The Toss of a Lemon (68 page)

He thunders softly at her, “You asked your brothers to warn Goli off from Dhoraisamy’s family? You are spreading rumours about this family?”

Sivakami sits up, feeling frail and uncertain. She had felt so competent when she wrote the letter.

“You will go to any lengths to protect that man, won’t you?” Vairum is in a fury.

Sivakami opens her mouth to respond—she wasn’t protecting Goli, she was protecting Janaki. “What if Dhoraisamy broke it off, when they learned...”

“You think I didn’t know Goli would try to milk them? I briefed them as soon as they agreed. They contracted with you and me, who are beyond reproach as far as they are concerned. They would never hold Janaki’s father against her. And you spread rumours. About them. Which reflects badly on me. You can’t just tell the truth about him, can you? That would be a blow to your pride.” He looks ugly. “If only your pride extended to me.” He thumps his chest with what sounds like a sob, and runs, so like a little boy, upstairs.

Sivakami can’t follow him—the main hall is full of relatives—and she doesn’t even know how to answer. She must talk to him, as soon as the wedding is done. She couldn’t be prouder of him. Isn’t that obvious ? He is what she always wanted him to be. And she is ashamed of Goli—that’s why she took this step. Has she made the mistake she feared others would make, all those many years ago, thinking Vairum too hard to be hurt?

Janaki thought the costume changes were fun, as were the ceremonies, which felt a little like play-acting. She is a bit embarrassed by the grandeur and finery, but also excited: these are harbingers of her new life. And she is mature enough to appreciate her in-laws’ classiness.
They didn’t even ask for a dowry
, she thinks with pleasure—they were happy to get her and didn’t need a bribe.

As the ceremonies wind to a close on the third night, Janaki sits with Baskaran on the dais at the end of the Brahmin quarter nearest the temple and wonders, not for the first time this weekend, where her father is. She thinks back to the last time she saw him, the only time since her mother’s death. He looked like a wraith, she thought—his hair nearly white, his eyes red, his clothes baggy and ghostlike.

As the sun begins to set, a chaotic figure runs hopping and gliding through the attendees of the wedding, from the other end of the Brahmin quarter—Padmavati, the witch’s sister-in-law. She streaks past the dais, and toward the temple, her clothes creased and bunched, food on her chin, trailing a yeasty smell of confinement in her wake. A moment later, the witch’s husband dashes frantically along the same path. When he reaches the dais, he asks Vairum, “Did you see her? My sister. Which way did she go?”

He points toward the temple, where Padmavati has achieved the top and begun shouting. First children, then other curious parties, crane and creep out to see what is happening. She has begun to tell a familiar story: the Tale of an Anklet, a Tamil classic. At least a third of the wedding’s guests move out to listen to her. Her brother figures out how to get onto the temple roof and tries to apprehend her. She runs to the opposite side, lifts her rumpled sari and starts masturbating for the crowd, shouting at her brother to keep away. He chases her and pushes her hands and sari down, but she slips out of his grasp and shoves him over the edge of the roof. The temple is only about nine feet high, but the wind is knocked out of him and he gives up.

Padmavati returns to her tale:

“I,” she declaims, “am Kannagi, the innocent daughter of a Thiruchi merchant, married to Kovalan, the handsome son of another merchant. At a festival some time back, Kovalan met Madhavi, a fish-eyed courtesan, and forgetting his faithful wife, went to live with her. Then they fought and he returned, but he had spent our entire fortune and I offered up to him my ankle bracelets, the thickest and best of my ornaments. ‘Come,’ I said, ‘let us go to Madurai and make our fortune anew.’ So now we go,” Padmavati grins evilly and marches around the perimeter of the temple. “But when we arrive in Madurai, new misfortunes are afoot. One of the queen’s ankle bracelets has been stolen and my husband, trying to sell one of mine, is accused. He is brought before the inattentive king and killed for a thief. I am waiting,” Padmavati sinks sideways to her knees, batting her lashes caricaturedly. “Where is my husband? I go and follow and hear of my husband’s destiny. I have fought and scratched my way into the king’s court: ‘What did your wife’s anklet contain?’ I challenged him. ‘Pearls,’ the queen tells me. ‘A city ruled by an unjust king is doomed to misery,’ I tell the king, and break mine open, from which gems roll and scatter. The queen faints; the king faints, too. ‘May Madurai burn!’ I scream. ‘My happiness is ended!’ ”

From within her sari, the witch’s sister-in-law withdraws a scythe and a bottle of kerosene. She douses herself while the crowd watches, still confused as to what she intends.

