Tamarind Mem (22 page)

Amma snaps her fingers rudely in Vani’s face. “There, that much I care for what you have to say!”

Vani also airs her opinions to my Grandfather Rayaru. With his thick, carefully combed white moustache, tall
lean body and the gold-and-red
peta
that hides his snowy hair, Rayaru struts from one relative’s house to another, dispensing advice and comment.

“Ho, so this is the girl who is creating trouble for the family.” He pats my head and accepts a glass of mango
panaka
from Chinna. “What is this I hear about attaching all kinds of degrees to your sari
pallav
and not one marriage degree?”

“With all those degrees I don’t need a marriage degree.”

“Ohoho! Still have a strong tongue I see?” Rayaru frowns at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “Is this what they teach you in your college? To argue with your elders?”

“Tell her, Rayaru, tell her!” Amma’s reputation for being a strict mother is at stake. It is immodest of me to be sitting in on a discussion about my own marriage. And I have actually dared to be insolent to my grandfather.

“Put some sense into this stupid girl’s head,” continues Amma. “And what a big head it has become! Look at the way she talks. Tomorrow she will get married and speak to her husband in this shameless way and he will kick her into the gutter!”

“Maybe we did a wrong thing sending her to college,” says Rayaru.

“So that I can end up like all the other women in this family?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I know that I am in trouble.

“Madam, will you please tell me what is wrong with the ‘other women’ in the family?” When he uses formal words like “madam,” he is really angry. But I can’t seem to stop saying what I think. This is a discussion about
my
life.

“Saroja!” My mother jerks her head towards the door. “I think you can leave the room now. Tell your father that Rayaru is here and would like to talk to him.”

“No, I want to know what is wrong with the women in our house,” insists Rayaru, tapping his stick on the stone floor. “She can leave after she tells me.”

“All right, I’ll tell you.” I toss my braid off my shoulder. “They are like cows. All they do is have children and gossip. The only person who has any guts is Putti Ajji, and I don’t need to tell you why.”

The room goes still, and I know that I have thrown any chance of an appeal to study for a doctor’s degree far out of the window. Putti Ajji is Rayaru’s wife, and she is the only woman in our family who has dared to show a spark of rebellion. For more than twenty years, ever since Rayaru found himself a lower-caste mistress, Putti Ajji has charged him a rupee for every meal he eats at her house.

Rayaru reminds me of the foolish old man who had two wives. The younger wife spent all afternoon pulling out white hairs from her husband’s head.

“My beloved,” she said, pulling out each hair,
kichik.
“When I have removed all your white hair, you will look as young as me.”

Every night, the older wife pulled out her husband’s black hair,
kichik-kichik.

“My darling,” she said, “when I am done, you will look as dignified as me.”

When his two wives were finished, the old man had lost every single hair on his head.

Many years later, after her story has festered in my head, I ask Putti Ajji if she ever minded being the neglected wife.

“Come here.” Putti pulls me into her room, drags her green tin trunk from under the bed. “I’ll show you something.” She selects a key from the big bunch that always jangles at her creased waist and opens the trunk. Inside are bags of rupee coins. From heavy silver to the newest stainless-steel ones, a fortune in coins. “Your grandfather is a hypocrite.” Putti strokes the faded silk bags. “He didn’t mind sharing the other one’s bed, but he wouldn’t eat from her low-caste kitchen. I was the fool who had to suffer the pain of mothering his children, I was the one he came back to for food.” My grandmother is silent for a moment and then she chuckles maliciously. “But now the old whore is deaf and alone, and your grandfather lives on my charity.”

I am certain that the whole town knows about this strange understanding between my grandparents. But by referring to it in Rayaru’s presence, I have done the unpardonable—offended his dignity. Now even Amma will not be able to talk him out of his decision to get me married.

“Bhabhi-ji,”
says Latha admiringly. “How you could dare to talk to your elders like that?
Baap-re!
I would have been so scared.”

Hameeda and Sohaila nod agreement.

“My father would have beaten me black and blue if I opened my mouth,” says Hameeda.

“But you are a teacher, at least you were allowed to work,” I say.

“That is because there were no sons to bring money into the house,” says Hameeda cynically. “Someone had to earn it!”

I stand up, stretch my cramping back and peer into the tiny mirror. My face is dusky with soot from the engine, my eyes
rimmed as if with kohl, even my nostrils have a fine, powdery lining of coal-dust. I go swaying down the corridor to the urine-splashed toilet, grabbing at window bars as the train takes a curve and catches me off balance.

Sohaila’s voice follows me. “Come back quick-quick Aunty-ji, we are waiting to hear your story!”

My future husband writes to my father from Waltair, where he is posted for a few months. In his tiny, spidery script, he informs Appa that he does not have a horoscope to send us and anyway, horoscopes are the rubbishy imaginings of money-minded priests.

“But we believe in horoscopes,” writes my father, equally adamant in his convictions. “Kindly send us your precise date and time of birth and we will ask our priest to cast your
jataka
.”

“I don’t know exactly which day and hour I was born. It was in a village where no one had watches,” comes the eventual reply.

Does the fellow have a warped sense of humour or could this be the truth? My father isn’t sure.

