19, Hospitality

The top of the hill seemed to Kamala to be getting no nearer as they trudged along in single file. The sun was a white hot thumb bearing down on them - they were tin tacks being pushed back into the dusty red earth. Kamala thought longingly of the lovely big, air conditioned four-wheel drive Tata Sumo that they had left at the bottom of the hill. It had brought them as far as it could get until first the tarmac ran out, and then the rutted road ran out, and then the relatively level ground had run out. Now it stood anomalously, stripped of its context of tarmac and traffic lights, at the edge of the primeval forest below them.

Mohan and Banubai, the cook, had accompanied them on the trip. It seemed that they belonged to the community which was going to lead them to the ‘target zone’ as Dr Singh called it, although as far as Kamala could gather (since the whole project was shrouded in confidentiality) what they were trying to locate was basically a tree. A very special tree, sure. Very old. But Dr Singh seemed excited about it.

Dr Singh was eager to get going. There had been delay after delay which had kept them fretting in the bungalow on top of the hill for the best part of a month. First they had to wait for the final team member; the interpreter. He had been scheduled to meet Dr Singh and the others at the Greenfields sub-regional office in the town at the foot of the hill, but he hadn’t turned up. Then a few days ago, after frantic efforts to contact him, a message had arrived to say he couldn’t make it on the mission - something about his wife being sick. Dr Singh was beside himself. It wasn’t easy to find people who could speak both English and the arcane language of the hill tribes. They kept themselves to themselves, Dr Singh had explained. Deepak had muttered that they didn’t have much choice since there were no schools near their isolated settlements.

Then they had to wait for some vital pieces of equipment for their field trip to arrive - some parts which had been sent from Switzerland had been impounded by customs officials who suspected them of being disguised components for military equipment. According to Dr Singh, the matter had had to be taken right up to the deputy Prime Minister who had ordered their immediate clearance. The customs officer had been sacked immediately. (Kamala thought this harsh, the poor guy was only doing his job and with terrorist alerts every other day of course he was going to be suspicious of some strange looking contraption coming from abroad). They’d been rushed to the Greenfield sub-regional office with an army motorcycle convoy, and Sunil, the driver had brought them up to the bungalow the day before. So now, after Dr Singh had checked them over and Sunil had had a night’s rest, they were finally on their way.

The interpreter problem had been resolved very suddenly one morning when Dr Singh had found Deepak was in the kitchen talking to Mohan and the cook. They discovered that he was speaking to them not in English or the language of the town, but some other language. It turned out that it was indeed one of the hill tribe dialects, and Mohan and Banubai confirmed that it was possible that the village they were going to would understand them. It would slow down the process a little, but if Mohan and Banubai translated for Deepak, Deepak could translate for the team. Dr Singh was triumphal with relief as he bellowed instructions to the bewildered pair to pack up their bags and prepare for an indefinite trip into the forest. Deepak had almost as little choice in the matter but he agreed moodily.

There had been an uncomfortable moment as the party had set out, when Deepak had climbed into the front seat of the Tata Sumo beside the driver, Ms Jensen and Dr Singh had settled themselves in the back and, as Kamala was about to get in too, she noticed that Banubai and Mohan were climbing into the trailer into which was piled with the team’s baggage and the heavily protected scientific instruments.

“No, no!” she’d smiled, holding the back door open for them. “Don’t be silly, there’s plenty of room in the back if we all scoosh up…” Mohan’s dark cheeks darkened further and he stared at his feet, and Banubai looked stricken again - the mad memsahib was at it again. She quickly shuffled round so that she was protected from Kamala’s gaze by Mohan’s body.

“Come along, come along,” shouted Dr Singh “What’s the delay here? We need to get going, we don’t want to be out in the forest when night falls and the wild animals and dacoits come out to play.”

“I was just telling Mohan and the lady not to sit in the trailer, Dr Singh. We can all squeeze into the back, can’t we?” Kamala replied.

Dr Singh looked puzzled for a moment, then…

“Ah, I see. No, no, don’t worry, Kamala, the equipment is well insulated. They can sit on top without damaging it. Accha, challo, bhai.” He finished, turning to the driver.

