Tell A Thousand Lies (4 page)

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School over for the day, I settled on the tyre swing in our courtyard, watching Malli, Ammamma and Lakshmi
garu
prepare the tomato for pickling.

Using a long wooden spoon, Malli turned over the sun dried tomato marinating in sesame seed oil. “Does this need more mustard powder? A little more asafoetida and turmeric, perhaps?”

Lakshmi
garu
put some in her mouth and pursed her lips. “I think too much salt is the problem. Add some more chilli powder to balance it.”

Ammamma made the addition and mixed it well. “Needs another day in the sun.”

Lakshmi
garu
nodded.

Dusk was approaching, so I helped Malli lug the fragile ceramic jars of pickle inside. We’d bring out the jars next morning, and open them to the sun again.

The courtyard gate rattled. The knock, this late in the evening, was as unexpected as road repairs in a non-election year.

Ammamma jerked her head up, startled.

Lata hurried forward, an expectant look on her face.

Lakshmi
garu
and Ammamma wiped their hands on their saris and got to their feet.

Malli started to sweep the courtyard.

It was the school Headmaster. When he’d been greeted and seated, Headmaster
garu
said, “Your Lata is extremely bright. I think she should study to be a doctor.”

There was stunned silence.

Lakshmi
garu
erupted into a cackle so maniacal, the birds lined up on the top of the cowshed almost tripped over themselves in their anxiety to get away.

I gave a startled laugh, never having thought Lata’s obsession more than a joke.

Malli clapped a hand over her mouth.

Headmaster
garu
’s eyes darted from Lakshmi
garu
to Ammamma, but my grandmother was of no help; she was quivering like a woman in direct contact with an exposed electrical wire. Soon the two women were clutching at their sides, gasping from laughing. “This is the best laugh I’ve had in years,” Ammamma said, when she’d regained some control.

Headmaster
garu
’s lips tightened.

Ammamma wiped away her tears with the edge of her sari. Sniffing, she said, "What is a girl to do with all that education – a doctor, no less?”

“Use it to wash her children's backsides?" Lakshmi
garu
suggested, slapping her thigh like
Duryodhana
from the
Mahabharata
, laughter rumbling up her chest.

That set Ammamma off again.

Headmaster
garu
looked at the women, both of them rocking with laughter. He turned to Lata, sorrow on his face. He stalked out.

“But Ammamma –” Lata protested.

“Hush, Child,” Ammamma said. “You think that pompous fool knows better than me what’s good for you? Look at Pullamma, is she complaining?”

I shook my head vigorously. Not me. No reason to complain.

“And Malli, is she aching for education?”

Malli started to sweep energetically.

Ammamma sniffed, wiping away tears of mirth. "Him and his stupid notions. If girls study too much, they will get funny ideas in their heads. They won't do as they are told in their in-laws' home. Then what will become of our family honour, I ask you? How will we hold our heads high?"

No one but me noted the distress on Lata’s face.

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The news of Headmaster
garu
’s visit spread. The villagers shook their heads over Ammamma’s foolishness. Letting a girl study all the way up to 12
^th
. What was she thinking? What girl ever needed to read more than an occasional letter from her husband? And if that weren’t bad enough, the foolish woman had sent Chinni and me to keep Lata company, and let me write – and pass – the exams, too. At least Chinni’s mother, though a widow herself, had the good sense not to permit any exam-taking nonsense after 7
^th
class.

Were the villagers fools to stop this school-going foolishness for their girls before it was too late? Were they brainless to marry their daughters off before the girls got grandiose ideas fixed in their heads, and brought dishonour to their birth homes by refusing to do as told by their in-laws? The villagers tut-tutted. Leave a woman in charge and look what happened. What else could you expect when there was no firm male hand to guide the family, no husband, no son, not even a grandson?

“
Aiyyo
,” Ammamma lamented, “what have I done?”

“What is the point in regretting now,” Lakshmi
garu
said, “after the girls have slid out of your hands, and the time for reining them in is past? Going behind your back, they are, sending Headmaster
garu
to demand more education. Like you need the headache. And that Lata, not even like a normal girl. Always getting out of housework, troubling her head with a book.”

Ammamma hung her head in remorse.

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For Chinni and me, things continued as usual. We passed time telling each other ancient sayings, within Lata's hearing, of course.

“Don't tell lies,” Chinni said, her eyes twinkling in her plump face, “otherwise girls will be born to you.”

“How about this one,” I countered. “Help arrange a marriage, even if takes a thousand lies to do so.”

“So you’re racking up lies?” Lata asked.

“We want to get married,” Chinni said, her face angelic. “Don’t you?”

“How can you think so little of yourself?” Lata demanded, head inclined in that imperious way of hers, making us giggle even more.

“Don’t you have anything better to do in life than giggle?”

“We tell lies, too,” Chinni said.

Lata shook her head and walked away.

Lata had more use for books than friends. For her, marriage was yet another milestone; for Chinni and me, it was The Goal, The Ultimate Truth, The Purpose of Life. We spent all our free time discussing our future husbands – plump-yet-pleasing-to-the-eye Chinni kindly overlooking the fact that I had virtually no prospects – and how we would live out our lives.

