One Part Woman (8 page)

Before he got married, you could find Kali amidst any group of young men just hanging about town. He was also their leader in some ways. But once he got married, Ponna had tied him down somewhat. When the boys teased him, saying, ‘Once he saw the girl, he got lost in her,’ he quietly walked past them, smiling. But it was true, wasn’t it? Ponna’s body just dragged him into itself and presented him with whatever he needed. It even gave, volitionally, what he did not ask for, what he did not even know existed. And she had remained the same to him until today. The separation this effected from his male companions was now complete.

In summer, for as long as a month before the temple festival began, crowds started teeming into the town square. Beginning late in the evening and going on till midnight, two pariahs would hold forth with their instruments. A temple dance would begin. And as the musicians kept playing the thappu drums, the dance would intensify. Middle-aged men, already well trained in the dance, would go first. Then the novice youth and other boys would join in. Some of the
old ones would suddenly decide to show off their expertise. So they would get up and say, ‘This is how you do it,’ show a few steps, and go back and sit down. They’d yell at the drummers: ‘What are you playing? As if someone is dead!’ And find fault with the dancers: ‘Swing your arms properly!’ The others would murmur, ‘These old ones never shut up,’ and the dancing would continue. Women and children would finish their chores at home and rush to the spot just to see the beauty of the men’s hair flapping around their backs and shoulders, their topknots having come undone in all the movement.

Mastering these temple dances was no small matter. The dancers had to internalize the sounds of the drums and dance accordingly. There were over fifty kinds of rhythms, and there were only a few people who were skilled enough to dance to all of them. Those people always danced in the front, and the others danced behind them. Kali was somewhat adept at this dance. He could even follow the dances he didn’t really know. For him, there was nothing more joyous than being in the crowd.

On one such occasion, Kali finished his work in a hurry, washed himself and ran to the town square. He did not even have patience to focus on his food, gobbling down what was on his plate before rushing out.

Ponna unleashed her sarcasm. ‘What wonder is waiting there for you? Are they waiting for you to inaugurate things? How would this food nourish you if you eat so fast?’ But he let nothing bother him.

Her mother-in-law laughed at this: ‘He used to roam around like a free ass with his friends. Do you think you can tie him to your lap?’ She was delighted that even Ponna could not hold him back from this.

‘How can I dance if I eat so much?’ he replied. ‘Only my belly would go up and down in its fullness.’

There was such delight in dancing in the spacious field in front of the town square! Murugesan from Semmangadu was not very good at dancing. The nuances of the thappu drum simply failed to penetrate his thick head. When everyone took a step in unison, he alone would do something that would make him fall down between their moving feet. Not everyone can dance. And when one comes to terms with this, he can go and sit down with the oldies and watch the others dance. In a way characteristic to spectators, he can also criticize the dancers and pass comments. Failed artistes suddenly become critics. But what do you do about someone who insists on dancing even though he keeps tripping over people’s feet? No amount of teasing and taunting deterred Murugesan. With his clumsiness, he sometimes even made other dancers trip over him. He was well built and was the colour of a tender mango shoot.

‘Looking at his skin colour, I am a little suspicious,’ said Mutthan. ‘Maybe we should check with his mother, just in case.’ Everyone laughed.

‘It should be easy for peasant folk to do this dance,’ said Songaan. ‘If he can’t, it must be some birth defect!’ This taunt was followed by more laughter.

Rasu got up, entwined his legs, imitating Murugesan, and said, ‘This is real dance.’ And more guffaws ensued.

Usually, if the teasing got out of hand, Murugesan would say, ‘I will leave you to your dance,’ and then move away to join another dance party. But on that day, they had teased him more than he could bear. He was fuming inside. Kali, however, did not know that. He joined in the teasing and said, ‘Looks like a doll but moves like a corpse!’ Everyone cheered, ‘Hear! Hear!’

