The Toss of a Lemon (69 page)

Vairum remains non-committal and Arundale somewhat grudgingly escorts them to the guest suite, where an elegant tiffin awaits them in the company of her husband, George. While Janaki eats with appetite, drinking in the room’s European-looking appointments, she notices Kamalam just picks at her food.

After tiffin, Vairum tells the driver to take them to Adyar Beach. Janaki and Kamalam have never seen the ocean and they wriggle in excitement, exclaiming when it comes into view. Vani shows some hesitation about disembarking, but Vairum persuades her to join them for a stroll. Janaki and Kamalam have to hold themselves back a little to stay within a decorous distance of their aunt and uncle. Janaki sniffs the salt air, feeling the breeze stick and sting on her cheeks.

A few family groups are out for a promenade. A father and son kick a striped ball back and forth. The boy must be about four, fair-skinned with curly hair in a high quiff that tosses as he runs and laughs. Vani slows to a stop, watching the pair, as Janaki and Kamalam go on a little ahead, looking for shells. At a certain point, the little boy misses the ball and it rolls up into a patch of beach grass. Vani scurries after it, with Vairum looking a little alarmed and starting as if to get it himself. She plunges through the high grass and emerges with the ball, squatting and holding it so that the little boy comes to her. She speaks to him momentarily and Vairum moves toward them as she suddenly hugs the child, who looks uncomfortable, and then starts squirming and pushing against her. Vani doesn’t let go, however, until Vairum arrives and releases her arms.

The little boy runs to his father, looking panicked and close to tears. The father had looked as though he weren’t sure what to do: Vairum and Vani are obviously prosperous and respectable. He might have thought, until Vairum freed his child, that Vani was just enthusiastic and affectionate, but now, as he pats the boy and they walk away together down the beach, he looks back and shakes his head.

Janaki and Kamalam raise their eyebrows at each other furtively as they collect shells, flat and white with regular red zigzags on the back. Vairum and Vani stay crouched together, where the boy left them. Vairum is talking to her, a hand lightly on her arm; she is rocking back and forth slightly. As the girls return to them, Vairum stands, telling Vani gently and repeatedly to do the same, until she does.

They return to the car, walking past catamarans beached for the evening, long logs lashed together so they look exactly like giant cupped hands, upturned to receive some offering.

As they get ready for bed, alone in their room, Janaki asks Kamalam, “Didn’t you like the tiffin today?”

“Not much. It tasted funny,” Kamalam says.

“Are you feeling all right?” Janaki asks.

Kamalam had eaten well at supper, but the cooks are people they know vaguely, from Cholapatti, where they had lived down the street. The husband had been a cook-for-hire there, and Vairum brought them to Madras, saying that they would prepare food with the flavours of home, besides which they were two other Brahmins, like him, whom the people of the
agraharam
didn’t respect.

“I guess,” says Kamalam, lying down with a sigh, her arm over her eyes. Janaki turns down the lamp and joins her.

“Tired?” Janaki asks. She herself feels lit up from everything they’ve seen and done.

“Yes,” says Kamalam.

After a pause, Janaki asks, unsure if she should, “Why do you think Vairum Mama reacted that way to Vani Mami when she hugged that little boy? She wasn’t hurting him.”

Kamalam answers without hesitation. “She wants babies too badly, Akka. It’s tearing her up.”

Janaki is startled but knows Kamalam is right. She, too, had sensed something like this behind the scene they saw, but never would have been able to put it in words so clearly.

“Yes,” she says. “They should have babies.”

“Everyone should,” Kamalam says through a yawn, “but it’s in God’s hands.”

Within minutes, Janaki can hear that her sister is asleep, while she lies awake an hour or more, choosing and examining moments from the day as though they were snapshots in a holiday album.

The next day, Vairum takes them to his office in town, and then says the driver will take them shopping while he is in meetings. “Buy yourselves some new saris. Ask the salesmen what is fashionable—they will tell you. You can take the blouse pieces to Vani’s tailor. And Janaki, get some nice fabrics to take to your husband’s home, for quilts and cushions, that kind of thing.”

