Every night, I watched Missy K leave her room and walk past me where I lay curled on a mat in the corridor between their rooms, and go to Missy V’s room. In the early hours, she crept back to her bed. Why this secrecy, I wondered. If Missy K was afraid to sleep alone, the sensible thing to do would be for them to share a bed. I would have thought nothing of two women sharing a bed. It was the most obvious thing to do when there wasn’t a man around. For the women to stick together. Perhaps these foreigners are different, I told myself They do not like to admit their fears and would rather pretend they are just as strong and selfsufficient as men. How silly, I thought.
For three years, we all lived content in our lives – three women and a decrepit old man. I visited my mother every few months, but seldom stayed long. I was always in a hurry to get back to Vellore where there was so much more happening. The fields and the villagers bored me. I felt stifled by the narrowness of the streets and the boundaries that were everywhere. Between field and field; home and field; man and woman; woman and life; living and dignity …
The Missies taught me the English alphabet and bought me books to read in both English and Tamil. I didn’t understand everything I read. I had to read aloud the English books, which were meant for very young children, so that they made some sense to my confused brain. But the Missies were happy with my progress. Instead of glass
bangles, I began to collect words and these would always be with me, I told myself with some degree of satisfaction …
When I turned eighteen, they said, they’d help me find a job in the hospital as a helper.
‘You should try and finish your SSLC privately and then we’ll pay for you to do a nursing assistant’s course,’ Missy K said one morning.
‘Ask her if that’s what she wants, Kate. Not everyone wants to tend to patients,’ Missy V said, spooning uppma into her mouth.
Missy V liked uppma and vada, idli and sambar, dosai and onion chutney. Not Missy K. She preferred her toast; two slices. One she smeared with butter that she said was more like ghee, and the other with jam, which she complained was too sweet to be real fruit. Missy K ate two plantains every morning. Not Missy V. She wanted guavas and papaya, sapodillas and mangoes, and in the summer she ate the palm fruit, scooping its quivering transparent flesh into her mouth with great relish.
They were so different from each other. Missy V smiled. Missy K stretched her lips into a grimace. Missy V liked change. Missy K hated it if anything disrupted our lives. Missy V preferred gay colours and wore lots of beads and chains. Missy K dressed in sombre colours and left her neck and wrists and earlobes bare.
‘Of course she’d like to work with patients. She has the aptitude and most importantly, the makings of a good nurse.’ Missy K crunched her toast.
‘I do,’ I agreed. I told myself I did. I wasn’t squeamish about blood or pee or shit. I didn’t think I was. ‘I’d like to start as a helper when I’m eighteen and I’ll try and pass the SSLC privately.’ And when I had said it, I felt as if I were on the threshold of a whole new world.
‘Well then, that’s settled,’ Missy K said, sounding pleased.
Missy V shrugged. That was the other thing. Miss V became petulant if she didn’t get her way. But not Missy K. She never bore a grudge or sulked.
When I look back, I wonder if the fabric of my life would have been woven on a different loom if I had done as the Missies had expected me to. Would everything have been different? This is the one question that punctuated my early morning thoughts during those terrible days …
My mother fell down and cracked a bone. Her leg was put in a cast and she was advised to rest for a few weeks. My brothers came to fetch me. They seemed to have grown up all of a sudden. Four months ago they were little boys, but now they stood a head taller than me and when they spoke, their voices cracked with the effort of becoming men.
‘How tall you’ve become,’ I said, unable to reconcile myself to the idea that these lanky boys were my little brothers.
‘You can’t call us Kulla Kathrika and Odachu Kadala any more,’ they grinned.
Little aubergine. And split pea. My names for them.
‘That’s true,’ I sighed. ‘Perhaps I should call you Easwaran Sir and Sivakumar Sir now.’
I giggled. Suddenly, going back to the Chettiar household didn’t seem so bad.
