The toss of a lemon, p.52
The Toss of a Lemon, page 52
She has been preoccupied, since that night at Adyar Beach, with Vani’s childlessness and with her isolation with Vairum here in Madras. She is increasingly convinced that this is an unnatural way to live: no parents, no children, no relatives nor even neighbours of their own caste and community, meeting strangers every day, strangers who want something. Vairum seems so enamoured of this loneliness and anonymity, but now Janaki is fearful of what it is doing to their aunt, and maybe even to their uncle.
She knows Vani grew up in a sophisticated household, but also that she had thrived, as much as the grandchildren had, in the order of their Cholapatti home. Her affection and regard for Sivakami was visible. With children and neighbours, she was never alone, even when Vairum was away overnight. Maybe Vairum thinks Thangam’s children reminded Vani of the baby they lost, but what if it was better for her, not having a child of her own, to be surrounded by children? She had always been eccentric but had seemed content. Now she crackles with some weirdness. Kamalam, too, has noticed it.
“Vani Mami is not happy,” she tells Janaki tonight, as they take out the postcards they bought that day.
Janaki nods. “I know. I’m not even sure she’s well.”
There is little more they can say: what can they do, two young girls? Whom would they tell? They trade off the postcards, writing notes to Sivakami, Muchami and Gayatri, about the sights and wonders of the city by the sea.
They have four days left, which pass without major incident. A trip to Madras Beach, where they eat roasted corn and take in such curiosities as a two-headed girl in a boxlike theatre; another ice cream at the Presidency Club, where Vairum plays tennis. One evening, Janaki, inspired by the Punjabi woman, crushes henna leaves from the garden into the finest paste she can, and extrudes it from a paper roll onto Kamalam’s hands. On one hand, she does a pattern of lotuses and mango leaves; on the other, a zigzag, replicating the pattern on the souvenir shells they took from Adyar Beach. Vairum laughs when he sees her art, so different from the large, crude dots that are customary in the south. “So you are capable of departing from tradition!”
Janaki laughs, too.
“Do Vani’s hands also, why don’t you?” he asks.
Tickled, she agrees.
On their last evening, Janaki reminds Vairum that he had wanted to hear them read from the English book. Kamalam had begged her not to bring it up, but Janaki felt it was an obligation, and welcomed the challenge, so like school. She missed school terribly. Kamalam didn’t. Janaki has also started inserting, from time to time, an English word in her speech, though she blushed a little when Kamalam looked at her quizzically.
“Ah, it’s all right,” Vairum says, waving them off. “I’m sure you’ve learned many things no book will ever tell you.”
The three look at one another sombrely, knowing each takes away very different impressions of this holiday, though these impressions are, nonetheless, shared.
Vairum had planned to drive them back to Cholapatti but must attend to a water dispute that is turning ugly and affects several of his concerns. He asks if they might be able to take the train. The couple who cook for him are due for a trip home; he’ll give them leave to escort them. The girls tell him it will be fine.
The platform at Egmore Station is crowded with people fleeing the city for the villages, against rumours of attacks. Though the girls are fearful, Vairum looks at the hordes with something like disdain.
“No one will ever target Madras. It seems big to us, but it’s a backwater in the world,” he says, rolling his eyes and looking as if he wishes this weren’t so.
Still, for every reason, Janaki and Kamalam are glad to be going home. That morning, a cook had arrived to replace the couple while they were away: a non-Brahmin. Janaki and Kamalam were aghast, though Janaki felt nothing should surprise them any more: now Vani had to eat this kind of food in her own home?
She’s had quite enough of the city. Soon she will be home, and thence to married life. She hopes she is sufficiently prepared.
PART SEVEN
*
35. The Tumbling Stars 1942
“SO THE PRETTY YOUNG THINGS HAVE RETURNED, have they?” Gayatri ribs Janaki and Kamalam, who smile back. “How did you enjoy your trip? That was a nice gift, I must say.”
“Yes,” Janaki can agree on that. “It was a nice gift.”
“Did you enjoy?” Gayatri prods. “What is their house like?”
