The Cauliflower (3 page)

In the beginning (if there ever was a beginning—was there ever a beginning?) there were three powerful forces: creation, preservation, and destruction. Over millennia these three competing and often complementary powers or concepts were deftly sewn into an exquisite weave of ornate characters and stories in four of Hinduism's principal religious texts, the
Veda
s. The creator is Brahma, Vishnu is the preserver, and Shiva, the destroyer. Shiva has a wife. Her name is Kali (the feminine form of
kalam
, which means “black,” or
kala
, which means “time”). When fierce Kali died, Shiva became uncontrollable with grief and rage. He carried her corpse on his shoulders and performed a violent dervish dance of anger, smashing his feet down upon the earth. The other gods became concerned that unless Shiva could be persuaded to relinquish Kali's body he would destroy the world altogether, and so Vishnu took a blade and threw it at Kali's corpse, which was then scattered in fifty-two chunks across the earth. The little toe of the right foot landed next to the great river Hooghly, in Bengal, and a temple was built there to mark the spot. This temple was—and is—Kalighat. This place was—and is—Kali-kata.

In the beginning was Job Charnock. And Job Charnock was named after the biblical character famed for being sent endless trials by Satan, with God's permission, to test whether his love for God was truly sincere. Job is celebrated for his righteous suffering. Our Job—Mister Charnock (who suffered righteously)—was born in London although his family originally hailed from the north, from Lancashire. He was a loyal, highly valued employee of the English East India Company in Bengal. He was a moral man and a devout Christian. In 1663, he took a common-law wife—a Hindu widow, a
sati
—who he was reputed to have snatched from her husband's funeral pyre. She was fifteen years old, and he renamed her Maria. They had four children together. They all lived in Cal-Kali-kata-cutta. One of the daughters, Mary, went on to marry Bengal's first president, Sir Charles Eyre. Job was devoted to Maria, and they lived happily together for twenty-five years until her tragically premature death in 1688. A devastated Job built a garden house in the northern suburb of Barrackpore, Cal-Kali-kata-cutta, in order to remain close to her grave, where, rumor had it, every year he slaughtered a cock in a
Sufi
ritual on the date of her death. Maria was buried as a Christian, although Job Charnock was accused of converting to Hinduism and his life story was later—with considerable bile and aplomb—employed as a cautionary tale of moral laxity and improbity. When Charnock died, Eyre, his powerful son-in-law, erected a monument in his honor—which made no mention of his beloved wife—constructed from a form of shimmering granite which in the year 1900, after briefly apprehending it, the famous geologist Thomas Henry Holland would christen “Charnockite.”

In the beginning was the word, and the word was Cal-Kali-kata-cutta, but there is no word, and the person who created the word is no person, only rock, and if there was a person he was a most loathed, mistrusted, morose, and morally degenerate company administrator. So it's probably better that we waste no more of our precious time and energy thinking about him here.

1857, the Kali Temple, Dakshineswar (six miles north of Calcutta)

What better place in the world for one such as Uncle to be born than deep in the bosom of the Chatterjee family? Both Kshudiram and Chandradevi had been blessed with many divine visions. Uncle's brother Ramkumar had special spiritual gifts and foretold his own wife's early death. Uncle's sister, Katyayani, was prone to erratic behaviors and was once possessed by a bad spirit which Kshudiram exorcized with a pilgrimage to Gaya to worship at the feet of Vishnu. Kshudiram's sister, Ramsila, would sometimes believe herself to be possessed by the spirit of the Goddess Sitala (the Disease Goddess, the Goddess of Smallpox, who brings coolness to victims of fever). I was very afraid of Ramsila as a boy, but Uncle—only four years older—showed no fear of his aunt during her transformations. No, the young Uncle was not remotely afraid. Uncle was fascinated. Uncle calmly observed the reverence and awe with which Ramsila was treated in their humble Kamarpukur household during these special occurrences. He watched her intently. He studied her closely. One time he even quietly whispered in my ear, “Ah, wouldn't it be just splendid if the spirit who now possesses my aunt would someday possess me?”

