Two days into the new year, Cromwell and Digby set out in the Mylins’ Chevy, carrying spare tires, petrol, and camping equipment. The Western Ghats run parallel to the coastline for four hundred miles, most of it unspoiled, lush forest, save for a dozen discrete estate regions established in the previous century by daring adventurers. Those pioneers found their way up on old elephant trails known only to the indigenous people, the “tribals,” and staked out choice land on the fertile slopes. But if they didn’t soon carve out a ghat road by blasting through rock, building tunnels and switchbacks, their claim was worthless—they had to have a way to bring laborers from the plains to estates sitting at five thousand feet or higher, and to take the tea, coffee, or spices down to market. The first owners sold land at a nominal price or just gave away great swaths so as to have partners to share the expense of building and maintaining the ghat road. The largest established estate regions are Wayanad, the Highwavys, Anaimalais, Nilgiris, and the Cinnamon Hills—the last being where the Mylins and their friends have estates.
Their start is inauspicious, with early engine trouble, but Cromwell fixes it by taking the carburetor apart under a tree, cleaning and reassembling it. Cromwell is a member of the Badagas—an indigenous tribe in the Nilgiri mountains who live in tight-knit communities, farm collectively, and are proud to never have been in bondage. Those Badagas who migrated out are known for being skilled welders, carpenters, mechanics, and shop owners. Digby finds Cromwell easy to be around. A former employer dubbed him a “regular Cromwell” for bravely and cleverly defusing a volatile situation involving the employer’s son, a married woman, and an aggrieved husband—Digby heard this tale from Lena. Kariabetta, once he understood the nature of the comparison, decided he preferred “Cromwell” to his given name. Now even his mother calls him Cromwell.
They camp overnight by a stream. At noon the next day they arrive at the base of a highland range whose jagged contours remind Digby of the craggy peaks of Càrn Mòr Dearg or Lochnagar. Somewhere in the clouds is Müller’s Madness. Gerhard Müller was an early pioneer who never put in a ghat road. Sitting on a vast estate that he could never develop—hence the madness—he and his wife preached the gospel to tribals and scratched out an existence. His son, Bernard, did only marginally better, seeking but then scaring away potential partners by his asking price for land. He built a poor excuse for a ghat road that washed out every rainy season. Now, suddenly, Bernard Müller is selling it all and heading to Berlin, to a homeland that he’s never seen. His asking price has dropped three times in as many months, a sign of his desperation.
Getting to Müller’s property proves extremely tricky, and after one flat tire they hike the rest of the way in the mist. What am I doing here? Digby wonders. He knows he can’t be a surgeon anymore. He has been so focused on surgery for so long that he simply cannot imagine doing anything else in medicine. Being a planter is more appealing than the thought of being a general practitioner, dispensing unguents and digitalis, and seeing a hundred people a day. If he’s running from his past, these mountains are as good a place to hide as any other. He slogs on, following Cromwell, his breath short. Should Müller take the consortium’s offer, the plan is for Digby, with Cromwell as manager, to run the estate, and in time be given a piece of it for his effort. If Müller accepts the offer, Digby will take it as a sign that this is precisely what he is destined to do. Rune would approve. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.
The valley below, the rock underfoot, and the mountain before him will outlast him. On the scale of this land, he is nothing; words like “shame” and “guilt” mean little here; and a reputation is no more than a fleeting blue flame, an evanescent spirit in a brandy glass.
Part Five
CHAPTER 38
Parambil P.O.
1938–1941, Parambil
The arrival in Parambil of the man who would be known as Uplift Master, along with his wife, Shoshamma, goes unheralded. Could anyone have predicted that one person would so uplift their community? Soon no one can recall his baptismal name. The couple were happily settled in Madras when Shoshamma’s brother died suddenly—of drink. He was unmarried, without children, and so, quite unexpectedly, Shoshamma inherited the property. That house plot and surrounding two acres is on the far west edge of Parambil, well away from the river, one of a dozen that Philipose’s father sold or gave away to relatives in the last decade of his life.
In Big Ammachi’s opinion, Shoshamma’s deceased brother had less initiative than a washing stone. The house he leaves behind is in bad shape, but the timber and coconut palms on the land are good. When the couple first call on Big Ammachi, she’s impressed by their two well-behaved young children, a boy and a girl, of seven and nine. Shoshamma has a pleasing face, a ready laugh, and seems full of energy. Her husband, despite his years working in a prestigious British company, is modest and unassuming. Big Ammachi introduces Philipose, saying her dream is that he will study medicine in Madras. Uplift Master speaks up: “That’s wonderful! Madras Medical College is the oldest in the country. I visited once. I saw a British professor and all the student doctors around a bed . . .” He trails off, because something about the boy’s forced smile tells him that Philipose has no desire to study medicine but is too polite to contradict his mother.
Soon after they move back, Uplift Master gets a loan from the Government Development Office—who knew such a thing was even possible? He purchases a cow, puts in a new approach road, and rebuilds the house. His invitation to his neighbors to join his appeal of the property tax assessment is met with ridicule; Decency Kochamma says, “What nerve! The fellow returns from Madras and thinks the government should tax him less!” Only Big Ammachi joins his petition, sharing the cost of the survey and stamp paper. The appeal succeeds. When the naysayers understand just how much money they could have saved, they clamor for Uplift Master’s help. “With pleasure,” he says. “Next assessment in two years, so we have plenty of time.”
Uplift Master and Shoshamma’s arrival coincides with a change in the entrenched attitudes of the good people of Travancore. There are more newspapers to choose from and more readers. The illiterate can always find a tea shop where the paper is read aloud. News of the mounting opposition to British rule, and of a world on the brink of war, filters into the smallest village. Literacy alters patterns of life that have gone undisturbed for generations. The proof of this, as Uplift Master recounts to Shoshamma, is his encounter in the tea shop. “This shirtless fellow on the bench says, just to impress me, I think, ‘The maharajah is a British stooge. I’m with Gandhi! Last week when Gandhi marched to the sea, why no one told me? I’d have gone with him! Why pay tax for salt when it’s there for the taking?’ Poor fellow. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Gandhi’s Salt March was eight years ago. But the fact that he knows of the march is progress!”
When Uplift Master discovers Philipose is a voracious reader, he congratulates him and explains to him his own passion for literacy: “Reading is the door to knowledge. Knowledge raises the yield of paddy. Knowledge combats poverty. Knowledge saves lives. Is there a family around here that hasn’t lost a loved one to jaundice or typhoid? Sadly, few understand that contamination of food and water is the cause, and better sanitation might prevent it!”