“The house is very nice,” Janaki says. “Modern, you know: modern stove, divans. Indoor toilet! So different. City life.”
“Mm-hm,” Gayatri frowns. “Almost too much, sometimes, no?”
“I enjoyed the holiday,” Janaki insists. “Certainly, for two weeks, it was excellent. I’m not sure I would want to live in Madras.”
“Oh, yes, I understand.” Gayatri smiles, patronizing and warm. Janaki remembers hearing that her family was one of the first in the town of Kulithalai to install an indoor toilet. “Well, that’s not too likely. I suppose, after a time, one just wants one’s home, isn’t it true?”
“I suppose.” Janaki blushes.
“Not too long now, is it?” Gayatri leans forward a little. “Just a couple of months, and then you’re off to your husband’s! Your real home.”
Her real home. After all these years of feeling she was living on credit-not just because she is a girl, but because she was being raised in her mother’s natal home-Janaki is departing for the place where she truly belongs. She has been in safekeeping all these years, for this family she will now join.
Vairum and Vani were to have taken her to Pandiyoor by car but, at the last minute, a business crisis prevents Vairum from coming. There are not many male relatives appropriate to take his place: Murthy has grown increasingly dishevelled since Rukmini died, Janaki’s brothers are unmarried; Sivakami’s brothers are dead, and Vairum never liked to ask them for favours in any case. Instead, in a radical departure from tradition, he arranges for Baskaran to come and fetch his bride himself. Sivakami finds the plan disturbingly casual, and insists they will have at least a ceremonial handing-over, even if it takes place three steps from the veranda. She recalls that Thangam’s in-laws came for her, but circumstances were such then that she didn’t want to draw attention to the matter.
Janaki doesn’t feel undervalued by the change in plans; on the contrary, it flatters her that Baskaran is willing to come himself. But the unconventionality worries her in the way that every departure from tradition does. On her last night within these borrowed walls, Janaki frets: will she measure up? Their trip to Madras made her feel more sheltered than ever. She lies awake, holding Kamalam’s hand. Kamalam squeezes back, her face against Janaki’s shoulder, crying silently.
The next morning, upon seeing Baskaran, with a brother and one of Vani’s lawyer uncles, ready to escort her, she relaxes. His smile for her is reassuring.
She takes leave of her grandmother, prostrating for her as Baskaran bows, palms together, at her side. She does the same for the Ramar. She hugs Kamalam, wiping tears from both their cheeks, saying she’ll be back soon for a visit, not to worry. “Or you can come to visit me there! Please don’t cry.” Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan come along to the station.
At the Kulithalai station, she is packed into a train compartment by Muchami and Baskaran, as carefully as she packed her trunks. Radhai and her brothers kiss her, and Muchami smiles at her long and affectionately, a smile she returns rather more quickly, with a little puzzlement at his apparent sentimentality. He holds the children back from the platform and they wave until the train is out of sight.
ON THE TRAIN, Baskaran’s brother and cousin bury themselves in newspapers and lift their heads only to engage in heated debate with their compartment-mates on the subject of India ’s entry into the war on the British side: was independence worth such a sacrifice of lives and integrity?
Janaki is next to the window with Baskaran beside her so that no other man will sit next to her. Baskaran grubs in the left-hand pocket of his kurta and holds its contents out to her until she accepts. He boldly brushes her hand as she pulls it away.
It is a package, no bigger than her palm: slightly heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She tugs at the coarse bow. It comes loose, and the soft thick paper opens to reveal a box of worked silver in the shape of a parrot.
Seeing it stirs some dim memory in her that she can’t quite bring into focus. It’s so touching that he planned a gift; what a shame it’s so ugly. The bird looks vulgar and ill-intentioned. Perhaps parrots are not suited to being rendered in silver, she thinks.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“It’s beautiful,” she responds.
He gestures. “Open it.”
She lifts off the lid, which fits onto the bottom half by means of a latticework border. Inside is a small sack and, inside the sack, glossy peppermints in pink and white stripes.
“Take one,” he urges, but she thinks they look too lovely to eat, and she feels so shy. She imagines playing palanguzhi, Kamalam’s favourite game, with him, using pink and white peppermints for tokens.
