There was one more person. Chettiar Amma. She lived by herself on the top floor of the west wing and was never seen outside.
‘After the last son was born, something went wrong with her. She screamed each time she saw the Chettiar and refused to feed the baby. A wet nurse was brought in and she fed the baby and looked after Chettiar Amma. That is who Vadivu is. She is not a member of this family and yet the Chettiar treats her like one, for after all, she takes good care of Chettiar Amma. Only she can control Chettiar
Amma when the demons enter her and take over,’ Rukmini Akka told my mother.
‘On full moon nights, Vadivu closes the doors and windows of the west wing and no one is allowed in. Chettiar Amma, they say, scratches the walls till they shriek and then she howls and tears her clothes off … thud, thud, thud, you can hear her feet stamp the floor as she paces up and down the room as far as the iron bracelet and chain attached to her ankle will let her go,’ Rukmini Akka shuddered.
‘What about the others? Are they also scared of Chettiar Amma?’ Amma asked.
‘The Chettiar and his sons visit her once in a while. Rani Akka used to, until one day when she took her baby daughter there, the Chettiar Amma grabbed the baby from her arms and almost threw it down from the top floor. After that, Rani Akka’s visits ceased,’ Rukmini Akka replied.
At first, Sujata Akka was sorry for Chettiar Amma. She sent her little treats to eat and visited her often. But once she had her baby, all she could think of was what Chettiar Amma had almost done with Rani Akka’s little girl and she began to fear her. So she told the Chettiar that she needed someone to watch over the baby while she was busy. And that was how I came to be there.
‘Though busy doing what, I’d like to know,’ Rukmini Akka had said on my first day there. ‘She,’ she said pointing to my mother with her chin, ‘does all the cooking and I do the rest of the work. There are others who sweep and mop, wash the clothes and do all the other chores. But the Chettiar didn’t realize that. Or even if he did, he said: “Yes, yes, find a young girl. Ask Kanakambaram, she has a young daughter.” ’
‘He was on his way to that Seethalakshmi’s house and was in a great hurry. So that’s how your name came up,’ Rukmini Akka told me a little later as she and I cleaned the rice.
‘Who is Seethalakshmi?’ I asked.
‘A relative,’ my mother hastened to say.
‘The Chettiar’s concubine,’ Rukmini Akka corrected. I looked from Amma’s face to Rukmini Akka.
‘Don’t fill the girl’s head with nonsense,’ my mother said, chopping the brinjals with extra vigour, letting her anger show for once.
Rukmini Akka popped a rice grain into her mouth and said, ‘She’s not a baby. She’s bound to find out sooner or later.’
The Chettiar has a concubine. Some say it’s because of her that Chettiar Amma went insane. Others say that it was because she went mad that the Chettiar began to seek consolation in Seethalakshmi’s arms.
‘If a man’s appetite is not fed at home, he’ll find another place where it will be,’ Rukmini Akka began, but I was no longer listening.
I had heard a baby wail and I went looking for it.
The first time I saw Sujata Akka, I lost my heart to her. Sujata Akka was fairer than anyone I had ever seen. She had long black hair and she wore an orange and green sari. Her blouse had sleeves that ended halfway down her upper arms. A diamond nose-stud sparkled and on her wrists were gold and green glass bangles. There were flowers in her hair and talcum powder on her face. And she wore spectacles. She looked like a film star and all I wanted to do was worship her.
Sujata Akka was sitting on the bed feeding the baby. I stood in the doorway, too scared to go in until invited to do so.
‘Come here,’ Sujata Akka said. ‘Aren’t you Kanakambaram Amma’s daughter?’
I smiled.
She eased the baby’s mouth off the nipple and gave him to me. ‘Here, you hold him. He’s full, so don’t rock him. Just pat his back gently till he burps.’
I did as she asked me to and when the baby burped and a mouthful of milk dribbled down my back, I felt a great love
swamp me – for the baby, for Sujata Akka, for everyone in the Chettiar household including Chettiar Amma in the west wing.