Janaki has a gay time playing the young mistress. She feels a little frustrated at Kamalam’s shyness, even while she enjoys being in charge. The younger girl stands always very close to and a little behind her sister, and tells Janaki to choose her saris and blouses for her. When they are finished, the driver skirts the city, taking them to Chromepet, where Vairum awaits them at a leather goods factory, one of a number in this district named for the chrome tanning process that took hold here late in the last century. The smell of leather, chemicals and dyes is faint outside but overpowering inside, even in the closed showroom at the upper reaches of the building. Janaki tries not to make a face and breathes shallowly as they browse the sandals. Vairum is on the company’s board and has told them each to choose a pair while he finishes work.

Kamalam starts tapping her arm frantically. Janaki peers at her. “What?” But her sister runs out of the showroom and vomits in the hallway. Janaki, mortified, takes her outside to get some air while peons rush up to clean the mess. The driver opens the car doors the moment they appear. Janaki asks him to fetch some water.

Vairum comes out a few minutes later, looking concerned. “Kamalam? Are you all right?” He crouches beside the open car door and reaches in to feel her forehead. She starts and pulls away a little. Neither girl can remember ever having been touched by their uncle. He clicks his tongue and puts his hand again to her head. “You don’t feel hot.”

“I’m feeling better, Vairum Mama.” Kamalam licks her lips. “I’m very sorry.”

“Hm. Okay. Give me a couple of minutes to finish and we’ll get you home to rest, all right? Good girl.” He goes back into the factory, his dhoti snapping between his Jodhpuri jacket and huge black shoes.

“Are you really feeling better?” Janaki asks.

“It was the smell, I think,” Kamalam whispers, not wanting the driver to hear, and shudders.

“Yes, horrible,” Janaki says. “I don’t know how he can stand it. Like a slaughterhouse or something, I imagine.”

Each day of the visit, it seems, Vairum has some entertainment planned for them, and people of the city for them to meet. Often, guests come to his home: business associates, people who wish him to support their causes, others with whom he has had some similar association in the past. They attend a concert at the Music Academy in the company of a burly, red-cheeked Dane, an investor in a fertilizer company Vairum is starting up, and a sallow Russian who will become its chief engineer. At the intermission, Vairum introduces them to luminaries, including C. Rajagopalachari, former premier of Madras, and still one of the top men in the Congress Party, and Kalki Krishnamurthy, who has published articles and stories in the weekly magazine
Ananta Viketan
for as long as Janaki can remember. Gayatri and Minister now subscribe to the new periodical,
Kalki,
that he started after his release from jail last year. Janaki, taking her cue from Sivakami and Minister, disagrees with Kalki’s politics: he is in favour of independence. Still, she can’t help feeling impressed and has often enjoyed his lighter pieces. Rukmini Arundale is also in attendance and flutters up to monopolize Vairum, crowding his nieces to one side.

On the car ride home, Vairum asks them, “So, I assume you girls recall why Mr. Rajagopalachari resigned his premiership, yes?”

Janaki and Kamalam are silent.

“Janaki?” Vairum peers at her, over Kamalam. “You need to learn to keep up. He objected to the British here declaring we were in the war on their side.”

Janaki is not sure what to say and not sure he expects her to say anything.

“You’ve read Kalki’s work, though?”

They both tell him yes.

“There are pros and cons to independence, but it is coming and we will manage. Interesting challenges ahead. I want to see what Congress does about caste. Completely outmoded. We’ll never progress as a nation, self-governed or otherwise, unless we can stop thinking people’s birth determines their worth.”

The girls are rigid in their seats, and he looks over at them and laughs.

“You don’t like this kind of talk? Get used to it. You’ve been brainwashed by your grandmother, closed up with her in that house, in that village. Why should people put up with Brahmins acting like they’re better than everyone else? I wouldn’t, in their place.”

They arrive at the house and Janaki lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. The car doors open. She looks at the driver as she gets out and he smiles at her with what now feels like threat. Are the lower orders planning a revolt? What’s wrong with everyone being in their places, doing the work that suits them? She has never questioned her place. Muchami has never questioned his place, and he and Mari admire Brahmin ways, as they should.

She doesn’t feel offended so much as confused. If people don’t aspire to emulate the Brahmins, what would they aspire to?