She hands back the bird-shaped box, indicating Baskaran should offer the mints around the compartment. He tries and is ignored by the others, who are shouting now, evenly divided on a number of related political topics. Finally, he takes a mint, presses it into her mouth and chucks her lightly under the chin. Taking another candy for himself, he sits back to enjoy her discomfort.
MUCHAMI FINISHES PUTTING AWAY THE BULLOCK and cart and comes through the courtyard toward the kitchen door, carrying Raghavan, who is nearly asleep. Sivakami is in the pantry, reading her Ramayana, only her forehead and hands visible above the book. The older children have scattered. Muchami calls out softly, “Amma?” then goes back around to pass through the back room, then the room under the stairs, into the main hall.
Sivakami lays a mat down in the main hall. Muchami deposits the little boy on it, and Raghavan rolls luxuriantly onto his side, already asleep.
Sivakami and Muchami take their separate paths, she through the kitchen, he through the other passage, out to the courtyard, where Muchami draws some water. He washes his feet, face, neck and hands, and takes a long drink.
“Everything went all right?” Sivakami asks from the small veranda at the back of the house.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “Janaki’s a good girl, very smart girl.”
“Yes,” Sivakami says. “They’re all good.”
“I will miss her more than the elder ones,” he says, a little apologetically, “and probably more than the younger ones, too.”
“Sure, who will practise Sanskrit with you?”
Muchami laughs. “She surpassed me so long ago, she has no use for this old man’s stuttering!” He looks serious again. “Amma… seeing her in-laws, I couldn’t help thinking again about how Vairum, what he said about how we warned off Goli. Ah, I felt so bad, all over again.”
Sivakami is silent: she had tried to talk to Vairum about that after the wedding was over, but he wouldn’t allow it. “What’s done is done, Muchami. Don’t torture yourself. I wouldn’t even have told you what Vairum said if you hadn’t asked.”
“I should have known.” Muchami hits his head with his fist. “Vairum is also so intelligent. I should have known he would anticipate whatever we could. I was just so concerned for Janaki.”
“Yes, yes.” Sivakami doesn’t see the point of talking about it. They can’t take it back and they’ll never do it again. “The point is, she’ll be fine there.”
“I think she will.” His face shines as he thinks of her, all dressed up, with her rich husband. “I think she’ll really do well.”
At the Pandiyoor station, the family’s bullock cart, magnificently decorated and drawn by a majestic and fatty black bull, awaits them. Gopalan, the family’s head servant, is driving. Before he mounts the cart, Baskaran pulls a small tin from the pocket of his kurta, inhales a few pinches of snuff from it, and sneezes. Janaki looks away, wishing she hadn’t seen. He mounts the cart and Gopalan twitches the reins against the bullock’s back.
Leaving the station, they cross a small commercial street and travel past the bus depot and a post office before turning into one of two streets that, intersecting at a T, make up the Brahmin quarter. Single Street, the top of the T, is composed of a row of houses facing the sides of two long houses on Double Street, including Baskaran’s family home. Double Street, the T’s stem, looks more like the Cholapatti Brahmin quarter, with two rows of houses facing each other. On both streets, the houses share walls with their neighbours, the red and white stripes of the verandas, as in Cholapatti, practically continuous. Double Street culminates in a Krishna temple, behind which stretches the Vaigai River.
Almost everyone on the street between the station and the Brahmin quarter recognizes the cart and puts palms together respectfully. Baskaran’s brother gives the expected reaction: sometimes he nods in acknowledgement; mostly he doesn’t react at all. Baskaran, though, puts his own palms together, offering namaskarams to labourers, merchants, a tailor, hardly conventional Brahmin behaviour. Suspicion inkles in Janaki’s breast: she hasn’t married a radical, has she?
Only one of Baskaran’s sisters is at home, the one who married locally. She squeals delightedly, a habit Janaki noticed when they met earlier. The two sisters-in-law are more-what? Reticent or decorous? Surly or proper? Janaki can’t read them. Vermilion water is swirled; songs sung. The bride and groom are instructed to step up onto the threshold with their right feet. Janaki, looking down, watches her own foot, hennaed in dots and lines, entering her real and forever home in unison with the wide, pale foot of the husband who brought her here.
