Chapter 8

The summer monsoon had failed to arrive. Sowmya looked up at the ceiling fan that merely stirred down curls of hot air. She pinched off a small amount of the moist paste of the marudani leaves, rolled it between her fingers, and pressed it into a border along the edge of Mallika’s foot. It was the only cooling thing to do. When the paste dried in a few hours and was rinsed off it would leave a beautiful coral stained pattern.

“Look, your hand will get all stained this way, and the pattern will not show,” Mallika said.

Ignoring her, Sowmya lifted Mallika’s foot with one hand, and dabbed a small amount of the paste on her nails. The foot was slight and small in her hand. The old stain from months ago on the toenails had completely grown out but for a sliver of crescent at the tip.

Mallika did not know of the latest cancellation, and Sowmya did not have the heart to tell her yet. The secretary of the theater company, Ragini Sabha, came by last week to announce his helplessness. The sponsor had backed out, he explained. The opposition to staging the dance was coming from some powerful members. The man’s awkwardness was genuine. “We go way back,” he had said, remembering Krishnaveni who had lived on the same street as his grandfather. Mallika listened in silence.

Now Madras Fine Arts had asked for a return of the advance. Earlier that morning they had sent a letter through a messenger, who was instructed to wait for a response.

Mallika had always believed in settling her accompanists’ bills right after each performance. “We all have bellies to fill.” Now she found it difficult to look them in the eye when they came to visit, and was filled with shame when they left without mentioning what was due. Their loyalty for old time’s sake would last only so long, soon they would desert her.

Sowmya patted a circle at the center of the sole. Mallika’s toes curled.

“Enough, girl! What do I need to doll up for? Here, give it to me, I will put it on you,” she reached for the dish.

When Sowmya drew the paste away from her and lifted the other foot, Mallika surrendered and leaned back on the chair. Sowmya carefully worked the paste into a pattern.

“There is a small javali,” Mallika said leaning forward to look at Sowmya. “A short, sweet love song of a dance. My grandmother taught me this.”

Sowmya paused and looked up.

“Radha accuses Krishna. ‘You are flirting with the milkmaids’ she says, ‘and you ignore me.’” She mimed. With eyes like daggers, the young woman slays the handsome Krishna with deadly scorn. Heaving with desire, yet she sulks. “She scolds the Blue-skinned God,” Mallika said, signaling the cloud-capped sky, the peacock feather in his cap, the flute-player, stealer of hearts.

Sowmya sat back on her heels. Timeless emotions captured in Mallika’s aging face made them new.

“So what does Krishna do? He offers to massage Radha’s foot. Radha then instructs him on how to do it right!” Mallika chortled at this pluckiness. “You can add this as a small piece towards the end for the program next month. A sweetener, a surprise—”

“Program got canceled.” Sowmya stood up, wiped her hands on a wet towel, and picked up the marudani dish.

Mallika sat up.

“The secretary came this morning. We returned the advance. What was left of it.” Sowmya folded a pillow and tucked it under Mallika’s feet so the paste didn’t smear before it dried.

The terrace was sunlit and smelled of white heat. She rinsed her hands. They had stained a bright orange already, these were excellent leaves. She threw handfuls of water over her face, which was slick with sweat. But even that did not offer relief in the heavy, still air that had even silenced the crows.

The bright shimmer that she had thought was dance, a life source, had become clouded, become something much more complicated. The pickets at the gate did not frighten Sowmya anymore, but it was destroying Mallika. She had lost the case to retrieve her property back in the village. More than anything, it hurt when her own cousin bought the auctioned property. Sowmya’s eyes prickled at the unfairness of it all.

Satya appeared regularly at the house, as though these visits would somehow erase his guilt in this whole venture that was turning painful and ugly. The truth was when Satya came, even in his arrogance, a stance that came to him so naturally, it felt as though all things were possible. But the sight of him only infuriated Mallika.

“Send the man home to his wife,” she would say between gritted teeth when he left. “He looks stricken. We are all done with that kind of thing here, somebody tell him.”

Sowmya wondered if the message was a warning for her. This must have been how they came to the doorstep at Mallika’s house on Nellyappan Street. Her dance, and no less her youth, drew admirers. Mallika fell in love. “Give up your dance,” the man said, she once told Sowmya. A wholesale trader of peanut oil, he had a wife and three children in Salem, and yet he came bearing gifts. He would marry her, he said, make her his wife, give her respectability—and steal her soul. What else could Mallika do but refuse?

“Dance has to please you first, Sowmya,” she said. “If you dance for him,” gesturing with a tilt of her head, “what happens when he leaves?”

