Nine Yard Sarees, page 4
“Slapping is child abuse,” Keerthana proclaims like the smart aleck she is, interrupting Padma’s thoughts. “Appa would never hit me.”
Of course he would not. Perfect, faultless man that Srinivasan. All these demons in her own family: making a fool of her, testing her patience. Unable to control herself, she slaps her daughter’s shoulder. “Don’t act like you know everything. Using big words doesn’t make you any smarter. Move your arms! See if you have room!” Obediently, Keerthana flaps her arms up and down. Then left and right. A loud tear ensues—the back of the tunic has ripped in the middle. Of course it has. “What are you, an elephant?!” The girl screeches in anger and storms off into the bathroom, locking herself in. “Good! Stay in there and starve. Maybe that way you will find something to fit into!”
As her daughter’s cries echo from the hollow bathroom, Padma finds a strange sense of calm descending upon her. If Amma does not wish to speak with her, then she does not need her mother either. She is a grown-up now. One who can advise and counsel herself. She is a mother. A good mother. A good Brahmin mother.
One annual tradition Padma and Prema have maintained through their years in Singapore is to make Deepavali snacks together for their two families. This year’s Deepavali is special because it is the first they are allowed to celebrate since their father’s passing. Today, just ten days before the festival, is reserved for murukku. Each time the batter hits the wok in swirls of three, hot oil splatters against the tiled backsplash. But they are not fazed by it; as Indian wives and mothers, they have grown used to the joys and perils of hot oil, just like their own mother.
“By the way, has Amma spoken to you recently?” Padma asks in Tamil over the chaos unfurling in the wok.
Prema hesitates.
“She has, hasn’t she? What does she have against me?”
“I don’t think it’s like that.”
“Then what?”
The first batch of murukkus float up, all a unanimous golden brown. The sisters exchange glances as if to signal to each other that it is time to remove them from the oil. Carefully, Padma ladles them out onto a metal tray that Prema has pre-lined with paper towels. The twirls of each murukku are relatively consistent, as if they have been made in a factory. Considering they are just a two-person operation, it is a job well done.
“Amma has gotten close to someone. In the ashram.”
Padma wonders if she misheard. Still wielding the dripping hot ladle in her hand, she turns to her younger sister. “A man?”
“Put that down.” Prema groans, quickly removing the ladle from her grip to deposit it safely onto the kitchen counter. “He seems really nice, Akka. He takes care of her.”
Padma fumes. Is this why Srinivasan is doing what he does? Because someone is taking care of him? Because Padma is not taking care of him enough?
“Takes care of her? She and Appa were together for forty years! Forty! He took care of her. He died two years ago. She is a widow! She has three grandchildren! Has she lost her mind?”
Unbelievable, coming from a woman who vowed by customs and fidelity her entire married life. Who got her tubes tied after two daughters because she feared a third pregnancy, and a third girl. Who claimed that she was going to the ashram to rediscover herself. Did she only know how to find herself in another man? Padma’s head begins to pound painfully.
Prema reaches above the refrigerator and brings down an ornate tissue box. Within it are unenveloped letters all in Amma’s handwriting. Several letters. Unlike Padma who only received a grand total of two letters from her mother.
“Read these.”
Padma begins reading the letters, starting from the oldest.
Please do not tell your Akka.
He’s not a Brahmin man.
He is good at making ginger tea, but terrible at dicing onions.
Ramakrishna Beach is lovely. We visited it with other residents from the ashram.
We are going to Tirupati closer to Deepavali to receive blessings from Venkateswarar. Maybe one day, we will go to Varanasi together. I think it will be good for us.
The same Varanasi that Amma said she wanted to avoid because she claimed it reminded her of her sorrowful late mother? Scoffing, Padma says, “So this is why she has been avoiding me. She’s ashamed. Of course she is. Who goes all the way to an ashram to prostitute themselves?”
“Akka!”