Now it was Kamala’s turn to look puzzled… “No, Dr Singh, I didn’t mean…”

But Deepak had suddenly stuck his head out of the passenger seat window and snapped, “Oh for god’s sake, girl, just get in the bloody car and leave it alone. You’re not going to achieve a social revolution and overturn centuries of social conditioning in one car journey!”

Kamala was shocked. Every one was a little shocked, actually. Throughout the month Deepak had remained as taciturn as he had been on the first morning, but he had never been rude before. With Dr Singh he sometimes had quiet, thoughtful conversations over whisky late at night after the women had gone to bed. Kamala would hear their voices murmuring in the dark - Dr Singh’s high, excited machine gun fire, Deepak’s occasional single, deep cannon ball, plunging into the cricket-crackling silence, leaving endlessly expanding ripples in Kamala‘s half dreaming mind.

To Kamala herself, he barely addressed a word, indeed he seemed to actively avoid her, though she couldn’t imagine what she had done to offend him. Once, while reading on the veranda she had looked up abruptly for some reason and thought she caught her reflection in the lens of the camera which he’d been tinkering with, but when she looked properly, he was focusing on one of the pale, chubby ghekko lizards on the wall behind her head - she must have imagined it. He seemed to prefer to pretend she didn’t exist. She discovered from Dr Singh that he had studied in America and, when she found herself alone with him in the sitting room one evening, she’d tried to break the ice by asking him if he ever felt homesick for America. But he had tersely retorted “India is my home, Ms Steel” and gone back to reading National Geographic. Kamala, mortified, decided to respond to his arrogance with cheery nonchalance, which, alas never quite came off. Whenever she tried to gently provoke him with mindless pleasantries, her voice always came out a little shriller than she’d intended - as though there was a tiny sob buried deep in her throat.

Ms Jensen seemed utterly oblivious to his lack of conversation (as arrogant as each other, thought Kamala) and they were often to be found sitting on the veranda in silence, each absorbed in their own task - she usually reading print-outs from her lap-top (“It is essential to keep abreast of the latest dewelopments in Svedish scientific circles” she explained), he usually tinkering with his lenses and light meters. He had an old fashioned SLR in a battered leather case as well as an array of digital cameras and other photographic paraphernalia which now, fully prepared for the long awaited field trip, festooned his chest like military medals.

The only people he really seemed to relax with were Mohan and Banubai. Kamala felt slightly hurt by this too. She had met them and, she’d thought, befriended them first, and they were still painfully shy with her, especially Banubai. Why should they feel so relaxed with Deepak, the newcomer? He smoked with Mohan on the back veranda, leaning his long back against the pillar, the morning sun illuminating the smoke from his cigarette… Banubai calling out comfortably to him from the kitchen in her gravelly voice. As usual they all fell silent when Kamala opened the door. She would hand her bed tea tray to the new odd-job boy (she knew they’d rather she left it for them to collect - but she felt she had to make a point) and then turn away from the threshold of the kitchen door, the boundary of her banishment, feeling as though her gesture had been childish and pointless. And then she would hear the conversation start up again as the door swung shut behind her.

At Deepak’s uncharacteristic outburst, Kamala pinched her lips tight shut and climbed into the back seat as instructed, stroking with her thumb the smooth curve of the golden snakes at her throat. She’d thought Deepak was Mohan and Banubai’s friend, he was the one person she’d expected to support her in sticking up for them. She stared out of the window as they pulled away, trying to avoid Ms Jensen‘s supercilious look. It wasn’t just the dust which was making her eyes sting as they set off.

But the long drive had blunted the edge of her hurt. The rise and fall of the road, up hill and down, repeated and repeated until to Kamala it seemed like she was part of the slow motion heave of the hills, breathing. Even over the straining whine of the Sumo’s engine, a silence, immense, ancient was gathering in intensity around them - oozing out of the very rock of the hills. For mile after mile, the gradually strengthening sunlight strobed through the forest canopy. Occasionally they would burst out into a clearing and the whole world would be splashed out in front of them for an instant. They would catch, for a moment, the flash of whitewash on the low, square-hewn rocks that lined the road’s edge, which acted more as a warning - “You are now mere feet away from plunging several hundred feet to your death” - than a barrier, and then the forest would open its branchy jaws and swallow them again.