At that point in the story, the legendary Kannagi, that paragon of faith and chastity, cuts off her left breast and the city of Madurai bursts spontaneously into a cleansing flame, but Padmavati strikes a match on her scythe and sets herself on fire instead.

The crowd bursts into shouts and runs, but by the time they have fetched water and medics to the rooftop, the witch’s miserable sister-in-law is dead.

This doesn’t seem like a very good omen for a wedding, but Janaki is determined not to think that way. What has shaken her more than anything was the mention of the seductress who lured away a husband and made him spend on her the money he should have lavished, if judiciously, on his faithful wife.
I hate stories like that
. She is unable, however, to keep herself from wondering what becomes of the courtesan.

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, Vairum comes to fetch Janaki and Kamalam to Madras for a holiday. It is his final wedding gift to Janaki. Though she is well brought up, he wants to encourage Janaki to be more worldly, not only in her habits and tastes, but in her comportment.

Vairum’s driver loads their luggage and the two sisters climb into the car, a Ford woodie wagon with a royal blue nose and tan upholstery, cool to the touch. Janaki faces forward; Kamalam faces her on the jump seat. Vairum says little on the twelve-hour drive, and the girls are absorbed in watching the countryside. It’s their first time in a car, and the scenery is so much closer than in a train. Twice, Vairum stops for business. Before each meeting, he extracts a dossier from a pocket in the door on his side, flips down a desk from the seatback in front of him and double-checks the documents. The driver courteously inquires if the girls would like “cooldrinks” and they refuse. At the first stop, they eat, on their uncle’s direction, the rice meals that Sivakami has packed for them, washing their hands with water the driver brings them. At the second stop, they accept a tiffin of dosai and idlis Vairum buys them at a small hotel.

They arrive at Vairum’s house in the city a little after dark. Janaki and Kamalam are breathless at the activity between periphery and centre, the cars, buses, carts and cows competing with people for space on the roads, the blocky houses, apartment buildings, churches, mosques, temples and shops. Vairum lives in the thick of it, just off Cathedral Road, but in a neighbourhood of three-storey detached houses where tall, leafy trees muffle the urban noise. A peon pulls open the gate and they roll into a carport.

The driver opens their doors then extracts their things from the back of the car, a storage area Vairum calls the dickie. He runs up a curving outside staircase while they wait for Vairum, who has stopped to have a word with someone inside a large door on the ground floor, his home office, he explains briskly to the girls: reception room, guest quarters, small study and skeletal staff. A couple of staff members bow to the girls, palms together, as they stand in the carport, bleary-eyed from the drive. They follow Vairum up the stairs, polished granite, by appearance, but glittering with something like mother-of-pearl, and onto a narrow balcony edged with a plaster balustrade. The walkway widens into an outdoor reception area, furnished with bamboo sofas, in front of a pair of monumental carved wood doors. Vani rises, smiling, from a divan in the salon within, and waves them in to show them the room where they will sleep, off the dining area, opposite the puja room. Their things have been deposited there.

“Well, then, girls,” Vairum says, clapping his hands softly. “Wash up and we’ll have a bite to eat. I hope you’re ready to have some fun here!”

Janaki and Kamalam murmur happy agreement.

The next morning, Janaki parks herself in front of Vani to listen to her morning recital. She feels shy, but not shy enough to keep away. Vairum, leaving for his office, bids her sit on the divan—“That’s what it’s for! Go, sit, relax!”—and stands at the door until she obeys, tipping awkwardly on its edge. Kamalam, who had sat behind her on the floor, follows. “If you don’t learn anything else while you’re here, please at least figure out how to look at ease without plopping yourself on the floor.”

He leaves, and the girls remain rigid on the divan. Janaki doesn’t really mind sitting on it, especially after Vairum is gone and there is no one left to see them, but wishes she were closer to Vani, the better to observe her fret work. At one point, Kamalam rests a hand on one of the bolsters, which are covered in woven Hyderabadi cloth, black and white to match the floor tiles, with cross-hatched embroidery in primary colours.

