Miss Katherine

 “Completely batty,” Parul mashi was saying as Miss Katherine’s dirty half-a-dozen ululated in a dissonant chorus for the twelfth time that afternoon. Although Miss Katherine lived in the huge bungalow beyond the boundary wall outlining our backyard her voice shot through like a machine gun report.

“Tony baba’s mother is visiting,” Usha said knowledgeably, bending over unwashed utensils in the kitchen sink. Tony was Miss Katherine’s nephew, her brother’s sole progeny. Miss Katherine’s canines didn’t seem to like her flat-nosed chubby nine-year-old Tony for some reason and barked their heads off whenever he appeared in their vicinity.

“Quite batty,” Parul mashi said for the third time, her voice rising in pitch, whether out of annoyance or in a bid to make herself heard above the din, or both.

The din, penetrating Babuji’s study, caused my father to slam the door shut and turn up the volume of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. The celestial music was drowned in the racket. He stomped out of his study bellowing, “Can’t we call the police or something? I’ll drown those buggers in the Gardener’s well!” He then proceeded to switch on Mozart’s fortieth symphony – another of his favourites – on his well-dusted record player next to the study window.

Miss Katherine’s dirty half-a-dozen – her six assorted canines so nicknamed by Babuji – remained chained to their posts all day long in her backyard overlooking ours. They always barked in a deafening chorus, usually led by Sam – old, faithful, and ugly – possibly the ugliest mongrel I had ever set my eyes upon. The ugliest maybe, but as Babuji said, the most goddamn charming. There was something heartbreakingly appealing about the way he looked up at you with his pool-grey eyes. And the old rascal had outlasted so many of the others who’d wilted like the white gladioli in my mother’s garden on a hot summer’s day.

Paul mashi’s “batty” comment was directly attributable to Miss Katherine’s marital status or rather, in this case, the lack of it. My aunt’s unyielding adjudication – “marriage induces stability, what’s the point of living otherwise?” – found few votaries in the younger generation. Consensus regarding Miss Katherine’s “battiness” ran high, nonetheless.

Although in her late sixties or maybe early seventies, Miss Katherine held herself ramrod straight and walked as though she were marching. Whether she was scolding her pet parrot Rim or her six dogs, or chasing her widowed, middle-aged brother John brandishing a pail or a broom, or even a bamboo stick to hold up mosquito nets, her carriage never faltered. Sometimes we would find her admonishing an invisible antagonist waving her hands in the air. The rumblings had become more pronounced with the passing away of Buds, the frisky scamp who’d died one early morning that summer. Tim and Frenzy had dropped dead too just like that. Arsenic poisoning stated the local grapevine.

All of us, including the extended family, had mourned the passing away of Buds, the russet spaniel with a dark patch across his left eye giving him a roguish appearance. Every so often we would see him elude Miss Katherine’s chain and come sneaking up from behind the bushes unmindful of the raucous rasping – “Get back, you bum, you hound!”- of his mistress. Then an incipient form of rabies killed him off. Eliminated by poisoning, was the local grapevine’s unforgiving verdict.

My cousin Roopa and I made friends with Tony, Miss Katherine’s nephew that summer. Actually, it started with his mother Michelle aunty who brought in a basketful of litchis one Wednesday evening. Michelle aunty stayed back to watch Chitrahaar – the Bollywood song sequences featured by Doordarshan, the sole government-owned TV channel.

We had litchis with ice cream for dessert that evening.  

Nobody had seen Tony’s father who, we learnt, was a Hindu Brahmin who’d married an Anglo Indian flouting family rules and traditions. He worked with a shipping company and was mostly away on sailing trips abroad. Michelle aunty was Miss Katherine’s mother’s first cousin on her father’s side. Superbly coifed and shod she wore the most expensive perfumes. She also had a knack of expression that was different from anyone I had heard. Extolling my mother’s well-tended lawn she had declared most poetically that her lilies resembled “bloated pearls”. Ensconced in the enormous couch in the lounge and sipping tea she let on that Miss Katherine had been a history teacher at the local Catholic school. “That’s why she’s been called ‘Miss’ all her life,” she said.

Roopa and I watched fascinated as she sniffed into her lace-edged cotton handkerchief sipping Usha’s specially prepared black-and-pepper and cardamom tea for treating colds and the ‘flu’. Like my mother, Michelle aunty too suffered from allergies. Her off-white skirt and grey-black waist-coat set off her smoky eyes to the greatest advantage. Michelle aunty hardly ever wore saris or salwar suits like Ma and my aunts. In some ways, she reminded me of the quiet and dignified Mrs. Quentin of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books of which I had, by then, a sizeable collection. I watched Michelle aunty’s long conical fingers daubing her cucumber sandwich into the mint chutney as she continued to gossip about Miss Katherine whom she referred to as Aunty Kate.

