Authors: Anita Nair
Ladies Coupe (21 page)
What is it with women who are wedded to the kitchen counters? Why is it that they can’t endure the thought of a woman being capable both at home and in the outside world? Akhila fumed in disgust.
At first, Akhila consoled herself with the thought that perhaps Padma resented her being able to escape the periphery of the home. Maybe she longed for wider horizons, the financial independence that Akhila possessed. But Akhila soon realized that Padma’s feelings for her had acquired a complexity that Akhila no longer knew how to decipher or handle. Padma needed to make Akhila look inadequate to feel complete herself.
Another afternoon. Akhila was in the bedroom with the blankets pulled up to her chin. She had the flu. She could hear the murmur of voices from the front room. Padma had found a group of five other brahmin women. They took turns to meet in each other’s homes every Tuesday to practice singing Meera bhajans. This afternoon, it was Padma’s turn to host the singing party. Akhila heard a voice ask, ‘Would your sister like to join us?’
‘Don’t be foolish. She is ill. How can she?’ another voice retorted.
‘Anyway, she doesn’t like all this. She is a different kind of person.’ Akhila recognized that voice. Padma’s.
‘What do you mean she is different?’ the first voice asked.
Akhila began to feel a certain kinship with that unknown voice.
Akhila began to feel a certain kinship with that unknown voice.
‘She is not like us. She is not interested in any of the things that give us or any normal person pleasure. She likes to be left alone. And she can be very scathing if someone tries to draw her out of her shell. I have no intention of asking her to join us. So put that thought out of your mind.’ Padma’s voice bore just the right inflection to suggest misery at the hands of a callous older sister.
‘But doesn’t she believe in God?’ an incredulous voice asked. ‘These are bhajans, after all. Songs praising Krishna.’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think she isn’t even a practising Hindu. She won’t light the lamp in the puja room or go to the temple or observe any of the rituals we brahmins do. When she has her periods, she continues to water the plants and if I object, she bites my head off.’
‘Why do you live with her then? Why don’t you move and leave her?’ the first voice said.
Padma sighed, ‘I would love to do just that. But she is my older sister and a spinster. If we abandon her, she will be all alone.’
‘But there is a limit to how much you can tolerate.’
‘My husband says the same. But no matter how badly she behaves, I have to do my duty. That is what our scriptures teach us.’ As a martyr, no one could be more convincing than Padma.
By evening these women, Akhila knew, would have spread the story further. Of how much poor Padma endured. Of Akhila’s eccentricities. Of her godless state. Of how lucky she was to have a sister like Padma living with her and putting up with what she dished out to her day after day.
Akhila tolerated the invasion of space and privacy that took many forms. But the worst were the nights when Padma’s husband Murthy was at home. The two girls Priya and Madhavi were shunted off to Akhila’s room to share her bed. And when the lights had been switched off –
because the two girls couldn’t sleep if there was even a tiny flicker of light in the room and they needed their sleep or they would doze off in class the next day – muffled noises crept in through the crack between the bedroom door and the floor.
because the two girls couldn’t sleep if there was even a tiny flicker of light in the room and they needed their sleep or they would doze off in class the next day – muffled noises crept in through the crack between the bedroom door and the floor.
A reined in breath. A caressing sigh. The rustle of clothes. Feverish excitement. And sometimes a whisper – Ssh … she’ll hear us …
Akhila would turn towards the window and pull the sheet over her ears. Those nights she felt a crippling longing for Hari. Had she made a mistake by letting him go? Where was Hari now? If she were to meet him again, would he feel the same way about her? Hari, Hari, she cried … If only I hadn’t been such a coward.
With the longing came a bitter resentment. A rancour she couldn’t stop from curdling within her and crawling down the sides of her mouth in narrow lines.
It wasn’t that Akhila grudged Padma the happiness her life seemed to be speckled with. Akhila didn’t grudge her anything. The entwining of limbs; an arm thrown around her waist; a chest to rest her head upon; the blossoming of her womb; the engorging of her breasts with milk; the sound of her babies, and laughter; the waiting for her husband to come home; the sharing of an ordinary moment …
What she resented was being thrust into the middle of all this change, this expanding of horizon, while her life continued in its sedate, dull, spinsterish, constant way. No highs. No lows. Just seamless travel from day to day.
The train wheezed to a halt. Voices crowded. Strange sounds that made no sense. Akhila opened her eyes. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She panicked. Then she remembered and a slow smile bloomed. She turned onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows.
