saddened and exhausted she and her children eventually made their way home, pausing only to ask some Tibetans Nungu had befriended to pray for his soul at the next full moon, which marked the Buddhist new year when all old sins were washed away. Nungu's children went back to their educational exile and his hard-won organic dream was dismantled in a pesticidal mist, while the home he had made for his family became a resting place for the basest sort of trolls. It was a total victory for the ghouls, or at least that is what they thought as they wrapped themselves in sanctimonious comfort and commissioned yet another temple in the family name.

But they forgot that Nungu was only a ghoul on his maternal side. By his father he was a rakshasa, and according to dharma his cousins had every right to expect his demon roots to be acknowledged. When it became clear that the needful was not forthcoming, the rakshasas resorted to their most terrible weapon: not rage, not anger, but penance. With grim resolve the king and two lieutenants found a clearing open to the elements, where like true tapasvaris they resolved to sit through day and night and winter and summer eating and drinking only what the wind would bring. The monsoon raged over them, the summer baked their skulls and the chill winds roared but they neither moved nor flinched until finally Lord Shiva took note of them and appeared as the crescent moon. As was his custom he offered the penitents a boon, but he was taken aback by their unusual request. In its stead he offered them gold, round-bosomed maidens, the golden mango of wisdom and even eternal life, but they were steadfast in their request and he was honour-bound to grant it. Finally he sighed and assented, and the rakshasas leapt up and roared triumphantly to the night.

And so it was that the next full moon found the demon trio staggering over the sands towards the ocean, laughing and bellowing in exultation while Shiva watched from beyond the lunar disk. He allowed his gaze to wander for a second from just one of his many sanctuaries scattered across the Earth, and for just long enough for a fuse to sputter to its end and a stick of dynamite to ignite. The demons roared as the explosion tore open the night for an instant, and they would later swear that in its glow they saw the hint of a smile pass over Shiva's lips as the pieces of the prefab shrine fell away and his youngest son's spear rocketed up into the night, cutting a golden arc as it flashed westwards carrying Nungu's rakshasa spirit home. Even the gods, it seems, have a bit of demon in their pedigree.

©2002 F. G. Pluthero