Her mother-in-law has stood for the occasion and waits inside, Dhoraisamy tittering and bobbing beside her. Baskaran and Mrs. Baskaran prostrate themselves before the household elders.
Her sisters-in-law indicate that they will show Janaki around while her luggage is brought in, and Baskaran goes off to bathe. Janaki turns and, without thinking, blurts words of caution about her veena. She receives a look of pained hauteur from Gopalan in return-a servant of his calibre needs no such instruction. She cringes, but is also reassured.
The house is two or three times the size of the one she grew up in. The ground floor has not only a veranda and anteroom leading into the main hall from the street, but a front study that corresponds to the anteroom, with a desk on which are neatly arranged a blotter, pen and paperweights. Tidily labelled ledgers bound in red or brown leather line a rotating rosewood bookshelf beside it. After a peep into the study, Janaki is led back through the main hall and into a small extra room, lit by two windows that give onto yet another room. The windows have no panes, bars, or shutters, but they are a bit too high to see through, the bottom edge at the level of Janaki’s brow. Vasantha, the elder sister-in-law, explains in a low tone that this is the women’s room. It contains untidy piles of tatting and embroidery, magazines and novels, a harmonium and now her veena still within its jute wrappings. Swarna nods nervously and whispers, “We spend time here, you see-when we’re not doing everything else we have to do.” Janaki wonders why they are acting as if this is a secret.
There is a communicating door between the windows, and she is led to it but stopped before she goes through. There, she is surprised to see Senior Mami, her mother-in-law, in a bright room barely wider than the good lady herself, about three times as long as it is wide. It contains a radio, a gramophone, a floor desk, two more bookshelves fully stocked with books and a cot, currently containing Senior Mami, who is reading what appears to be a religious commentary. Janaki sees that, among the pride of children following them on the tour, only one aggressive two-year-old still needs to be told not to enter their grandmother’s lair.
The set-up seems regal or Muslim, somehow, with its hierarchies and its rigorous division of the masculine and feminine. This impression is assisted by the fine latticework that covers the windows of Senior Mami’s room. Such fashions are rare in areas such as this, where Muslim emperors never really gained a toehold. Here, the ruling classes are likelier to ape the British, a less threatening practice, as far as Janaki is concerned.
Janaki tries to look coolly appreciative as, inwardly, she frets-could such details possibly be in accordance with the Shastras’ dictates on construction? She takes a deep breath and doesn’t think about it. Doorways are lined up from front to back in two rows-that’s one Shastric prescription she does know about. She can see clear from the door of her mother-in-law’s zenana entrance, through the women’s room, into the extra room, into the puja room, the pantry, the kitchen, straight out into the garden, whence wafts the smell of curry leaf, jasmine, tulsi. Janaki exhales. She’s imagining-she couldn’t smell all that from here. But she can see a patch of green. Everything will work out.
They pass back through the great hall and mount the stairs to the next storey, where each brother has a chamber that he shares with his wife. Janaki and Baskaran are in the last. Her luggage is already there, between the double bedstead and almirah. The windows are hung with strung flowers in what strikes her as a Rajasthani fashion. Her sisters-in-law, who probably hung the flowers, giggle nastily and Janaki’s flushing shyness turns to annoyance. She thinks to shoot them a look but stops herself. Janaki had very much hoped to find things in common with these girls. Observing them now, she feels homesick.
Vasantha and Swarna attack her luggage, searching out a fresh sari, blouse and undergarments so Janaki will not contaminate her things by touching them before she has had her bath. They swarm like ants over a torn-open package of candy, appraising her bodices with the lace straps and trim she crocheted herself, putting her saris in order of their preference, yanking out sheets, hairpins, cooking vessels. The entertainment is too soon concluded and Janaki senses, astonished, that she has come up short. Her trousseau is the grandest and most modern that any of Sivakami’s granddaughters has had-Janaki had felt both embarrassed and proud at its opulence. But Vasantha and Swarna are rich girls, raised for boredom and discontent.