How strange, she thought. All railway platforms look
alike. The puddles of water near the occasional dripping tap. The passengers with clenched faces and feverish eyes. The piled up suitcases. The occupied benches. The porters. The vendors with coffee and tea urns, packets of biscuits and glossy magazines. The garbage bins stuffed with litter. The cigarette butts. A crumpled plastic coffee cup. A chocolate wrapper. A banana peel. The pink and green plastic bags caught between the railway tracks, ballooning with the breeze, deflating in stillness. The once white but now silvery-grey stakes fencing the station in.
alike. The puddles of water near the occasional dripping tap. The passengers with clenched faces and feverish eyes. The piled up suitcases. The occupied benches. The porters. The vendors with coffee and tea urns, packets of biscuits and glossy magazines. The garbage bins stuffed with litter. The cigarette butts. A crumpled plastic coffee cup. A chocolate wrapper. A banana peel. The pink and green plastic bags caught between the railway tracks, ballooning with the breeze, deflating in stillness. The once white but now silvery-grey stakes fencing the station in.
PALAKKAD. Akhila saw the name of the station. The pass in the mountains that allowed the world entry through the Western Ghats. This was a major junction and the stop would be a long one.
She turned her head and looked at the other passengers. All the others were asleep except Prabha Devi who was climbing down from her berth. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘So did you sleep well?’
Akhila nodded and sat up. ‘I’m going to buy a cup of tea. Would you like one?’ Then, pointing to Janaki, she asked, ‘Should we wake her up? She has to get off at Ernakulam. So does the girl, and they seem to be fast asleep.’
‘There is still time. We’ll wake them up after a while. Do you want to eat breakfast? This is the stop for it. The food will be warm and fresh.’
‘How can I? I haven’t brushed my teeth.’ Akhila shook her head.
‘Do you plan to go hungry all day? Just rinse your mouth well and that should do,’ Prabha Devi said impatiently.
When they had washed their faces, rinsed their mouths, combed their hair and re-pleated their saris, they set about buying breakfast. ‘What are you going to have?’ Akhila asked.
‘I’m going to eat an appam with vegetable korma, and a banana fritter. I make everything else in my kitchen and besides, what is the point in coming to a new place if we do
everything the way we do it at home? We might as well stay there,’ Prabha Devi said, sticking her hand out of the window and waggling it to catch the attention of a nearby vendor.
everything the way we do it at home? We might as well stay there,’ Prabha Devi said, sticking her hand out of the window and waggling it to catch the attention of a nearby vendor.
Akhila thought for a second. ‘Alright, I’ll have the same,’ she said.
‘That’s more like it,’ Prabha Devi said with a smile.
The white fluffy appam came wrapped in a banana leaf that was covered with a sheet of newspaper. ‘I love the aroma of food wrapped in banana leaf,’ Prabha Devi said breathing in deeply. ‘Do you?’
Do I? Akhila wondered. She had never thought about it. She inhaled the aromas and said, ‘Yes, I do too. But I never knew. How strange it is that someone has to tell us what we like and what we don’t.’
‘There is nothing strange about that. Most of us are like that.’
‘I find it hard to believe that of you,’ Akhila said. ‘You seem completely assured of who you are, what you want, what you like and what you don’t.’
Prabha Devi swallowed her mouthful and said thoughtfully, ‘Is that how I seem to you?’
‘You are one of the most confident and content persons I have met,’ Akhila said, gingerly placing a piece of appam in her mouth.
‘There, it wasn’t all that bad, was it?’ Prabha Devi teased.
‘You know what,’ Prabha Devi said when they had eaten and washed their hands, ‘I used to be very much like you. Quiet and timid and afraid to try anything new. Then one day, I discovered I didn’t like the person I had become and so I changed.’
‘Just like that?’ Akhila asked disbelievingly.
‘Of course, it wasn’t just like that. There was a cause and effect like there always is. Except that in my case, I was both the cause and the effect.’
Afloat
During the course of a short nap one afternoon in September, a week after her fortieth birthday, it occurred to Prabha Devi that she had forgotten the sound of her own voice. What do I sound like? Is my voice shrill or harsh? Does it pitch low or high? Does it float like the wind or fall like bricks? She opened her mouth and spoke her name: Pra-bhaa-de-vi. A sound emerged that was a little like a bleat and more like a mewl. So this is my voice, she thought. Between an irate sheep and a kitten being strangled.
