I directed that all of those coolies who were suffering, and requiring medical attendance, should be, at once, sent to the hospital. … Many of these, including the two women, had the marks of flogging on their backs. One of the women so marked had her toes sloughing away. The acts of cruelty were too disgusting to describe.

Colonel Sir Archibald Edward Harbord Anson, The Lieutenant-Governor of Penang, November 1870

 

Whispers of Ratna’s death on the morning of 8 December 1941 spreads throughout Harvard Estate. Policemen witnessing the lifting of her body out of the well are careful to side-step an agitated cobra in the undergrowth. Until her burial, Ratna’s eyes remain open, as though she’s looking at a ghost.

Ratna isn’t the first in the estate to die by suicide, and she won’t be the last. Nonetheless, neither a victim nor a survivor of any atrocity, Ratna’s death is particularly important because it’s the first time someone in the estate commits suicide because of a sickness in the head.

Her son, Sunder, (confused, twelve and feeling alone) is the first in the house to cry, when the body is brought into the house. When his father, Raja, puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders, Sunder recalls his mother’s last words: “Harvard Estate is a terrible place.”

*

Oooo… my headache was terrible; so was the situation at hand.  

“With due respect,” she said, raising a gnarly finger, “it’s 9 March 2019 and you in the government have done nothing for them.” ‘She’ was a performance poet, predictably theatrical in her speech; ‘You’ was a much-respected former Member of Parliament; and, ‘Them’ were the current descendants of indentured labourers. Seated with them for this panel discussion, I struggled to read the look on the faces of the fifty or so people watching us, but I heard their collective gasp during the tension-fraught Saturday afternoon at the Indian High Commission’s Cultural Centre in Kuala Lumpur.

While the MP contemplated his response, I indulged in some regret. I didn’t want to be involved in this racially charged dialogue with political overtones.

“We help everyone,” the MP said. He set out the ways he provided assistance to the hardcore poor regardless of their colour, creed or faith. Diplomatically, he skipped the potentially volatile elements of ethnicity and race.

*

“Why did they investigate me, Bali? Ratna and I are same race.” Raja takes down the stiff tobacco leaves he’s been drying on his veranda. He crushes them into a mound of flakes on rice paper. With nimble fingers, he rolls the paper while applying appropriate pressure to keep the contents compact. He seals the ends with a lick of saliva then hands one to Dr. Chanderbali, the new expatriate from Kerala.

“What did you expect, Raja? It’s normal to investigate.”

“Okay.” He exhales. “Anyway,” Raja decides, slapping his thighs and readying to roll another cigarette, “looks like they are happy with the results. The marriage date is fixed for next year. Actually, on my thirty-third birthday.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Raja then shares the edited version of his history:

Born in George Town, Madras on 23 March 1895, Raja worked as a ‘Record Clerk’ in the Asiatic Petroleum Company Limited. In 1920, he boarded the S. S. Rajula and, by the time he arrived in Singapore, he’d made a good friend, Uncle Ganesan. The latter wrote him a letter of introduction to the Managers of Harvard Estate helping Raja secure the position of Chief Clerk.

That is enough, Raja decides. He’ll take to his grave the reason why he’ll never return to India. “Harvard Estate is now my home.”

*

How I wished I could go home. Suddenly, the moderator, seated between the performance poet and the MP, reached across and thrusted a microphone in my face. “Seetara, do you have anything to add?”

I wanted to share that Daddy once said: “We didn’t know we were poor until these city people told us so.”

Instead, I shook my head. All I heard was my father’s repeated warning when he’d read a draft of my novel: “Don’t write awful things. Harvard Estate was a lovely place.”

*

Lovely-lovely pots are everywhere in Ratna’s new kitchen. Like Babushka dolls, there are even pots inside pots. The big brass one contains uncooked rice with dry chillies to prevent weevils. The middle one contains wheat flour for capatis. The small one houses gram flour for besan ladoo. In the tiniest of all, she puts a bunch of knotty tamarind pods.

