Chapter 1

1932

The priest who officiated the amavasya ceremony was new. He was young and zealous. He looked askance at Sowmya when she brought in the flowers and inquired pointedly, “How old is the child?”

Janaki turned to see whom he was referring to. Her eyes filled with dismay when they alighted on Sowmya. She signaled to Sowmya, Leave! Sowmya had become accustomed to being vanished, to be disappeared. She stepped into the women’s room.

A little later when Janaki paid him off and the priest left he must have stopped at the front porch to talk to Natesan because suddenly the voices from there grew sharp, heated.

Janaki rushed out to the front porch where the two men were talking. Sowmya followed. The priest was saying something about the sacramental offering for the ceremony.

“Soiled,” he said, by the widow’s touch. Now had she only observed the vows, observed the pollution and purity laws, this desecration would never have occurred.

“A Brahmin widow’s karma is to take her vows. Our elders were not fools,” the priest said. “These laws that they set down are not insignificant that can simply be ignored. The girl is not a child anymore to be sin free. She is fifteen!” Natesan should arrange to have Sowmya’s hair shorn as soon as possible, he said with certainty, and have her dress appropriately.

Natesan fixed his reading glasses that were sliding down on his nose, and with a flick of his wrist straightened the morning newspaper and raised it over his face.

The man was not deterred by this dismissal. “You are the elder, there is nothing I need to tell you,” he said to the newspaper.

Janaki left her space at the window in a rush. Sowmya pressed closer to the window.

“Why would she enter the kitchen and touch the food for the sacrament?” Janaki charged at the man, diamonds glinting on her flaring nostrils. “Are we such barbarians?” She pressed on, her righteousness silencing the man who appeared to visibly diminish in size in front of her mother. “We have no propriety? My sister Meenakshi and me, do we look to you like cripples unable to do the necessary work? She does not touch the offering,” she said and dropped a ripe mango, golden and sweet like a bribe, into the priest’s hand. “From our own tree, please take,” she said.

The young priest looked at the fruit in his hand, rolled it as if to weigh it. His long abundant inky hair was pulled back into a knot and half his face was covered in beard. Until his pregnant wife delivered he would not shave. Without glancing at Janaki he placed the fruit at the stoop. His eyes met Sowmya’s watching from the window. He straightened the cloth shawl covering his chest and left without bidding goodbye.

But after the man left, and after Sowmya had swept up the wilted flowers and leaves from the central courtyard, and cleared the burnt cinders from the sacramental fire, Janaki’s face remained grim. It seemed as though the temple elephant was trampling the courtyard and nobody knew how to deal with it. Sowmya was the culprit who had let him in.

Later, as Sowmya cut vegetables and helped aunt Meenakshi prepare the evening meal, her father, her dear brave father, rested on the canvas easy-chair in the courtyard. Janaki sat close by, sari draped over the twins as they fell asleep on her lap. She spoke softly, barely a murmur. Sowmya leaned out the kitchen doorway slightly but could not hear her. But in the quietness of the descending night Natesan had knitted his hands together, and with his head bent over them, listened. Seeing her parents confer so quietly intrigued Sowmya, and she knew in the hollow of her belly that this was a conversation she dare not interrupt.

“What’s your mother saying?” Meenakshi asked softly.

Meenakshi was leaning over the stove roasting eggplants, holding them by the stem over the coals, turning them around deftly. The sari she draped over her shaven head had slipped down and sweat glistened on her smooth bare skin. Sowmya imagined the steel crescent that the coconut man used to shave the green husk, leaving a thin film of the pale and moist coconut shell, slicing through her aunt’s hair, chisk, chisk. The barber had come that morning very early, slipping in by the back door with his box of tools, and drawn a pail of water from the well, rinsed his tools and set them out to dry at the rim of the well. When Sowmya went there to brush her teeth in the morning, she looked at the tools, at the waiting man, and her throat had seized with aversion and horror.

Sowmya swiped her sweaty brow with her forearm. “Nothing, aunty.”

The next morning Janaki came in where Sowmya slept and spread a sheet on the floor. She removed from the almirah all of Sowmya’s silk skirts, all the wedding saris, the sage and aqua blue with the temple border, the lotus colored one with the bottle green border, the crimson with the black checkered border—every single one of them she tossed to the sheet on the floor.