… Yet when my son was born, all I felt was revulsion for the child. My mother would bring him to me and ask me to let him feed at my breast, and a tremendous loathing would fill me. I would thrust him away screaming, ‘Take him away. I don’t want him near me.’
My mother would heat cow’s milk, dilute it with water and feed this to my son who drank it greedily. Even then he was a quiet child who demanded nothing.
I have been a bad mother. That much I know. I spent all my maternal love on Sujata Akka’s baby and had none left for my own. Perhaps that too was Brahma’s doing.
But I am digressing. Where was I? The Chettiar household …
For the next three years my world revolved around Sujata Akka and Prabhu-papa. Nothing was more important than them.
When Prabhu-papa turned on his stomach for the first time, I rushed to the kitchen for a coconut and a brand new moram, and laid the baby on it. I broke the coconut on a doorstep and offered a prayer to Bhoomidevi, ‘Amma, goddess of the earth, I entrust this baby to you. Forgive him for wanting to tread on you. Don’t punish him with bruises and broken bones. When he misses his footing, take him into your arms that are as soft as flowers and break the fall with your blessings.’
Sujata Akka watched, amusement crinkling her eyes. ‘You are a strange girl. Who taught you all this?’
I tugged at a strand of hair behind my ear and said, ‘When Easwaran turned on his stomach, I watched Amma do this and when it was Sivakumar’s turn, Amma let me perform the puja.’
Sujata Akka patted my cheek and gave me a dozen of her
new glass bangles. Purple with silver and blue flecks. I ran into the kitchen to show my mother my new treasure. Amma looked at it and said, ‘Keep them away carefully. You can wear them for Deepavali.’
Rukmini Akka snorted, ‘Glass bangles! How mean of her. It isn’t as if she can’t afford anything better. A blouse piece! Or some money. That’s what she should have given you. Glass bangles, I tell you …’
‘Rukmini Akka,’ my mother interrupted in a worried voice, afraid that the tones of rebellion and scorn would seep beyond the kitchen walls. ‘Hush.’
‘Listen, Marikolanthu,’ Amma said, turning to me and wiping her hands with the end of her sari pallu, ‘we shouldn’t expect anything from anyone. That way there will be no disappointment.’
‘You are filling the girl’s head with nonsense.’ Rukmini Akka made a face. ‘What do you want her to become? A silkworm? To be made use of through life and death?’
I giggled at the thought, but Amma’s words had found a firm niche in my mind.
When Prabhu-papa took his first step, I did what I had to do, expecting nothing in return.
‘Can I have a coconut with its beard intact,’ I asked Rukmini Akka. She opened her mouth to spew scorn, when she spotted Sujata Akka by the kitchen door.
‘Here, here,’ she gushed as she rummaged among the coconuts placed in the corner. ‘Will this do? Isn’t it much too small?’
I took an enormous coconut and went with it to the main door of the house. When I shook the coconut, I could hear the water slapping against the cool white flesh. My mouth watered.
Outside the gate, I saw a little boy playing with a stick. ‘Here Pichu,’ I called out to him, ‘go fetch a few of your friends. I’m going to break a coconut and you can take the pieces.’
When the boys had gathered, I asked Sujata Akka to help Prabhu-papa take his first step over the threshold.
‘Vinayaka, Vigneshwara, Ganesha, Ganapati,’ I prayed, repeating all the names of Pulayar who alone can remove all the obstacles in one’s path. ‘Let his every step be an easy one. Let his every step lead him to happiness.’
I circled the coconut three times around Prabhu-papa’s face to remove the evil eye and hurled it onto the rock by the side of the dust road.
The coconut smashed into many pieces and the boys fell on it, fighting for the larger share.
‘You should have kept the coconut for yourself,’ Sujata Akka said, gesturing to me to carry Prabhu-papa in.
‘How could I? The evil eye would have settled within my body then,’ I said, wondering how someone as educated as Sujata Akka could be so ignorant.
Later she gave me a crisp ten-rupee note. ‘Keep this,’ she said, pressing the money into my palm. ‘To spend as you please.’
‘What do you have to say now?’ I taunted Rukmini Akka.
