One Part Woman (14 page)

It made Ponna anxious when her father started asking Maran about his family. Her fear was that once that ended, Maran might reciprocate. Gradually, it would come to his asking, ‘How many children does your daughter have?’ And when they would hear she had no children yet, they would take pity on her and suggest some medicine or some ritual. ‘I have nothing but humiliation to expect, even from a Chakkili,’ she thought. She did her part to make sure the conversation did not head that way. Thankfully, her father started talking about cultivation instead.

The two children were very beautiful. The one sitting on the father’s lap must have been eight years old. A small kandangi cloth torn from a sari was all she was wearing around her waist. The other one, sitting naked on her mother’s lap, must have only been three. Ponna felt like keeping the baby on her lap. But caste laws forbade her from touching the child. She refrained from even playing with caste children, since she feared some rebuke or comment.

In the month of Purattasi, it was a tradition to offer pongal
at the Perumal temple at the foot of a hill. If one took the shortcut through Kollipalayam at the crack of dawn, one could reach the temple by the time the sun was overhead. Of course, if someone was going like this by bullock cart, you could all go together. Earlier, Kali used to take the initiative to arrange for and even drive the cart. Those were very happy journeys. He would take as many people as the cart could hold. If they left very early, they would be at the foot of the hill by the time it was bright and sunny. The hill was basically a bare rock that resembled a giant basket that had been turned upside down. The region surrounding the hill was all forest. On the Saturdays of the Purattasi month, crowds from nearby flocked to the temple. You could see stoves busy preparing pongal for the offering. The sambar made with green gram dal, pumpkin and ladies’ fingers—all specially made for this offering for Vishnu—were delicious. Everyone followed the same recipe.

On the mud roads leading to that hill, one could never spot any sign of a human dwelling. It was all green and lush vegetation. Elevated fields cultivating groundnuts dotted the edges of the roads and filled everyone with joy. And the plants that yielded toor dal stood with their leaves spread out like the unfurled tails of proud peacocks. It was soothing to the heart just to drive on this road. Ponna had promised three head shaves and three pongal offerings to this deity. When would she get to complete that?

Once during their trip there, Kali’s cart was so crowded that they were practically elbowing each other for space.
Accompanying them from Thundukkaadu were Kannaaya and her two children. Her son, who was three or four years old, was dark and snot constantly dribbled from his nose. The girl was an infant; she hadn’t even started to crawl. Kannaaya was struggling to take care of the children while also holding on to all the things she was carrying for the temple offering. Her husband was walking behind the vehicle, since there was absolutely no space for him in it. Ponna took the infant from Kannaaya and kept it on her lap, making sure the sun didn’t bother the baby. The child was in utter delight at the vehicle’s bouncing up and down on the road, and it laughed whenever Ponna made a ‘kooooo’ sound twirling her tongue around.

Kannaaya’s wedding had happened only a year after Ponna’s, but she already had two children one after the other. Whenever Ponna saw someone like that, she shrank from within. Despite her best efforts to cheer up, she would be sad the whole day. There were no words to describe the pride and joy glowing on the faces of women who managed to have a child within a year of their marriage. They also overdid it in front of Ponna. The baby, who was laughing until then, suddenly grunted. Ponna saw that the baby had defecated, wetting the little white cloth tied around her waist.

The stench was overpowering. What had Kannaaya eaten before feeding the child? Ponna’s sari too was wet with the child’s faeces. ‘Why does it stink so badly? Did you eat anything that you were not supposed to during the festival weeks?’ Ponna asked as she handed over the baby to Kannaaya. She could not bear the stench and the dampness
on her sari. Everyone in the cart felt assailed by it and were trying to manage it by covering and twitching their noses. Kali stopped the cart at a well by the side of the road. Ponna ran to the well, took some water from the large water holder next to it and cleaned herself. Kannaaya cleaned the child’s legs and feet and also rinsed the cloth it was wearing.

Why carry the baby when she was travelling so far? Was the god going to be mad if she decided to come the next year instead? All right, if she still chose to go, shouldn’t she know what to feed the child before travel? Ponna was really annoyed. It felt like the stench from her sari had not fully gone.

‘This is making me retch. Kannaaya, don’t you think you should feed the infant something she can digest?’ she said.

And Kannaaya retorted, ‘Shit will stink. Is it only my baby’s shit that stinks? Does yours smell wonderful? You’d know if you’d had and raised a child of your own. You keep saying it stinks, as if I don’t know it!’