When she was a child, Kamala had come across a comic book tucked away in the bottom of an old trunk under her mother’s bed. It was before she could read the words, but she remembered vividly the images; a slender, beautiful girl with great, heavy lashed eyes slanting across her almond face; her hair, inky black swept down her back, caught at the nape of her neck with a clutch of white flowers. She was gazing longingly into a cave in which a man sat cross legged. The man was as impossibly beautiful as the girl, the same luxuriantly inky black hair, a black thread slanted from his broad shoulders down to a nut-brown six pack where a leopard skin was knotted low on the hip. His eyes were closed, long, dark lashes sweeping down almost to his cheekbones, but his lips, broad and shapely, smiled with a deep, and sensuous… knowingness. The girl stood in a forest just like this. There were caves in the hillside just like the one the prince (she assumed that’s what he was, though he was half naked) sat in. Kamala could have sworn she saw a deer flash through the undergrowth just like the one that peeped curiously out at the beautiful girl and the beautiful man in the comic book picture.

She wondered if the indigenous people whose village they would set up camp in for the first phase of their work would look like that. But then she remembered, Banubai and Mohan were from the same ethnic group. She had glanced back at the trailer and its occupants with a mixture of guilt and embarrassment - Mohan was curled up asleep in a kind of nest he had hollowed out for himself amongst the bags and the boxes, apparently impervious to the Sumo’s violent lurches and bumps. Banubai was sitting bolt upright looking out at the forest, her chin raised, eyes bright, and nostrils flared... Kamala realised she’d never seen her face properly before.

Banu wasn’t tall and slim and honey skinned, her beauty worked on a different level, thought Kamala; her skin the colour and sheen of walnut, except where the tattoos smudged it like finger prints smudging a polished dining table, broad forehead, high, shapely cheekbones and gleaming black eyes, slightly creased at the corners like those of people from further east. Her small, sharp chin drew her face into a perfect heart shape. Kamala felt against the skin of her back the reflection of something glowing and tingling in Banu's eyes - this is what the earth might feel, she thought, when the rain returns to slake its parched surface. For the rest of the drive, the waves of crackling aliveness kept radiating from somewhere behind her. By the time the Sumo gave its final shudder into silence under the trees, the tingling had grown to a blazing warmth and the back of Kamala’s shirt was soaked through, before the sun on the hill path ever started beating down on it.

“Not too far, now, Kamala, my dear” chirped Dr Singh as their calves strained against the slope. Deepak and Ms Jensen were in the lead, then Dr Singh, then Kamala, with Mohan, Banubai and the driver bringing up the rear helping them carry their equipment up. Two men, armed - Kamala was thrilled to see - with bows and arrows, were sent back later to guard the Sumo until the driver returned to take it back to Greenfields HQ in the little town in the plains. Kamala tried to picture cool waterfalls, ice packs, the air conditioned bedroom at the guest house back in the city, to distract her from the heat and the ache in her legs.

“See,” said Dr Singh “the cook is going on ahead to ask them to have some cold drinks ready for us!”

At the mention of ‘cold drinks’ Kamala pictured a chilled glass of Coke chinking with ice… and then laughed wearily. She looked up and saw that Banubai was indeed some way ahead of them now. Again, Kamala felt a stab of guilt - poor woman having to slog up the hill in this heat just so that they could have drinks waiting for them - it was bad enough going at their plodding pace. But then she noticed that Banubai wasn’t running, and she wasn’t panting or even sweating. She was walking briskly, purposefully, but as easily as though it was level ground. And her eyes were raised towards the peak of the hill. Kamala turned her own gaze down to her feet again, willing them to keep moving, unable to bare the glare of the sky.

“Wow! She must be super fit!” she gasped.

