The Toss of a Lemon (24 page)

This episode is the end of the all-important first Deepavali. Thangam spends the rest of the day on the veranda, refusing lunch, rising only at Sivakami’s insistence, around half past four. When she rises, gold falls from her paavaadai as though all its forget-me-nots were shedding their petals.

A few minutes after Thangam vacates the veranda, Vairum arrives home from school, removing his shoes before dragging his satchel over the threshold. It gathers a thin gold line of dust along the broad bricks. Muchami departs for his late-afternoon tour of the fields; Mari sorts rice; Sivakami organizes snacks for her children.

Thus, she does not see a neighbour’s disappointment at just missing a chance for Thangam’s blessing, she doesn’t see him pass close by their veranda on his way home and be arrested in his passage by the thin dusting of gold on the spot Thangam just vacated. She doesn’t see him take a pinch and stroke it across his forehead, the way he did with a pinch of ash given him once or twice a week by Sivakami’s late husband when he held his healing court on the very spot where Thangam sits daily.

Sivakami doesn’t see one or two neighbours note the glisten across this man’s forehead as he proceeds home, she doesn’t hear his wife exclaim over it, she doesn’t even hear the crackling up and down the lines of gossip as the news spreads like fires in the dry season. What she does hear is the sound of squabbling, maybe an hour after the original incident. What she sees, when she goes to investigate, is three of her neighbours trying to scrape their own small mounds of Thangam into small paper cones, while a crowd of ten or twelve others try to get a glimpse of the substance, on the veranda, or the road, or the steps, before it is all gone.

In the days following, whenever Thangam is out on the veranda, adults come one by one to receive her blessing. As before, she does nothing to offer it. Those who need must simply take. They lean across the veranda and pinch a pinch of dust from the sprinkling around her or from the small drift against the wall where she sometimes leans. Small babies have the dust rubbed on their tummies for their perpetual ailments. Some is given, folded in a bit of paper, to a servant whom caste does not permit to walk on the Brahmin quarter. Old people receive a pinch on the tongue, just as they take a daily dose of holy ash brought home from favourite temples to ease their undiagnosable internal malfunctions. The villagers remind one another that once upon a time it was said a morsel of pounded gold taken internally had great medicinal value. It was the vitamin pill of nobility. All in the village swear that they feel its invigorating effects. Their good health gains renown, and people come from elsewhere, too, just as they did for Hanumarathnam, to pay respects and receive some holy ash toward prevention or cure, just as Sivakami’s parents did all those years ago.

At first, Sivakami feels a vague indignation at her neighbours’ greed and opportunism. She can’t bring herself to think of Thangam’s dust as a gift; to her it feels like a symptom of some malady, the root of which she tells herself she cannot yet fathom.

She eschews the auric dust. The village presumes this is because of her widowhood: widows do not wear gold—her forehead should be marked by nothing but ash, the leavings after a flame goes cold. But this does not explain why neither Muchami nor Mari applies Thangam’s dust to their furrowed brows or tired limbs. Gayatri queries them. Muchami doesn’t say that he, too, is widowed, though this is how he has felt since Hanumarathnam’s death. He replies as he and Sivakami determined together in advance. He tells their young neighbour, “All who are frequently in Thangam’s presence are coated with her blessed presence at all times.” He holds out his hands for inspection ; the glints beneath his purplish fingernails and in the creases of his velvet-dark knuckles prove his claim.

Vairum has overheard, though, and pipes boldly his own explanation, “I’ll never take gold from my sister. I’ll only give her gold, I will never, never take it.”

Gayatri feels inexplicably shamed by their answers and determines from that moment not to take the dust by pinches, but to feel content with whatever traces drift upon her by accident during her daily visits.