Within a month of her new life, though, the words begin to ring in her ears.

‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’ from the Catholic nun who taught her to read and write.

‘If Raja beats you, pawn this diamond in your mukkutti and come back,’ from her Ganesan sittapa who’d taken her into his household when she was orphaned in 1905.

‘You must adjust to estate life,’ from his wife, cinnama.

‘You’re so fair,’ from her husband whenever he accepts a stainless-steel tumbler of piping hot morning coffee.

*

Mercifully, the ‘Conversation’ was over and I was gathering my things when I felt a tug on the sleeve of my kameez. Instantly recognising who it was, I cried out, “Vikram. Hello.”

“Hi, Seetara,” He said, showcasing his megawatt smile.

“What are you doing here?”

Pointing to the MP, he said, “We worked together.” Looking at me, he added, “And I wanted to surprise you.”

I felt the heat in my cheeks. “How hav-”

Vikram said, “Listen, I have to go. A patient is waiting. We catch up later, okay?”

“Sure-sure. You have my number. Call me.”

A while later, feeling like the nerdy kid at the popular kid’s table, I decided to leave. I waved at the MP and heard him say to the gathered members of the media that, “In my constituency, the maternal mortality rate dropped by one-hundred percent in 2018.”

*

When Ratna opens her eyes, seemingly having napped, Bali and her husband are on either side of the bed.

“Ah!” She holds her stomach, feeling a contraction.

Wait a minute. What, or rather who, is that at the foot of her bed? His eyes and ears are growing by the second. There is a sense of comfort when he lifts his palm, as though to bless her. This must be Nagakanna whom the temple devotees say roams Harvard Estate.

Ratna passes out.

*

“W-h-a?” He pinches his nostrils to avoid the stench – a mix of fermenting faeces, dried vomit and cow dung. He searches his mind as to how he’s in the lower bunk in what appears to be the cargo hold of a boat. Isn’t he supposed to be lying spent in the arms of a prostitute in Madras? Flinching, he hits his head on the iron frame and passes out.

“G-e-t U-p!” A vellakaran is shouting. “You filthy coolies.”

The man from the other bunk is already standing up. Soon, they’re pushed up the stairs and off the boat.

It’s like nothing he’s ever seen. To his left, the vellakaran is speaking strange words to another White Man. They look at him and exchange pieces of paper, as though they’re negotiating a sale. In the distance, there are men with very small eyes, a long plait down their backs, carrying sacks on their backs. These, he guesses are what the folks at home call Chinamen. To his right, a man squats, smokes a stick-thin reed and spreads a mat. When their eyes meet, he sees that the man is an exact mix of a Chinese and Indian. A woman in a sarong walks to this man. She picks up fish and crabs and places them inside a rattan basket. They haggle and she throws some coins onto the mat.

He holds his breath.

Where is he?

What happened to him?

For a very long time after – decades, in fact – he mulls the answers to these questions. One October 1925 morning in a toddy shop, having heard what happened to other coolies, he composes an edited version of his history:  

It was the year 1895 and a local maistry raided the Madras brothel he was in. When this recruiting agent dragged him off the bed, he hit his head on the floor and passed out. In the coolie godowns in Negapatam, he was sold for ten rupees to the vellakaran shipowner. When the ship docked in Province Wellesley, he was re-sold for five English pounds to another vellakaran. After deducting expenses for passage and food, the vellakaran shipowner and maistry divided the profits. He got nothing – no wages, no papers and, sometimes, no food.

The vellakaran sugarcane estate owner’s cruel laugh when his toes were sloughed off still rings in his ears. Still, he forgives the vellakaran Anson who genuinely tried to help. He will never regret running away in 1915. With his alcohol-addled mind, he limps to the temple and mutters: “In Harvard Estate, I’ll find freedom and lots of money.”

