Vikas Swarup - Six Suspects

'Look after your mother,' said Melame, gently patting Koira's shoulder. The old woman continued to wail, taking no notice of the visitors. Melame and Pemba said their goodbyes and stepped out of the shack into the sweltering heat once again.

'That's the third death this season,' the older man said, his voice quivering. 'The legions of eeka are increasing.'

Pemba nodded grimly. 'When malevolent spirits multiply, things can only get worse. At this rate, our tribe will soon become extinct, like the dugong.'

'Ah, the dugong! I have almost forgotten what it used to taste like,' Melame replied wistfully, smacking his desiccated lips.

'But Pemba still remembers. For my initiation ceremony I actually speared a dugong,' said Pemba.

'You were a great hunter. One of our best,' Melame responded approvingly. 'But look at today's youngsters, celebrating tanagiru by drinking beer and coca, that too made by the foreigners!'

'You are right, Chief. Well, what can I say? My Eketi is no better. He roams around the Welfare Office all the time, waiting for handouts. They say he sells honey and ambergris to the welfare officials in exchange for cigarettes. I have caught him several times smoking them. It makes me hang my head in shame,' Pemba replied in a low voice.

They trudged slowly in the direction of the turquoise ocean, wiping the perspiration from their brows. Bordered by casuarinas and coconut palms, the creek looked green, shady and inviting. They could see two white motorboats moored at the jetty. On the other side of the jetty were the cottages of the welfare staff. They passed the powerhouse, where the generator was making a racket as usual, and the dispensary, where Nurse Shakuntala was sitting all alone, fanning herself with a magazine. The next building was a dilapidated old warehouse, which now served as the school. They saw Murthy, the teacher with the slick, oily hair, standing with six tribal kids in the playground. He was distributing paper flags to the children, who wore identical blue shorts and white bush shirts. 'Now look,' they heard him instruct, 'when Minister Sahib arrives on Sunday, you have to stand in line at the helipad just like this and start waving these flags. And I want each one of you to give him a big smile. Now show me smiles, all of you.' He raised his right hand, in which he gripped a wooden ruler. The children gave nervous, toothy grins.

'Looks like another VIP is coming. Now all of us will be ordered to do cleaning and dusting and made to put on those horrid clothes,' Pemba said in irritation.

'Can there be anything more demeaning than parading our children before the inene?' Melame asked, his voice bristling with anger.

'No, Chief,' Pemba concurred. 'We have been made slaves in our own land.'

They passed behind the little temple built three years ago by the welfare staff. A square block of concrete with a white dome, it housed a stone image of Hanuman in mid-flight holding up a mountain, the entire thing painted a garish orange. They glimpsed two figures inside the temple, bowing their heads before the monkey god.

'Isn't that Raju and Taleme?' Melame asked incredulously.

'It does look like them,' said Pemba, craning his neck to peer into the semi-darkness of the sanctum sanctorum.

'Now Melame has seen everything.' The chief shook his head slowly. 'Our men have even forsaken our god.'

'That is because our god has forsaken us. Why is Puluga causing all these deaths? You need to do something, Chief, and quickly,' counselled Pemba.

'I think the time has come to consult the torale,' replied Melame. 'Today we will all be busy with Talai's funeral. But let us have a full Council meeting tomorrow morning. Spread the word quietly. We will meet inside the forest, at Nokai's hut, where the prying eyes of the welfare staff will not be able to spot us. That welfare officer – what's his name, Ashok – is particularly nosey.'

'Quite right, Chief. He has been taking an unhealthy interest in our tribe. The children have nicknamed him Gwalen – Peeping Tom,' Pemba laughed.

'I think he is more dangerous than a snake. Ensure that he doesn't get wind of our plans.'

'Yes, Chief.' Pemba bowed his head.

The forest was a palette of greens, brushed with patches of pink and white. Climbing orchids burst from branches and clumps of pink lilies poked up here and there like anthills. Triangles of Deodar trees stood like sentinels against the sky. The jungle thrummed with the sounds and scurry of life. Clouds of mosquitoes hummed their monotonous song. Invisible parakeets and parrots cried out from tree branches. Cicadas screeched from shrubs and bushes. Monitor lizards and snakes slithered through the underbrush.

Melame stood in a little clearing under the shade of a lofty garjan tree, directly in front of the medicine man's hut, and surveyed his flock. The women were busy as usual, making tassels of nuts and sea shells, gathering firewood or braiding their hair. The men were working on a log with their adzes, trying to fashion a canoe.

Melame breathed in a lungful of fresh air, still redolent with the aroma of morning dew, and looked longingly at the tree-lined vista in front of him. This little stretch of forest was the only surviving patch of green on the island. The settlement in Dugong Creek was littered with tree stumps. Every day ramshackle trucks loaded to the brim with timber rumbled down the Little Andaman Trunk Road, which ran along the island's edge, slowly denuding the island of its forest cover. Virtually every part of the island was now dotted with rice fields and coconut plantations. This was the islanders' last refuge, the only place where they could still hear birdsong and be themselves, naked, free and alive.

'Is the bait ready?' the chief asked Pemba, who nodded and pointed to a large earthen pot lying at his feet. Melame, looking satisfied, tapped on the door of Nokai's conical hut, thatched so low that it could only be entered by crawling.

'Go away,' the torale shouted from inside. 'Nokai has been having bad dreams. He cannot step out of his hut.'

Melame sighed. The medicine man was a reclusive, reticent oracle who hardly ever ventured out of the forest and was notoriously difficult to please. But without his powers of medicine and magic, the tribe couldn't survive. He could stop a storm simply by placing crushed leaves under a stone on the shore; he could divine a gathering illness from the lines on a man's face, and advise a carrying woman whether she would give birth to a boy or a girl simply by tapping her belly. The torale alone knew how to avoid malicious spirits and propitiate friendly ones, how to protect the clan during a lunar eclipse and what to do to counteract a curse. Melame was convinced that short of bringing a dead man to life, Nokai was capable of working any miracle. So he persisted, holding up the earthen pot.

'See, Wise One, what have we brought. It is turtle meat, absolutely fresh. Pemba caught it just yesterday.' Melame opened the lid, letting the smell of the meat waft into the hut. If Nokai had a weakness, it was for turtle meat.

The bait worked. Presently the door of the hut opened and a wizened hand snaked out, grabbed the pot and dragged it inside. After a long interval the door opened again and the torale gruffly invited them in. Melame and Pemba slithered through the opening.

The hut was quite spacious inside. It contained a single raised sleeping platform in the centre. The ceiling was decorated with all kinds of objects – animal skulls, nautilus shells, bows and arrows and pieces of multi-coloured cloth. There was a wooden pan on the ground full of strips of dried boar and snake meat. A crackling fire burnt in the far corner in another earthen vessel. Nokai sat in the centre of the hut on a majestic tiger-skin rug, believed to have been a gift from the King of Belgium, whom he had once cured of the usually fatal black water fever. The earthen pot was lying in front of him, licked clean.