A week after Deepavali, however, it is clear that the quantity of gold Thangam is shedding is somewhat reduced. Within a month production has ceased. Thangam has returned to her previous magnetic, but not magical, self. The village resigns itself to taking her blessing as before, with a hand on her head. Straggling pilgrims who come seeking the girl who makes gold must content themselves with a sight of her. As the locals point out, and the religious travellers must agree, that sight is reasonably miraculous in and of itself. The pilgrims depart protesting their perfect contentment. And when, inevitably, a few visitors come with glints in their eyes more entrepreneurial than spiritual, all rumours are hotly denied, and the would-be capitalists turn away shrugging.

SOME MONTHS LATER, the seasons turn, and crops mature. It is Pongal time. This harvest, the big harvest, is the busiest time in Muchami’s work year. Accounting suddenly becomes more complicated. There are three growing seasons, not to mention year-round income sources such as coconuts or bananas, but in this time when every possible crop can be reaped, bushels can be lost or disguised. This year, Muchami’s sixth in this household’s employ, will be exceptionally stressful for him because he, together with Gayatri, Murthy, and Rukmini, will escort Thangam to her in-laws’ house for the holiday. There, Thangam will initiate the festival by placing the pongal pot on her in-laws’ stove to symbolize the bounty she brings them as a bride. Her escorts know that, given her in-laws’ straits, their charge is a fortune both literal and figurative.

Muchami has become silent and tense. This is not due to the stress of his work. Normally, he thrives under this kind of strain, becoming more authoritative and authoritarian with each additional demand. He is proud to be taking Thangam, and will be fiercely watchful.

It’s just that he wishes he could take her by bullock cart: he is scared of the train. He doesn’t find it difficult to meet trains at the station. He displays a good deal of confidence when putting people on and taking them off, certain that the train is stationary while he does so. None of this leaping on and off while it is in motion, no sir. To ride on one himself? It seems an unnecessary risk.

Mari and Sivakami reassure him that frail women and little children ride them all the time. Yes, he agrees, but those passengers are literate, high caste. He is the toughest guy around when it comes to market and merchant. He can hold his own in the rowdiest toddy shop in the deepest forest. But this great big roar of metal and smoke... He hopes he can keep his dhoti clean, within and without.

Mari accompanies them to the station, counting baggage, ensuring the gifts are always in her husband’s hands. Even if he’s gripping them numbly with fear, at least he’s got them. A clutch of dishevelled children, including a couple of Vairum’s bodyguards, stand with her on the platform. They run around, chattering, helping her settle Thangam, Murthy, Rukmini and Gayatri. Finally, a couple of minutes before the 3 p.m. departure, Muchami must mount, ashen beneath his mahogany complexion. The children imitate his knees shaking and laugh until they choke. He stands to yell at them, but the train gives a preliminary lurch and his voice fails him. He sits down and feels the floor shudder up to speed.

Two hours later, it is a suave and cosmopolitan gent who swaggers from the train with his party. They have befriended a number of fellow travellers, exchanged news and opinions, and addresses. There had been, in their own compartment, a range of caste such as you would never run across in such close proximity anywhere else. Muchami is not really sure this part is such a good thing. He has heard of agitations to promote such mixing. One of the men in their compartment seemed to lean that way. Muchami is not persuaded, not at all. He knows his place and so should everyone. Else how would anyone know anything ? What would be one’s occupation, one’s realm of expertise? But the conversation was lively and two hours couldn’t really harm anything. Best of all, he no longer fears the iron horse, and his compartment companions concur: it is initially harrowing, but ultimately a very agreeable and efficient way to travel.

The in-laws’ servant brings them by bullock cart to the chattram where they will be accommodated. Muchami will sleep in the courtyard out back, since the building is Brahmin-only. They tidy themselves, organize the gifts and go to take their evening meal at the in-laws’ home. Murthy, in a kurta neatly pressed except for one wrinkled sleeve, is being insufferably knowledgeable, having travelled here once before. Gayatri is so curious that she can’t get too irritated with him; Rukmini, also curious, is naturally deferential to her husband; Thangam shows no curiosity. Just before they enter the house, Gayatri inspects the girl, and absentmindedly, with her thumb, wipes a little sparkle of sweat off the child’s upper lip. But the lip is not moist, and now Gayatri’s thumb shines with a faint gold, the sort that Cholapatti has not seen in months.