Sowmya would tease her then, making a joke of her fears. But later when Satya left their house in George Town, a cold stone would settle in her stomach. She imagined his long legs clad in white garments striding up the stairs to their bedroom, his head bending over her, except it wasn’t Sowmya; it was Yamini’s face that was on the pillow. Yet his weight was on Sowmya’s hips, his breath on her eyelids. The protest from her heart would make Sowmya toss in her bed. She struggled with the burning and the melting, the quivering force that shook her as her fingers brought her to that sweet death. The erotic verses she mimed for her dance mocked her in her solitude.

“Let’s go to the beach,” she called from the terrace. Sunlight had dimmed from white-hot to yellow gold. “At least we can catch some sea breeze and cool off.”

When Neelam came to visit a little later, the three of them set off with Kitappa towards the beach.

The fisher folks’ catamarans became visible as they approached the sea, and they smelled the salt and dead fish from the nets spread out to dry in the sun. White-crested waves rolled in, air-soft and bubbly. Sowmya hitched her sari up to her knees and waded into the water. A big surf crashed close sending her scrambling backwards.

“Wafers, sir? Fresh and hot, madam.” A man approached, scurrying impossibly in this heat, two large tins slung over his shoulders.

They crunched on the thin, crispy rice wafers dotted with cumin and cracked black pepper, and made their way towards the lighthouse in the north, away from the crowd. Kitappa and Neelam walked up front and Sowmya followed beside Mallika.

“Have you seen the poster?” Neelam asked, her voice picked at by the breeze.

“For The Thief of Blue Mountain?”

“Satya had designed the poster himself.”

Satya had set up a studio in Mylapore, where his wife owned some land, and was producing a film. No need to go to Bombay anymore for sound recording. Neelam was on the staff at Madras Broadcasting Company, and was recording two songs for the film. An actress would lip-synch the song. Talkies had made everything possible.

When they arrived home at dark, Satya’s Chevrolet was parked at the top of the narrow lane leading to the house. A cigarette tip glowed inside.

Satya got out as they approached. He was dressed in neatly pressed white veshti, which he always wore long and flowing, the zari edge sweeping the floor at his feet, and a loose open collared white shirt. His hair was combed neatly to a shine. He smiled directly at Sowmya and made the stars rise up bright. He accepted with ease the invitation to eat with them.

The power went out just as they sat down for dinner. Kitappa carried in a hurricane lamp in and lit it. Sowmya and Neelam brought the dishes from the kitchen to the front room and they ate in the moonlight that flooded the windows and doorways.

Later, after the women cleaned up, Sowmya closed up the kitchen door and plopped down next to Mallika on the sofa and rested her head on her shoulder. She was glad for the power outage. In its darkness she could observe Satya closely without being watched.

A young woman from Bombay, Devaki Bai, would lip-synch Neelam’s song in the film, Satya was saying. He had arranged for her to come down for a screen test.

Shooting and screen test. These were words so remote from the silent shadow images Sowmya had seen on a silver screen so long ago in Ponmalar. The Seizure of Draupadi’s Robes at the tent cinema. A projector ran noisily. Lights streamed out of it and raised shadows on a luminous screen. A man appeared before the screen and started narrating the story. He read the text out from the screen, taking on different personas, using a squeaky voice for the women characters. Every time there was a reel change, a troupe came in to sing. It came as a surprise to recall now that it was a silent film. It had seemed so full of sound and action.

“How much will you pay her?” Sowmya asked Satya.

“We haven’t negotiated yet,” Satya said.

“A Hindi-speaking woman from Bombay, cannot even speak Tamil properly,” Neelam said, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “You can’t find someone to hire locally?”

“Find a Tamil speaking talented actress for me! Someone who can dance. They are all afraid of the cinema. Devaki Bai was famous even before she came to cinema,” Satya said. “She’s experienced. She is very popular in Marathi dramas. She sings. And she will dance.”

“Here in Madras, they don’t take risks. They stay with what they know,” Kitappa said. “They know drama, a sure thing.”

“There is more money in cinema.”

“Drama or cinema, a woman always makes less than a man, a lot less,” Neelam said. “Even the most talented ones.”

“Dance for the cinema?” Mallika bristled. She waved a reed fan uselessly over her perspiring face. “What kind of talent do you need for that?”

Satya looked at the tip of his cigarette, tapping at the ash. Kitappa rose to raise the wick in the lamp, his face illuminated in the glow.

“How much would you pay me?” Sowmya asked, watching the way he played with the cigarette.

Satya turned and looked at her. “For you?” His voice was mellow, warm honey in the semi-darkness. He tapped at the tip of his cigarette again. “You can—”

“Sowmya! If you go into the cinema—” Mallika turned and looked at her. “Why would you want to do that? That’s all for those foreigners and their, their—debauchery. It’s not our way. You will lose your authority, you will—”

“Authority? Tell me. How much advance did we get this month? How many bookings?” Satya asked. He knew every engagement they got.