Murugesan lost it. ‘Dey!’ he fumed. ‘Work is not about this. Work is about
this
,’ and he made a lewd gesture, lifting two fingers of his left hand and inserting the index finger of his right hand between them. ‘Tell me, now,
who
looks like a doll and works like a corpse?’

Everyone turned to look at Kali. No one laughed but he shrank with shame. He suddenly felt that there was nothing more painful than being in a crowd.

Something else had happened about a year and a half into Kali and Ponna’s marriage. People had just started asking about a child. According to them, only the man who induced morning sickness in his wife in the very second month of marriage was a real man. When the girl looked unchanged in over a year and a half, it simply meant the husband’s ‘work’ was not up to the mark. And the entire bunch of Kali’s friends had insinuated this several times.

Once, Subramani, who had become a father in the tenth month of his marriage, was in the crowd. When they heard that Munia Nadar had made and filtered a fresh batch of
arrack, they decided to go there. Munia Nadar’s arrack was in great demand. There were people who would be flat out for two days on just half a tumbler of his stuff. When they drank together, one of them said, ‘Oh, this is great stuff! As vital as water.’ And Subramani replied immediately, ‘It is not enough if the water you take in is great, the water you send out should be top-class too.’

Everyone glanced at Kali, even if it was for just a moment. Munia Nadar’s arrack lost its pungency for him that day. He gradually stopped joining this crowd of old friends. He also knew they had nicknamed him ‘the impotent one’.

Although he had no children, Kali was very happy with Ponna. He would also ask her now and then to make sure she was happy with him. Her replies always came as intense kisses, and he found peace in that contentment. If the only way to beat this reputation for impotence was to marry again, what would happen if that failed too? Should he ruin the lives of two women? And could Ponna bear his bringing in another woman? She was in the habit of pulling a long face for two days if she saw him even talking to another woman. If he married again, she wouldn’t stay. To make things worse, what if the second wife did get pregnant? That would be the end for Ponna. She wanted to believe she was the most important person in his life. Sometimes she even suspected he was fonder of his cattle than he was of her. He tried to reason with her. ‘Can this love compare to that?’ he said, and buried his face in her bosom. All his heat cooled down.

The moment the thoughts of a second marriage invaded him, all happiness wilted away. It also meant he would need to learn how to handle two women. When his world was already complete with his cattle, his barn and Ponna, could he handle anything more? Also, if the second woman too could not get pregnant, his reputation as an impotent man would be engraved in stone. Thinking through all these things, he abandoned the idea. Whenever someone brought it up, he closed the topic, saying, ‘It won’t work. Forget it.’ They all attributed his hesitation to his fear of Ponna’s wrath. ‘Well, let them think whatever they want,’ he thought. Only he knew that Ponna was scared that he might, at some point, say yes to the idea.

Uncle Nallupayyan too played a role in Kali’s refusal to marry again. This was his story: when it came to splitting their inheritance, Uncle Nallupayyan’s brothers refused to give him his full share.

‘Why does a bachelor need the same share as we do?’ they all said.

He replied, ‘How can you conclude that I will never get married? I might do it even when I am sixty. I won’t let any dog touch my food. This is my grandfather’s property. Though your father wandered the fields in his underwear, did he add even a handful to it? Tell me!’

The property was divided a year or two after his father’s passing. His brothers didn’t listen to any of his arguments. They brought along some ten people as mediators, all of whom were on their side. And these men reasoned, ‘Why does a single man need so much? Any home is his. Won’t the brothers take care of him?

His mother said, ‘At least till I am alive I do not want him to have to go to anyone even for a drink of water. Just
give us two acres. He and I will live there. After him, it is going to come to you. Isn’t it insulting to tell a young and able man that you will feed him? At a time when the oldies are running after women and getting married, he seems to abhor even the scent of a woman.’