No time to wonder, though, because here are Goli and his parents, and neighbours who have come to greet them, and Thangam’s maternal uncles who have come also, and there are gifts to be distributed and inquiries to be made and the evening meal to be taken, and... Goli is gone again. His parents appear utterly unsurprised and offer no explanation. Half the guests want to take the same approach, the other half are more inclined to wild speculation, until Gayatri pipes up, “Why is everyone so mystified? He had to go look after business. He’s a very responsible boy. Too responsible,” she gently chastises his parents. “He should learn to take it easy sometimes. He would be forgiven on a night like this.”

Muchami overhears her and is so grateful, because from his place in a foreign courtyard, in a foreign land, he can do nothing.

Anyway, Goli returns at noon the next day, plainly exhausted, for a meal and a nap. He is gone again by late afternoon. Thangam pathetically, exquisitely, performs her functions, stirring the pongal pot on the first day of the festival; on the second, she makes rows of seven balls each of sugared rice, yellow rice, red rice and yogourt rice. These are left as an offering for the crows, who are models for familial behaviour since the common wisdom is that they never eat without calling their fellow crows to eat with them. This is also the day women pray for the welfare of their brothers; when brothers give gifts to their sisters. Thangam is given a cash token by proxy, from Vairum, and Sivakami’s brothers give her a few rupees to take home to her mother.

Rukmini and Murthy eat and talk heartily and Muchami and Gayatri silently collude in their relief: if Rukmini and Murthy don’t find Goli’s absence suspicious, neither will anyone else. Besides, the village is distracted by a miracle: Thangam is shedding again.

When the party returns to Cholapatti after an absence of almost seventy-two hours, they are all coated in a dusting of gold. It is in the corners of their eyes and in their hair, it speckles Murthy’s shiny bald forehead so he resembles a new species of egg. As they disembark the train, all their compartment companions compete for a fingerful to smear on the foreheads of near and dear.

Rukmini and Murthy are flushed with celebrity as they arrive back on the Brahmin quarter. They excitedly relate the events of Pongal to Sivakami while Gayatri listens in uncharacteristic silence. The in-laws’ village had been so impressed to see Thangam in the full bloom of her powers. She just started a little the night before Pongal, but by the following evening, there were puffs of gold jetting from her heels with every step. The house streamed with people all wanting a bit, and Thangam satisfied them all. Oh, how Sivakami’s brothers had been amazed!

That evening and the day following, chattering hordes mill about Sivakami’s veranda, replenishing their supplies. “Thangam does look happy to be home,” Sivakami says to Muchami, who agrees. He has told her that, in those seventy-two hours, they saw Goli for perhaps two, one and a half of which he spent asleep.

Sivakami shakes her head. She is about to ask, rhetorically, “Where does he go?” but then it occurs to her that Muchami might know, and she is not ready to be told. Men disappear from time to time, and women must cope. Knowing where they go and why sometimes just makes that harder.

Three days later, the village is restive. Thangam’s glut of gold is receding once more. Where does the miracle come from? Where does it go? How to make it stay? Murthy, who likes to spend his days pacing and pondering questions of import, hits upon a theory: marriage completes a woman, does it not? It was only when Thangam found her other half that she became fully what she was meant to be, is it not so? Naturally, her capacity for magic waxes when she is near her husband, and wanes when he is far away.

The explanation is readily received by the village. But what to do? The child cannot live close to her husband until she comes of age. They would not want to lose her any sooner than necessary. When she goes, oh, that will be a sad day! Murthy’s scientific and deductive clarity has helped the townsfolk to understand what they can expect. They resolve to be satisfied with what they receive.