“Yes, these hill tribe people are strong, no? Strong as oxen. Very pliable too, that‘s why they make such good servants.” Dr Singh replied brightly. “Phenomenal people. Quite underestimated. Most people think they’re completely primitive, but they do have some knowledge - for example, about the medicinal properties of forest flora. Quite a bit of knowledge. You must be knowing, pharmaceutical companies are pushing each other over in their hurry to get at that knowledge, it’s a real goldmine. And since they’re completely uneducated, mostly it’s like taking candy from a baby." He laughed. "But now, now there are these wretched people, these enjyos, who stir them up and start getting them all agitated about their so called ‘rights‘. What about the rights of human kind to benefit from that medicinal knowledge, huh? Where’s the human rights in denying the world that? That’s what I want to know!”

Kamala didn’t have the energy to do more than grunt. How did he manage to keep up his energy when their lungs were pounding against the scorching, thinning air of the hillside, she wondered.

“It’s like this project of ours… these enjyos would be having our 'guts for garters', as you English say, if they knew about it…”

She didn't have the energy to remind him half English, half Indian. “Enjyos?” Kamala managed between gasps. It was clear she was going to have to understand this new phrase if she was to follow the rest of the conversation - or rather lecture.

“Yes, yes, enjyos. En. Gee. Os. Non-government organisations. They pretend to just be charities, but they are dangerous trouble makers these days. They don't just give out alms to the needy. They would be saying that we are exploiting these 'poor people'. They refuse to see that we’re actually doing them a big favour. You see, Kamala my dear, these people are like children. They don’t appreciate the value of what they know. They don’t understand how to put it to the best advantage - look at them, you’ll see them soon, scratching around half naked on top of a burning hillside, when they could be living in nice apartments with air conditioning and drinking cold Pepsi Cola! They could have education, health care, proper jobs with pensions and other fringe benefits. The enjyos just want them to remain in the dark ages. They think it’s more picturesque that way. Such arrogance!” He shook his head sadly, his boundless optimism experiencing a little dip.

At this point, Deepak turned sharply. “In that case, I’d better go and try to get some pictures of them in their natural state before our wonderful project saves them from their ignorance and innocence.” Kamala thought she caught the inverted commas around the word ‘saves’.

“Certainly, certainly, my boy!” he cried “You carry on ahead. Click away! Click away! It would be interesting to have some ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots of these people, certainly. Then we could show them to the enjyos and say well, what do you say now, hah?! Ha, ha, ha!”

Deepak bared his teeth in what Kamala supposed was meant to be a smile. He cranked up his pace and set off up the hill after Banubai. A dark patch on the back of his white shirt spread slowly until the chestnut skin beneath shone through. Kamala felt a cold trickle of sweat trace its way down her own back. She looked down at her feet again and willed them to keep moving.

Ms Jensen and Dr Singh, ahead of her now, fell into a conversation about the comparative merits of different methods for analysing molecular energy conversion, which, fascinating though it was to her, Kamala couldn’t quite keep her mind on. She just tried to focus on not melting down and on the idea of the top of the hill.

At Dr Singh’s cry of “Ah, here we are!“ Kamala looked up to see a figure towering over them, outlined against the dazzling sky. A purple haze stood out all around it and spurts of gold blazed at its wrists. Then she raised her arm to shade her eyes and saw a statuesque woman in a purple sari, calmly gazing down at them. Banubai stood behind her.

“Ah, yes, here we are, Banu-ma! Our refreshments are ready? Good, good.”

The tall woman with Banu raised her arm and gestured them graciously towards the village. There was a large reception committee awaiting them when they finally flopped down, dusty and sweaty, onto a rug spread under a huge tree. The tree stood in the middle of a cluster of small, square houses made, as far as Kamala could see, from woven palm leaves. The whole village seemed to be there, eagerly (Kamala assumed) awaiting the strange visitors. But it was actually only the children who seemed excited, staring and giggling and flapping their fingers.

The adults had stood very quietly and watched as the dusty little procession approached. Kamala couldn’t see Deepak. Once they had sat down, the tall woman gestured towards one of the houses and a boy ran out with a large, round bellied, thin necked earthenware water pot on one hip and a glass tumbler in the other. He handed the glass to Dr Singh, and then poured a cool, silvery clear stream into it for him. Kamala felt slightly panicked. Only one glass. Wasn’t anyone else getting water?

