The Toss of a Lemon

10. A Woman Alone 1908

NINE MONTHS AFTER THE BETROTHAL, the days of the wedding arrive. Everyone has a role to play, in giving and receiving the gifts of silks and lands and bride. The drama begins with the procession of the bridegroom in the streets, dressed up in parasol and eyeliner and a stiff swirl of silk dhoti. As is customary, he pretends he is off to Benares to complete the Sanskritic studies with which so few modern Brahmin boys bother. Goli’s primary education was interrupted prematurely by his sense of fun. His nickname, which means “marble,” was bestowed by a tutor who left, as all Goli’s tutors did, within a year, after observing that he couldn’t teach a child who spent every session ricocheting off the walls and furniture. Goli liked the moniker and it became one of the few things he retained from his education.

Customarily, when the parade passes the bride’s house, her father intervenes in the chaste young scholar’s journey and persuades him to marry his daughter. This is a Brahmin boy’s big break from the cocoon of youth and scholarship, his chance to transform into a householder who is qualified, and indeed, obliged, to own property and produce a family.

This happy moment of intervention and invitation should have been Hanumarathnam’s. Today, his cousin Murthy, here from Cholapatti along with half a dozen of their other neighbours, fulfills the role, solemnly and with evident excitement, as the closest equivalent of a paternal uncle. Muchami has also come, at Sivakami’s request, ostensibly to help, though everyone knows it is a treat and he is given no real work.

Vairum has been instructed as to each of his obligations and is too bored, by now, even to resist. He sullenly repeats, with flat affect and eyes out to space, each scripted word fed him by the priest, flaring up the sacred fire with ghee. In the process, he accidentally sets Goli’s puffily starched silk dhoti on fire.

Goli streaks straight out back to the courtyard to plunge his leg into a brass basin as Vairum and Thangam make unexpected eye contact, a quavering beam of horror that turns instantly into suppressed laughter. Sivakami, whose widowhood confines her to the courtyard because the wedding is everywhere else, scampers through a gate in the wall, just ahead of the crowd that soon surrounds the smoking groom. In a forgotten garden, behind a scrubby old margosa, Sivakami, too, has a good laugh, and then a good cry, though she cries only from her left eye. Her right stays dry.

If she were not a widow, she and her husband would have escorted Thangam to and from her in-laws’ house for festivals in the years between the wedding and her coming-of-age, at which time she will join her husband for good. She and Hanumarathnam would have got to know Goli and his family at home-though, of course, it would not have been Goli, she reminds herself with shame, since now it is done, and to think of Thangam with anyone else is tantamount to sin. Now her brothers will escort Thangam, and she will have to glean what knowledge she can from their careless, partial reports. Oh, for a spy, someone on her side! A Muchami of the marriage, that’s what she needs, she thinks, as she watches her servant watching the now-resumed festivities. Who will tell her what she needs to know?

Her sisters-in-law approach her, interrupting her thoughts. She has not seen them since Hanumarathnam died, though she dutifully sent them letters, to which they didn’t respond, after settling at her brother’s place.

“Oh, how thrilling to have such a wonderful excuse to come and see you and the children,” the elder sister effervesces. Her jowls, which started forming in her early forties, have a strange rigidity to them now, giving her a formidable look despite her gay tone. Sivakami is cowed.

“Your brothers have done a fine job,” sniffs the second sister primly. “You must count yourself as lucky.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Sivakami replies.

“Now you must let us help you,” trills the elder, and Sivakami is alarmed, since they have never offered any help she wanted before. She has been grateful for their lack of communication since Hanumarathnam died. “Your house is standing empty and you must let us look in on it from time to time. Give us the key, there’s a good girl. We’ll wait here. You don’t seem too busy right now.”

Sivakami looks at her, trying to think quickly. Samanthibakkam is a little closer to Cholapatti than their husbands’ places, and they have never seemed inclined to inconvenience themselves for her before. “I… thank you. I do manage to go back every three or four months, and…”

“But, my dear, you really shouldn’t, and don’t need to!” says the elder sister, cocking her head impatiently. “We will look after it. Go on, fetch the key and no more objections. You shouldn’t be worrying about this, with everything else on your mind!”

Sivakami looks at the younger sister, who has been silent through the elder’s speeches. She looks nervous and guilty. Sivakami says nothing more but goes to the shelf where she and the children keep their few possessions. Beside her second sari, the children’s clothes and her Kamba-Ramayanam is a small pile of possessions Vairum has accumulated here, things he likes to look at, things he has acquired in trade or intends to give away. Among them is an old key for the Cholapatti house, which she saved for Vairum after the attempted robbery, when she had the locks changed. She’ll have to compensate him, she thinks, as she brings it back to her sisters-in-law.

“For the courtyard door padlock. It’s a little stiff, but if you work it…” she is telling them, but they are already rising to go.

“Don’t worry, Sivakami! You worry too much!” says the elder, tucking the key in her bosom. Her younger sister smiles stiffly in Sivakami’s direction but cannot hold her gaze.

Sivakami knows she has just postponed giving them whatever it is they want but knows that Muchami will tell her what happens when the sisters come to Cholapatti and that this will be enough to help her decide her next move. A woman alone is a target, she nods grimly to herself as she prepares the next meal.