Sowmya had not been allowed to wear these saris after Ramki’s funeral, but they had remained there all this time, periodically aired out, refolded with neem leaves between the layers and put back on the shelves.

Sowmya grabbed the tumbling saris that swirled like water on their way down, gathered them up to her chest. “No, no, no! Amma, please, please!” The saris slipped out of her hands as she tried to gather more. “Please, what are you doing?” She fell on them, pressing her angry tears to the colors, the gold, the russets, the blues. “Why must you take these from me? I look better in them than you! Why are you so jealous?”

Janaki stopped in mid action, looked at her speechless.

Immediately Sowmya wished she could take back the words but a trap-door was closing over her head, and if she could somehow get those saris back from her mother everything would be all right between them, back to the old times when her days had clarity and made sense. She reached up and pulled the sari from Janaki’s hand. It was the sacred blue, the color of Lord Rama, the very sari that she had worn the day Ramki had arrived at Ponmalar with his father.

Janaki had helped her dress that morning, pleating and tucking the folds, and brought the end drape around her hips and tucked one corner neat and tight at the waist. Sowmya had served the morning meal to the guests, the rustle of the crimson border brushing at her feet, and later played dolls with Niru dressed in it. She had begged Janaki to let her keep the sari on for the rest of the day, and was still feeling like a princess when they brought Ramki’s body home from the river bank and laid him in the courtyard.

His face was bruised and bloated beyond recognition. The long ebony hair was tangled with twigs and sand. What possessed him to go for a swim in the river in the middle of the afternoon? Swollen with monsoon rains, the river was treacherous in July. The banks were particularly rocky where it flowed near Ponmalar. He was struck unconscious by a blow to the head and was carried away by the currents. Villagers had found him floating face down several yards from the bathing ghats.

Fate, the men muttered as they stood with their arms folded after giving the body to Sowmya’s family. Who can bargain with fate?

They looked at Sowmya in her blue silk. The musings and murmurs quietened and came to rest on her like flies. Later still, the new sari splashed with water, she helped wash Ramki’s poor body and prepare it for the cremation.

Sowmya looked down at the sari which was in a tight twist in her hand.

Meenakshi appeared at the door. She had pulled the drape of her sari, which appeared to be the color of mud, over her head tightly to cover its nakedness.

“Please, Amma!” Sowmya whispered fiercely, feeling her aunt’s presence at her back. “Don’t take them away. They are mine, aren’t they?”

Sowmya turned and looked up at her aunt who had locked eyes with her sister. Clutching the blue sari Sowmya got up on her knees and wound her arms tightly around Meenakshi’s hips.

Janaki abruptly turned around and left the room. It was then, in that flash of movement when her mother’s shoulder vanished from her sight, that Sowmya knew all was lost. Still she quickly folded up the saris, those bright shining objects that were her talisman, and laid them all back one by one on the top most shelves. Only when she was all done did she turn around, and saw Meenakshi watching her without saying a word. Meenakshi reached out and touched Sowmya’s cheek, brought up the thin gold necklace that was hidden among the folds of her sari out and around her neck and fixed it so the pendent rested at Sowmya’s throat. She patted it gently, saying nothing.

Next morning when Sowmya opened her almirah she felt as though the door had slammed into her face. All the colors had been replaced with pale cotton saris.

“New?”

Sowmya tightly twisted the end of her voile sari around her finger and stood at the door to the women’s room. Her mother was dressing. It had been two weeks since the battle over the saris.

“Amma, is it a new sari?”

Janaki’s fingers rapidly pleated the luminescent silk, its two-toned color that of the golden beetle. She tucked the pleats against her waist, which was now expanding with another pregnancy.

Sowmya’s fingers twitched to tear the sari off her mother and wear it herself, feel the swish of the new silk glide over her arms. She wanted the garland of jasmine that circled around her mother’s braid and to pin it up her own hair, line her eyes to brilliance with kohl as her mother had done, retrieve all of these to herself.

“Where are you going?”

Sowmya asked knowing fully well that along with Natesan and the twins, Janaki was getting ready to attend a wedding and a feast. There were never any invitations to festivities for Meenakshi or Sowmya. Young and widowed, denied the full glory of womanhood, they would naturally be full of envy and malevolence that would turn every festivity into charcoal. No, there were no invitations for them and their attendance was never required at any happy event.

