The Toss of a Lemon (22 page)

Fortunately, Gayatri, who has none of Sivakami’s concerns, has invited Thangam to help her and her mother-in-law set up their golu, which will require much more time and creativity. This is Gayatri’s first Navaratri in her husband’s village, where she has no sisters, nor sisters-in-law, and so she has invited Thangam to come and help with this, the most pleasant of feminine chores, always more pleasant in a crowd. Gayatri does, at least, have an ad hoc ally in her mother-in-law, an avid and competitive collector who has decreed that their golu should be the grandest on the street. Her daughter-in-law is, for once, wholly complicit in her wishes. Sivakami is amazed as she watches Thangam gallop down the Brahmin quarter to Gayatri’s house.

She arrives as Gayatri and her mother-in-law are unpacking their collection. They greet her as servants shuffle away the boxes. Thangam stands silent until she’s impatiently beckoned.

Some of the dolls are exotic, such as a little boy figure in green felt short-pants held up by two straps. He has a mate in a green felt skirt. “Both are albino,” the mother-in-law points out. They were a gift from a man who photographed her wedding for display abroad, from “Soovisterlund,” a place the mother-in-law says, authoritatively, is “between Iroppia and Aappirikka.” Gayatri exclaims that another doll, with reddish-brown skin, looks like pictures she has seen of north Indian indigenes: tall and severe, clothed in stiff skins, beads, feathers and face paint. The mother-in-law explains condescendingly that the doll is, in fact, from “Ikanahda,” gifted to her by a British engineer.

None of the other dolls are as exotic, but they are exciting. Three are dressed like dancing girls, in cheap jewellery and cunningly wrapped costumes. One even has a torso that wobbles in its blouson and hinged legs that spread the pleats of her costume into a stiff fan. Another wears a sequined, Persianesque veil.

Thangam is most taken with four tiny, exquisite, carved figures, each all-of-a-piece: a woman bending over a grinder, a man putting his shoulder to a plow, another woman inspecting her loom, and a man cutting coconuts from the top of a tree. The mother-in-law’s face softens with pleasure at Thangam’s choice.

“These, child... the most precious. They are the only dolls I brought out from my father’s house. They were carved by our old servant. He took me everywhere. On his hip—he never let my feet touch the ground. He’s been dead now... thirty-five years? More.”

She quickly becomes all business. “So, Gayatri, what? What are we doing?”

Gayatri shrugs.

There is one thing that Thangam has not yet examined, and she goes to it now: a three-storey dollhouse, sitting on a green-painted wooden plinth. It’s taller than her waist and has a veranda spanning its front, while the back is painted in red bricks, with window frames filigreed in green and violet.

Gayatri comes over to where Thangam is conducting her inspection and explains, proud and a little possessive, “My father bought this for me in Thiruchi when I was nine, just after my first Pongal in my husband’s house. Guess you’ll have yours in a couple of months, right? I begged and begged for it, but he said no, and I cried so hard that night. I wasn’t spoiled,” she says as if warning Thangam. “My whole life, I never asked for anything but this. The next day, he came home with it.” Two little bound-straw dolls huddle over clay pots and an even smaller pair nap on tiny mats. “My sisters said I must bring it with me when I came to live here. Aren’t the dolls sweet?” She rearranges them around minuscule tin plates, but the realism is spoiled because they are too stiff to sit. “Let’s try and make some more things for them.”

(Is Thangam remembering that other wee house, long dismantled, where she served her father’s soul his last meals? She says nothing about that, but brings her own tin play dishes to Gayatri the next day and insists on an extra place setting at each meal.)

Gayatri’s mother-in-law breaks in. “How many shelves for the golu? I say eleven.”

Thangam gapes.

“Eleven, yes, and an extra platform to run the perimeter of the pool. Panju! Panjunathan!”

