Monkeys, like cows, cobras, peacocks and mice, are sacred-their mythological associations give them immunity from harm. So Hanumarathnam, as a good Brahmin, must find some means of reclaiming his house without violence toward the invaders. At three the next morning, he and three of his servants return. Illuminating the garden section by section with the gaseous glare of kerosene, they strip every tree of its ripe fruit. It is not a large garden, but severely overgrown, and it takes them until six before all the fruit is stacked neatly in the pantry.
As Hanumarathnam locks the garden doors, a female servant prepares several platters: two of fruit and a third heaped with cooked rice mixed with fatty yogourt, mustard seeds, curry leaves. Hanumarathnam carries the rice, two others the fruits. They place these ceremoniously at the bottom of the steps into the wasteland behind the house, just outside the courtyard door.
That day, Hanumarathnam opens the front doors of the house so neighbours from up and down the street can come and help themselves to fruits. He monitors the sounds of the monkeys over the course of the day and hears them discover the plates. They feast, and waste food, and waste time and then come over the walls into the courtyard and garden. Their chattering grows progressively more outraged as they discover nothing but hard green fruits. These function well as weapons, or toys, and they batter the walls and doors for a time. But they are still hungry and soon scuffle off to other locales.
Hanumarathnam has reserved a portion of the ripe fruit. This, with a plate of yogourt rice, becomes the next morning’s offering, half as large as the day previous, but still generous. It is placed four paces away from the back wall, four times farther than the day before. The next day he halves the offering again, and doubles the distance. By the end of the week, the monkeys lackadaisically lap up the token offering left by the side of the canal a furlong from the courtyard door. They have stopped coming to Hanumarathnam’s garden.
On a day deemed favourable by the religious almanacs, all the doors are flung open, and the cleaning is done in earnest. Hanumarathnam, with the servants, works to clear the garden, uprooting dead trees and installing seedlings. Two female servants use a new bucket to haul up well water, which they sluice top to bottom and side to side, from the very front of the house to the back. They scrub the courtyard thoroughly with coconut coir to remove all stains and traces of the monkey invasion, then scour it with cow dung. Hanumarathnam himself perfumes the corners with sandal paste and incense.
Hanumarathnam hires a Brahmin lady to do a final cleaning, to bring the house up to caste standards so his wife will have to do only a few small things for ceremony’s sake, such as hanging bundles of mango leaves and spiny cactus above the door, against the evil eye. Their first act, on her arrival, will be a puja for the black stone Ramar installed in the main hall, the Ramar that was the object of his mother’s devotion and that has stood neglected, though still noble, since her death.
Three weeks after she comes of age, Sivakami is escorted to her husband’s home. Before she mounts the bullock cart, she falls at her elders’ feet. All of their blessings are the same: Bear your husband many children. May your first child be male. Always be modest. A family’s honour is a woman’s responsibility. The blessings cut through the wonder and fear of departure: she is confident these accomplishments can and will be hers.
She alights in Cholapatti, feeling elegant in a silk sari of red and yellow checks, ornamented with less gold than on her wedding day but still quite brilliant in thick gold bangles and dangling jimiki earrings. A gold chain threads the sides of her sternum; her wedding pendants fit snugly between her small breasts, hidden beneath sari and blouse from any jealous glance. Hanumarathnam greets her in front of their home, together with his aunt, his uncle and his cousin Murthy. This is the only time when it is proper for a groom’s family to show hospitality to a bride’s. Sivakami’s parents and uncles will be put up next door.
The party goes there first, to socialize until the sunset, when the young couple are seated side by side and served a meal with much banter. Tonight, they say, is the night of “Rudra Shanti Muhurtam,” the pacification of the bride’s passions. Sivakami is not sure yet what her passions are, but supposes it is good they will be calmed. After they drink cups of sweetened saffron milk, the couple are escorted to the chamber on the second floor of Hanumarathnam’s house, where the bed has been made with the new quilts Sivakami has brought, and strewn with flowers. The couple are seated there, blushing so that sweat beads attractively on their foreheads and upper lips. After singing to them, the party closes the door, going to make merry and leaving the newlyweds to do the same.
SIVAKAMI’S TERRORS AND SORROWS in the early months of her marriage are much the same as any new bride’s. It hardly seems worth troubling the imagination to find pity for her, so common are her woes. At first, she tries constantly to please her husband, but he is easily pleased. Sivakami has no mother-in-law, so her own mother comes twice in six months to ensure standards of household management and nutrition are not being thrown to the four winds. Hanumarathnam’s aunt, Annam, who raised him and lives next door, might have done the honours, but her own new daughter-in-law, Rukmini, is using up all her attention.
Essentially, Sivakami is alone with her husband. She appreciates this but will appreciate it even more in retrospect. Each morning, she bathes at the Kaveri River and does the kolam, the design a girl or woman of a house draws daily in rice flour on a freshly swept threshold. Then she does a puja for the Ramar. Before sunrise, she lays out fruit and rice beside the canal for the monkeys. She cooks. Each afternoon, while her husband naps, she cries a little in a corner of the pantry. She cooks. Each evening at sunset, she watches the parrots swooping low over the roof. At night, she and her husband have sex. They talk, mostly about the village and religion and the daily matters of their shared life. She likes her husband and comes quickly to rely on him.
She comes also to know the Brahmin quarter and her neighbours. Hanumarathnam’s aunt Annam, who apparently looks and sounds just like her late sister, Hanumarathnam’s mother, and her husband, Vicchu, are kind and helpful, even while they are preoccupied with training their daughter-in-law. Rukmini arrived six months before Sivakami, and Sivakami alternates between feeling sorry for her, having to accommodate her parents-in-laws in exactly the way Sivakami herself has been spared, and feeling envious of the extended family and parental surrogates she has been denied. Rukmini and Sivakami see each other daily to exchange cooking or gossip, and so Sivakami hears the older girl’s mild complaints about her mother-in-law, which are never venomous or even very specific. Rukmini’s complexion is uneven, marked by evidence of some childhood malady, measles or chicken pox, but she is tall, with broad shoulders, and an exceptionally good cook, which her in-laws appreciate, though they’re more likely to tell others this than tell her. She has frizzy hair that won’t grow past the shoulders, and irritates Sivakami with excessive attention to her glossy, waist-long tresses-What does it matter, really? she thinks, though she knows she is proud of her hair.
Murthy is slightly shorter than his wife and has a high-pitched voice. He chiefly endears himself to Sivakami with his pride in Hanumarathnam’s abilities. Since a mother’s sister is considered a second mother, and a father’s brother another father, Murthy considers Hanumarathnam to be his own brother and takes personal credit for his accomplishments. He himself barely made it through eighth standard before stopping. He nominally assists in looking after the family lands, which have been split now that Hanumarathnam has received his share, but mostly spends his days snoozing on the veranda and occasionally holding forth on some article he has read, say on recent advances in science and technology. Hanumarathnam commented once to Sivakami that Murthy always mangles the details of these reports, and she has never since been able to respect Murthy, though she is fond of him nonetheless.