The next day dawned bright. As usual in Mr Naidu’s household, they were up with the first light and made their ablutions with the cold well water. Pari joined them soon after from next door with a packet of pulihora, spicy tamarind rice, for breakfast.
“We made it just now,” she said. “It was fun being in a household with so many women.” She turned to Rehman. “Especially because no one knew that I was a widow and treated me differently,” she said in Urdu so Mr Naidu and Vasu would not understand.
Pari helped Vasu with his studies while Rehman helped Mr Naidu dig a hole to plant a young mango tree. Mr Naidu folded his sarong-like lungi in half to knee-length and swung the sharp end of a heavy iron bar into the hard ground. The older man’s face creased with the strain and his arm muscles stood out in cords under the dark, sinewy skin. Despite the relative coolness of the early morning, drops of sweat soon covered his forehead. As soon as Mr Naidu stopped breaking up the ground, Rehman moved the soil to one side with a small shovel.
“How long does it take for a mango tree to start fruiting?” asked Rehman.
Mr Naidu wiped his forehead with a small towel that was always on his shoulder. “A tree like this that’s grown from seed? About fifteen or twenty years.”
“That long?” said Rehman.
Mr Naidu laughed. “You are wondering what an old man like me is doing, planting a tree that will not produce any fruit until after I am gone, aren’t you?”
“No, no!”
Mr Naidu said, “I am aware that I won’t taste these fruit. But Vasu will eat them; and his children after him.”
They resumed digging and soon had a hole about three feet deep and over a foot wide. Mr Naidu part-filled it with composted cow dung mixed with straw, and Rehman lowered in the plant. Mr Naidu firmed the soil around the young tree with his dusty bare feet, hard from years of tramping in the fields. Rehman fetched a pail of water from the well and poured it around the sapling.
Mr Naidu said, “We should leave something behind when we leave this earth and for a farmer like me, a tree is the easiest way of doing that.”
Sitakka and a couple of other young women came over an hour later. Pari left with them to get ready and make the bride. Rehman and Vasu came out of the hut to watch the women walk away, their long braids swinging and their silver anklets tinkling in the dust. One of the girls said something that Rehman couldn’t catch but he could hear all of them laughing.
“Why do girls giggle so much?” asked Vasu.
Rehman scratched his head. “You tell me when you find out,” he said.
A couple of hours later, the men got ready and left for the bridal house next door. Pari came out of a room and said to Rehman, “Do you want to see the bride?”
He nodded and she led him inside. Pari looks really fetching in a pink sari, he thought. I wonder if she will go back to her sober clothes when we leave the village.
They passed innumerable women, from young girls to old dowagers and Pari seemed to know them all. “That’s Sitakka’s mother,” she said, pointing to a middle-aged woman. Rehman looked discreetly but could not make out whether she had six fingers on her hands. They were soon in a room near the back of the house.
“There’s the bride,” said Pari, with a flourish of her hands. “Her name is Tara.”
Rehman looked at the small figure in the middle of the room, the red sari almost seeming to drown her. She had a wizened face and appeared frightened as she peered nervously around. She looked ready to jump out of the window. Rehman noticed an iron shackle round her ankle. He almost objected but stopped himself – the poor girl was in no condition to give her consent and she wouldn’t be wearing the shackle for long. She would be set free once the wedding ceremony was over.
Tara’s mother came up to them and said, “It won’t be the same without her in the house, you know.”
Rehman said, “You are doing a virtuous thing. Marrying off an orphan is good deed.” After a moment he added, “Even if she is not willing.”
Tara’s mother bobbed her head and turned to Pari. “These young girls want to make themselves up like film stars. Please help them. You are a city girl – you will know how to paint lips.”
The two women left and Rehman made his way back to Vasu and Mr Naidu.
“How’s the bride?” asked Vasu.
“Beautiful…and nervous,” said Rehman and laughed.
By this time, several people from all over the village had started converging on the house and the menfolk spilled out into the street. There were several people from the city among the villagers. This wedding was an event and nobody wanted to miss it. A tonsured Brahmin priest in a white loincloth, his chest bare except for a white thread, carried a rolled-up bunch of banana leaves in his hand. He started preparing a hearth with bricks in the yard next to the house.
Among the farmers in the crowd, the talk was mostly about the next harvest and everybody was hopeful that the yield would be good. Mr Naidu was the only one in the group who had planted cotton. The other farmers asked him how it was doing.
“It’s two months since I sowed the seeds and buds have started appearing on the plants,” said Mr Naidu.
The sound of a band playing music was heard in the distance and all conversation about crops and harvests stopped.
“The bridegroom is coming,” said fifty voices.
Soon, a procession appeared around the corner. Men and women in bright clothes and all sporting great smiles walked behind the musicians. Unlike in other weddings, the groom was neither on a horse nor in a car, but sitting on a wooden platform, decorated with red tinsel, that was carried on some of the men’s shoulders. He sat hunched and peered suspiciously at the sea of people below him. As the procession passed under a gooseberry tree, the bridegroom reached out a thin arm and plucked a bunch of the light-green fruit. He put one piece in his mouth and must have found it too sour, because he spat it out in disgust on the bald head of the man in front of him. The man put his hand on his pate and jerked it away when he touched the wet mass.