Vairum returns to take his mid-morning meal at home. Beforehand, he beckons the girls to sit with him in the salon a moment and shows them a small picture book.

“I had a meeting a few doors down from Higginbotham’s this morning.” He looks at their faces. “The big bookstore. You know of it.” They are not sure they do. “I got this for you both. I imagine your English is as bad as mine was when I was at school, before I started going to Minister Mama’s salons, yes? Let’s give this a try.”

Janaki sounds out the title and author: Madras, the City by the
Sea.
C. A. Parkhurst.

“Not bad,” Vairum says. Turning the page, he holds the book in front of Kamalam, who stares at it, her hands at her sides. Janaki recalls having seen Kamalam through the window of her primary-grades class, when the teacher, Miss Mathanghi, was giving them Sanskrit lessons. When she pointed at Kamalam, the little girl simply didn’t respond. The teacher berated her, but Kamalam kept her silence, looking straight ahead, her lower lip trembling.

Vairum sighs and moves the book back to Janaki. She takes it and haltingly reads a few lines of the text below the pictures of white children and catamarans. “Well, children, let us go on a visit to Madras. It is a city by the sea. I wonder how many of you have seen the sea.”

“Right,” Vairum says, standing. “That was painful, but I know you like a project, Janaki. Work on it, and work on your sister. I’ll expect both of you to read it to me in turns, in a way that doesn’t grate like a file on cement, next week sometime. Done?”

Janaki would love to learn English. She’s sure she can help Kamalam, who still has not moved or spoken.

Vairum had told them that they should be freshened up and dressed for 3 p.m.: they are invited out for tiffin today. They are seated on the divan, their hair identically oiled and coiled, their faces powdered with Pond’s Rose Talc, Janaki in the nine-yard sari of a married woman, Kamalam in the maiden’s half-sari, when they hear the car roll up downstairs. They stand and wait, some ten minutes, before they hear the soft clatter of Vairum’s feet on the stairs. “Vani!” he calls, and she comes out, putting on a ring.

He stops in the doorway to watch her, and she smiles knowingly. She wears a silvery blue silk with a wide black border, very simple, utterly elegant. Janaki, who had felt so sophisticated powdering her own face and her sister’s, shrinks again, frowsy, hopeless. She watches the look on Vairum’s face.
He adores her.

Vani walks past him. He notices the girls and beckons them impatiently to the door.

They go to the Theosophical Society headquarters in Adyar, where a woman Vairum introduces as Rukmini Arundale tours them aggressively around the grounds. Janaki read an article about her in a women’s magazine: a Brahmin, married to a British man, she has learned and is marketing the devadasis’ dance-drama in a new, respectable form. It was called sadir, but she has renamed it. Now it is “Bharata Natyam,” the dance of India, and it carries, she says, a message of national liberation and uplift.

She is trying to get Vairum to sponsor a performance, in which she will star. “I know your politics are progressive, Anna,” she presses flirtatiously, though Vani is standing close by his side, no expression but an air of hauteur. “And, being as you’re married to such an illustrious artist, you know better than anyone the importance of preserving and promoting our classical arts.”

Vairum looks amused. They have paused beneath the Society’s famous banyan tree, beside the main trunk, surrounded and shaded by a grove of aerial roots. The sun through the large leaves dapples Vairum’s already blotchy face as he smooths his moustache.

“I’m just not entirely convinced that what you’re doing is progressive, my good lady,” he says, sounding mildly jocular. “Stealing those poor devadasis’ livelihood!”

“No one says they can’t dance any more,” Arundale responds tetchily. “Though certainly our performances demonstrate much greater scholarship and grace. But don’t you agree they should find”—her voice drops—“that is, be encouraged into, more respectable means of supporting themselves? Think of their virtue,” she insists, leaning into him and speaking as though not to offend the ears of the ladies.

Janaki, who had had doubts about this enterprise—a Brahmin woman, a married woman, dancing in front of an audience? How could it possibly be modest?—finds herself won over, despite being put off by Arundale’s coquettishness. She’s not sure whether the devadasis’ self-respect is besmirched by all the arts and wiles they use to attract men to support them, but think of all the corollary damage they cause! Mrs. Arundale is right: it’s a question of public morality.