Apparently, Uncle had to control his laughter at his mother’s naiveté. He said, ‘Maybe my mother smelled me for a woman’s scent,’ and laughed finally. When his brothers realized that their mother was not going to drop his case, they decided to allot two acres to him. But Uncle did not agree with this. He was insistent that he should get his fair share. Men from the community settled matters and asked him, ‘Do you agree to this?’ He got up, tightened his loincloth and said, ‘All right. I agree. Just add one more thing. My brothers seem to have decided that they could just give me a torn cot and some loincloth, throw some food at me and snatch away what is rightfully mine. That’s all right. Let it be as they wish. I don’t even want the two acres that my mother has asked for. I will let them have all of it. Now, they are giving me this loincloth, right? If this little brother who is inside the loincloth stays quiet and calm, it will all go well. But he does wake up now and then. He’ll throw a tantrum for some milk. Just find out and let me know if my sisters-in-law will take care of that.’

He asked all of this with not as much as a smile. His sisters-in-law grew pale in the face and ran inside their houses. The people gathered there murmured to one another as they walked away, ‘How can a man talk like this?’

But Uncle called out to them, ‘If you are mediators, you should speak for both parties. How can you walk away?’

There were no disputes after that. His share of the inheritance came to him automatically. And his speech became popular in town. The moment someone said, ‘Little brother,’ the repartee was, ‘What? Do you need milk?’ It became a code language among young men: ‘I’ve been thirsty for milk, da.’ Whenever they saw a loincloth, they were in splits with laughter. They also took to asking Uncle Nallupayyan’s brothers, ‘What did your brother ask for?’ and they were amused at how much it angered them.

Uncle did some farming as long as his mother lived. After that, he would sow the land one year, and let it go fallow the next. He also had a farm boy taking care of odd jobs around the field and tending to the cattle. One day, Uncle Nallupayyan vanished for a week. When he came back, he had a woman in white with him. The next day onwards, she was working in the fields, dressed in his mother’s saris. Uncle, too, worked alongside her happily. The village was overcome with surprise. They said, ‘Look at how homebound this Gounder has become!’

There was no end to the stories of how the two of them would wander about as a couple and make merry. She walked about in new saris and wore lots of flowers in her hair. And he walked along dressed in sparkling white. ‘He’s become responsible,’ everyone thought. But they had a fight one day, and he drove her away. Many people saw her running out
of town one evening, wearing the white sari she had first appeared in.

No one knew what went wrong, what the fight was about. His help, the little boy Vediyan, was a sharp one. He was ten or eleven years old and had a lot of freedom around the house. He even cooked for Uncle. If Uncle heard anyone say, ‘He eats the food prepared by a Chakkili, and he still calls himself a Gounder,’ he would retort, ‘Oh! You find a Chakkili woman fragrant and only a Chakkili boy stinks for you?’

Even though a lot of people tried to make Vediyan speak, they could extract nothing out of him. They even tried bribing him with good arrack. He made it look like he was about to spill something, but he never actually divulged anything. They were frustrated: ‘The Gounder has trained this boy well.’ When Uncle could get him foreign liquor, why would he fall for this arrack?

Muthu asked Uncle one day when they were lounging about in Kali’s barnyard. And it all came out.

‘When I bring a dried-up woman home, shouldn’t she just shut up and sit around? She started saying she wanted a taali around her neck and a child by me! I got her earrings and this and that and kept her like a queen. But apparently all that was not good enough for her. She wanted a taali. At first I thought the desire would go away soon. But she wouldn’t let me touch her without tying a taali round her neck. That’s why I hit her, gave her the sari she came in and chased her away.’

They couldn’t stop laughing that night. Just to egg him
on some more, Kali said, ‘Why, Uncle, couldn’t you have let her go in the coloured sari she was wearing?’

‘The coloured sari was my mother’s. Also, if another woman comes along, I need something to give her, don’t I?’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t deal with marriage and all that stuff. It is enough to come and go as I am. As if it’s not enough to tie a ring around your nose, they want to tie you to a stalk as well.’

Those words penetrated deep into Kali’s mind. He already had a ring around his nose. Should he also tie himself around a stalk now? Since then, whenever someone brought up the topic of a second marriage, Uncle Nallupayyan would appear before his eyes.