Tamarind Mem (21 page)

“What are you doing?” calls Amma in a sharp voice. “Are you going to school or for a wedding party?”

One morning the two loafers on our street, famous for their never-ending uselessness, those rascals who loiter near the corner shop, whistle at me.

“Haiyah,
my heart!” One of them thumps his chest. “Look at her walk,
chhammak-chhammak!
Ah! I will die with the ecstasy of watching her.”

My middle sister tells Amma and she changes my hairstyle.

“Think you are a film star!” she mutters. I have to wake up a half hour before everybody else so that she can scrape a part in the centre of my scalp, drag the two
halves into stern braids and fold the braids again in half before binding each hideous bunch of hair with black ribbon. She clamps her teeth on the end of a ribbon and jerks my head back as she knots the ribbon tight.

“You’re hurting me!” I squeal. The flowers hang like a bridge from one braid to the other across the back of my head. The skin on my forehead is taut and uneasy my eyebrows raised as if surprised.

My mother tells Appa, “She is as old as that coconut tree and the tree is already full of fruit.”

This
raaga
she repeats with slight variations.

“At her age I already had a child at my breast.”

“At her age I would not have dared to behave the way she does.”

“Marriage is a crop that will last a thousand years.”

Yet and yet, with all those years of wifedom behind her, she cannot, or will not, answer my question.

If she is unhappy why does she push me, her daughter, into the same jungle of sorrow? Why can’t she allow me a chance to create my own shade instead of sheltering under somebody else’s? Amma shuts her carved betel-nut tin, the tiny
choona
box stained pinkish-white with chalk, and finally looks at me.

“If I had remained at my parents’ house, would I have been any happier? That is what I wonder when I look at myself in the mirror and see this.” She jerks a hand at her body and then extends it for me to help her off the ground. “So, my girl, the next time you think we are ill-treating you, go take a look at some beggar near the Krishna temple gates and feel happy with your lot.”

My mother has an argument for everything; she could have been a lawyer.

But all her arguments cannot keep my brother Gopal from going to England for higher studies. He is the first person in our family to cross the seas, and she is filled with superstitious dread. For once she does not agree with Appa, who feels that so long as the boy does not touch meat or drink alcohol he will be fine. Amma sits on his bed, occasionally tucking an item of clothing into the trunk, snapping at the rest of us for no reason at all. “What for you want to go to another country? What is wrong with this one? Do you have to go there to become a big-shot engineer?” she demands, as sulky as a child.

Gopal tosses a shirt at Chinna, our widowed relative. He wants to see the world. “Maybe you should all come with me, even Chinna, leave this narrow old house.”

“Why should I want to go anywhere?” Chinna snaps the shirt in the air, smoothes it against her stomach and flips it deftly into a neat envelope of fabric. Nobody can fold clothes the way she does; it isn’t even necessary to give them to the iron-man, who charges ten paise per shirt.

“Come on, Chinna! This house isn’t the world, you know,” teases Gopal. “Come with me, we’ll visit the Queen of England.”

“If the Queen wants to see me, she can come here to this house,” declares Chinna. “This is
my
world.”

“What I say is, get the boy married,” suggests Amma. “A wife will keep him from bad habits and foreign girls.”

“What
are
you thinking of?” My Grandfather Rayaru taps his cane on the floor, demanding attention. “Enough nonsense it is sending the boy to a foreign land, now you want to get him married before his older sister!” He points his cane at me. “Didn’t I tell you to stop her studying? Get her a boy? Now see how it affects the whole family!”

Amma wants the family to make a trip to the Thirupathi temple to have Gopal’s hair shaved off, for it is important to propitiate the gods before he leaves the country. “Just the family,” she says. “It is cheaper than having a function at home.”

But Appa will have none of it. “Are you saying I cannot afford it?” he demands. “We will have the ceremony at home for Gopal. I am still capable of spending for my son.”

“Why not for us daughters, hanh?” I demand. “It’s okay for you to spend money on your precious son. Just to shave his head in front of a big audience, why not go to a barber shop?”