Amma was afraid that her place in the household would be usurped if she left it vacant. Rukmini Akka would be asked to step in, and though she had tried very hard to keep her recipes a secret, Rukmini Akka and she had spent many hours together and there was little Rukmini Akka didn’t know. ‘And where will that leave us?’ Amma said, her eyes resting on the boys’ faces.
I understood. I was to take Amnia’s place. I may not be Amma. But I was Marikolanthu. Sister to the real thing. Daughter of the cook.
‘But Amma, how can I manage? I’m not used to cooking such large quantities,’ I said, wondering if I could cope at all.
‘I’m here to advise you. What you have to remember is that Rukmini does most of the work. In spite of her tongue
that wags all the time like a dog’s tail, she’s a good worker. She can very easily do all that I do in that kitchen. Which is why it is important that you don’t let her. The Chettiar family has to think that in our hands, and in our hands alone, lie the culinary secrets that have whetted and appeased their taste buds for so long,’ Amma said, dispelling my fears as if they were an errant fly to be slapped and squashed out of existence.
I managed just as Amma had said I would. But I hated every minute of it. In Vellore, I had enjoyed cooking. I cooked to please. Here I cooked to feed. And such rapacious mouths that chewed, chomped, swallowed, belched and demanded more …
The smell of smoking oil clung to my hair; my fingertips stank of garlic; the pores of my skin oozed the odour of asafoetida. Every night I scrubbed myself hard to erase the embrace of the kitchen. For a few brief minutes I would smell Lux soap and then again the kitchen smells would ride my body.
Each night I crossed the date on the calendar that hung on the wall. My house didn’t feel like a home any more. I was busy all day; my hands and feet toiled. But my mind felt empty. At Vellore, the Missies and Periaswamy had nurtured my mind. I would have felt less lonely if I could have spent time with Sujata Akka. But once the chores of the day were done, all I wanted to do was rush home and bathe.
Sometimes it occurred to me that my mother and brothers had unconsciously severed ties with me. I was the daughter whose tenure in the household would soon end. My rights in the house would cease the day I was wed.
Each night I told myself that six weeks later, I could return to Vellore where the Missies would help shape my future. Each night I dreamt of independence and dignity.
When just a week more was left, Amma began to insist that I stay on. ‘Go back after Pongal,’ she said. ‘God knows where you will be for your next Pongal.’
‘I want you to wear that new sari Sujata Akka gave you,’ she said, one evening. ‘She wanted to know if you liked it.’
I have always wanted to own a Kancheepuram silk sari. With a parrot green body and a chilli red border; with real gold zari drawn into the shape of mangoes and peacocks, dots and triangles. A few days after I returned from Vellore, Sujata Akka had given me a new Dharmavaram silk sari. I had stuck a smile on my face and my eyes reflected the glitter of the fake zari because that was what she expected. But I didn’t want it. Everyone knows what a Dharmavaram silk sari is compared to the Kancheepuram – a sister to the real thing, and I wanted none of that.
Instead I confided in Amma about the Missies’ plans for me.
‘All that is very well but I have already started looking for a husband for you. The Chettiar has promised to help with the dowry,’ Amma said, weaving jasmine buds into my plait.
Ever since my father died, Amma saw to it that my plait was adorned with flowers. Jasmine or kadambam, chrysanthemum or marigolds … And if there wasn’t a single flower available, Amma brought out a pink plastic rose she had bought at a village fair long ago and nagged until I wore it in my hair. It was as if she were making up for not being able to wear flowers herself
‘You’ve become careless of your appearance since you began staying with the Missies. Do you want to end up looking like them? Plain and hag-like with hair like coconut fibre and skin like old leather.
‘Girls of your age should be seen with flowers in their hair, collyrium rimming their eyes, bangles on their wrists, and the tinkle of anklets should echo every step that they take. Look at you … you look like a widow even before you are married,’ my mother’s words fell like tiny darts.
There was no room for fripperies in the Missies’ home. Flowers were frowned upon unless they were on bushes, and anklets irritated Missy K. At first, Periaswamy teased me
that I was beginning to resemble a nun. But soon he too got used to the drab Mari, with tightly braided plaits and bare wrists; naked eyes and sallow face.
