Janaki’s contentment is only slightly dented by Swarna, who suggests Janaki is messily attired, that she doesn’t properly know serving etiquette, that she is moving too slowly or too quickly, until Janaki is in a transport of irritation, and grateful for her grandmother’s training, which enables her to mask her reaction and to feel confident that Swarna is wrong. At 3:45, she eats her own tiffin together with Swarna, while Vasantha serves them.
As she goes, after tiffin, to take up a place in the women’s room, she feels a flash of pride at being so genteel, so protected. Silent and invisible in her passage, just like her grandmother in a way. Sivakami so respects herself that she has almost never been seen on the street after sunrise. Janaki can’t think even of one time (except that time in Munnur, in the rain, but Janaki passes over that quickly). She thinks of the Brahmin women employed in the kitchen. Were they born poor, or did something happen? God’s grace, that’s all that separates us from life’s humiliations. If she had chosen the other flower packet, she might not be here. And what if her father had been in charge of getting her married-would she ever have gotten married at all? She wonders what everyone, Kamalam especially, is doing back in Cholapatti.
Her veena is still in its wrappings-her sisters-in-law either are not bold enough for that or not interested.
“Shall I take out the veena?” she asks, again unsure of whom she is asking.
“If you want,” says Vasantha ambiguously.
Janaki glances in at her mother-in-law’s room, but the great woman doesn’t look up from her reading.
Vairum had insisted on having the instrument packed professionally. Still, Janaki couldn’t help fearing for it and so sighs with relief when it is finally unclothed, curving and gleaming in the late-afternoon sun like a cobra ready to be worshipped. “Shall I play?” she asks, not fully confident of the answer. Her sisters-in-law say nothing, but she hears an affirmative grunt from the front room. She tunes, and plays “Sakala Kala Vani” and “Jaggadhodharana,” grateful for the leisure to practise. Her sisters-in-law continue reading and playing with the children, though once, when one of the boys gets noisy, Senior Mami shouts, “Hush, child!” from her hideout.
Janaki has another reason to be glad for moving to Pandiyoor: Vani visits her parents every few months, and Janaki is sure her sporadic lessons will resume. She is particularly hopeful that she will finally learn the Bharatiyar number she first heard on All-India Radio when Vani played her Navaratri concert. Vani’s version of “Chinnan Cheeru Killiyai Kannama,” is becoming famous. She set it to a ragamalikai, a garland of ragas, the scale changing with each stanza. There’s talk, Janaki heard at her wedding, of having Vani make a gramophone recording of it.
Janaki concludes her second piece and her eye lights on the harmonium, which looks dusty. It should be covered with a cloth, she thinks, if it’s not going to be cared for. Maybe she can sew a cover for it.
“Whose is that?” she asks politely.
“Mine,” Swarna says.
“Oh, how lovely,” Janaki soldiers on. “Perhaps you could sing something for us?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Swarna smiles sourly. “Perhaps you could.”
Janaki is confused and looks down at her instrument, pretending to examine a string.
“Miss Perfect,” Swarna whispers.
Janaki freezes, not entirely sure she has heard correctly, then hears Baskaran calling her from the main hall. She rises, grateful, with apologetic glances to her sisters-in-law, who ignore her, and takes her leave of Senior Mami.
It’s time for them to pay the first few of the numerous required visits they must make, as a newly married couple, up and down the Brahmin quarter. Out of respect, they will visit Vani’s parents first, their seniormost relatives on the quarter. They walk, slightly apart and not speaking, along Double Street in the direction of the Krishna temple, greeting neighbours on verandas. Vani’s parents’ house is, gratifyingly, not as grand as Janaki’s in-laws’, though it would have cowed her before she was married. The talk is strange and lively. Vani’s father describes recent progress in his attempts to start a school based on his system of calisthenics and Janaki pecks at a silver plate loaded with murrukku and halwa as she eyes a china cabinet stocked with Vani’s mother’s collection of vintage weapons. At one point, the woman runs to it to extract a nineteenth-century French switchblade, whose mechanism she demonstrates with a cackle.
Janaki, dismayed, checks her watch surreptitiously. She inquires politely about Vani and receives an earful, including the welcome news that Vani will visit next month.
At eight-thirty, the evening repast is served in Dhoraisamy’s household, a simple meal. Janaki, after having visited three homes in which she was rigorously required to snack, wants nothing but a little yogourt rice. She and Baskaran are seated together and served by the sisters-in-law, one of the few nods to tradition in this otherwise unconventional first day. After today, Baskaran will eat with the men and Janaki with the women.
When the meal is done, the cooks of the house proper pour sweet hot milk with boiled almonds into silver tumblers, inverting a bowl on top, then turning them both so the bowl can be carried by its lip. Vasantha carries one to their father-in-law while Swarna carries another to Senior Mami. The brothers are chatting in the main hall. The children are asleep in various places. There is an ayah and a servant to keep track of them whenever a mother is not available. Each of the wives then takes a tumbler of milk and ascends to her bedchamber. The husbands shortly follow.
Janaki sits on the bed, scared once again. Unlike city girls, she knows how babies are made. And she is sharp, so when she overhears things, she puts the two and two together. But knowing the facts of life doesn’t prepare a person for living.
Baskaran looks down as he enters, glances up, then down, and smiles a little. He closes the door, fumbles the bolt closed and closes the shutters on that side, which give onto the corridor. He clears his throat and hesitates, then crosses the room and reaches through browning garlands to close the shutters on the street-facing windows as well. The house across the street-Baskaran’s uncle’s-also has a second storey.
Janaki had stood as he entered, and now holds the milk out to him. He takes it gravely and urges, “Sit.” He again hesitates-there is a chair in one corner of the room-and opts to sit on the other end of the bed. “Sit,” he repeats in a low voice. “Sit, ma.” She collapses a tiny bit at this endearment, and slowly perches again on the high mattress-topped bedstead. He pours the milk into the bowl, stopping before the almonds at the bottom slip out. He pours it back and forth, twice, to mix and cool it, then pours himself several sips, and drinks, watching her, before he pours a little more that he holds out to her. She accepts wordlessly and drinks. He pours her another and then shares the sweet, milk-cooked almonds out between them.
He takes the tumbler from her and puts it and the bowl by the door, then turns down the flame on the kerosene lamp so the room is dim and seems to brighten again as their eyes adjust.
“I was listening to you play this afternoon,” he says. He sits on the bed again, a little closer. “So beautiful, it was…” He speaks with real passion, or so it seems to her. “Everyone was touched, I could feel it. I imagine you don’t even notice others, though, when you play, do you?”
“I… I haven’t played very much for anyone outside the family. Visitors occasionally. But I like it.” She feels a shy smile tugging her lip upward, covers her mouth with her hand, lowers it with a breath.
He moves closer to her, awkwardly, and as though forcing his arm through a thin barrier, touches her face. Gaining confidence, he begins stroking her brows, temples and cheek. What a strange way of looking at her, she thinks, and how good it feels to be touched. She likes how he looks, his chubby cheeks and receding hairline. He looks like someone who means what he says. And he looks gentle.