“Who are you to decide what your father does with his money?” asks my mother, giving my hair a sharp tug.

“He makes such a big fuss about spending money for my college books, but he can waste it on rubbish like this.”

“Mind your tongue Miss Too-smart,” snaps Amma, this time slapping the side of my head. My mother’s hands do most of her talking for her. They fly through the air hard and sure, gesticulating, ordering, slapping, shouting, the symbols of her authority over us.

Old Putti, my grandmother, pats her cheeks rapidly. “Yo-yo-yo, what does that chit of a girl think of herself? Learns a little bit of English and see what happens, becomes as bold as a white woman!” She is a fine one to talk, I think. My grandmother has a vocabulary of words more foul than those used by a beggar denied alms. She follows none of the rules of womanly behaviour, so why should she set any for me?

Aunt Raji adds a little salt to the coals. “I believe there are lots of wild boys in her
callij.
God knows what her
father is thinking of, sending an unmarried daughter to a place full of grown men.”

“One of those wild boys is your son, Raji Atthey,” I say sharply. “And believe me, if I told you the things he does, your hair would turn white.”

Raji Atthey slaps her forehead and scowls, wagging her hand accusingly. “Too much of freedom, too cheeky, no shame! She is going to bring her parents grief, listen to me. It is time she had a husband, no doubt about it.”

Actually, if not for Chinna, I might have married the first boy who had all his wits and limbs about him. That is Amma’s favourite phrase. Whenever one of our relatives comes home with a prospective groom, she says, “First tell me does he have all his wits and all his limbs, then tell me his
kula-gothra.
What is the use of belonging to a high caste, being a descendant of the most illustrious sage, if the fellow himself is deficient in some way?”

My father was all for finding a boy for me when I turned sixteen. “She has finished high school, what use is any more English-Hindi-Arithmetic going to be for her? Now what she needs to learn is how to cook a good meal and make pickles for the rainy season,” he says when I come home with my high school diploma. He barely glances at the parchment with its curly black lettering; only my brothers’ diplomas are worthy of his attention. By that time Chinna has been with us long enough to ladle out advice with her strongly spiced
saaru
and curries and get away with it. She tells Appa that he is a clever bank manager but a stupid father.

“Look at me!” she points to her widow’s garb, her bald head. “God forbid that such a fate should visit this dear child, jewel of my eye, but suppose something happens to
her husband, what will she do without an education? If she has a college paper in her hands, you wouldn’t have to worry. It will get her a good clever boy—see what a smart fellow Mangala Rao got for his B.A. daughter!”

Appa just laughs. “Our family adviser telling us what to do. So much she knows about life!” But a week later he picks up admission forms for Sriram College.

That does not stop my mother from sending out my horoscope to all our relatives—to Delhi Aunt, cousins in Calcutta, a brother in Indore, first cousins, second cousins, aunts twice removed.

“Find a groom for our oldest girl,” she commands. “She is tall for a girl, wheat colour skin, almost seventeen. A well-educated boy would be preferable.”

She takes me to Guhan, who has the only photography studio in Mandya. We go there every year to have a picture taken of the family. It is good to keep a record of the children. Who knows when death will arrive in the garb of sickness and carry one of us away? Unless you have the money to spend on a trip to William’s Photo Palace in Bangalore, Guhan has to do. As he is also related to us by marriage, it would be a gross insult to him if we went elsewhere. My mother will not let me go to Guhan’s studio alone. If you allow him to adjust your sari, he runs his hand caressingly over your breasts and shoulders, strokes your neck as he arranges your hair, and, according to some reports, kneads your waist, all the time murmuring, “Stomach in, stomach in, my dear, we don’t want you slouching in your photo. Boys like brides who look upright and smart.”

“Tchu-tchu-tchu,” clucks Guhan the lecher as he bustles around, arranging a few potted palms behind me.
“Last time missy was not looking pretty enough, eh? No boys were hooked, eh?” He dives beneath the black cloth draped over his camera. “This time, so beautiful I will make her, there will be a line as long as the Godavari River outside her gates. Now you want mountain background or park background?”