But Rukmini Akka simply made another face. ‘Ten rupees? What is ten rupees to her? Now if she’d given you fifteen or twenty rupees, that would have meant something! ’
But Amma had already snapped the note from between my fingers. ‘You’ll lose it. This will come in useful at the end of the month.’
I stared at my mother. That was my money, I wanted to say. She gave it to me to spend as I please. But I didn’t say anything and walked away holding back the tears. I wouldn’t expect anything from anyone, not even from my mother, I told myself. But if someone ever wanted to give me a reward, I would say – buy me something I want, but no money please. That way there would be no disappointments.
Sujata Akka understood. So for Deepavali, she gave me a
rolled gold chain with a blue stone pendant. For Pongal, she gave me a new cotton pavadai. I wore the pavadai and the chain and went to show them off to Sujata Akka.
‘Look at me, Akka.’ I turned on my heel and almost tripped. The skirt was too long.
‘Very pretty, but you need to raise the hem.’
I said nothing, too ashamed to admit that I didn’t know how to sew. Sujata Akka sighed and rummaged in the chest-of-drawers on which a round mirror rested. Sujata Akka’s talcum powder tin, the powder puff box, snow bottle and kumkum, comb and hair pins, spectacles and bangle-box were all kept on top of the chest and everyday it was my job to carefully dust them.
‘Watch me as I pass the thread through the needle’s eye and then knot it at the end,’ Sujata Akka murmured, snapping the thread with her teeth. She made me sit on the floor and raising the hem just a little bit, she showed me how to fold it in and make tiny stitches.
‘Now what do I do?’ I asked when the hem was raised in the front.
‘Use your brains and turn your skirt around.’
When the pavadai was two inches above my ankles, Sujata Akka said, ‘That’s better. All you need now is a golasu and you’ll be the prettiest girl in the village.’ And she drew out a pair of silver anklets.
I recognized them. They were her old ones and a few of the silver beads were missing. But what did it matter? They were the most beautiful anklets I had seen and they were mine. I put them on and took a step. The tinkly notes filled the room …
I ran to the kitchen, the silver bells echoing my steps, the red pavadai with white flowers swirling around my legs, the blue stone in the pendant shooting arcs of light.
‘Amma, see what Akka gave me,’ I said, doing a little dance so that the anklets leapt and sang their resonant song.
Rukmini Akka stared. ‘Kanakambaram Amma, she’s growing up. Has she … ?’ she stopped abruptly, catching
my eye, but my mother obviously knew what she was talking about.
‘Not yet.’
I couldn’t understand what they were talking about then. But a few months later I did.
One day I was simply Marikolanthu – wearing the fragrance of naïveté with a single-minded joy. And then came womanhood …
I was sitting on the floor one evening with a heap of jasmine buds. Sujata Akka didn’t know how to string flowers using a long piece of plantain fibre. Instead she used a needle and thread to string the flowers as if they were beads. But plantain fibre is the best; the flowers don’t die that quickly and it doesn’t snag the hair like a regular thread. I tried to teach Sujata Akka the right way to do it; how to thread the fibre around two fingers, place the stalk of one bud – to put more than one bud at a time would cause the flowers to decay faster – and briskly knot it. But she just couldn’t do it right. The knots were loose and the flowers would slip out. So every evening, I wove a jasmine garland for her to wear in her hair.
But that evening, I felt a pain shoot through my middle. For a couple of days, I had felt some discomfort in my tummy and Amma had told me to crush ginger and salt and chew on it. The pain came in spasms, unfurled and clenched in turns. My legs began to feel weak and my lower back began to hurt.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sujata Akka asked.
‘Nothing.’ I said standing up. Something trickled down my leg. Had I been holding my pee in too long? It has happened to me a couple of times before.
‘Stay here,’ Sujata Akka said. She returned with my mother and Rukmini Akka. The women stood around, smiling and sighing and smiling again.
‘You’re a woman now. No more running around like a little girl,’ Rukmini Akka said.
‘You’ll have to wear a davani to hide your bosom,’ Sujata Akka offered as consolation.