She watched, longingly, as Dr Singh threw back his head and poured the water straight down his throat. The glass never touched his lips. He passed the empty glass back to the boy who - she was relieved to see - refilled it for Kamala. Bravely, she attempted to do the same and ended up pouring half of it down the outside of her throat and the front of her shirt. The shrieks of laughter from the children clustered around them were a price worth paying for the delicious, icy drenching. She passed the glass to Ms Jensen who, once it was filled, simply put it to her lips and drank. There was a smear of pale lipstick on its edge when she handed it back to the astonished boy. He took the glass back from Ms Jensen with the tips of his thumb and forefinger and then turned and looked questioningly at the tall woman.

Kamala noticed now that she was not in fact much taller than Banubai, there was just something about her bearing that made her seem tall, statuesque. She was decked in chunky silver and bone jewellery. Like Banubai, she had dark green markings smudged on her high cheekbones and her forehead and chin. The woman’s calm expression never faltered as she uttered a brief command and gestured again. The boy ran to the house and got another glass which was then passed to Banubai and then to the driver and from him finally to Mohan. (Strange, thought Kamala, I thought in this country the men ate and drank first… she also realised that for the first time Mohan and Banubai were sitting with them, sharing the same mat, without any of their usual embarrassment. Kamala smiled, perhaps her little protests had had some effect after all!)

His thirst quenched, Dr Singh was now ready to crack straight on and get to work “Deepak!” he called, “Where are you? Come on, my boy. Come and do some interpreting for us!”

Again the woman gave an instruction, and a child scampered off between the houses, coming back a few moments later with Deepak in tow. As he arrived, so did another earthenware pot, this time filled with tea. The boy plucked a couple of the thick, rubbery leaves from the tree which sheltered them and used them to stop his fingers burning as he poured the tea into glass tumblers, one for each guest this time. Deepak sat down with them and ungarlanded himself of his many gadgets.

“Ok, shoot” he said, grumpily.

“Right.” said Dr Singh. “Kamala, dear, take notes if you please.” Kamala pulled her notebook and biro out of her back pack and wrote the date and the name of the village - Manjaria - neatly at the top of the page.

“OK. Question number one: Ask them who is the head man of the village.” said Dr Singh.

Deepak spoke to Mohan, who looked a little blank and then spoke to the rest of the crowd. The question generated a ripple of discussion, and set lots of heads shaking and people gesturing this way and that, and then their voices tailed off.

“They don't know what you mean by ‘the head man of the village‘.” said Deepak.

“What do you mean they don't know what I mean? I mean the headman, the leader, the elder, the sarpanch… you know what I mean, Deepak-bhai, explain it to them!”

Deepak shrugged and spoke again, for a little longer this time. Someone asked him something via Mohan and he answered. There was a ripple of laughter and everyone turned to look at Dr Singh. Then the tall woman spoke quietly, gesturing at an old man leaning, half dozing, against the trunk of the tree. And Deepak said, “OK, they say this is their elder. His name is Bapu - father.”

Kamala wrote the name down. Dr Singh namastéd to the old man. He didn’t notice, so someone nudged him - he looked a little surprised but namastéd back politely.

“Ask him about their sacred tree, can he show us where it is and how they extract the energy from it?”

Deepak spoke to the old man, who looked amazed, and stammered a reply. Deepak translated;

“He says they don’t have a sacred tree. He doesn’t know what you are talking about.”

Dr Singh rubbed his forehead irritably. “Oh, these people! Didn’t I tell you they were like children, Kamala, dear?” Ms Jensen gave a loud sigh at this point and got up. She took her bag and started wandering about the village, and - to the huge amusement of the large entourage of children she gathered - started gathering samples of apparently random things in little glass phials - thorns from small bushes, half eaten fruit, the leaves from the tree. The children, as if testing the limits of this crazy creature’s bizarre behaviour, brought her little offerings - goat droppings, strands of their own hair, dust from the ground, bits of palm pulled from the roof of a house.