The worst thing was not Kannaaya’s remark that Ponna didn’t know what it took to raise a child. It was what Kannaaya muttered under her breath after that, which everyone heard anyway: ‘This childless woman smells a child’s ass and squirms at the sight of a child’s shit. How does she expect to be blessed with a child?’

Ponna broke into sobs. Kali did not know what to do. He just made a general remark: ‘Can’t you keep quiet? These women! They can never keep their tongues under control.’ But the argument had rippled out among the other passengers by then, and they took sides.

‘Once you have a child, you will have things like shit to deal with. You can’t be squeamish about that.’

‘Well, you promptly lifted the child and gave it to its mother. Whom can she hand it over to in turn? Nobody. She has to do it herself, doesn’t she?’

It turned out that Ponna was more upset with the words of those who claimed to speak in support of her than those who took Kannaaya’s side.

‘Who knows what curse it is that has kept her childless and suffering? How can you speak to her like that?’

‘Had she handled a child before, she would have done better. She didn’t know. That doesn’t mean you call her barren.’

‘Don’t cry, Ponna. This time next year Perumalsami would have given you a child.’

Until they reached the temple, this was their only topic of conversation. Ponna was mad at Kali. Not only had he given Kannaaya a ride in the cart, he had also included Ponna in his admonition.

‘Do I have a problem controlling my tongue? What about what the other woman said?’ Ponna said. She had long since lost interest in the deity, in climbing the hill and in making pongal. But she did it anyway just for the sake of it. Thankfully, when they got ready to leave, Kannaaya did not join them. Her husband informed them that they were going to stay on longer. They might have chosen a different cart to return by. On the way back, everyone in Ponna’s cart scolded the absent Kannaaya: she talked back, she was arrogant, she was haughty—all sorts of words rolled around.
But Ponna knew that they felt obliged to speak against Kannaaya because they were in Ponna’s vehicle. When they would meet Kannaaya, they would talk ill of Ponna.

She did not speak to Kali for a month after this event. ‘If I had simply taken your side in front of everyone,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t they have said I was merely taking my wife’s side? That’s why I made a general remark. She is an uncouth woman. Why are you taking her words so seriously?’ But still she did not speak to him. She felt isolated from everyone and confined herself to the house. She also took to sleeping at odd hours. Sometimes she cooked, at other times she forgot to. She didn’t go anywhere near the field or the barnyard. Her face looked swollen most of the time, her hair dishevelled. Normally, she wouldn’t even allow him to leave his hair untied. She would also wash his hair for him. But now she did nothing. When he came home, she laid food on his plate. When she forgot to make any food at all, Kali’s mother brought his food. Now he mostly ate his mother’s food. It also became very difficult to make her eat.

Kali and his mother were quite alarmed seeing her lie around with no sense of day or night. They feared she might be possessed by some evil spirit. They even thought of sending for her parents. When Kali came home at midnight and knocked on the door, it took her a long time to unlock it. She looked demented. Her arms, which once used to embrace him with desire, now lay limp and dead. Kali was frustrated. But just when he was at a loss to figure out what to do, something happened that revived her.

A goat in the barn was in the throes of a difficult birthing. Kali ran to Ponna, imploring her, ‘You used to take such loving care of it, calling it your goat, remember? You used to say, “It doesn’t matter that I don’t have children. My goats and cows will always yield abundantly.” Now will you consider going to the barn and taking care of the goat in its suffering and give it some strength? Or are you going to let it die? It is a struggle of two lives now. Kattu Karuppanarayya! Show us a good way. Karia Kali! Be on my side, Mother!’

The moment she heard that, she rose as if she had just regained consciousness and ran to the barn. Even after the kid had been force-delivered, the goat’s legs were shaking. For the next ten days, until it was able to get up on its own feet and look at its young one, Ponna stayed in the barnyard. She washed the goat with warm water twice a day. She ground the pulp of aloe vera and applied it on the goat’s wounds from the delivery. She fed it steamed millets. It was her love for this mother-goat that revived her. The next year, when he brought up the subject of going to the Perumal temple, she retorted, ‘Why? So that you can bring some woman along to humiliate me?’ and, instead, walked all the way to the temple. She also stopped lifting and holding anyone’s children. Their barnyard always had little calves and kids for her to play with.

Ponna loved the eyes of the little child who, sitting on her mother’s lap, kept looking at Ponna. The child smiled through her eyes. In her mind, Ponna lifted the child and kissed her. Maran drove the cart faster than her father did. He was also able to overtake some of the other vehicles with great ease. For all this, he didn’t land the whip on the bullocks even once. All he did was touch them on their flanks with the handle of the whip. He seemed to be adept at the language of the animals, and since he was busy with the driving, his conversation with her father did not continue. It was a relief to her.

