As Sweet as Honey

7




Folded fortunes made of paper. Nalani was very quick in making them. She’d put down words like happiness, wealth, joy, peace, yes, and no, but Rasi never had much time for them. Too easy, paper fortunes, she said.

One of our uncles always used a coin to decide whether he was going to get another coffee, or would it be tea, the Madhupur News or the Albitar Accent. Both papers were dailies and owned by the same person. But the editors were rivals, ready to best one another. The News featured Moon Lieutenant, a very funny commentator who wrote piercing articles poking fun at the Madhupur City Council. At the Accent, it was the Silver Bullet, who systematically ridiculed the Moon’s article from the day before. Uncle Raj, our neighbor, took one paper, Uncle Darshan took another, and the two compared notes over betel. Neither the Moon nor the Bullet, of course, they liked pointing out, held a candle to the late, great wit and publisher of Tamil Nadu, Kalki himself. Kalki, they said, had written it all, before it had even needed to be written.

Every evening it was the same. The uncles would settle on the veranda with a silver box holding the paan leaf and betel nuts between them. Carefully they would attend to the matter of creating plump rolls of paan. This was done in silence. Then, chewing carefully, they would each let out their own thick red spit into the garden. Then one uncle or the other would comment on the dailies. Another stream of paan laced with tobacco followed. Then a sigh. And finally, one uncle or the other would speak of Kalki. And a third or fourth round of paan would commence.

I always watched fascinated and repulsed all at once at the thick red stream of spit.


Dreamy Nalani and her paper fortunes. There she was at the window, her hair in a loose plait down her back, and in a soft loose cotton gown we called her Juliet dress. She had a whole trunk full of such gowns, one for every day of the week, in soft purples, greens, yellows, pinks, and creams. Nalani, always sunny with her smile if you caught her by surprise. But at the window, her eyes were on her future, and she folded and unfolded the paper frogmouth she had made. Joy, peace, love, happiness.

Rasi said she should put in some other words, like misfortune, or dire straits, but Nalani has no use for words like that. She wanted a good life. Sometimes joy, sometimes peace. Mostly she wanted love, like Meterling had had, to share her heart with someone, romantic love, deep love, divine love.


“Shouldn’t they learn French?” our aunties wondered aloud. “They are running around like wild pigs.”


Their most focused talks had been about landscape. Archer had been an amateur naturalist. That was one thing his father, the Gin King, hadn’t taken away. So as he traveled for his father’s company, inspecting bottling facilities and such, he always took one day to appreciate the scenery.

“That must sound dull,” he said, “but we so often take it for granted.”

He described what he’d seen: enormous mountains stranded in mist, the vapors rising, magically, ghostlike.

He told Meterling about California, a green wonder in America, where orange groves perfumed the air, where the Pacific crashed wave after wave against the reddish-tan cliffs.

“Fat sea lions line the harbor, and pelicans roost in the rocks. Whales migrate each year—it’s a sight, Meti. A sight we should see.”

And so they had planned a honeymoon, a quiet trip to visit all the oceans, all the shores, all the mountains he had seen. And then a trip to all that he hadn’t seen, scenery and landscape they would discover together. They’d pack a few clothes, some lotions and potions to ward off sunstroke, bug bite, and nausea. They would be easily equipped for adventure.


I wondered if Meterling had even wanted a baby. How would they have traveled? Her belly was growing. Her body began to perceptibly change, and things became heavier. She felt as if water sloshed under her skin. Everything seemed puffy. There was nausea. Some mornings, she heard birds cry out and her eyes began to fill with tears. Her arms trembled. They were the part of her body that hurt the most. Not her legs, not her back, but her arms. So much was held in, held up.


Archer had given up the gin business, but he still held the title of VP of Distribution. As heir, he could not give it up, although in reality a legion of assistant VPs and sub-VPs did most of the work. His family’s company made its fortune on Black Cat O’Malley gin, named for a real cat back in 1670, when patrons at High Tom Spirits on Holburn Street in London lined up for a shot of medicinal gin. The chief attraction at the pub was a mechanical cat that held a spout from which the publican poured a shot of gin straight into the customer’s mouth. The Forster family’s dram shop grew to a gin palace, and the original, highly guarded recipe stayed the same until Archer’s great-great-grandfather decided to open a distillery in Madhupur. He added cardamom and coriander to ten other still-secret plant oils, as well as asafetida to his gin, calling it Mulligatawny Black Cat. “Add Spice to the Kick!” was the advertising slogan, and the British colonials drank it up to ward off malaria. It was local, it was cheap, and it was British.

There was an old house on a hill station nearby to the distillery where Uncle Archer’s father stayed with his family when he became president of the company. As babies, Uncle Archer and his sister had an ayah, and then they were sent to boarding school in England. Susan loved England, and begged her father to let her stay with relatives in London instead of coming back to Pi. Archer was different. On holidays, he’d return to Pi, getting tanned and following his father to the plant. He was fascinated by the way the stillman, Mr. Peaks, ran the liquor through again and again, until he deemed it perfect. In another room, the rich smell of cardamom and the other plant oils wafted to the ceiling. Archer’s father hired about twenty local people in his plant, and as in the old days, the island workers were overseen by the Anglo-English, except for Mr. Prakash, who kept the books. On his holidays, Archer would often visit the Prakash family at their home, and plump Mrs. Prakash fed him sweets and savories. “Archie,” she would chide, “you’re much too thin. Do they not feed you at that school of yours?” In his hamper back to school, there would be lovingly made chutneys and snacks packed expertly by Mrs. Prakash.

Adolescence found him hiking in the hills, often with just a rucksack and a friend or two. After university, after a brief stretch with the idea of becoming a barrister, he settled into a job at the family business. It was an easy jump to VP—who was there to compete with him? Evenings found him and his father nursing their tonicky gins, as the shouts of night cricket were heard outside their home. Archer’s father was rail thin, and liked to emphasize his points with sharp blows with a cane on any nearby object. The object had often been the back of Archer’s knees for misdemeanors and backtalk. Boarding-school masters were equally fond of the cane, but Archer swore he would never use one on any child of his. What was unnerving to Archer was to imagine his father voicing those same promises when he was a young man.


His father did not die on his beloved island. He died in London, on the floor of a bank, where an epileptic seizure led to his heart stopping altogether. Susan identified the body. Somehow, she blamed the island, even though it was irrational, but when is grief rational?—and at the same time, when is grief ever irrational? Grief for her needed a focus, something to blame. She was twenty-two. When Archer reached her, she was cold, withdrawn, because she knew Archer loved the island. After the funeral, Susan poured herself into her new job in advertising. Archer poured himself a drink.

Was this why he never dated much, in love with the bottle more than with any woman? A cadre of school friends dined with him regularly until one by one, they married. Then he became a guest, the needed fourth in bridge, the possible date for Anne or Lesley. At thirty-five, he went back for Mrs. Prakash’s funeral, and wondered why he ever left Pi. He moved to Madhupur permanently. His father’s house was too empty, so he sold it, and took a small bungalow. Without his drinking companions, he felt less inclined to drink. Mr. Prakash, eighty, took him along to ayurvedic steams and massage, made him consider yoga. Archer thought about it, but decided he found more pleasure in rasagullas than in chaturanga dandasana, sweets winning easily over yoga postures.