Their servant comes hurrying to remove the two-foot-square wooden cover that sits year-round like a trap door in the main hall, flush with the floor. It conceals the hollow whose sole purpose is to become a pond every year at this time, a fixture in homes of status. The servant clatters off the board and squats to examine the state of the square basin, much like a temple tank in miniature, its surface slippery and green from eleven months under cover. This will give the “lake” an authentic cast once the basin is filled with water and baby lotus plants, but Panjunathan’s job is to find cracks, dry them and plug them with mortar. He picks diagnostically at fissures with a long, reddish fingernail.

They work on the golu until the wee hours of the morning. It is magnificent. At eleven shelves, it is taller than anyone who will come to see it. The top shelf is crowned with pictures of gods, heavily garlanded by Gayatri, who balances precariously on a bench dragged into the main hall for this purpose. The servant guards her, no doubt praying he will not have to touch her, since to do so is forbidden in several ways: first, a male servant can’t touch a young mistress, and second, she is Brahmin and his touch would be polluting. Her pregnancy adds an extra frisson of fear and his jaw is clenched as he stands by.

Reams of new silk cascade down the shelves in bands of peacock and aubergine, so much fabric, of such good quality, that its weight holds it in place without tacks. On each shelf, a scene plays out. Thangam and Gayatri will change the dolls around each morning of the festival, so that the small figures meet one another in a variety of social settings: a concert, a party, a school, a wedding, a Dravidian religious festival, a trial, a pilgrimage, a diplomatic incident (suggested by Minister), a bridge inauguration and an exorcism. Two bars, normally used for hanging saris on, extend from the sides of the ninth shelf, and three marionettes hang from each bar.

For nine nights running, Thangam and all the other village girls run house to house after dark, admiring the golu, singing a song and accepting a treat: sweet crunchy balls of black sesame, teardrop bubbles of fried batter tossed with nuts, sugar crystals ground with toasted lentils and compressed into balls. On the ninth night, the lady of each house makes an offering to a young girl, invited for this purpose. A beautiful virgin from a good family embodies the goddess, perfect in everything—no girl is feted who is deformed or sickly, blind or bad-smelling. Not surprisingly, Sivakami has received many requests for Thangam, though she has made her available only to houses without virgins of their own.

Thangam’s enthusiasm has got Sivakami curious, and on the first night of the festival, when she’s putting Thangam to bed, she asks her about it.

“I had no idea you loved Navaratri so much,
kunju.
You never showed such excitement, even last year in Samanthibakkam, when your cousins and aunts got up a display.”

The girl is quiet a moment. “They had all the dolls.”

“They didn’t have that many dolls.”

“No.”

“Not like Gayatri.”

“The big aunty already had so many, Amma—remember when we went, when I was small?”

This is Gayatri’s mother-in-law. Sivakami knows she and Thangam would have paid a call there together before, before everything changed, but she has no recollection of it. Clearly, it made a much greater impression on Thangam than she had realized.

“And Gayatri Mami told me she has just as many, Amma, and she does and she specially asked me to help arrange them!” Thangam’s eyes shine in the dark.

Sivakami strokes her head. What else has Thangam seen, been changed by, fallen in love with without her mother noticing? “Maybe next year you can get a couple more for our golu.”

“Puppets.” Thangam has clearly thought this through. “Not the big ones, the small ones.”

In contrast with his sister, Vairum’s joys and sorrows are all too evident : she sometimes wishes she could notice his unhappiness less, along with the way he blames her, for his exclusion, for his nostalgia, for noticing his skin problems. She knows she is to blame. She didn’t bring him back here so that he could be happy; she brought him so that he would be fulfilled. She just wishes she weren’t reminded of this every time she looks at him.

Now IT IS EARLY NOVEMBER and time for the next festival: Deepavali, the festival of lights, when oil lamps are lit and fireworks shot off, perhaps to celebrate Rama’s triumphant return from defeating the demon king of Lanka, perhaps to celebrate one of Krishna’s many victories, perhaps to celebrate a victory of the god Vishnu, of whom both Rama and Krishna are earthly incarnations. Regardless, it’s a chance to celebrate, and why should any god or incarnation be excluded?

This Deepavali is the first of Thangam’s life as a wife, Sivakami’s first great act as a mother-in-law. Custom dictates it should be half as grand as the wedding, but many make it grander than that, hoping attendees will double it in their heads and be even more impressed with the wedding in retrospect.