My mother, who was digging into the samosas with unseemly zest asked, “And why didn’t Aunty Kate ever get married?” To my utter annoyance, I was called away by Dida, who was visiting that summer, to help Usha with the rotis. Trust Dida to try and spoil my fun. I believed she did it on purpose sometimes.

Pretending to watch Usha knead the dough I eagerly absorbed Michelle aunty’s cheesecake voice turned nasal with cold narrating the bitter-sweet story of her Aunty Kate. Ever so often a vegetable or an ice cream vendor would drown the chatter with their ballyhoo forcing me to sidle closer to the door.  

Roopa filled me in later with the missing bits and pieces of the conversation. I learnt that the Gardener bungalow, a relic of the Raj, belonged to a Bengali land shark by the name of Tushar Ghosh who preferred his abode up in the hills, away from our little valley town. When an Anglo Indian ICS officer, Henry Gardener, made a fabulous offer backed by patrimonial affluence the old patriarch, loath to descend from his craggy haven in the mountains, sent down his indolent progeny Ranadeep to negotiate. The good-for-nothing Ranadeep negotiated well besides promptly losing his heart to the comely young Katherine Margaret Gardener who was home on vacation from her Catholic college in Benares.  

Since the families on both sides were mutually unhappy about the blossoming romance Katherine was shipped off to England. At the age of twenty-five she returned to India, enrolled into a teachers’ training course in Delhi and systematically rejected offers from various suitors in the Anglo Indian community. There was some buzz about her attempts to reconnect with her old flame.

Ranadeep married a Hindu Bengali girl selected by his family. Katherine, now known as Miss Katherine, returned to her hometown to teach history at a local girls’ school. In her advanced years she had become, as Parul mashi put it, “quite batty”.

“And the dogs?” my mother, the animal lover, asked. “Is it true that she poisons them once they fall sick? They remain chained to their posts all day, poor things…”

I did not quite catch what Michelle aunty murmured in reply.

No one in the family had actually seen the hardy old spinster up close. The upright bearing and the severe vociferation intimated her presence better than the iron-grey curls that framed her once-lovely face.

“Poor soul, such a waste of a nice life…” my mother hummed a different refrain now which was echoed faithfully by my aunts and grandmother.

That summer, after Michelle aunty left for Mumbai - then Bombay - to meet her husband who was sailing ashore for the umpteenth time, Sam died in his sleep. Arsenic poisoning was the local grapevine’s verdict. This time, though, my family’s sympathies were with Miss Katherine.

We missed Michelle aunty’s quiet dignified presence, her warm prattle and tasteful elegance. She returned in autumn just in time for Dashera, a few weeks before my final exams, with Tony in tow looking taller and thinner.

Sitting down to watch a game show on television with Tony the mention of “Ranadeep Ghosh” pinged my ears. I sidled closer to the drawing-room to catch snatches of Michelle aunty’s cheesecake voice.

“I could barely recognize him, he looks so old... his face has changed such a lot. I felt sorry for the man with his bones sticking out …” Moratorium crept into the conversation as Usha set down a plateful of sandwiches and onion samosas over a side table.

“But to invite him home, do you suppose that was wise?” I sneezed just at that moment.

“ Bulbul!” My mother’s eyes became red hot coals as she yanked open the drawing-room door. “I told you not to eavesdrop on grown up conversation. Go and play with Tony. Go on, be a good child.”

Ranadeep Ghosh passed away in his sleep the following morning. “Cranky Spinster Poisons ex Flame.” The Uttarayan Times had headlined the tragedy rather dramatically, according to Babuji. Ranadeep Ghosh, a highly successful lawyer – contrary to his father’s gloomy prognostications – had been terminally ill in any case.

The accused was acquitted on grounds of insanity. How and where Miss Katherine had met her blameworthy ex-lover had not been mentioned by the paper. There was no mention, either, of Michelle aunty or any other family member. The paper did mention, however, that Miss Katherine had slipped arsenic into the dead man’s whisky and confirmed the act on being questioned.

Miss Katherine’s voice rang out firmly the next morning reprimanding her pet parrot. I sped across to the backyard even as I heard Dida calling out to help Usha with the dishes. Miss Katherine had stopped rebuking her parrot Rim and was looking across the wall in my direction. Her eyes, twin granite marbles, bored down mine. I blinked more than once. Then her face creased into a smile, the little crescent under her chin expanding. The grin, so inane and vacuous, prompted me to step back. “Will you send your gardener by, please? It’s just that…” I fled without waiting to hear the rest. When I told Roopa later that day she said that mad people were basically harmless because they didn’t know what they were doing. The memory of the vacuous grin made me shiver.

The tragedy had put a stop to the canine chorale. Gossip too, died within a week. My mother, who had been more circumspect than everyone else did wonder aloud, though, “Was Miss Katherine – poor soul – motivated by passion or compassion? Was it hate that moved her, or love?”