“I cannot believe you’re buying into this. She chose not to come and stay with us. She chose not to talk to me for so many months. Forget me. She chose not to talk to her own grandchildren. Now she turns around to tell us—well, you—that she’s found some man in some ashram who fancies her? Who would expect this from a Brahmanathi? Isn’t she ashamed?”
Prema hurriedly tucks the letters into the box that she slides back above the refrigerator. “Amma has been through a lot, Akka. It’s not just about Appa. You know that. She deserves to be happy.”
“If you died and Shekhar did the same, do you think your spirit will rest?” Padma did not even need to die for Srinivasan to begin sliding out of her clasp. The thought burns through her veins.
“Well, I would be dead so how would I even know?”
“Prema!”
“Life is far too difficult and short to fight over this. I would rather Shekhar not be miserable for the rest of his life after I’m gone. Besides, Amma is already in her 50s. They are both widowed so it’s not some secret affair behind their spouses’ backs. More than that, she’s not some child we can control.”
Padma almost lets out a sob, remembering the ongoing debacle with Keerthana. Why is her family an utter mess? “Did I tell you Keerthana came home upset because she wanted to play Raavanan, not Ramar in her school play? She said Ramar was boring. Ramar! God!”
Prema snorts. “Sounds like something I would have said as a child.”
Padma does not refute her there. Prema was always the contrarian. She loved to oppose anyone and everyone just for the thrill of it. The last thing she ever wanted was to be the same as everyone else. Even on that riverbank with Appa those decades ago, Prema, without understanding head or tail about Raavanan, had squealed about how her best friend was a good person even though she was not a Brahmin, but a Nadar Christian; no one had even asked for her opinion.
“You know, I can’t wait to see what she’s like when she grows up. At least she is opinionated unlike my Vani who is too meek to even let out a sound. Girls need to be opinionated to survive in this world. That way they can stand up for themselves. Otherwise, they become like us.”
“What’s wrong with us?”
“We got married and never worked again.”
Padma bristles at that. Prema studied accountancy at an all-women’s college and was hired as an accountant in a small Coimbatore firm. She met Shekhar because he was working in the same building as an assistant sales engineer for another company. He wooed her with regular deliveries of mittai and roses, and they courted each other for years before they got married. Padma on the other hand had a biology degree that she never used because she was made to stay home with Amma until her marriage was finalised; Amma did not want to let her young daughter work in the city, hence Padma’s express route to wifehood, but Prema later convinced her otherwise, which was why she only got married at the ripe old age of 28.
“Never mind us. At least we have our dignities intact. We’re not having sordid affairs with random men.” Or women, Padma supplies to no one but herself.
“Amma has hers intact too, Akka.” Prema reasons softly.
Padma does not indulge her by replying. Instead, she begins to fry the next batch of murukkus and hopes the sputtering oil is loud enough to speak on her behalf.
On the morning of Keerthana’s play, Padma draws a large thiru namam on her daughter’s forehead and powders her almost white with an old Ponds compact she had bought from a neighbourhood mama shop. The ill-fitting silver Punjabi suit was altered by a famous seamstress at Little India, for a ridiculous price she would have never been charged back home. But at least Keerthana is clothed in something decent and presentable. The girl fidgets nervously as Padma tries her best to turn her into a believable Ramar.
“Stand straight and open up your shoulders. You are Ramar. A powerful and respected god.”
Keerthana, despite her earlier tantrums and qualms about Ramar, follows her mother’s instructions exactly. She lifts her chin, pushes her chest out and grunts. Then, slightly embarrassedly, she shares, “Madam Malar said she chose me because I’m tall and big, like a boy.”
Padma clicks her tongue loudly and combs her daughter’s hair back to start plaiting it into a thick French braid. “Don’t listen to her. How dare she talk about my daughter like that? She is the one looking like a witch with crooked teeth and that hooked nose of hers. My Keerthana is beautiful. Chubby, so what? You will make the prettiest Ramar.”
The girl seems easily pacified by those words. Sweet thing. In a mother’s eyes, a daughter is indeed the sweetest when she listens.
“All the best today, okay? When you come home, I’ll let you eat some of the pal kova and murukkus that Chitti and I made.”
She sends her smiling daughter off in the direction of her 7 o’clock school bus, feeling equal parts relieved and accomplished. Maybe she has finally nipped her daughter’s bad habit in the bud. Her child is no longer on an irreversible path to becoming a rakshasi. Mission accomplished.
The telephone starts ringing then. Krishnan, who is rushing out for school with a half-eaten toast in one hand and balled up socks under his right armpit, considers picking it up. But upon making eye contact with Padma, he predictably shouts, “Amma, phone!” before promptly racing out the door. Typical teenage boy, Padma thinks, shaking her head. Pushing everything onto his mother.
Padma picks up the receiver, her good mood lulling her usually high-strung nature.
“Hello? Srinivasan, is that you?” The person on the line is a woman. She is speaking in Tamil, though in a way Padma would never speak the language—swapping “sh” out for “s” in a way that cheapened the tongue. It is immediately clear that she is not one of them. Padma does not speak; her mind is sprinting. She imagines a slim body attached to the voice. In the silence, the woman continues. “Ah, it’s me, Sri.” She says again, urgent. Sri? No one calls him that, not even Padma. She must have heard it wrong. “I called at 7 just like you said.” Just like Srinivasan said? Why? Because that was the time Padma brought Keerthana down to the school bus? “The doctor said my mother needs a hip replacement surgery. We admitted her to Sultanah Aminah last night. I’m so sorry, baby, but I need more money.”
The audacity. “Baby?! Who is this on the line?” Padma barks.
The voice stutters. “Um, I’m, I just—”
“What do you want with my husband? You’re asking a family man for money? Don’t you have any shame?”
Instead of a reply, the call is abruptly cut.
There is no need for second guessing. Padma knows, even though she has no name or face to latch onto. Strangely, she is not instantly angered. Nor does she break down in tears. Her mind instead travels to the conversation she had days ago with her sister. That women have to be opinionated. That Keerthana’s big-mouthed insistence, no matter how infuriating, was the key to surviving this world. That as disgusted as Padma feels about the idea of her mother with another man, she was perhaps only doing what she had to for a semblance of happiness. Women have to stand up for themselves, and what they desire. Maybe that does not make them bad people.
What do I desire, Padma asks herself.
If only she could be Ramar instead, demanding her Sitai to undergo a trial by fire to prove his faithfulness; apparently only men reserved such privilege.
When Srinivasan comes out of the shower, she approaches him. Stealthily, because to pounce in the open is to immediately admit defeat. She will never admit defeat. To anyone. Least of all her husband. She sits on the edge of their queen-sized bed, lightly, her weight leaned forward onto the balls of her feet. A lioness waiting for her prey. As Srinivasan towels himself off, she begins. She tells him that there is a boy who keeps calling their line for Keerthana. An older brother of a girl at her school. Padma makes sure to sound extremely horrified by it. Then, after making a show of massaging her temples, she suggests that for their daughter’s safety they should change their number.
Srinivasan does not react much to that. Not openly at least. He simply agrees, as he loops his necktie around his collar. He tells her to go ahead. Then, emboldened, Padma adds: “I want one of your pagers too. So the kids can contact me if I’m outside marketing. Or at Prema’s place. For their safety. Not like you need two anyway, unless you have some secret you’re hiding.” Srinivasan raises a brow. Ha, a reaction. “You should page me too. From now on. Since I’m your wife.” He takes a measured inhale, eyes searching in Padma’s, before nodding. The rakshasa, tamed for good.
27 October 2001
Dear Amma,
Prema showed me the letters. I am guessing you did not tell me because you knew I would disapprove. You are right in thinking so. I do disapprove. It has not been that long since Appa left us. I still miss him. I still wish he could have been around to see his grandchildren grow up. I still regret not having been there for him before he fell into a coma. I don’t know how you have put that all aside for someone new. I am angry. I am disappointed. I am heartbroken. I just do not understand why you would make beds with another man. This is not how women like us behave. But like Prema said, you are not a child. I cannot control you. As your first daughter though, I am in the position to tell you that I wish you would behave your age. I wish you would behave like a grandmother that our children can look up to. Maybe after Deepavali comes to pass, you will remember the path you are meant to lead.
Your daughter, Padma
17 November 2001
Prema,
I cannot believe you told your sister, even though you know how she might jump to conclusions. I do not make beds with any man! How dare she imply such a thing? How cruel! He is a good man with only the purest of intentions and I know my own path. Neither of you have the right to tell me what to do. If you cannot let your only parent live her life in peace, then do not write to me at all. Both of you.
Agni’s Trials
2011
“Indeed, she resembled the veritable daughter of a celestial born among men.”
(Book 1, Section CLXIX, The Mahabharata)
ON THE NIGHT of the village fire thirty years ago, a girl infant was born into the hands of a panicked midwife. The infant’s midnight skin glowed under distant crackling flames and her little fists were clenched, as if born a ready warrior. In the time it took for the fire to be put out and the ashes to settle, the girl was rushed to a distant relative’s home, swaddled in a rough checkered blanket, and pressed against her mother’s bosom for her first feed. Just as she was about to fall asleep, lips puckered around a swollen nipple with warm milk pooling in her mouth, her mother whispered with a tender smile: “Look at you, my very own Draupadi.”
At half past five on a Sunday evening, Sivagami was onto her fourth and final family of the day, who lived in a luxurious condominium at Clementi. Once she was admitted past the guardhouse, Sivagami’s mouth parted at her weekly marvel. These high-rise homes were nothing like the drab brick and mortar apartment complexes she had seen back home or even the neighbourhood she now lived in. Here, the colours were vibrant, straight out of elaborate dance sequences she had seen in Tamil films: saturated greens of the strategically planted palm trees, cool blues of the swimming pools scattered across the compound, and sultry ambers of the low sun caressing the buildings. The people too were an intriguing spectacle. Men and women, white and beige, in various stages of undress, lounged on long reclining chairs. Residents walked their well-groomed canines around the garden. Children jumped into the pools with neon floats around their arms and waists. There truly was a lot to behold in this gated paradise. But Sivagami had no time to linger.
The metal gate of #12-10 had already been left open for her, expectant. She quickly slipped into the flat and greeted Madam who nagged at her for being late. She rushed to stuff her handbag into the lowest shelf of Madam’s shoe cabinet and after changing into an oversized cotton T-shirt and stretchy pants, she started her $10-per-hour job proper. First, the mountain of dirty dishes left in the kitchen sink. Then she would have to sweep and mop the entire apartment, wash two bathrooms, and iron Saar’s office clothes.
“I was too tired to do the dishes last night,” Madam said in Tamil, letting out a shaky sigh as she peered over Sivagami’s shoulders to ensure she was doing a good job.
Madam said that so often that it was comical. Still, Sivagami was fond of her because she reminded her a lot of her mother. The frail physique, the shrill “Sivagami!” whenever she nagged, and the heavy hand when scooping sugar into her ginger tea. Unlike Madam who lived off her husband’s ample salary though, Amma lived under a badly thatched roof within a village that flooded every monsoon yet still managed to run out of clean water ever so often.
“So, did your sponsor get you a proper mattress yet?” Madam enquired over the sound of the running tap.
“No.” Sivagami shook her head as she scrubbed a large wok that had burnt lentils stuck to the bottom.
“That woman is too much. Do you need more pillows or blankets? I can give you more of my son’s old ones! He’s in Australia anyway.”
“It’s okay, Madam. There’s no space to keep them.”
“Don’t let them take advantage of you, Sivagami. Just because they’re your sponsor does not mean they can treat you however they want.”