Uncle was set apart from the very beginning. I have often been told that he was a beautiful baby and a beautiful child, and when I look back on those early years that is very much what I, too, remember. He was always cherished and celebrated. Uncle was handsome and charming. His face was full, like a shining moon. He was greatly loved and admired in the small village where he was raised. One village elder was so besotted by Uncle that he would even take the young Uncle out into the rice fields, hang scented garlands around his neck, then secretly feed and worship him there as an incarnation of the young Krishna. Village religion is a private religion. It is a householder's religion. The Christians have one God and one way to worship him. We Hindus have a thousand gods and a thousand ways to worship them. The gods call to us—they speak to us—and whoever speaks the loudest or the most persuasively we respond to with a most profound sincerity. We make the best choices we can and then try to cultivate as deep a love as we can possibly muster.

Uncle was always an impressive actor and a mimic. He made everybody laugh with his delightful pranks. The village women constantly sought out the wonderful Gadai to sing and to dance for them. He was one of their very own. Throughout his life women have treated Uncle as a girl, and men have happily indulged their wives and their mothers and their daughters in this curious whim of theirs. Uncle is so sweet and so innocent. They have nothing to fear from him. Uncle could never pose any threat. The very thought of it is laughable! He is a child. Untarnished by the world. And for this very reason Uncle could go wherever he chose. No door was closed to Uncle. The womenfolk of Kamarpukur were all completely devoted to him. Even as he grew from a child into a young man he continued to possess a feminine quality that made him at once their confidant and their plaything. Nothing could be kept hidden from the young Uncle. He could not be curtailed.

There was one exception to this rule, however, in the shape of a successful trader by the name of Durgadas Pyne. Durgadas Pyne was as fond of Uncle as everybody else, but he maintained a strict system of
purdah
in his home and would often brag to other villagers about how nobody in Kamarpukur had ever seen the women of his family. On one occasion he made this brag within Uncle's hearing, and Uncle was greatly provoked by this statement. He immediately insisted that he could know and see everything that happened among the women in Kamarpukur, even those cloistered in Durgadas Pyne's household. Durgadas Pyne merely laughed at Uncle. He did not take this brash boy seriously.

A short while later, at sunset, an impoverished weaver woman dressed in a filthy
sari
and veil and coarse ornaments arrived at Durgadas Pyne's home, her basket of wares tucked under her arm. She told Durgadas Pyne that she had come to the market at Kamarpukur to sell yarn but had been unexpectedly abandoned by her thoughtless companions. She then asked—in pitiful tones—if he might provide her with a shelter for the night. After a brief interrogation of her story Durgadas Pyne was satisfied by her tale and sent her to his women's apartments to be cared for there. The weaver woman spent the entire evening with Durgadas Pyne's womenfolk, eating, laughing, and engaging in gossip for many hours. She was finally distracted by the frantic calling in the street outside of Rameswar Chatterjee, who was then searching for his missing brother, Gadadhar. I think you can probably work out the end of this story. Suffice it to say that Gadadhar had hoodwinked Durgadas Pyne and all the members of his family with this prank, and while at first Durgadas Pyne was very angry with Uncle, he soon saw the humor of the situation and commended the young man for his impressive disguise.

Of course, this was not the first occasion on which Uncle had dressed as a woman. Often in the past his female companions had dressed him up in
sari
s and ornaments—Uncle was their joy, their plaything—so that he might better act the part, and sing the delightful songs, of Radharani or Vrinda. In fact, Uncle loved nothing more than to get dressed up and masquerade as a village woman walking to the tank to fetch water with a pitcher. His observation of all the special female habits and mannerisms was very close. He was utterly convincing as a woman in every way. To the closed-off Western mind Uncle's pranks may appear shocking, but in these parts we think of such behavior merely as Uncle's
lila
—his special play. We see in it a kind of innocent devotion, an expression of the
madhura
bhava
, a sweet mood. There is no deceit in it. Play cannot be deceitful. Nor devotional love. Like Uncle himself, it is simply joyous. It is completely harmless. It is utterly blissful.

America, the late 1950s/early 1960s (an anonymous transgender man speaks)

“I remember being alone on a farm with access to my landlady's wardrobe … wearing the pretty, old-fashioned dresses made me feel so happy … but after a couple of hours in them I was overcome with sadness and frustration. I wanted to be a woman so badly … but I saw no way to achieve my goal.