*

“Appapa, I met your friend’s daughter today. Sunder’s daughter.”

“Who Vikram?” Bali turned the smartphone on its side to increase the volume. During his time in Harvard Estate, Bali was a gynaecologist, dermatologist, cardiologists and every other medical ‘ist’ rolled into one. Today, this boy is a psychiatrist; a specialist, it seems. He switched on the ‘Video’ mode and leaned the phone against an elephant carved from ebony. The memento was Raja’s gift when Bali’s homesick wife insisted, in 1950, that they return to Coimbatore in an independent India.

“Seetara, Appapa. Her father keeps mentioning Nagakanna.”

Bali whispers, “What did you say?”

*

On a cold October morning fifteen years after the first consecration ceremony of the temple in Harvard Estate, the new priest hears a loud clanging sound. A man is squatting in the middle of the temple clutching his eyes and screaming. He reeks of toddy and a crowbar lies nearby. The priest pulls the man’s hands away. He recoils from what he sees in the light from the kerosene lamp. There is blood streaming down the man’s cheeks and his eye sockets are empty.

The priest summons the Estate Elders. When they arrive, the man repeats, “Thirty years. Nothing. Now this.” Confessing to attempted theft, he’d raised the crowbar to strike the idol. Before he could bring it down, he’d heard a hissing sound and turned. “I saw the cobra’s fangs.” Worse is to come. He hops around on his left foot, clutching his ears. He can no longer hear.

After he calms down, the Estate Elders realise that no one knows his name. They call him Nagakanna: ‘Naga’ meaning ‘Cobra’ and ‘Kanna’ meaning ‘Eyes’.

He is dead in three months.

In time, most of the descendants of these rubber tappers leave to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Deliberately forgetting the legend of Nagakanna, they feel cultured and educated when they declare: “Harvard Estate is a scary place.”

*

“If your father is scared, try not to leave him alone.”

Vikram’s advice about how to care for Daddy made sense. I was driving him back to the airport after his day trip to Alor Setar to meet Daddy. It was heartwarming that he’d travelled the length of the peninsula to see my ailing parent.

“Also, let’s try a mild antidepressant.” Once in the parking bay outside Departures, he put his hand on mine. “See you back in KL.” I smiled and nodded. “And,” he added, “Talk to him. Sometimes, all Uncle Sunder needs is someone to talk to.”

*

My husband doesn’t talk to me.

Ratna pours a mixture of lime and tamarind juice into a bowl of sand.

I don’t even know his mother’s name.

Ratna applies the gritty paste to her brass pots and rubs hard.

I don’t know his favourite colour.

She pours boiling water over her pots.

I don’t know if he has siblings.

She lays her pots, now gleaming, on the grass to dry in the tropical sun.

I’m his wife, for God’s sake.

“Amma.”

Ratna turns to her son. “What Sunder?”

“Toilet.”

Ratna reties her sarong, reaches for two kerosene lamps and takes his hand. While he’s inside the outhouse, she walks to the disused well nearby. Her palms flatten wild ferns with water-logged spores on the outer rim of the well. She leans in to have a closer look. A lotus leaf, with ants scurrying to and fro, floats on the water’s surface.

“Amma.”

Ratna turns. Her son’s eyes are huge and unblinking.

“You alright, Amma?”

“Ya-ah. Why?”

He looks beyond her, at the well.

Ratna squats in front of him and places the kerosene lamp on the floor. Rubbing his bony shoulders and arms, her tender words comfort him. “Don’t be scared. Remember, Nagakanna will always protect you. You will never be alone.”

He nods and smiles at his mother.

Later, stacking her dry pots, Ratna quietly acknowledges that her words ring hollow because she suspects that her son will, indeed, be alone. No point relying on Raja and never on Bali. An invisible barrier between the families is erected especially when Bali announces that he’ll not repeat Raja’s mistake of writing ‘Indian’ on Sunder’s birth certificate. Instead, Bali’s baby boy will not be a descendant of indenture because his birth certificate will show that he’s a ‘Malayalee – Christian’. He’ll probably get a job as an ‘Office Assistant’ or ‘Secretary to vellakaran’ and not krani in the estates like her husband.