Each child would tiptoe carefully up to her with the offering held out stiffly at arm’s length, as if approaching a dangerous wild animal and then - as the offering was taken - would scurry away at which his or her fellows would yell with shrill triumph and deliver congratulatory whacks on the back. Ms Jensen accepted everything, solemnly placing each sample in its phial and carefully inscribing the label. Kamala wasn’t sure whether she was in earnest or if she was being uncharacteristically kind and humouring the children. She suspected, though, that it was merely because she couldn’t think how else to react without losing face.

Meanwhile, Dr Singh was persevering with his line of questioning about the sacred tree. Kamala was starting to feel a little uncomfortable at this. She had known they were coming here so that the indigenous people could show them a special kind of tree and maybe they could learn how to get it to generate some kind of power, but she hadn’t realised the tree was sacred to them. However, it was all looking a little academic now, as they didn’t seem to have a sacred tree at all, or if they did, they were not admitting to it. The old man kept looking at the tall woman who, every now and then, would say something quietly. But, though the old man told Dr Singh about the tree whose twigs they used to start friction fires with, and the tree which they raided for the honey that the wild bees who nested there made, the tree whose leaves which the women used to cure fever with and the tree whose branches they used as cooking fuel, he never seemed to be able to offer Dr Singh the tree he was looking for. Eventually, Dr Singh gave up and said;

“Never mind. We’ll talk to them again later. Maybe we have to earn their trust a little first. Let’s go and eat now.”

“Maybe the power tree’s just a myth” said Deepak quietly.

“No, no! It must be existing. Definitely. Plenty of anecdotal evidence. We’ll find it. Don’t worry. They are just pretending. Like I was saying to Kamala here, these people are very simple and trusting, we’ll get it out of them somehow. Candy from a baby, hah, Kamala dear?! Now come, Banu-ma, we are ready to eat! It‘s getting dark now.” Although they were far from the bungalow and this was not Banu’s village, Dr Singh did not seem to be able to relinquish the idea of her as his supplier of food.

And Banu obliged and graciously gestured them towards the largest of the houses. Even though the sun had started going down, it was still bright outside and Kamala’s eyes took a moment or two to grow accustomed to the cool gloom inside the unlit hut. Soon she was able to make out that they were in a large, empty room and that two neat rows of square, green plates, little green bowls and glass tumblers were laid out on the cool, khaki coloured mud floor along each wall.

They were invited to sit down. Kamala didn’t find it very easy to sit cross legged on the floor, but Ms Jensen found it impossible. A wooden box had to be found for her to perch on, and Deepak produced a fork attachment on his Swiss army knife for her to eat with. Their hosts looked at her pityingly - not only is she mad, and doesn’t know how to drink, they seemed to be thinking, the poor thing can't sit or eat properly either. Kamala felt sorry for her too, thinking she must feel terribly self conscious, but a glance at her face showed she didn’t mind a bit - in fact she looked rather triumphant perched up on her wooden throne looking over the rows of bowed heads.

The plates and bowls turned out to be made of broad, green leaves, woven and held together with little stitches of green stalk. Kamala was fascinated, and studied them closely until she was distracted by the food being brought out to them now and ladled onto their plates - hot, spicy vegetables curries, boiled eggs, fish and meat in fragrant sauces accompanied by steaming, nutty flavoured rice. A thin, hot soup was poured into the woven leaf bowls, which didn‘t leak a drop. Then all of her attention was taken up with trying to get the runny food from the plate on the floor into her mouth with her fingers without spilling it all down her front like she had with the water.

Some moments later she paused for a drink of water between mouthfuls. A movement caught her eye, a final flash of the setting sun glinting off a gold bangle beyond the open doorway. There was a small group of women sitting in a circle under the tree - talking quietly and earnestly together, their heads leaning in towards the centre of the circle. Banu and the tall woman were with them. And every now and then one of them gestured sharply towards the hall. Kamala was suddenly reminded of the huddles of conferring teachers you sometimes glimpsed through the doors of the school staff common room after classes had ended, and experienced the same unbidden reflex of searching her conscience.