Prabha Devi rose from the spring-mattress-fitted bed covered with a satin spread and switched off the air-conditioning. She pushed aside the heavy drapes that turned the room into a womb where the waking world had no entry and flung open the French windows. The terraced lawn beamed, flushed with sunshine and moisture. Prabha Devi walked on to the grass. The blades tickled her toes. She raised her head to the evening sun and parted her lips. Sunshine dribbled down her throat. She licked her lips and tried saying her name again. This time, the ghost of a former life drifted out of her mouth. And Prabha Devi felt a gradual awakening of life. Where have I been all this while?
she asked herself At first quietly, tremulously and then furiously. What was I doing all this while?
she asked herself At first quietly, tremulously and then furiously. What was I doing all this while?
When Prabha Devi was born, her father sighed. He had hoped it would be a boy. He had planned to open a fifth jewellery store in the city. Madras was big enough to provide ample business for five stores and if Prabha Devi had been a boy, he could have settled everything so tidily. Five stores, five boys, everyone happy. Now he’d have to shelve the idea of the fifth store.
Prabha Devi’s mother, though, was pleased with her daughter. ‘I have someone to leave my recipes to. Someone who’ll treasure my jewellery. Someone who’ll want to be like me. Someone who’ll say—in my mother’s house, this is how we did it …’
Prabha Devi’s father stared down at her disapprovingly and muttered, ‘Has this baby, apart from ruining my business plans, addled your brains as well? If you ask me, a daughter is a bloody nuisance.’
Prabha Devi’s mother sighed. It was foolish of her to have bared her soul to him. What he would give in to was flesh. Creamy globules, pert and plump, all signs of having nourished four lusty sons erased now that they were engorged with milk for this new one. Her daughter. Prabha Devi’s mother snapped open the buttons of her blouse and cradled the baby against her breast. A fleeting glimpse was enough to ensure that her husband’s disagreeable mood dissipated. ‘We have four sons. A daughter can do no harm. Besides, when it is time for her to be married, you can choose a family that will aid your business interests,’ she said to her husband in a low voice.
He looked at her thoughtfully, then smiled. Things seemed better now that they had been put into perspective. He touched the baby’s cheek, stroked the curve of his wife’s breast and went out of the room quite satisfied with life.
Prabha Devi grew up. Her mother saw to it that she had
a near perfect childhood. She was bought expensive dolls from Singapore, with blonde hair and eyes that shut when you laid them down on their back. Old saris were cut up for Prabha Devi to dress up in and play schoolteacher. A kitchen was set up for her to play house and mother games. Sometimes Prabha Devi’s mother joined in her daughter’s games, pretending to be an adult-child while her daughter tried hard to be a child-adult. This one daughter of hers gave her more pleasure than all her four sons put together. But she kept quiet about it. Long ago she had discovered that a woman with an opinion was treated like a bad smell. To be shunned. And so Prabha Devi’s mother swallowed the thought as she had done all her life.
a near perfect childhood. She was bought expensive dolls from Singapore, with blonde hair and eyes that shut when you laid them down on their back. Old saris were cut up for Prabha Devi to dress up in and play schoolteacher. A kitchen was set up for her to play house and mother games. Sometimes Prabha Devi’s mother joined in her daughter’s games, pretending to be an adult-child while her daughter tried hard to be a child-adult. This one daughter of hers gave her more pleasure than all her four sons put together. But she kept quiet about it. Long ago she had discovered that a woman with an opinion was treated like a bad smell. To be shunned. And so Prabha Devi’s mother swallowed the thought as she had done all her life.
When Prabha Devi was fifteen years old, her father moved her from the family-owned school to a convent school. The nuns were as strict and as fastidious as Prabha Devi’s father expected them to be. ‘The nuns will groom her well. Besides, if we have to find a good alliance for her, she should be able to speak proper English and look a little fashionable,’ her father told her mother who was all for Prabha Devi leaving school now that she had passed her tenth standard.
When Prabha Devi asked her mother for permission to go with a friend to a matinee show at a nearby cinema theatre, she shook her head nervously. ‘I don’t think your father will like it.’
But to her surprise, he said she could go. ‘No roaming around the city from the theatre to ice-cream parlours. But she can go out every Saturday morning for two hours. These days, boys prefer girls who are friendly and can hold their own in a conversation. But the word is friendly, not brazen or wanton, do you understand?’
In all other aspects, Prabha Devi turned out to be the kind of woman her mother had envisioned she would be when she was born. A replica of herself.