The next day brings more visitors, some of whom come to hear Vani play in the evening: a young Punjabi Sikh couple, she in a pale grey salwar
kameez,
he in a high red turban, and two Tamil Muslim men. Janaki doesn’t mind the Sikhs so much; they are practically foreign and have to speak to her in English, which she responds to in monosyllables. It feels very odd to sit in the salon with Muslims, though—are they even interested in Carnatic music? They appear highly educated and flow between English and Tamil in a way Janaki finds dizzying. It’s like trying to listen to someone who, every few phrases, turns away and mumbles.

Afterward, they all go to the Dasaprakash Hotel, where the Punjabis are staying. There, the girls have their first taste of ice cream. For the first time since leaving Cholapatti, Janaki sees a look of real pleasure on her sister’s face. They are wearing their new saris and blouses—eyelet with puff sleeves—and look sweet, if not chic. The Punjabi woman, only a couple of years older than Janaki, seems to feel more comfortable with them than with the rest of the group, and they speak to one another and laugh at their halting English. Janaki is fascinated with the henna work on her hands: leaves and flowers, an intricate design such as she has never seen before, and asks how it is done. Vairum nods approvingly at their having made friends.

The next morning, Vairum tells them he’d like to take them to a couple of attractions. “You can’t leave Madras without visiting the San Thome Cathedral and the Kapaleeswarar Temple. I’ve told Vani we’re having our morning meal out, at the home of one of the associates you met last night. Then we’ll go see the sights.”

Janaki can’t think who he means: surely not one of the Muslims? But yes: the taller of the two men who came to hear Vani play last night. Mr. Sirajudeen greets them at the door of his home, slim and elegant in a pressed white jibbah, a skullcap on his silver hair. Unfamiliar smells wash over the girls as they enter the house and seat themselves on divans in the salon. The house is large and light, but doesn’t otherwise look too strange: Janaki wasn’t sure what to expect, but thought it would be more shocking and unhygienic.

Sirajudeen speaks more Tamil than he did last night, now that the company is less mixed, but still peppers his speech with English phrases.

“Mr. Sirajudeen is a close associate of Rajagopalachari,” Vairum tells his nieces, and then tells his friend, “They met him at the Music Academy the other night.”

“Ah, yes. He’s a rare Congressmen, one who takes Muslim concerns seriously.” Sirajudeen smiles evanescently and rubs the corners of his eyes. “We talk often.”

A bell sounds elsewhere in the house.

“Come,” he says, standing. “We’ll take brunch? We can eat at the table, or, if your nieces find it more
homely,
” he says the last in English, “we can sit on the floor as we usually do.”

Vairum turns to them. “What do you prefer?”

They look back at him: what should they say?

“I think they can manage a table,” Vairum says.

“Good, then.”

There are four silver plates laid on the table, and a servant starts bringing rice and vegetables as they seat themselves.

“Pure vegetarian, of course,” Sirajudeen assures them, but Janaki and Kamalam are still struck nearly motionless in their chairs. They recall having eaten out, years earlier, at a non-Brahmin place while staying with their parents. But they were children, and there was no food in the house, and their father told them to. But why eat in the home, at the table, of a Muslim, by choice? They’re not even eating from banana leaves, but from plates other Muslims have probably used. One layer of contamination on another.

Kamalam is looking at Janaki to see what she should do. Sirajudeen bids them, “Eat, children,” and he and Vairum resume chatting intensely about construction materials or some such thing. Janaki looks at her plate and sees there are two curries, one wet, one dry, two pacchadis, of cucumber and green mango, and the rice with a
kootu-
like sauce on it. The worst thing to do would be to take the rice. Perhaps she can simply avoid it. But there’s not much harm in eating raw vegetables and fruits. She nibbles on the pacchadis. Kamalam does the same.

Mr. Sirajudeen finally looks over at a pause in their conversation, and asks, “What’s wrong? You’re not hungry? Not feeling well.”

“No, no,” Janaki says politely. “We’re eating, we’re eating. Thank you.”

He looks at them, narrows his eyes a little and inclines his head to his own plate, nodding slightly. He has guessed what is wrong, and he is offended.