“I started to shout at the top of my lungs, ‘I am a woman! I am a woman!' No one could hear me in the sprawling countryside but the cows and trees and sky.… Then all at once I was flooded with the sweetest, most glorious feeling I have ever had. It seemed to pour out of my heart into my whole body … pure joy just kept bubbling up within me, without any effort on my part. I felt that this feeling was the presence of God. And I decided that it was a sign that God's grace was most available to me as a woman.”

1836. In the following scene we find the Rani cheerfully contemplating the wider sociopolitical ramifications of her husband's tragic early death.

Ha! No we don't. Of
course
we don't. The Rani (although she is no
rani
, no queen; this is merely a fond nickname her mother applied to her which then stuck like ornate sugarwork to the end of a wooden spatula) lives within the asphyxiating vise of the present moment. Clever as she is, hallowed as she is, she still can't step outside of it. The awesome “power of the present” treads rudely on the back of the skirts of her
sari
.

But we can. We can step outside of 1836. We can stretch the melted sugar of the Rani's life and analyze it from a distance. (Although ornate decorative sugarwork is a Western weakness. Let's replace it with an Indian sweet—
burfi
, a popular Bengali treat made of sugar and condensed milk. Let's push our clean thumbs and index fingers into the metal tray containing this sticky, cooling mixture—possibly flavored with coconut or almond or pistachio—pinch it lightly, and then pull the glorious, glutinous mess closer toward us.)

The Rani hails from the lowly
Sudra
, or servant, caste. Her immensely wealthy husband has just suddenly died from “apoplexy” (which in modern parlance is a hemorrhage or a stroke) during a carriage ride. He is forty-nine years old. Reports tell us that when Rajchandra died the Rani lay groaning on the floor, stricken, for three full days without any food or drink. Then the formal grieving process began: She weighed herself and gave this exact amount to the
Brahmin
s (the spiritual caste) in silver coins (6,017 of them, in total); she distributed food and gifts to the poor.

It may legitimately cross our minds whether the Rani considered—even briefly—the tradition of
sati
, and what the implications might have been for her if this practice had not been summarily outlawed by India's British colonial rulers in 1829 (seven years before). Research tells us that
sati
was considered to be the ultimate act of honor and devotion by a pious wife (a sign of both insurmountable grief and spiritual renunciation). The Goddess Sati, also known as Dakshayani, was the first incarnation of the Goddess Parvati (who is also called Durga and, ah, Kali). She burned herself alive after her father, Daksha, publicly humiliated her beloved husband, Shiva.

In
sati
(first celebrated among the
Kshatriya
, or warrior, caste, and later cautiously embraced throughout Indian society—although notably disapproved of by the
Brahmin
s) we see a fascinating crossover (a meeting of minds) between the spiritual and the pugnaciously pragmatic. Many Indian faith traditions venerate acts of voluntary self-negation and renunciation above all others (especially for women; these impulses—to negate the self and sacrifice for family—are the natural duties of a good wife and mother, after all). But we also see the widow as a social inconvenience. The widow inherits property, but may only ever be perceived as a temporary custodian of it, since all money and goods are passed on to the husband's family upon her death. And good widows were—and still are—expected to live only half a life (an excuse for a life, a groveling apology), the life of an ascetic, wearing only white, eating plain food, rejecting all social activities, and sleeping on the ground on a thin grass mat.

Sati
, on the other hand, was a helpful foreshortening of this social and emotional purgatory. It was a key to salvation. Its power was vested in the belief that when a widow submits her living body as a burned offering on her husband's funeral pyre (although many were drowned or buried alive) she gets not only to purge herself of all her sins, but to save her husband's soul, her own, and those of the following seven generations from the tortuous cycle of rebirth and death. Suicide is forbidden among Hindus, but
sati
is not suicide, it is a cruel and clever semantic sidestepping of the rules; it is an act of exquisite piety. And when a widow kills herself, her husband's family—the main players in a story in which the widow is merely a bump in the road, a narrative impediment—may inherit sooner.