Her embroidery was done with stitches so fine that you could barely see them. Just shadows and shapes. Her idlies
were light and soft. But the true test of a woman lies in the curd she makes and even there Prabha Devi excelled. Sweet and tart with a faint taste of mangoes. In the stone dish that her mother used to set her curd, it wobbled with delicious excitement every time Prabha Devi was responsible for its making. Her voice rose pleasingly full when she was asked to join in the singing at a puja. She walked with small mincing steps, her head forever bowed, suppliant, womanly.
were light and soft. But the true test of a woman lies in the curd she makes and even there Prabha Devi excelled. Sweet and tart with a faint taste of mangoes. In the stone dish that her mother used to set her curd, it wobbled with delicious excitement every time Prabha Devi was responsible for its making. Her voice rose pleasingly full when she was asked to join in the singing at a puja. She walked with small mincing steps, her head forever bowed, suppliant, womanly.
Prabha Devi’s skin remained fair, dewy and spotless; other girls of her age had acne. The result of overindulgence and negligence, Prabha Devi knew. She avoided chocolates, she didn’t like them anyway. And she gave herself a face pack every two weeks. Green gram flour, orange peel and sandal dust mixed with sour curds. When she had washed the muck off her face, she ran a half-slice of lime over her skin. Around the mouth. On the cheeks. Over the nose and forehead and then all around her neck. Just the way her mother had taught her to.
Prabha Devi was eighteen when her father came home beaming one evening. He had found her a husband. Prabha Devi’s brothers and their wives beamed as well. An unwed younger sister, even though she was docile and well mannered, was a concern. Why their father had waited this long was beyond their comprehension. But Prabha Devi’s father was not given to explaining why he did what. So in the same spirit, they accepted his decision to wed Prabha Devi to Jagdeesh. The only son and heir of a prosperous diamond merchant. Besides, they could expand the diamond section in their four jewellery stores.
Only Prabha Devi’s mother was saddened by the news. She should be happy, she knew. Jagdeesh was good-looking and smart; his family pedigree was excellent and her daughter was lucky to marry into such a fine family. Besides, Prabha Devi would be moving to Bangalore, which was only a few hundred kilometres away and not to some far-flung place like Delhi or Bombay.
But once Prabha Devi left, there would be nothing for her to do. Bringing up a daughter was a full-time occupation. One never stopped being a mother with a daughter. Sons were different. Their allegiances were constantly shifting. From mother to father to friends to wives to their own vested interests. But a daughter’s loyalty was constant as long as she lived under your roof. Prabha Devi’s mother already felt bereft. Soon there would be a vacuum nothing in this world could fill. And yet, she knew she was an oddity. Other women couldn’t wait to get rid of their daughters. ‘What do you want to do? Keep her with you for life? Have you ever heard anything so sacrilegious? You were always a strange one,’ they would say if she tried to explain her feelings to any of her friends or sisters. So Prabha Devi’s mother wept quietly into the scallop-edged hanky Prabha Devi had embroidered for her and let everyone believe that they were tears of happiness.
Prabha Devi outlined her lips with pale pink lipstick and filled in the colour with a few deft strokes. She stuck a bindi in the middle of her forehead, a precise two centimetres above the meeting point of her eyebrows, and rained a reddish trickle of kumkum in the parting of her hair. She patted her heavy gold earrings, pushed back a strand of hair that was already in place, and pulled the end of her sari over her head so that it framed her face becomingly. She glanced at her new gold watch. It was half past five in the morning. The household was still asleep. Her husband turned on his side and pulled the sheet to his chin. He smacked his lips and chewed on saliva. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. She felt a huge swell of emotion – love, fear, hope, expectations … she had been a wife for less than a day. Then she waited.
For the next many years, that was all Prabha Devi did. Wait. For Jagdeesh to come home. For the babies to be born. For their first step, their first word, their first triumph … Waiting for something to happen while her life swished past in a blur of insignificant days.
There were stray moments that parted themselves from the morass of nothingness and clung to the wall of her mind. Cobwebs of fleeting happiness; a ripeness of joy that overwhelmed Prabha Devi with a single thought in its wispy wake: How lucky I am to be me!
A couple of months after her marriage, there was a death in Jagdeesh’s family. It was decided that Jagdeesh’s parents would attend the funeral while the younger couple stayed behind at home. ‘The servants will take care of everything. You just have to keep an eye on them,’ Jagdeesh’s mother said, thrusting the filigree silver keyring into Prabha Devi’s hands.