“Sowmya, listen. Look at me Sowmya, are you listening? Take those two little donkeys, bathe them and get them dressed, will you? They have been playing in the dirt outside all morning, and look at them. All caked with it.”

“When did you get this? I haven’t seen it before.”

“Sowmya, go now.” Her mother’s wide eyes pleaded. Sowmya looked into them without mercy. Finally Janaki rustled out of the room past her.

Later, after she had bathed the twins and dressed them for the outing, Sowmya passed by the prayer room. Janaki was seated on the floor, her eyes closed, her lips moving in recitation. Sowmya released Jaya and Uma who were squirming, and the children ran outside to resume their play.

The prayer space was lit by the flickering glow of the oil-lamp. Taking central place in the altar was the celebration of the Cosmic Couple’s wedding: Cast in bell metal, Shiva and Parvati shone in their timeless embrace, their ancient smiles lit by lamplight. In front of them was a small stone icon of Ganapathi, Sowmya’s favorite elephant-headed and pot-bellied deity, the Vanquisher of Sorrows, the Lover of Sweet-dumplings.

Sowmya sat down by her mother on the floor, pressing her knees into Janaki’s soft, warm side. A small trickle of perspiration ran down the side of Janaki’s face.

Sowmya stared unblinkingly at the flickering flame. How large and uncouth her limbs had become. Her interior had taken fearful shapes beyond her control, and its heat had coarsened her skin with pimples. She knew the cure for this condition. Conjugal bliss. She had lost so thoughtlessly the one bequeathed to her. Widowhood, like a deformity, was forever. No man would marry such a bearer of misfortune. Not for her the colors and the fragrance. Bit by tiny bit, day by day, her mother leached, sieved, removed all the things that would make her desire or be desired, forcing on her the life of a nun, a sanyasin. Be good now, better luck next life.

In front of the altar was a basket with a few blossoms remaining at the bottom. Wilted, rejected blossoms, unsuitable to be woven into the garland that was decorating the altar. Sowmya picked up a flower and tossed it towards the altar.

“Sowmya!”

She tore the petals off an oleander and tossed.

“Stop that. Please!”

Janaki’s voice was hoarse, as though she had been crying.

Sowmya grabbed the basket and threw the contents into the altar. The flame flickered wildly. A sharp intake of breath from Janaki. A stinging slap came flying from her hand. In the flickering shadows her mother’s face was unrecognizable. It could have been a stranger’s.

Sowmya fled from the room, clutching her cheek.

“Sowmya, come back here. Sowmya!”

Sowmya ran up the stairs to the terrace.

In the hot days of summer the room upstairs gradually gathered heat. It held it oppressively within its four walls, barely releasing it at night. No one came up here during this season unless necessary. Sowmya’s cheek throbbed as if it would squirt blood if she touched it. The humidity made her eyes melt. She flung open the door to the terrace.

Across the sun-bleached terrace, against the cloudless sky, the temple tower rose like a small hill. The brightly painted yakshis, demons, gods and humans carved over the tower’s four sides were visible even from where she stood. Two huge gilded wings, as if ready to take flight, topped its crown.

Sowmya tip-toed quickly across the hot terrace to the center where a wall on all four sides enclosed a rectangular opening. Leaning over it she looked into the central courtyard below. Her mother called towards the kitchen for Meenakshi.

She walked to the edge of the terrace where tree branches shaded a corner. Carefully she perched on the narrow parapet wall. She walked her fingers up the length of her braid, loosening it, feeling the shape of the muscle at the nape, the bones beneath the skin. If she pressed them very hard, would they break?

On the eleventh day of Ramki’s funeral her head would have been shaved clean, just as Meenakshi’s was done this morning. Before dawn the women had come to the house to get her up and to prepare her. But when the barber arrived Natesan had turned him away at the door. Amidst loud murmurs of protests he had refused to let anyone touch Sowmya’s hair. “A child, only a child,” he had cried, his face crumpled into the towel he pressed to it.