Sivakami’s preparations are anxious and exacting. In-laws have been known to make demands on the spot—for extra dowry items, saris or jewellery. Thangam’s in-laws don’t seem the type, but maybe she should hold something in reserve, just in case? Like what? No, she will give what is appropriate; she has never done less, nor more. If they make demands, she will meet them.

Murthy travels to the in-laws’ village to extend the invitation, thrilled to be the family envoy. He thinks of himself as fastidious and preaches this almost as a kind of morality, but he always overlooks some detail of his grooming. The day he embarks, for instance, bright with the honour of his mission, Sivakami notices a line of red betel-stained spittle marking a trail down his chin. She works hard to overlook his flaws, which are almost endearing: he is quite genuine in his affection for her family, as he was in his fondness for Hanumarathnam, and he sincerely desires to help.

Murthy returns home three days before the Deepavali celebration, gushing over Thangam’s husband’s beauty, of which he had, sadly, only a glimpse toward the end of his trip. It’s a shame, Goli’s parents had said, he must have mistaken the time. They sent someone to fetch him, but he’d been unavoidably detained. Guess Murthy would have to greet him at Deepavali in Cholapatti, with the rest of the Brahmin quarter. When Murthy was being taken to the station, the driver pointed to a tall boy crossing the street, and Murthy recognized him from the wedding—high colour, immaculate clothes. But Goli disappeared before they could catch him. “As with our Thangam,” Murthy says, “just a sight of him is enough to fill a heart with peace and gladness. What a couple they will make!”

Sivakami thinks, But that’s inexcusable! and wonders if Murthy is being honest or trying to make her feel better about her son-in-law’s rudeness. Surely guileless Murthy is not capable of dissembling?

The day before the festival, Muchami takes Vairum, Murthy and a cotillion of garland-bearers to greet the in-laws. Sivakami is so hoping that this meeting between the brothers-in-law might go better than the last. It would be so nice for Vairum to have a friend in the family. Thirty minutes later, Vairum tears into their vestibule, kicks off his shoes so hard they hit the ceiling, ducks out of the way of their descent and shoots into the farthest corner of the cowshed. Sivakami guesses he still has no such friend.

The rest of the party is half an hour behind him, slowed by the many who come out to greet them. Goli’s parents look wan and wary, but Goli is fresher, shinier and handsomer even than before. Sivakami wonders again why she cannot see his charms and resolves to try harder, if only for Thangam’s sake.

The next day, the house is crowded with feasters and gawkers who come to see the new son-in-law. Hanumarathnam’s sisters come. They ask nothing about matters related to the house. Sivakami’s brothers come. They ask nothing about matters related to the children. Sivakami greets them with affection and respect, enhanced by the feeling that she is, truly, mistress of this home.

Happily, Thangam’s in-laws make no extra demands. They meekly, mutely receive their gifts and, in turn, present Thangam with a sari. Various matrons rub it between their fingers and pronounce it, among themselves, not gorgeous, but respectable. Goli is as pleased as a child with the diamond ring he receives from Sivakami, the ring her father had presented to his own son-in-law. As Goli leaps about the room displaying it, Sivakami squints to blur the crowd and see, for a moment, only the light of the jewel, as though it were still winking from her husband’s hand.

Then Sivakami instructs Thangam to lay banana leaves for the feast. But in the brief interval between diamond and dinner, Goli vanishes. His wife and parents dine without him. Everyone is uneasy, but they proceed. He is not back for the second seating. Several packs of youngsters and a posse of men volunteer to look for him. He remains unlocated. His parents remain mum. Sivakami begs everyone to sit for the third seating, but no one will. She walks to the back of the kitchen and leans in the doorway facing the courtyard, where Mari and Muchami are nervously conferring, and Vairum, who insisted on taking his supper out back and alone, is playing palanguzhi against himself. Sivakami beckons Muchami, and after hearing what she has to say, he goes, quick and solemn, through the cowshed to the northernmost garden door.