When Chinni and I weren’t together, it was because we had housework to do. One of our daily chores – mine and Malli’s – was sweeping and washing the courtyard.
Over the years patches of flooring had broken off at awkward angles, making the navigation of our walled-off courtyard an adventure for my friends and me. Ammamma had part of it cleaned up, exposing the earth below, before she ran out of money. Because of the uneven flooring, cleaning was a challenge. The walls of our courtyard weren’t much better; the straw and mud were plainly visible. Patching them with cow dung was another chore I didn’t care for.
 

Then there was the washing and milking of our cow. I complained about it endlessly, but Ammamma was quite unsympathetic; we should be grateful we even had a cow, she said. Ammamma’s tailoring supplemented the family income we got from selling milk and cow dung; Malli and I helped out by sewing buttons and hemming edges, but this was a bearable chore.

What I truly detested was the water duty. The well water was good enough for daily use, but we depended on the municipal supply for drinking water. The municipality, in their wisdom, chose to turn on the drinking water only at three in the morning. We arose, I – complaining that Lata wasn’t doing her bit, Malli – calmly doing what she had to do. We filled all available utensils and drums with drinking water, because the days the municipal water man overslept, we had no water. Then we put utensils on the stove, one at a time, waited for them to boil over and left them to cool, so water would be ready for drinking in the morning.

Chinni and I swore that when we married, it would only be into rich families where we could expect a municipal water connection that worked during the daylight hours, but more importantly, where the servants took care of such menial chores, leaving us to do important things – like shopping and gossiping.

The one good thing my grandfather did – the only thing, if you asked Ammamma – in the short time he was part of my grandmother’s life, was to get his name on the rolls of freedom fighters. He hadn't been one himself – too much of a coward, Ammamma said. How he got his name there was a mystery, but after he died, the pension from the Government of India was what kept us from lining the road to the temple, tin plate in hand, dependent on the generosity of worshippers.

Once the day’s chores were finished, and Ammamma’s head had hit the pillow for the afternoon, Chinni and I went in search of fun.

A favourite pastime of ours was to sneak past the house of our local oracle, Ranga
Nayakamma
, daring each other to go inside her house for a ‘session.’

Four days a week Ranga
Nayakamma
was an ordinary woman.

For the other three, she transformed from a meek housewife tending three children and a goat into a whiskey guzzling, chicken-leg chomping, cigarette puffing oracle. She started her day by going into trance, out of which she erupted with frenzied dancing – lips curling, diamond-studded nostrils flaring, kohl-lined eyes flashing, bejewelled arms slashing – sort of like Goddess Kali after she had killed a demon, except I didn’t think Goddess Kali drank, smoked or ate meat. This trance-and-dance routine continued for a good three or four hours before the oracle collapsed on the floor, ready to bless people with whatever it was they wanted – in return for gifts of whiskey, chicken (never any other meat – for, on her days off, Ranga
Nayakamma
was a staunch vegetarian) or
beedis
– the coarse,
tendu
-leaf cigarettes the villagers favoured. Her mostly-male followers were many.

Chinni and I couldn’t imagine what would make a housewife give up a respectable life with a husband and children, for this kind of spectacle.

We were expected to spend our free time in the courtyard of my house, or in the village square, where the elders could keep us in check while Ammamma took her nap.

A huge banyan occupied the place of pride in the centre of the village square, with a cemented ledge running around it for people to sit on. In the heat of midday, when the chores were done, the men lay down to gossip, making themselves comfortable on creaky wooden cots made of coir. It being unseemly for women to lie down in public, they settled on the ledge, watching the children play, taking a breather from the labours of the day. The boys, for the most part, spent their time swinging from the hanging roots of the banyan tree, or chasing discarded cycle tires with a stick, while young girls played endless rounds of hopscotch. Older girls like us sat demurely on the ledge, pretending to be immersed in embroidering and sewing, but in actuality waiting out the elders. Inevitably, sleep overcame them and eyelids drooped. With the elders no longer awake to keep us in check, Chinni and I felt free to sneak looks at the boys and giggle.

Life was good.

Chapter 4

The Bride Viewing

N
ow, as we waited by the gate of our compound for Kondal Rao
garu
to arrive and bless Malli’s bride viewing, I tried to ignore
Jhampaiah’s
words. Bad talk, indeed! Such a respectable politician like Kondal Rao
garu
!

The marriage broker hurried up to us, rubber slippers slapping against the dusty road. “Got late. Is Kondal Rao
garu
here?” She looked worried.

I shook my head.

She sagged with relief, and joined the anxious crowd.

A spicy smell wafted in the air.
Pulusu
?
My stomach growled. Hopefully no one had heard. Where was Kondal Rao
garu
anyway?

Thirty-five minutes later two jeeps, each loaded with rough-looking men armed with bamboo sticks and scary-looking sickles, screeched to a halt behind Lakshmi
garu’s
tractor. A fat little man, with a droopy moustache, and oily hair knotted at the nape of his short stubby neck, descended from the first jeep. Kondal Rao
garu
scared me now, as he had when Ammamma, my sisters and I visited his house two years ago.

He was dressed in the standard politician uniform of dazzling white
kurta –
which
strained at his generous belly – and a white cotton
pancha
that barely skimmed the tops of his black patent leather shoes.