Sowmya had seen her father lift a hundred pound bag of rice onto his shoulders. No one could match his swift footwork at stick fight competitions, he would tell Sowmya. Although she had never seen this, she believed it to be true. She could see him as a youth swiveling the long bamboo pole in his hands, the arc he would draw on the sky. He was like a banyan tree to the women in the house, a shelter forever and ever. It had frightened her to see him cry, and she had started to weep as well. After a few moments Natesan had folded his palms in prayer. “Please go,” he told the people, their neighbors and family. “There is plenty of evil in this world. Sowmya is not the cause.”

But another transformation had come over her father that was more gradual. He began to draw his grief close around his shoulders, sinking into himself. And the day Sowmya’s body had declared itself with blood he retreated even further from her. Had Ramki’s unnatural death not occurred, Sowmya would have been feted and sent off to her husband’s home with great joy and celebration. From that day forward she belonged to them and he would have discharged his duty as her father. But now a young single woman in his charge was like holding live coal on the palm of his hand. The things expected of him and expected of Sowmya made her father furious and yet helpless. As the head of a house full of women, disobedience from any one of them became unendurable for him. His face, always open and kind, closed like a fist with deep frown lines.

Sowmya pressed her hands into her eyes until she saw light sparks. Every inch of her skin itched as though it had ruptured and sprouted wings that flapped uselessly. She imagined splitting that horizon and flying beyond and over where there were towns and cities that lay in every direction from Ponmalar, and hover like a bird over the sea that lay to the east.

She had once asked Meenakshi why she allowed it, why couldn’t she just refuse to get her head shaved?

“Nobody is forcing me to do this, I want this for myself. This way everybody knows what is what, there are no suspicions and no fear. It gives me freedom to do what I please, come and go as I please.”

Meenakshi was resting in the afternoon after all her chores were done, her head on a small wooden platform, not caring that her sari had slipped from her head, deeply absorbed in reading the three newspapers that she brought from the market daily. Later in the afternoon she would spin the raw cotton that the Congress people brought for her, which when spun into skeins, she would take to the khadi depot. She indeed had freedom to go about in the streets, more so than what Sowmya had. It had become quite impossible for Sowmya to leave the house with the heavy censure hanging over the Natesan household.

Meenakshi then dropped what she was reading and looked at Sowmya for a full minute. She sat up and touched her face. “But this is not for you, my sweet,” she had said. “Times are different now, and you must never submit to this. Never.”

This was something Sowmya had never heard her mother say. Meenakshi had also arranged, with Natesan’s approval, for a relative from her late husband’s side, young man named Mani, to come tutor Sowmya. Mani was a student at St. Joseph’s College in Tiruchi and he came only sporadically, without notice. He left as suddenly, referring to meetings that were a mystery to her, with people that she did not know. She would wish then that she could, by magic, slip into his skin and go into that world with the easy abandon that he displayed. She envied him for the simplicity and ease of the trousers that he wore, the stories that he held within his slight frame and thin limbs, for the way he seemed possessed with some kind of hope. Names of towns and cities that he talked about opened up like a pod full of seeds inside her after he left and made her want to sprout wings and fly away.

Sowmya plucked a leaf off the branch that hung low over the parapet and dropped it. It slowly spiraled down where two women stood at the gate. They wore black hoods that covered their hair.

Natesan stood behind the gate, holding it slightly open, or maybe slightly closed.

“All the houses on this street, and the next,” Natesan Aiyar pointed over his shoulder, “we are all Brahmins here, this is the agraharam. You can try the quarter on the east side, or over there, outside the village. But here, here no one will let you inside. We have no use for these,” he said looking at a pamphlet that they must have given him. “We are simple people, we have our own way of doing things.” He joined his palms together, goodbye.

The women’s black shoes made a rasping noise as they walked away from the gate. Their white cotton saris barely covered their ankles. The black hoods and trains slowly became small. The pamphlets her father clutched in his hands behind him flicked nervously as he watched the receding figures. How thin had her father’s shoulders become.

“Child,” he said later when he saw Sowmya downstairs. “Get me some buttermilk, will you?”

She handed him the glass of buttermilk, wanting to touch his hand in mutual reassurance, and yet frightened by the way he avoided her touch. It was then that she knew that his hands were slowly getting slippery, withdrawing from her hold. Or was it that her hands had engorged and bloated and become too cumbersome to hold? In any case they were all getting lost a little bit every day and there was no rescue. None.

The full weight of what Natesan carried on those shoulders came to her on the following day when the letter arrived from Ramki’s parents.