Young Kesavan enters shaking his head and clucking his tongue.
“Why, why, why, why, why…” He shakes his head.
People so often think something becomes more profound if repeated. Sometimes it does.
“Why don’t Brahmins permit widow remarriage?” he asks.
This is not what Sivakami and Janaki expected to hear.
“I think it is terribly wrong, what they did,” he continues, because this is how he feels and because he would hate to lose this job due to some misapprehension of his position on Sivakami’s part. “But if widows were permitted to remarry and if we could rid ourselves of this terrible caste prejudice, maybe this would not have been necessary for them.”
“This was not necessary for them,” Sivakami starts, and Kesavan replies, “Oh, yes.”
“And remarriage?” she continues. “What is this ‘remarriage’? Marriage is something that can only happen once.”
“But men are permitted another wife,” Kesavan says, after a slight, ingratiating, pause.
“If the first wife does not complete him. If there is no child,” Sivakami splutters. “But then it was not really a marriage, so the second is really the first. Or if there are children who need a mother.”
Janaki watches her grandmother. She has never seen her angry like this. Her convictions are what sustained her, Janaki thinks. How dare Vairum Mama try to challenge her on her beliefs? They are the reason she is alive.
No one ever knows Shantam’s opinion on the subject, because she disappears the next day, taking with her jewels-those that should have been her daughter‘s-and six silk saris belonging to her sisters-in-law. She is never seen in Cholapatti again. From time to time a rumour floats back: Shantam seen in Thanjavur, thinner and darker, living with a pearl fisherman and selling pearls on the harbour road. Shantam, cheeks and ears pierced with tridents, hair grown matted and coiled atop her half-mad head, running up to pilgrims in the Palani temple and telling their fortunes whether they want them or not. Shantam, fatter and fairer, living in Benares, masquerading as a wealthy Parsee widow running a charity home for destitute or abandoned Brahmin widows. None of the rumours is ever corroborated.
Karuppan, the barber’s second son, needs surgery and is taken to the French mission hospital to have it done, but by then he has been bleeding internally for ten or twelve hours, so it’s too late and he dies. At the beginning of the following year, the company employing Karuppan’s older brother fails. It’s a bad time for rubber, and for companies generally. He is sent home on a ship that gets caught in a typhoon and founders on some rocks. If there are survivors, he is not among them. His parents have now lost both of their sons. They never have grandchildren. Their older son’s widow, as is not uncommon in their community, remarries.
The elder barber goes back to shaving the heads of all his customers. Perhaps he still says “I’m sorry,” as he did to Sivakami, before shaving a Brahmin widow’s head for the first time.
Perhaps not.
39. A Jasmine at Dawn 1945
JANAKI HAD THOUGHT SHE MIGHT STAY at her grandmother’s house until the birth, but Baskaran comes to escort her home the week before the annual festival for the goddess Meenakshi of Madurai. Senior Mami has had a dream, in which the goddess appeared as a bride and reproached her for not coming to her wedding. Senior Mami tried to protest: it’s so far away, the family contributes much to the festival through the charitable trust, her daughters-in-law are attending, but she could not utter any of this. It was as though she had been gagged by a wooden ball. The goddess, already at the end of her patience, yelled at her to defend herself but still Senior Mami could not speak. Just as the goddess turned away-to receive, as it happens, the supplications of their immediate next-door neighbours on Double Street -Senior Mami regained her voice. It was too late-Meenakshi was bestowing all her favours on the neighbours.
The next morning, Senior Mami decreed that every member of their family must make an extra effort this year. Senior Mami herself will visit the temple to donate a ruby pendant for the goddess, along with the sari and cash the family gives every year. She will even participate in serving water and buttermilk on the street in front of the chattram. She hasn’t come in person for years.
Sivakami disapproves of Janaki travelling all the way back to Pandiyoor in advanced pregnancy, then courting illness by serving buttermilk in the hot sun, not to mention courting the evil eye by displaying herself, pregnant, to so many. Baskaran appreciates her concerns but cannot find it within him to contradict his mother. He promises Sivakami that Janaki will do no real work and return within a month.
Every family member participates in the serving, however ceremonially. Even Dhoraisamy comes-once-to dip the ladle, fill a cup for some passing wayfarer and offer it with wishes for his refreshment and renewed devotional strength. Senior Mami does nearly a dozen before collapsing in a sweat into the shade of the chattram. Each of the sons serves for several hours, with his wife and children. Baskaran and Janaki serve on the sixth day. They, too, drink the water and the buttermilk-yogourt churned with water, lemon, salt and asafetida-the best antidotes to the year’s hottest season. Janaki serves a few people and then keeps Baskaran company, sitting in the shade on the chattram veranda and fanning herself.
Mid-morning of that day, a covered palanquin passes, carried by two men. The palanquin continues a few yards beyond the chattram, then pauses. With effort, the men reverse their strides and set the litter down in front of the buttermilk-filled cauldron and the brass water drum. A hennaed hand parts the curtains veiling the palanquin, and a pale, hennaed foot slips out from between them.
Everyone’s eyes are on that foot, which is followed by a thick silver anklet, then by the wide red-orange border of a Kanchipuram silk sari, then by the sari’s chartreuse ground-the colours of ripe mangoes in a tree. Bharati emerges as Janaki shrinks. She smiles, requesting cups of the buttermilk for her entourage-the palanquin was followed by two manservants and two maids. As they’re drinking, Bharati asks Janaki, “Sowkyumaa? Are you well?” It’s not an intimate greeting, and Bharati does not sound familiar, nor challenging, though she must have stopped the palanquin because she saw her old school friend. She does sound interested, though, which is more than is expected from a stranger. She glances at Janaki’s belly and her husband.
“I’m well,” Janaki replies.
Baskaran looks at Janaki and then asks Bharati, as his wife should have done, “Are you well?”
“I’m well, yes.” Bharati inclines her head to Baskaran, then turns back to Janaki to inform her, “I am a devotee of Goddess Meenakshi.”
“Of course,” Janaki says mechanically.
How is Bharati living now? She must have done well for herself-the palanquin, servants, jewellery.
“You might recall, Janaki,” Bharati remarks conversationally, “that my grandmother is from Madurai. She brought me back.” Bharati smiles, as though Janaki knows how grandmothers can be.
“How is your mother?” Janaki blurts.
“My mother is well.” Bharati cocks her head slightly as if trying to understand what Janaki is saying.
Baskaran is looking at them as though they’re speaking another language, very like Tamil.
The two women stand looking at each other for a moment, then Bharati refuses the cup of buttermilk held out to her by one of the elder children.
“And how is Vani Mami?” she asks.
“She is well,” Janaki replies, starting to feel a bit scared. Didn’t Bharati used to call Vani “Amma,” the non-Brahmin honorific? “Mami” sounds funny, coming from her.
“You both are friends?” Baskaran smiles broadly. “From Cholapatti?”
The women smile narrowly. “We were at school together,” Janaki tells him.