*

Investigating the apparent suicide of the krani’s wife, the policemen make their way on foot, trudging through boot-sucking mud.

They swish their torch lights from side to side.

They walk past two mating snakes.

The stout Malay one wonders about the snakes. Where does the male keep its …errr… thing? Where does the female have her hole? Does she have one? How?

For the Tamil one, seeing a furry rat with a long tail racing to safety is a sign of good luck. The rodent is after all the vehicle of the mythological Lord Ganesh, the remover of all obstacles.

The mongoose, full from its recent meal of a cobra’s eggs, is snoozing by a rock.

The Chinese policeman walks past a Heliconia in full bloom.

All three shudder when they hear the mating call of toads. Maybe it’s true what the Kulim townsfolk insist: “Harvard Estate is an eerie place.”

*

Sunder lifts the lid of Raja’s sixty-year-old leather travel trunk looking for his father’s suit. The undertaker needs it to dress the body. Right on top is a large brown envelope. He pulls out a yellowing paper. It’s a handwritten copy of a letter he received while studying at Madras Medical College.

My Dearest Son,

Please find out the price of a good and thick carpet in red colour like If you happen to see a large size tray, double the size of ours with wooden fancy stand for serving tea or betelnut. I think these designs are coming from Kashmir or Delhi. You can try at Bombay shops in Madras. Whenever you find the chance, you can buy.

Your Affectionate Father.

Sunder holds the letter to his chest, aware that his decision about where to bury his father his correct. He mutters: “Harvard Estate will be my parents’ final resting place.”

*

“Will the driver know how to go to Harvard Estate?”

“Yes.” It was pointless to argue otherwise. My father’s dementia was so far gone that, although it was 2016, he assumed that we were headed for his childhood home instead of Alor Setar Hospital.

Before noon on 17 October 2016, Mummy and I stood on either side of Daddy’s hospital bed. Neither of us said a word, but we each had a thousand thoughts. When the numbers on the monitor switched to 11.42, I leaned down and kissed my father’s cheek. My father opened his eyes and glanced at us. When he then closed his eyes for eternity, I surrendered his body, heart and soul into God’s hands.

*

“Welcome to my ‘House of Brass’.”

Vikram, visiting in late March 2019, giggled, but cast his gaze around my flat. On a brass tray fitted with a wooden stand in one corner, I had placed another brass pot which housed a luscious Japanese Bamboo. Three pots, all engraved with the words ‘Ratna’ on the outer rim, were arranged on a wall-mounted shelf outside my bedroom. He exhaled. “Ya, lots of brass.”

“I’m a hoarder in the making.” Handing him a wine sipper, I invited him to take a seat on my sofa. I pointed to the album on my grandfather’s leather travel trunk which I’d repurposed into a coffee table. “Have a look at Raja Tata’s letters, documents and photos. When he left India, he came to British Malaya. Until 1946, it consisted of the Federated Malay States, the Unfederated Malay States and the Straits Settlements. After the War, in 1948, the ‘Federation of Malaya’ was created. When my parents got married, it had become the Federation of Malaysia.” With all that wine sloshing around in me, I relaxed into the sofa and said, “This is about my family’s history, yes. But it’s also our country’s one.”

Vikram reached out to hold my hand. We sat in silence for a long while before he looked into my eyes and said, “You know, during that ‘Conversation’, you should have said this: ‘Harvard Estate is an unforgettable place.’”

References:
Anson, AEH, 1920, About Others and Myself, 1745 to 1920, J Murray.
Chanderbali, DS, 1983, Indian Indenture in the Straits Settlements, Unpublished doctoral thesis, Australian National University.   

This was a runner up in the 2024 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize, supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation