Tamarind Mem Read online

  But Appa will have none of it. “Are you saying I cannot afford it?” he demands. “We will have the ceremony at home for Gopal. I am still capable of spending for my son.”

  “Why not for us daughters, hanh?” I demand. “It’s okay for you to spend money on your precious son. Just to shave his head in front of a big audience, why not go to a barber shop?”

  “Who are you to decide what your father does with his money?” asks my mother, giving my hair a sharp tug.

  “He makes such a big fuss about spending money for my college books, but he can waste it on rubbish like this.”

  “Mind your tongue Miss Too-smart,” snaps Amma, this time slapping the side of my head. My mother’s hands do most of her talking for her. They fly through the air hard and sure, gesticulating, ordering, slapping, shouting, the symbols of her authority over us.

  Old Putti, my grandmother, pats her cheeks rapidly. “Yo-yo-yo, what does that chit of a girl think of herself? Learns a little bit of English and see what happens, becomes as bold as a white woman!” She is a fine one to talk, I think. My grandmother has a vocabulary of words more foul than those used by a beggar denied alms. She follows none of the rules of womanly behaviour, so why should she set any for me?

  Aunt Raji adds a little salt to the coals. “I believe there are lots of wild boys in her callij. God knows what her father is thinking of, sending an unmarried daughter to a place full of grown men.”

  “One of those wild boys is your son, Raji Atthey,” I say sharply. “And believe me, if I told you the things he does, your hair would turn white.”

  Raji Atthey slaps her forehead and scowls, wagging her hand accusingly. “Too much of freedom, too cheeky, no shame! She is going to bring her parents grief, listen to me. It is time she had a husband, no doubt about it.”

  Actually, if not for Chinna, I might have married the first boy who had all his wits and limbs about him. That is Amma’s favourite phrase. Whenever one of our relatives comes home with a prospective groom, she says, “First tell me does he have all his wits and all his limbs, then tell me his kula-gothra. What is the use of belonging to a high caste, being a descendant of the most illustrious sage, if the fellow himself is deficient in some way?”

  My father was all for finding a boy for me when I turned sixteen. “She has finished high school, what use is any more English-Hindi-Arithmetic going to be for her? Now what she needs to learn is how to cook a good meal and make pickles for the rainy season,” he says when I come home with my high school diploma. He barely glances at the parchment with its curly black lettering; only my brothers’ diplomas are worthy of his attention. By that time Chinna has been with us long enough to ladle out advice with her strongly spiced saaru and curries and get away with it. She tells Appa that he is a clever bank manager but a stupid father.

  “Look at me!” she points to her widow’s garb, her bald head. “God forbid that such a fate should visit this dear child, jewel of my eye, but suppose something happens to her husband, what will she do without an education? If she has a college paper in her hands, you wouldn’t have to worry. It will get her a good clever boy—see what a smart fellow Mangala Rao got for his B.A. daughter!”

  Appa just laughs. “Our family adviser telling us what to do. So much she knows about life!” But a week later he picks up admission forms for Sriram College.

  That does not stop my mother from sending out my horoscope to all our relatives—to Delhi Aunt, cousins in Calcutta, a brother in Indore, first cousins, second cousins, aunts twice removed.

  “Find a groom for our oldest girl,” she commands. “She is tall for a girl, wheat colour skin, almost seventeen. A well-educated boy would be preferable.”

  She takes me to Guhan, who has the only photography studio in Mandya. We go there every year to have a picture taken of the family. It is good to keep a record of the children. Who knows when death will arrive in the garb of sickness and carry one of us away? Unless you have the money to spend on a trip to William’s Photo Palace in Bangalore, Guhan has to do. As he is also related to us by marriage, it would be a gross insult to him if we went elsewhere. My mother will not let me go to Guhan’s studio alone. If you allow him to adjust your sari, he runs his hand caressingly over your breasts and shoulders, strokes your neck as he arranges your hair, and, according to some reports, kneads your waist, all the time murmuring, “Stomach in, stomach in, my dear, we don’t want you slouching in your photo. Boys like brides who look upright and smart.”

  “Tchu-tchu-tchu,” clucks Guhan the lecher as he bustles around, arranging a few potted palms behind me. “Last time missy was not looking pretty enough, eh? No boys were hooked, eh?” He dives beneath the black cloth draped over his camera. “This time, so beautiful I will make her, there will be a line as long as the Godavari River outside her gates. Now you want mountain background or park background?”

  Guhan comes to our house carrying the photographs in a large green folder along with the negatives. Amma insists on the negatives.

  “God knows what the dirty fellow will do with the girl’s photo!” She drops a circle of dough into the sizzling oil, quickly rolling out another one while the first puri puffs golden brown. “I hear he attaches bodies to faces and whatnot, why take a risk with our child?”

  Whenever Guhan visits us, he arrives in time for lunch or dinner, and talks right through the meal.

  “How you like my haircut?” he asks, scattering rice particles across the table, his mouth flapping wet as he slurps his food. “New parlour I found in Bangalore, near Majestic Circle, haircut and massage parlour.” He winks at Appa and grins. “Ohhh, what a massage, splendid-splendid, you should take a holiday from this family of yours and come with me, Sir! The massage, nono the masseurs, will make you ten years younger, guaranteed!”

  Appa sits in silence, a stiff smile on his face, nodding now and again. “Unh-hunh, perhaps you can tell us all this another time.”

  Guhan licks food dribbling down his hand, his tongue a pink reptile darting against the large palm, lapping up liquid in quick strokes. He belches resoundingly, pats his belly and giggles. “May Lord Rama be praised, my belly is raised, five inches above the table!”

  After he leaves, Amma fights with my father. “Are you listening?” She never addresses my father by name. “Why does that fool have to come to our house? Don’t you have any kind of feeling for us, inviting him and allowing him to talk like that in front of the children?” She whips around the room picking up the dirty plates, slamming them together, rattling spoons to display her irritation. She knows that Appa cannot stand the clatter of steel against steel.

  At first we get offers for my hand from parents of boys in Mysore and Chennapatna. They write long letters extolling the virtues of their sons, pointing out the kind of girl demanded by their horoscopes. Raghotthamachar, our priest, charges five rupees for each horoscope compared with mine and discarded.

  “This one wants an oldest daughter whose father is dead,” he comments, flicking a hand at one horoscope, his long, thin face crumpled in a frown as he squints at the birth charts and star positions. “And that one is Agasthya gothra, same ancestral family. He is like a brother, all wrong that will be.”

  “The fellow is making a fortune thanks to the fact that our daughter makes a fuss about every fellow willing to marry her,” Amma complains. She thinks my father is far too indulgent with me. Easy for him! After all he spends only a quarter of the day at home. What would he know of her anxieties?

  “Please Appa,” I beg my father after each new letter arrives, “wait till I have finished college.”

  Amma grumbles a lot about these delays. “Why are you allowing her such a long rope? Don’t forget, the other girls’ futures depend on this one. We could have had a good match with that toy-maker’s son in Channapatna.”

  “Oh, wonderful! Then we would get a cheap rate on toys for all our grandchildren,” I tease my mother and get a sour look in return.

  “Acting too smart, that
’s what, too-too smart,” she snaps. “Thinks college-going makes her very great. All that has happened is that we have an eighteen-year-old dead-weight sitting in the house holding up a line of sisters and brothers.”

  “People think she is too clever for their sons,” remarks Appa’s sister Vani Atthey with malicious satisfaction. She has to poke her nose into all our affairs, she believes it is her duty to do so. “They say it is not good to have a wife who knows too much. Bad for her husband’s pride.”

  “We don’t really care what people think, Vani,” says my mother, who bristles at any implied criticism of her children, especially from an interfering sister-in-law.

  “You should have stopped when she finished high school and there were still good offers for her. Why, my own brother-in-law was keen. What’s wrong with him, I ask you? But no, your daughter thinks she is the goddess of learning herself for all the college-vollege she is doing. What for is she doing a B. Sc. now, hanh? Where you will find an equally qualified groom? When you give a girl away, choose a slightly higher family, castewiseclasswise. When you bring a girl home for your son, pick one slightly inferior to you—that’s what I say.”

  Amma snaps her fingers rudely in Vani’s face. “There, that much I care for what you have to say!”

  Vani also airs her opinions to my Grandfather Rayaru. With his thick, carefully combed white moustache, tall lean body and the gold-and-red peta that hides his snowy hair, Rayaru struts from one relative’s house to another, dispensing advice and comment.

  “Ho, so this is the girl who is creating trouble for the family.” He pats my head and accepts a glass of mango panaka from Chinna. “What is this I hear about attaching all kinds of degrees to your sari pallav and not one marriage degree?”

  “With all those degrees I don’t need a marriage degree.”

  “Ohoho! Still have a strong tongue I see?” Rayaru frowns at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “Is this what they teach you in your college? To argue with your elders?”

  “Tell her, Rayaru, tell her!” Amma’s reputation for being a strict mother is at stake. It is immodest of me to be sitting in on a discussion about my own marriage. And I have actually dared to be insolent to my grandfather.

  “Put some sense into this stupid girl’s head,” continues Amma. “And what a big head it has become! Look at the way she talks. Tomorrow she will get married and speak to her husband in this shameless way and he will kick her into the gutter!”

  “Maybe we did a wrong thing sending her to college,” says Rayaru.

  “So that I can end up like all the other women in this family?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I know that I am in trouble.

  “Madam, will you please tell me what is wrong with the ‘other women’ in the family?” When he uses formal words like “madam,” he is really angry. But I can’t seem to stop saying what I think. This is a discussion about my life.

  “Saroja!” My mother jerks her head towards the door. “I think you can leave the room now. Tell your father that Rayaru is here and would like to talk to him.”

  “No, I want to know what is wrong with the women in our house,” insists Rayaru, tapping his stick on the stone floor. “She can leave after she tells me.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you.” I toss my braid off my shoulder. “They are like cows. All they do is have children and gossip. The only person who has any guts is Putti Ajji, and I don’t need to tell you why.”

  The room goes still, and I know that I have thrown any chance of an appeal to study for a doctor’s degree far out of the window. Putti Ajji is Rayaru’s wife, and she is the only woman in our family who has dared to show a spark of rebellion. For more than twenty years, ever since Rayaru found himself a lower-caste mistress, Putti Ajji has charged him a rupee for every meal he eats at her house.

  Rayaru reminds me of the foolish old man who had two wives. The younger wife spent all afternoon pulling out white hairs from her husband’s head.

  “My beloved,” she said, pulling out each hair, kichik. “When I have removed all your white hair, you will look as young as me.”

  Every night, the older wife pulled out her husband’s black hair, kichik-kichik.

  “My darling,” she said, “when I am done, you will look as dignified as me.”

  When his two wives were finished, the old man had lost every single hair on his head.

  Many years later, after her story has festered in my head, I ask Putti Ajji if she ever minded being the neglected wife.

  “Come here.” Putti pulls me into her room, drags her green tin trunk from under the bed. “I’ll show you something.” She selects a key from the big bunch that always jangles at her creased waist and opens the trunk. Inside are bags of rupee coins. From heavy silver to the newest stainless-steel ones, a fortune in coins. “Your grandfather is a hypocrite.” Putti strokes the faded silk bags. “He didn’t mind sharing the other one’s bed, but he wouldn’t eat from her low-caste kitchen. I was the fool who had to suffer the pain of mothering his children, I was the one he came back to for food.” My grandmother is silent for a moment and then she chuckles maliciously. “But now the old whore is deaf and alone, and your grandfather lives on my charity.”

  I am certain that the whole town knows about this strange understanding between my grandparents. But by referring to it in Rayaru’s presence, I have done the unpardonable—offended his dignity. Now even Amma will not be able to talk him out of his decision to get me married.

  “Bhabhi-ji,” says Latha admiringly. “How you could dare to talk to your elders like that? Baap-re! I would have been so scared.”

  Hameeda and Sohaila nod agreement.

  “My father would have beaten me black and blue if I opened my mouth,” says Hameeda.

  “But you are a teacher, at least you were allowed to work,” I say.

  “That is because there were no sons to bring money into the house,” says Hameeda cynically. “Someone had to earn it!”

  I stand up, stretch my cramping back and peer into the tiny mirror. My face is dusky with soot from the engine, my eyes rimmed as if with kohl, even my nostrils have a fine, powdery lining of coal-dust. I go swaying down the corridor to the urine-splashed toilet, grabbing at window bars as the train takes a curve and catches me off balance.

  Sohaila’s voice follows me. “Come back quick-quick Aunty-ji, we are waiting to hear your story!”

  My future husband writes to my father from Waltair, where he is posted for a few months. In his tiny, spidery script, he informs Appa that he does not have a horoscope to send us and anyway, horoscopes are the rubbishy imaginings of money-minded priests.

  “But we believe in horoscopes,” writes my father, equally adamant in his convictions. “Kindly send us your precise date and time of birth and we will ask our priest to cast your jataka.”

  “I don’t know exactly which day and hour I was born. It was in a village where no one had watches,” comes the eventual reply.

  Does the fellow have a warped sense of humour or could this be the truth? My father isn’t sure.

  Amma is beginning to have misgivings. “What kind of irreverent fellow is this? It is true we want our girl married, but surely not to any crackpot who walks through our door.” Suppose the crackpot decides to send me back home; the shame of it all! These things have been known to happen. Uncle Mohan’s youngest was married to a foreign-educated lawyer and what happened? He sent her back to her father because she couldn’t read any books.

  “Educate her first,” he commanded. “I have no use for a wife who cannot make conversation with me.”

  Uncle Mohan was so angry. “Is a wife for talking to? Or is she for bed and breakfast? If that fool wants a Goddess Saraswati for a wife, he can spend on her education himself. We are not responsible any more!”

  Amma is doubtful about this strange man who cares nothing for horoscopes, but my father does not want to let the match slip away.

  “Rubbish, he is a modern boy, nothing wrong wit
h him. Is it his fault if his parents did not record his hour of birth?”

  “True,” says my mother doubtfully.

  “If we let this one go, we might as well clap our hands, hold our heads and resign ourselves to a house full of spinster daughters!”

  My father hurries to the priest, Raghotthamachar, and lays out the matter before him. The priest plays a role in every major decision taken by my family. Should this child’s name begin with an “A” or an “R”? What is a good time to buy a house? Should the windows of the new house face north or south? Then if things go wrong, no one can blame my father or the priest. Appa can shrug and say, “We tried our best, but the stars are unpredictable. Who knows which way they move?” And Raghotthamachar will roll his eyes piously and nod, his little knot of hair bouncing briskly, “Yes, Lord Vishnu throws the dice in Heaven and we are only the pawns in his mighty game.”

  Now, uncertain about this proposal sent by my future husband and eager to see me, a burden at twenty-three, married, Appa goes to Raghotthamachar.

  “Why you want to go after this fatherless-motherless person when there are hundreds of better boys available?” asks the priest.

  “Never mind all that,” says my father. “What I want to know is can anything be done about a horoscope?”

  “Does he have any responsibilities? Like unmarried sisters, idiot brothers?”

  “Two sisters. Only one of them is married,” says my father uneasily. That detail has been bothering him as well. It is better to give your daughter to a house that has no unmarried girls. But I am too tall, too educated. So perhaps it is all right to compromise.

  “Looks like you have found a gem so rare, his caste, his ancestry, nothing matters, eh?” murmurs the priest. “Now let us see, do you at least know which month the boy was born?”

  Raghotthamachar makes up his horoscope on the basis of an approximate date of birth. “Forty-forty match!” he exclaims to my mother, caressing the horoscopes smudged with turmeric around the edges. His matches mine point to point. “The boy was born under a mighty constellation. His star is so powerful it pushes away all the faults in your daughter’s. It is a sheltering star, not to worry.” Hunched over a sputtering sandalwood fire, his bare chest shining with sweat, he bribes heavenly beings with puffed rice and ghee. He waves his pudgy hands and creates an entire galaxy of stars to match with mine.