Still, it was a cruel question. Sowmya’s face grew hot.

Mallika looked at Kitappa for an answer. He looked at the dusty designs on the floor. The Chettiar’s agent had paid a visit on Saturday, a gentle man. How is everything, he had asked. Six months’ rent was in arrears. He may not be so gentle the next time.

Tenderness surrounded Sowmya’s heart for the way Mallika was hurting. But it would not compare to the humiliation they would suffer when they have to vacate the house. The Chettiar was not going to be patient forever. If dancing for the cinema would pay the rent, why not? Mallika was so charged with her own demons that she would not see reason.

Suddenly the light bulb above came alive with dim yellow light. The fan creaked overhead.

Satya slapped a hand over his forehead.

“I almost forgot what I came to tell you!” he said. “I have arranged for a dance for the earthquake fund. We will get Gandhiji himself to preside over Sowmya’s performance. Even Doctor M will finally be silenced. Let’s see the pickets then!” He turned to Sowmya. “It is also great exposure for you...”

The earthquake had occurred in Bihar four years ago, in the winter, destroying life and homes. As if that was not enough, floods followed and malaria had become rampant. Gandhi had declared it all as punishment for the practice of untouchability, the tainting of people forever by the menial work they did. He urged every Indian to clean his own latrine.

“Satya, what we know is our dance,” Mallika said with forced patience. “What do we know about making speeches? We have had enough social reform. You seem to think we live in your personal orchards in Mylapore. It’s all right for your Brahmin women to march on the streets, roll bandages, satyagraha for Gandhi, this, that. We work for our living.”

“Well, we can get her into those orchards.” Satya looked at Sowmya. “Simple enough,” he smiled.

Sowmya looked at the odd patterns of russet stain on her palm in the silence that followed.

“How simple? Tell me,” Mallika’s voice was soft but Sowmya heard her fierce breathing next to her.

“Mallika! What I meant was—”

“Akka!” Kitappa said, rising up. “It was a joke, take it easy. Satya, be careful please, these things—”

“Mallika. You have completely misunderstood—”

“Shhh! Everybody calm down, please—” Sowmya touched Mallika’s arm.

Kitappa put out the hurricane lamp. The room smelled of kerosene.

“I’d like to see the studios,” Sowmya said.

Satya looked a little stunned from Mallika’s assault and it did not seem like he heard her. Sowmya watched the single stream of sweat that ran down from his impeccable hairline, a small pulse beat at his temple. He would make her shine like a star, she knew this.

“Some day, when it is convenient,” she said.

Satya stood up. He offered to drive Neelam home and they left together. A second later he appeared back at the door. “I’ll send the car around tomorrow,” he said and left again.

Their voices in conversation could be heard as Satya and Neelam walked out of the compound and up the lane towards the car, the sound diminishing and finally the night became silent again.

“A man of many talents,” Mallika said.

Sowmya exchanged looks with Kitappa. She got down on the floor and kneeled close to Mallika. She took the older woman’s hand in hers, and Mallika did not jerk her hand away this time.

“Look! How nicely the stain has set!” Sowmya stroked Mallika’s open palm.

“You must stop judging him like this,” Kitappa said. “Your anger is misplaced. He’s only trying to help, that’s all he does.”

Mallika looked at her brother. In that heartbeat of time Sowmya saw the shame of overdue rent, the protests and slogans out there in the city and the humiliation of cancellations, all these forces that seized bits and pieces of their lives, recede. In the way the siblings looked at each other, life was once merely ordinary, sweet.

“It’s going to be alright,” Kitappa told his sister, nodding. “The world will not end if Sowmya danced for the cinema.”

Mallika looked down at Sowmya’s hands, picked up her hand, turned it over and examined her palm. “Good. These were excellent leaves.”

Sowmya switched off the lights, locked up the doors, and stood in the still moonlight that lit up the terrace like it was day. She wondered about the studio. She could not begin to imagine what it would be like or how they made movies but she was sure she wanted to be part of it, part of Satya’s dream.

When Sowmya finally climbed the stairs to her bed, Mallika and Kittappa were both snoring, keeping up a steady chorus.

She had brought with her the leftover marudani paste in its leaf pack. She sat down on her mattress and began to shape the paste into small caps on each of her left fingers. Carefully arranging her pillow, without smearing the damp and soft paste, she stretched out. The moon grinned overhead.

The bachelor who sublet one of the rooms in the house next door played his gramophone. The hit song from the film Chakku Bai played:

The song I hear in the wind

Oh how it stokes my dreams!