Guhan comes to our house carrying the photographs in a large green folder along with the negatives. Amma insists on the negatives.

“God knows what the dirty fellow will do with the girl’s photo!” She drops a circle of dough into the sizzling oil, quickly rolling out another one while the first
puri
puffs golden brown. “I hear he attaches bodies to faces and whatnot, why take a risk with our child?”

Whenever Guhan visits us, he arrives in time for lunch or dinner, and talks right through the meal.

“How you like my haircut?” he asks, scattering rice particles across the table, his mouth flapping wet as he slurps his food. “New parlour I found in Bangalore, near Majestic Circle, haircut and massage parlour.” He winks at Appa and grins. “Ohhh, what a massage, splendid-splendid, you should take a holiday from this family of yours and come with me, Sir! The massage, nono the masseurs, will make you ten years younger, guaranteed!”

Appa sits in silence, a stiff smile on his face, nodding now and again. “Unh-hunh, perhaps you can tell us all this another time.”

Guhan licks food dribbling down his hand, his tongue a pink reptile darting against the large palm, lapping up liquid in quick strokes. He belches resoundingly, pats his belly and giggles. “May Lord Rama be praised, my belly is raised, five inches above the table!”

After he leaves, Amma fights with my father. “Are you listening?” She never addresses my father by name. “Why does that fool have to come to our house? Don’t you have any kind of feeling for us, inviting him and allowing him to talk like that in front of the children?” She whips around the room picking up the dirty plates, slamming them together, rattling spoons to display her irritation. She knows that Appa cannot stand the clatter of steel against steel.

At first we get offers for my hand from parents of boys in Mysore and Chennapatna. They write long letters extolling the virtues of their sons, pointing out the kind of girl demanded by their horoscopes. Raghotthamachar, our priest, charges five rupees for each horoscope compared with mine and discarded.

“This one wants an oldest daughter whose father is dead,” he comments, flicking a hand at one horoscope, his long, thin face crumpled in a frown as he squints at the birth charts and star positions. “And that one is Agasthya
gothra,
same ancestral family. He is like a brother, all wrong that will be.”

“The fellow is making a fortune thanks to the fact that our daughter makes a fuss about every fellow willing to marry her,” Amma complains. She thinks my father is far too indulgent with me. Easy for him! After all he spends only a quarter of the day at home. What would he know of her anxieties?

“Please Appa,” I beg my father after each new letter arrives, “wait till I have finished college.”

Amma grumbles a lot about these delays. “Why are you allowing her such a long rope? Don’t forget, the other
girls’ futures depend on this one. We could have had a good match with that toy-maker’s son in Channapatna.”

“Oh, wonderful! Then we would get a cheap rate on toys for all our grandchildren,” I tease my mother and get a sour look in return.

“Acting too smart, that’s what, too-too smart,” she snaps. “Thinks college-going makes her very great. All that has happened is that we have an eighteen-year-old dead-weight sitting in the house holding up a line of sisters and brothers.”

“People think she is too clever for their sons,” remarks Appa’s sister Vani Atthey with malicious satisfaction. She has to poke her nose into all our affairs, she believes it is her duty to do so. “They say it is not good to have a wife who knows too much. Bad for her husband’s pride.”

“We don’t really care what people think, Vani,” says my mother, who bristles at any implied criticism of her children, especially from an interfering sister-in-law.

“You should have stopped when she finished high school and there were still good offers for her. Why, my own brother-in-law was keen. What’s wrong with him, I ask you? But no, your daughter thinks she is the goddess of learning herself for all the college-vollege she is doing. What for is she doing a B. Sc. now, hanh? Where you will find an equally qualified groom? When you give a girl away, choose a slightly higher family, castewiseclasswise. When you bring a girl home for your son, pick one slightly inferior to you—that’s what I say.”