Amma is beginning to have misgivings. “What kind of irreverent fellow is this? It is true we want our girl married, but surely not to any crackpot who walks through our door.” Suppose the crackpot decides to send me back home; the shame of it all! These things have been known to happen. Uncle Mohan’s youngest was married to a foreign-educated lawyer and what happened? He sent her back to her father because she couldn’t read any books.

“Educate her first,” he commanded. “I have no use for a wife who cannot make conversation with me.”

Uncle Mohan was so angry. “Is a wife for talking to? Or is she for bed and breakfast? If that fool wants a Goddess Saraswati for a wife, he can spend on her education himself. We are not responsible any more!”

Amma is doubtful about this strange man who cares nothing for horoscopes, but my father does not want to let the match slip away.

“Rubbish, he is a modern boy, nothing wrong with him. Is it his fault if his parents did not record his hour of birth?”

“True,” says my mother doubtfully.

“If we let this one go, we might as well clap our hands, hold our heads and resign ourselves to a house full of spinster daughters!”

My father hurries to the priest, Raghotthamachar, and lays out the matter before him. The priest plays a role in every major decision taken by my family. Should this child’s name begin with an “A” or an “R”? What is a good time to buy a house? Should the windows of the new house face north or south? Then if things go wrong, no one can blame my father or the priest. Appa can shrug and say, “We tried our best, but the stars are unpredictable. Who knows which way they move?” And Raghotthamachar will roll his eyes piously and nod, his little knot of hair bouncing briskly, “Yes, Lord Vishnu throws the dice in Heaven and we are only the pawns in his mighty game.”

Now, uncertain about this proposal sent by my future husband and eager to see me, a burden at twenty-three, married, Appa goes to Raghotthamachar.

“Why you want to go after this fatherless-motherless person when there are hundreds of better boys available?” asks the priest.

“Never mind all that,” says my father. “What I want to know is can anything be done about a horoscope?”

“Does he have any responsibilities? Like unmarried sisters, idiot brothers?”

“Two sisters. Only one of them is married,” says my father uneasily. That detail has been bothering him as well. It is better to give your daughter to a house that has no unmarried girls. But I am too tall, too educated. So perhaps it is all right to compromise.

“Looks like you have found a gem so rare, his caste, his ancestry, nothing matters, eh?” murmurs the priest. “Now let us see, do you at least know which month the boy was born?”

Raghotthamachar makes up his horoscope on the basis of an approximate date of birth. “Forty-forty match!” he exclaims to my mother, caressing the horoscopes smudged with turmeric around the edges. His matches mine point to point. “The boy was born under a mighty constellation. His star is so powerful it pushes away all the faults in your daughter’s. It is a sheltering star, not to worry.” Hunched over a sputtering sandalwood fire, his bare chest shining with sweat, he bribes heavenly beings with puffed rice and
ghee.
He waves his pudgy hands and creates an entire galaxy of stars to match with mine.

Amma is still doubtful. “He has too many sisters. With responsibilities like that, will he be able to look after my daughter?”

“Look,” says the priest, holding up a pair of imaginary scales. “On this side education, looks, job, on that side big family. Are they going to live together? No. Maybe a few rupees every month will have to be sent; after all, the boy is the oldest son and has a duty to his family. And most
important of all, the horoscope, where will you find such a beautiful horoscope?”

The
pujari
is so ecstatic over the compatibility that he has already told half the town.

“Invite the boy, let us have a viewing ceremony. I will pick a good date for you,” he tells my father. Appa hesitates. He had not expected a ceremony, just a quiet get-together with the boy. “I will select a date at no extra charge,” offers Raghotthamachar magnanimously, already planning to make up for that loss at the wedding, by asking for a silk
dhothi
with two lines of gold instead of one, perhaps. Naturally all our relatives arrive to view this auspicious creature with the marvellous horoscope. After all, if for some witless reason my family refuses this prince among grooms, there are other girls in our family in line for marriage.

This is how I like to imagine it all happened. The priest, lusting after a silk cloth, ten rupees, a bag of rice and a bottle
of ghee
—which is what my father paid him—fiddled with the positions of birth stars and forced our horoscopes to agree.

When I tell my mother this, she shrugs, irritated. “You are a disgruntled soul. From the moment you were born you could never be happy with what you had. You wanted everybody else’s share as well.”

“Not another husband,” I retort, hurt by her lack of concern. “One is bad enough.”

“I see the prospect of marriage hasn’t smoothed that knife in your mouth. Is this how you will talk to your husband?” Amma never lets me forget that my tongue has got me into trouble more than once. There is a time for words and then another when it is better to keep quiet,
she says, to sit and listen, to watch and wait. My mother has mastered the art of dropping her words into the right slots, and look how peaceful her life is! “Saroja, Saroja, why do you have to cause trouble all the time?” she continues. “Don’t forget, you are a woman now, with a life of your own, and you will have to clean up the messes you create. I will not, and neither will your father.”

My first meeting with the man I am to marry is almost like looking at a photograph. I learn nothing about him. And that sense of being in the presence of a puzzle does not diminish all the years I spend with him. He should have been a hermit, so distant is he from the world we live in. But of course I don’t know all that when we first meet.