The Toss of a Lemon

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2008 Padma Viswanathan

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations,
and events are the products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

Published in Canada by Random House Canada.

 

Excerpt from Salman Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children is copyright © 1980
by Salman Rushdie and included with permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Viswanathan, Padma, 1968—

The toss of a lemon/Padma Viswanathan.—Ist U.S. ed.

p. cm.

1. Women—India—Fiction. 2. Family—India—Fiction.
3. India—Social life and customs—Fiction. 4. India—Social conditions—
20th century—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.4-V57T67 2008

813’.6-dc22 2008013369

ISBN 978-0-15-101533-7

eISBN : 97-8-054-74159-6

 

 

Designed by Kelly Hill

 

Printed in the United States of America

First U.S. edition

A C E G I K J H F D B

Bhuvana and S. P. Viswanathan

Dhanam Kochoi

Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence: but I seem to have found from somewhere the trick of filling in the gaps in my knowledge ...

Salman Rushdie,
Midnight’s Children

THE YEAR OF THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL, Sivakami is ten. She is neither tall nor short for her age, but she will not grow much more. Her shoulders are narrow but appear solid, as though the blades are fused to protect her heart from the back. She carries herself with an attractive stiffness: her shoulders straight and always aligned. She looks capable of bearing great burdens, not as though born to a yoke but perhaps as though born with a yoke within her.

She and her family live in Samanthibakkam, some hours away by bullock cart from Cholapatti, which had been her mother’s place before marriage. Every year, they return to Cholapatti for a pilgrimage. They fill a pot at the Kaveri River and trudge it up to the hilltop temple to offer for the
abhishekham.
These are pleasant, responsible, God-fearing folk who seek the blessings of their gods on any undertaking and any lack thereof. They maintain awe toward those potentially wiser or richer than they—like the young man of Cholapatti, who is blessed with the ability to heal.

No one in their family is sick, but still they go to the healer. They may be less than totally healthy and simply not know. One can always use a preventative, and it never hurts to receive the blessings of a blessed person. This has always been the stated purpose of the trip, and Sivakami has no reason to think this one is any different.

Hanumarathnam, the healer, puts his palms together in a friendly namaskaram, asks how they have been and whether they need anything specific. They shyly shake their heads, and he queries, with a penetrating squint, “Nothing?” Sivakami is embarrassed by her parents, who are acting like impoverished peasants. They owe this man their respect, but they are Brahmins too, and literate, like him. They can hold up their heads. She’s smiling to herself at his strange name: a hybrid of “Hanuman,” the monkey god, and
rathnam,
gem. The suffix she understands; it’s attached to the name of every man in the region.
But no one is named for the monkey!

Her mother and father cast glances at each other; then her father clears his throat. “Ah, our daughter here has just entered
gurubalam.
We are about to start searching for a groom.”

“Oh, well,” Hanumarathnam responds with a wink, “I deal in medicine, not charms.”

Sivakami’s parents giggle immoderately. Their daughter stares at the packed dust of the Brahmin-quarter street. Her three older brothers fidget.

“But you have my blessings,” Hanumarathnam continues, making a small package of some powder. “And this, dissolved in milk and drunk each day, this will give you strength. Just generally. It will help.”