More than anything else the Missies hated the turmeric paste I smeared on my face after oiling my hair and washing it every Friday morning. The first time I did it in the Vellore house, Missy V took one look at me and shrieked, ‘Kate, do you think she has hepatitis? I’ve never seen anyone turn this yellow overnight. Do you think this is some particularly vicious strain?’
Missy K glanced at my face and said in a scathing voice, ‘Mari, wash that muck off your face. She thinks you have jaundice.’
In Vellore, where I was Mari, they liked me plain and bare. But Amma would have none of that. So I reverted to being the daughter she wanted. Blooming and pretty; with a merry laugh and the coquettish wiles of an eighteen-year-old seeking the world’s admiration and willing it to fall at her feet. I tossed my head when I talked. I developed a sidelong glance. I swayed my hips as I walked.
Perhaps it was the incandescence that Amma lit within me that plunged the rest of my life into darkness.
When Amma returned to the Chettiar kitchen, I went back to being Sujata Akka’s handmaiden. I was in and out of the rooms all day and I guess that was how Rani Akka’s brother spotted me.
His name was Murugesan. I often try to remember what he looked like. It isn’t as if I hadn’t seen him enough times. But all I can come up with is a face wiped clean of all features. A ghost face. When I think of him, what comes to mind are his hands. His big hands with meaty fingers …
… I don’t know if I should be telling you all this. You may be older than I am but you are unmarried. I don’t want to embarrass you … You smile. I understand that smile …
On the day before Pongal, it was customary to light a big
bonfire in the Chettiar’s courtyard. Everyone in the village would come there with their old things to fling into the fire and scream: Bogi! Bogi! Out with the old! Burn the past! Throw out the debris of the year! Bogi! Bogi!
I had to go back home to wash and change into fresh clothes. I looked at the wristwatch Sujata Akka had given me a few days ago and asked, ‘Amma, can I leave now? Sujata Akka wants me to spend the night here, at the Chettiar House.’
‘Don’t be long,’ Amma said as I left the Chettiar Kottai. ‘Take one of the boys with you.’
‘Stop fussing,’ I said. ‘I’m only going home, two streets away, and not to Vellore.’
‘Is this any way to talk to your mother?’ Rukmini Akka snapped. ‘You are a grown-up girl and not a young child any more. Don’t you know that there are dangers lurking in every corner, hiding behind every tree and bush?’
‘Like what?’ I said in my head.
‘Ever since she came back from Vellore, she thinks she knows everything. When I say something, she says, “I’m old enough to look after myself.” When something does happen to her, she’ll understand …’ Amma’s voice was harsh with anger. It is the fatigue that’s making her irritable, I told myself and agreed to take Sivakumar with me. Except that he wouldn’t come. He wanted to be there when they lit the bonfire.
In January, the village was at its beautiful best. Every bull, ox and cow in the village had its horns freshly painted. Children chewed on sugarcane and the sticky sap ran down their chins … The trees were dense with leaves and there was grass growing everywhere. A cool breeze winnowed through the fields and hair left loose. Flowers bloomed; thousands of them. This was the season of the jasmine – plump, rounded gundu-mallis, the fragile narrow-petalled mullai … The houses newly whitewashed gleamed in the moonlight; a row of jasmines strung with the thread of darkness.
In January it was so easy to forget the toll the summer would take, baking the earth and drying up the abundance in the village.
In January, the night came early and the shadows loomed everywhere, threatening, menacing …
I hurried through the mango orchard, the grass beneath my feet wet with dew. I never liked the mango orchard. It was flanked on one side by a giant tamarind tree. When I was a child, the orchard keeper who guarded the mangoes as they ripened enticingly on the trees had frightened me and the other children with stories of a female ghoul who lived on the tamarind tree and chose to capture her victims in the mango orchard. When I grew up, I understood that it was merely a ploy to keep us from stealing the mangoes, but the orchard still made me uneasy each time I walked through it alone.