As they neared Tiruchengode, she could see the hill at a distance through the gaps in the tamarind trees en route. Atop the hill, like a hand folded in prayer, was the barren rock. The hill’s peak was resplendent in the receding light of the day.

Ponna prayed: ‘If you do not show me a way this time, the only option I have is to fall from that hilltop … I am coming today to see the god. I might fail to recognize you. You have to help me. You have to give me a child. I do not
know in what form you will come today, where you will stand, what you will say, and how you will approach me. Kali’s hands are like large, rugged sieves. When they touch my cheek, my love pours forth despite the roughness of their touch. How will your touch be? How will you enter my body? I know nothing, but I am coming now, trusting you … My husband’s permission to this is not whole-hearted. He has said yes because my brother asked for it. Just like you, he wants to keep me in his body. He would never want to tear me apart from his body and give me to someone else. Despite all that, I am coming to you now. Let him hold his head high among people. Let him not stay confined to the barnyard, let the spring be back in his gait. May his embrace regain the love it used to have. You have to help us be like others, be accepted by everyone. Sengottaya, my Father … Pavatha, my Mother …’

Her mind was immersed in prayers.

She felt as though a new power was entering her. She felt dizzy, so she lay on her mother’s lap. Though she could not shrink herself and lie like a baby, it was comforting to lie with her head in her mother’s lap. She even forgot that this was the same mother who had been annoying her the whole morning. After a long time, she felt her mother’s gentle hands on her back. Her mother’s hand had sacred threads wrapped around the wrist, and she relished this maternal touch. Her mother’s eyes had teared up thinking about something. It seemed that a mother needed the joy of having a child, and the child that of having a mother.

Uncle Nallupayyan used to say, ‘Why do you think we have and raise children? For them to grow up well? No. We do it because we seem to need it for ourselves. That is why we have children and raise them. And then in old age we complain that those children are not taking care of us. This is all plain madness …’

Let him be right. We don’t expect our children to take care of us when we are old. It is enough if we can have a social life because of them. Now we are forced to act like untouchables, fearing if our sight or touch is inauspicious. All we want is to show these people who ostracize us that we too are people just like them.

Her mind was filled with various confusing dreams. There was one in which she walked a long distance with a child across her shoulder. It occurred to her that she could never see the child’s face. Was it even her child? From the way she walked, it looked like she had stolen the baby from somewhere. Was that true? Why was Kali never part of this particular vision? Where had he gone? Did he abandon her thinking that she didn’t need him when she had a child? With images and memories mingling with one another, she lay on her mother’s lap, tossed between sleep and wakefulness.

There was a lot of noise. Above the din of carts pulling over, the voices of people could be heard. They sounded unintelligible, like the cawing of crows at dawn. Maran drove the cart into the market, which seemed to be in full swing already. Ponna’s mother woke her up only after Maran pulled over at a spot wide enough for their cart. It took her
a while to get her bearings. She couldn’t remember how long she had slept in her mother’s lap. She was fully awake only after a little while. The sun was down, and the shadow of twilight spread over everything. She covered her bosom properly, wiped her face with the end of her sari and, holding her mother’s hand, got off the cart. She saw that the market was filled with people and cattle. She was amazed. Had the heavens landed here? She hadn’t seen this much of a crowd even on the days when people came to see the chariot. If there were already so many people here, how many more must be coming through the roads leading up to here from all four directions! Ponna looked at everything with a great sense of wonder.

‘Samee,’ Maran said with great reverence, ‘may you be blessed. But for your help, we couldn’t have made it all the way with these children. It is Pavatha herself who showed you to us at the right time. She has somehow brought us here. Please let me know if you need any work done. When there is no work at my landlord’s farm, I will work for you. It is people like you that I should serve.’

His wife bent low in obeisance and said, ‘We will take leave.’ Ponna’s mother undid a knot at the end of her sari, took out an anna and gave it to Maran’s wife, who received it in her pallu. They walked backwards for a few steps before walking away.

While Maran and his wife were taking their leave, their little child had been smiling at Ponna. It was a good omen. Ponna had wanted to affectionately pinch the child’s cheek.
Until the family vanished into the crowds, she kept looking at the child. Please bless me with such a charming child, my lord, she prayed.

Her father untied the bullocks from their harness. Bringing them around, tied to the front of the harness, he threw some fodder for them to gorge on. As darkness settled in, fire torches started glowing here and there in the market. Human faces became wandering figures of smoke. Her mother opened the food package. To Ponna, everything appeared foggy. She perceived everything as images from a dream that was not even hers.