Prabha Devi fixed it to the waist of her sari where it hung, pressing on her lower abdomen, brushing against her inner thigh, through the layers of the sari, with the weight of responsibility and the gleam of power.
Jagdeesh’s mother smiled approvingly. ‘Be careful. Don’t trust anyone and see that Jagdeesh eats all his meals on time.’ Her parting words sailed through Prabha Devi’s ears and sank with a gentle plop into the lily pond in the garden.
Prabha Devi unhooked the keyring from her waist and laid it carefully in the top drawer of the dressing table. Then she went into the kitchen and checked on the servants. They were busy rearranging the kitchen shelves. Prabha Devi closed the door behind her and walked to the pond in which white lilies bloomed, goldfish swam and frogs lived, all in perennial wetness of content. She pulled up her sari to above her knees and stepped into the pond. The water moved, splashed, rippled and lapped against the boulders heaped to one side of the pond behind which a concealed motor slumbered. One flick of the switch and it would begin to hum and a waterfall would be born. But Prabha Devi was oblivious to everything but the delight of the water that crept between her toes and pressed itself against her with a reckless abandon. The flat pads of the lily leaves nudged her and the goldfish came to examine and
experimentally nibble at the flesh that had dropped so suddenly into their realm.
experimentally nibble at the flesh that had dropped so suddenly into their realm.
Prabha Devi smiled. Then she felt a giggle escape her. It was, she thought, as if all of them had conspired to add to the fun. The breeze lifted a strand of her hair and tickled her nose. The lily stems ran ghost fingers on the back of her knees and the fish wriggled their bellies on her toes. Prabha Devi lifted her face to the skies and laughed loud and clear.
In the evening, when Jagdeesh came home, she waited for him to shower and change his clothes. Then she took his hand in hers and led him to the lily pond. ‘What is all this?’ he asked, bashful and surprised.
‘Sssh …’ she whispered. ‘Just do as I ask you to.’
They sat at the edge of the pond with feet dangling in the water, now a greenish black in the gloom of the evening. Jagdeesh lifted his foot and watched the droplets drip from his toes. ‘My father will be very angry if he knows that we have been wading in his precious lily pond,’ he said with a sly grin.
‘We won’t tell him what we did. Just this once. Let’s pretend that we are in a beautiful garden like you see in the movies. Where the hero and heroine hold hands and sing songs about their love for each other,’ she said, slipping her hand into his.
He gazed into her eyes, uncertain. Was her suggestion tinged with treachery? ‘Wives often lead their husbands down the wrong paths. Away from their family and responsibilities. We’re not suggesting that your wife will …’ his mother had said a few days before he was married. ‘But it is up to a good husband to accept or discard what his wife suggests. And not be smitten by a slavish love that makes him agree to her every demand.’
Was Prabha Devi’s whim to be accepted or discarded? Jagdeesh’s 23-year-old body and still boyish sense of adventure goaded him. What the hell, it was just this once …
He stretched towards the boulder and clicked the switch
on. Underwater lights came on, and a waterfall that cascaded. The waters turned a greenish gold; the plump fish danced; the lilies unfurled their petals; the frogs set up a chorus. Jagdeesh touched Prabha Devi’s face with his index finger and ran the tip of his tongue over her lips. She shivered: How lucky I am to be me.
on. Underwater lights came on, and a waterfall that cascaded. The waters turned a greenish gold; the plump fish danced; the lilies unfurled their petals; the frogs set up a chorus. Jagdeesh touched Prabha Devi’s face with his index finger and ran the tip of his tongue over her lips. She shivered: How lucky I am to be me.
A month later. Prabha Devi was radiant with excitement. Jagdeesh was taking her with him on a business trip to New York and, on the way back, they would stop over in London. Prabha Devi felt as if her life had just begun. At the international airport in Bombay, she sat in the lounge trying to read a magazine. Jagdeesh was making a last-minute phone call. She felt fingers curl around her forearm. ‘Prabha Devi,’ a voice probed, nervous and hesitant, ‘excuse me, are you Prabha Devi?’
Prabha Devi turned around perplexed. The voice belonged to a girl she had gone to school with. Sharmila. The most brilliant student the school had ever had. She was destined for great things, everyone had said. She would be either a doctor or an IAS officer or someone noteworthy. But here she was. Sweat dotting her brow, in spite of the air-conditioning; lank hair, droopy mouth; chained to a fractious toddler in a stroller and a mother-in-law who darted suspicious glances at everyone and everything.
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