The groom’s platform wobbled as the bald man stopped but the others continued walking. The bridegroom plucked another gooseberry from the bunch and threw it into the crowd. The small round fruit hit a woman’s blouse and she screamed, jumping round and trying to reach behind her back. The couple walking behind the woman bumped into her and stumbled.
The procession dissolved into chaos like ink drops dispersing in water as the groom started pelting the crowd indiscriminately with the hard, marble-like fruit. A boy dodging one of the missiles ran into a dignified-looking man on the edge of the procession and the man’s dhoti unravelled. The man clutched the sarong-like garment, trying to prevent his underwear from showing. The long cloth caught under his feet and he stumbled straight into a vat of cow-dung slurry by the side of the road. Screams and curses filled the air.
The band, oblivious to what was happening behind them, continued marching to their beat until they stopped in front of the bride’s house. It was only then that they noticed the people pointing and looked round. They ran back to the procession and regrouped.
Mr Naidu said, “We had better get the poor man cleaned up.” He and another farmer ran forward to the dignitary – covered in smelly green liquid and semi-blinded – and gingerly led him away.
The rest of the party sorted itself out and the band struck up a fresh, jaunty tune:
Aha, it’s my wedding; oho, today I shall marry,
The world’s laughing for you and I will not tarry,
Oh, what fun to be husband and wife; hurry, hurry.
Aha, it’s my wedding; oho, today I shall marry.
The procession made its way forward, stopping only when an old woman with a big, round, red bindi stepped out in front of them. She held a coconut in her hands and smashed it with great force on a stone on the road. The hard shell burst open and the liquid inside spilled out. She threw the two halves away and took out a currency note from a knot in her sari.
The bridegroom was lowered to the ground and held in his father’s arms.
Holding the money, the woman circled her arms round the bridegroom three times, then gave the note to a beggar. Women ululated and somebody blew into a conch. Some boys shook rattles. The noise unnerved the groom and he looked ready to bolt. He scratched the arm of the man holding him, raising angry red welts on the brown skin, but the man did not let go.
“Somebody get the bride,” he shouted.
The bride and groom were quickly brought face to face and they peered at each other. Suddenly, the bridegroom reached out and smacked Tara on the nose. She squealed and pulled his hair. Half the crowd was in despair and the other half bent double in laughter. People tried to separate the furious couple but were powerless in the face of their passion.
Pari finally stepped forward with two bananas, holding one in each hand. The bride and groom stopped fighting and looked at the fruit.
“Go on, you can have them if you stop fighting,” said Pari. The couple let go of one another and grabbed the yellow fruit. Tara fastidiously peeled the skin off before eating. The groom sank his teeth into the banana, skin and all.
“What monkeys!” said Vasu.
Mr Naidu looked down at the boy. “Of course they are. Monkeys don’t become humans just because you bring them up among people.”
Rehman looked at the two Hanuman langur monkeys, eating the bananas, and had to agree. They were about two feet tall, the male slightly larger than the female. Grey hair covered their entire bodies except for their black faces. They looked remarkably like children, except for the wise looks from their clear eyes.
The crowd moved into the yard next to the house where the Brahmin priest was waiting for them and Rehman heard several people talking about the bride and groom.
“Forget your toy and look around,” a mother was telling her five-year-old son. “You may never see something like this again – two monkeys getting married like humans.”
A man he didn’t know grinned at Rehman and Rehman smiled back. “Have you ever seen a spectacle like this?” said the man, who looked educated and in a professional job.
“No,” said Rehman shaking his head.
“Me neither. Though I have heard of another case of two monkeys being married many years ago. That was near the temple town of Puri, I think.” They shuffled forwards with the crowd and the man continued, “Mind you, it’s a good deed to free captive animals, it will earn you good karma. And if you are going to do that, why not make a hungama, an event, out of it and have some fun too?”
Rehman nodded. “You are right. Like mixing business with pleasure.”
The man threw his head back and laughed. “I like that – mixing business with pleasure.”
A giant marquee had been constructed in the yard with long pine trunks and thatched coconut leaves. Pari and Tara’s ‘mother’ joined them. Tara’s mother asked Rehman, “Are you enjoying yourself?”
Rehman nodded.
“Do you know how Tara came into our family?” she asked.
“No,” said Pari.
“About five years ago, we were worried about my eldest son and his wife. At that time, they had been married for a couple of years but they still did not have kids. So we went to the Tirupati temple to ask for the Lord’s boon. We went up the Seven Hills in the early morning, queued up and saw the deity. We were then coming back to the bottom and our bus broke down midway. When the bus couldn’t be repaired immediately, we started walking downhill to the town. After an hour or so, we were hot and so we rested by the side of the road. We saw a tribe of langurs peacefully grazing and grooming themselves in the distance among the rocks and shrubs. Did you know that there are lots of monkeys on the mountains of Tirupati?” she said, looking quizzically at him.
