That next day, carrying the textbooks he recently purchased, he heads out. Moore Market is a vast quadrangular hall made of red brick and closely resembling a mosque, but with a labyrinth of lanes inside that are lined with stalls. A shrill voice screams in his ear, “Come, madam, best price!” Two mynah birds in a cage dare him to guess which of them spoke. He averts his eyes from the puppies, kittens, rabbits, hares, tortoises, and even baby jackals for sale. This pungent, ammonia-scented area gives way to a section that has the fragrance of newsprint and book bindings. It’s like coming home.
The shelves and the stacked tables in JANAKIRAM BOOKS USED AND NEW are in sections for law, medicine, science, accounting, and humanities. Janakiram presides atop a dais, the ceiling fan inches from his scalp. His half-moon glasses lack temples but find purchase on a bump halfway down his nose. “J. B. Thorpe is the Gita and Veda for cost-accounting,” he says to a young man. “Why pay for Priestley when Thorpe will get you through the exam?” His gaze falls on Philipose, then on the books he carries. He descends from his platform; his spidery fingers gently touch the textbooks that Philipose so recently covered in brown paper. He sends a boy to bring tea and ushers Philipose to an alcove—his puja room. “Thambi, I am refunding money fully, not to worry. But, Ayo, tell me what happened?” he says, once they sit cross-legged facing each other.
Philipose had not planned to tell him the story, but the kindness of this legendary bookseller, a friend to every college student in Madras, persuades him. Jana’s expression goes from concern to indignation, then sadness. To be listened to is healing, as is the brick-red tea, thick with milk, strongly sweetened and with fat cardamom pods floating on top.
“Good tea, that much I will say,” Jana exclaims at last, smacking his lips. “Life is like this. Crushing is there, and success is there. Never only success.” He pauses for emphasis. “I wanted to study. Father died. Crushing! What to do? I work! Buying old newspapers firstly and reselling, then secondly old books. Now? I’m sitting on knowledge! I read anything and everything. Better than education. I am saying you will succeed! Never to give up!”
Crushing, Philipose has had aplenty. He’d wanted to sail the seas like Ishmael, but the Condition dashed that dream early. He told himself he’d explore the world by land, but here he is in Madras and already eager to return. He’s had the crushing. What can success look like now? Janakiram has the answer. “Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!”
Back at the lodge, Mohan Nair has a train ticket for a little over a week from that day. “It’s a miracle. All are worried about Japanese bombing in Ceylon. All trains overbooked only. Speaking of that, let me show you something.” He takes him back into the curtained-off area behind the front desk, where Philipose is surprised to see not one but more than a dozen radios. “I’m selling without any license. Nobody bothered with license till last week, till all this fear of Japanese. Everyone is wary. Oh, and no licenses to be had.” With a twist of the dial, Nair brings in an Englishman’s voice. Philipose instinctively puts his hands on the radio. At once he’s in the place where the sound originates, hearing it with his whole body. The dial turns to orchestral music. “With a radio,” Nair says, “the world comes to your doorstep. You’ll never get one cheaper.”
The next day, it pours, a strange and welcome sight. Roads are flooded. By evening the power is out all over Madras. Moore Market’s dim interior is lit only by candles and lamps because there’s no electricity in the entire city. Philipose is there because of an idea triggered by Nair’s “the world comes to your doorstep.” I may be headed home, but I’ll not be exiled. As long as I have my eyes, then novels, the great lies that tell the truth, the world in its most heroic and salacious forms can always be mine. Even after paying for the radio, he has money left over from the tuition refund. It’s money his mother saved for his education; he hopes she’ll appreciate that he will spend it for just that purpose.
“Brilliant, my friend!” Janakiram says, after hearing him out. “But you’re not the first with same idea!” He leads Philipose to a set of bound, blue volumes with embossed gold lettering, packaged neatly inside their own matching, three-tiered cardboard shelf—a beautiful sight. The spine of each volume is stamped with THE HARVARD CLASSICS. Jana reads from the introductory volume. “A five-foot shelf would hold books enough to afford a good substitute for a liberal education to anyone who would read them with devotion, even if he could spare but fifteen minutes a day.”
Philipose recoils at the price. “Not to worry,” Jana assures him. “I have same authors, used only. However, I am protesting Harvard choices. Not enough Russians! Too much Emerson . . . Will you trust Jana to suggest true classics?” Philipose does.
He buys another trunk to hold his treasures: Thackeray, but not Darwin; Cervantes and Dickens, but no Emerson. Hardy, Flaubert, Fielding, Gibbons, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol . . . Though he’s read Moby-Dick and The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, he wants his own copies. Tom Jones is the raciest thing he has ever read in his life. As a parting gift, Jana throws in volumes 14, 17, and 19 of the Encyclop?dia Britannica: HUS to ITA, LOR to MEC, and MUN to ODD. The used volumes carry the scent of white people, mildew, and cats.
Two trunks of books and a roped carton holding the polished, faux-ivory-knobbed, mahogany radio now occupy the floor of his room. His purchases are the only thing that allows him to return home with a sense of purpose, instead of abject defeat. He isn’t retreating to Parambil P.O. or fleeing the larger world. He’s bringing it to his doorstep.
CHAPTER 42
All Getting Along
1943, Madras to Parambil
The other passengers in the cubicle have long ago settled in, stored their luggage, and pulled out their cushions and playing cards, by the time a soaked, bedraggled Philipose boards. His porters shove around the other passengers’ bags, trying to make room under the two benches for both his trunks and the carton with the radio. A large woman in a yellow sari, baby on her lap, is incensed when one porter topples her suitcase, and she scolds him in choice Tamil; the porter responds in spades. A young woman in dark glasses and with a scarf over her hair defuses the situation by telling the porter to put the carton and one trunk on the uppermost berth—hers—just as the train jerks into motion.
Ten cubicles in a carriage, six passengers to a cubicle, three seated on each facing bench. At night, two berths above each bench fold down, and the benches become berths as well. From adjacent cubicles Philipose hears laughter and happy voices. But in his, the fellowship of a shared journey eludes them; he is responsible.
He pulls out his notebook. On the first page he’s written axioms from Gurumurthy. “One writes to know what one is thinking.” “If hearing is impaired ensure that olfaction and vision become hyperacute.”
In the periphery of Philipose’s vision he is conscious of the bobbling Adam’s apple of the thin chap next to him; the man’s fluttering fingers that adjust his spectacles are sure signs of incipient speech. He gives off a mysterious scent of camphor, menthol, and tobacco.
“Next station is Jolarpet,” the man blurts out. “The busiest alleged junction in Asia!” Philipose finds his hearing is enhanced on the train, just as Gurumurthy predicted, because in noisy places, people turn up the volume and pitch.
“Is it really?” Philipose caps his pen, grateful to be spoken to.
“Indubitably! Technically, it’s not a junction. Junction means four ways, is it not? But Jolarpet is only three ways! Salem, Bangalore, and Madras!”