Rehman nodded and asked her to continue. It was common knowledge that bands of monkeys lived on the slopes and the temple summit of Tirupati.
“Suddenly, they started running towards us. We didn’t know what was happening at first, but then we noticed that they were being pursued by another troop of monkeys. One of the members of the first group was slower than the others and fell behind. The leading pursuer caught up with her and we saw why she had been slow. A small baby monkey was clutching on to her front with its arms and legs. The mother monkey turned around and whimpered. She must have been scared, poor thing. The pursuer tried to pull the baby away but that seemed to give the mother a sudden boost; she bared her teeth and screamed loudly before jumping straight for a rock near us. Unfortunately she missed and fell to the ground, landing awkwardly. The pursuers quickly closed on the mother and baby, but my husband picked up a stone lying on the ground and threw it at them. He shouted loudly, flapped his arms and rushed at them like a noisy crow. All the monkeys ran away, except the fallen mother and its baby. When we reached her, we found that the mother was still alive but she couldn’t move. I think her back was broken. She still clutched her baby tightly and tried to scare us off. The poor little baby was so small – if its mother died, there was no way it was going to survive.” Tara’s mother looked up at the stage where the fire was just being lit and turned back to Rehman and Pari. “I understood immediately the test that the Lord of the Seven Hills was posing. Was I ready to bring a baby into my house?”
Pari smiled at the woman. “What happened then?”
“I kneeled down by the mother monkey and told her that I was a mother too. I’ll look after your baby as if she is mine, I told her. She must have understood what I said because she loosened her hold on the baby. As soon as I cuddled the baby in my arms, the mother monkey closed its eyes for ever. We brought the baby with us, fed her from a bottle and slowly built her up.”
Sitakka and another woman walked by, leading a little boy of about four, and the older woman called them over.
“This is my first son’s wife. And this little fellow,” she said, patting the boy on the top of his head, “was born less than a year after Tara came into our house. I had read the Lord’s intentions correctly. And today, I have to do my last duty for her and then her mother’s soul will be at peace.”
All the usual rituals were followed for Tara’s wedding as they would be for a normal human wedding. A curtain separated the bride and groom; a prayer was said to the elephant-headed god Ganesha for the success of the rituals; the bridegroom’s feet were washed by the bride’s ‘parents’; the band played music that reached a crescendo at the appointed auspicious moment, and the curtain was whipped away, to reveal the bride and groom peering at each other from hooded eyes. All the correct mantras in Sanskrit were spoken by the priest – at a breakneck speed more suited to pop songs than to sacred hymns. The bridegroom and bride were picked up by their respective ‘parents’ and taken round the sacred fire seven times. All the guests showered rice on the couple as confetti. Two yellow threads were hung around the bride’s neck, by the bride’s ‘father’, instead of by the groom. A photographer shot lots of pictures. The main ceremony of the marriage was complete.
The newly married monkeys were then stripped of their clothes – leading to a lot of ribald comments among the rustic crowd. They were then carried through the village, all the guests following, until they reached the river where trees grew thick along the banks. The monkeys were unshackled and placed on a low, overhanging branch. The bridegroom gave the people one startled look and scuttled up the trunk like a proper monkey until he was hidden in the leaves. He then started chattering, saying something in simian language. Tara just sat there on the branch, alternately looking at the people and up into the branches at her new mate.
“Go on,” said somebody in the crowd. “Your husband’s calling you.”
Tara’s mother gave a sob, tears trickling down her cheeks. Tara quickly jumped off the tree and hopped into her mother’s arms.
“Oh, my darling daughter,” wailed the woman. “My heart’s breaking but you have to go. When I had only sons, I boasted that I was lucky because I would never know the pain of saying goodbye to a daughter on her wedding day.” She hugged the monkey and nuzzled her tiny face. “The Lord was watching from his abode in Vaikuntha and he took note of my boasting and gave me a daughter. He knew that just like the pain of childbirth, this pain of farewell too is not a curse but a boon.” She fell silent for a moment and silently wept. “Go, dear,” she said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. “It’s time for you to leave your parents’ house. Go, so that when I meet your birth mother in heaven, I can look her in the eye and tell her that I fulfilled my promise.”
The monkey in the tree dropped to a slightly lower branch so he was visible and said something loudly again. Tara mewled, before jumping down to the ground. She quickly crossed the ground on all fours and scaled the tree with consummate ease, as if she had been doing it all her life.
The people were quiet, except for Tara’s mother who started wailing even more loudly. Sitakka and Pari held her arms and supported her. Other women told her not to cry, though without much success, as their eyes too were streaming with tears.
Tara shuffled forward on the branch and sat next to her mate. The male langur held out a paw and opened his fist. A shiny red fruit flashed in the sun as Tara popped it into her mouth. A dozen human females went ‘Aaah’ on the ground below. Tara leaned forward and started searching through the he-monkey’s hair for lice. His fur shivered as he was groomed by his bride.
Several minutes later, they stood up on their little legs simultaneously and launched themselves into the upper branches. The newlyweds’ chatter slowly became fainter as they moved away through the trees.