Janaki startles. “Bharati was there? But I thought she was living in Madurai.”
“I’ll get to that.” Gayatri holds up a hand and continues quoting Bharati’s grandmother. “‘This girl should have been born a hundred years ago, in the shadow of a famous temple’s towering gopurams!’ she said. ‘Poets would have immortalized her. Corpulent Brahmins with diamond ear studs and betel-stuffed cheeks should have been kept awake at night scheming on means to finance her maintenance. Kings would have declared themselves unworthy!’”
Bharati’s dancing and music masters had not even lived in. The committee was made to understand this had been a sore point for her grandmother. This prompted them to ask: many a live-in master is brutish and demands distasteful favours, which the family must permit because how else can they give the child the training she needs? This surely was the type of suffering Bharati’s grandmother had talked about: did any of her teachers ever commit improprieties upon her young person?
The old woman was appalled that the committee would ask such a question, and as good as kicked them out of her house for their rudeness.
“So that was that, but I wanted to know what was happening with the girl-what is her name again?”
“Bharati,” Janaki mumbles.
“Yes-Bharati,” Gayatri repeats, a little quiet as though she just remembered Janaki’s stake in this story. “A beautiful girl.”
Janaki doesn’t reply.
“I asked Muchami.” Gayatri lowers her voice confidentially. “Bharati came of age around the same time as you. When she finished school, her mother let her be taken to Madurai. Their relatives there arranged a performance to try to attract a patron for her. She attracted a man in his forties. He is a Brahmin but not a man of good reputation. He had dropped two previous devadasis after he tired of them, and he…” Gayatri makes the signal for drinking, her thumb pointing at her mouth. “His family still has money, but I imagine Bharati must be concerned that he may well drop her, too. She came back here for an abortion. I don’t know if it was the first.”
Gayatri stops and they both are silent.
Janaki wants to remain angry but finds she cannot. Her own life seems so simple by comparison.
“Sometimes”-Gayatri looks almost scared to say this-“men are known to patronize more than one woman. Women get diseases…”
“Are you saying this is what my father does?” Janaki asks.
“You opened the topic, Janaki.”
Janaki is too emotional to apologize. “Does… does my grandmother know about the rumours?”
Gayatri looks as though she would like to end the conversation. “I’m sure she doesn’t. As we said, it is no longer the mark of a great family, and never really was, I think, for people like us.”
“People like us?”
“Modest people. Conservative people. We who live a quiet, middle-class village life, and keep to ourselves.”
Janaki nods-that’s it, that’s who she is. That’s the only life she has ever wanted.
IT IS THE LAST WEEK OF JUNE 1945, and Janaki ‘swaterbreaks. As she goes into the birthing room, she signals to Muchami. When he nears, she hisses, “Amma’s kai raasi. I won’t let anyone else touch me.”
Sivakami’s kai raasi are the first hands on Janaki’s baby, and Janaki’s own hands are next. The nurse is never called.
It’s a girl, a strong one. She thrashes and yells and eats heartily. Even at birth, she looks like her father, with a strong nose and round cheeks. Janaki writes to Baskaran to bring a photo of himself when he comes for the eleventh-day ceremony, so that when the ayah comes to massage the child and mould her features, she can make the baby’s nose even more like his.
He doesn’t think this is funny. He shows up two days early and, in a temper, tells Janaki from outside the birthing room that she will never again come to Cholapatti for a birth.
Janaki says nothing, but thinks, He’s a fool, criticizing, when the birth could not have gone better.
He has brought gifts for the baby and coldly thanks Sivakami for doing such a good job-he is all manners-but Sivakami is mortified and Janaki is most hurt by the pain she has caused her grandmother, who feels terrible at having unwittingly created discord between the young couple. Although Janaki insists that it is her fault, not Sivakami!’s, Sivakami mounts her own argument.
“I raised you, Janaki. If you can disobey your husband, I did a bad job. It’s my fault.”
“Did you never disobey your husband, Sivakamikka?” Gayatri, witness to all this, asks.
Sivakami looks as if she’s trying to remember.
Hanumarathnam bolts upright from sleep. With a slight movement of his head, he summons her.
“No, never.” To answer otherwise would be to fault her own parents. “Don’t ever do such a thing again.”
Vairum and Vani are coming to Cholapatti for the baby’s naming ceremony-they didn’t come for all the babies!’, but Vairum has a special interest in Janaki’s family. Generally, this interest pleases Janaki, but now she is dreading their arrival. While she had been confident of her right to decide who birthed her baby, she fears Vairum’s reaction when he finds out she disobeyed her husband and failed to take advantage of modern methods. Vairum is so derisive about so many of their traditions, though not consistently: he and Vani still do a daily puja in their home and observe all the Hindu festivals. But this may be on Vani’s initiative. Vairum is vocal, even at family gatherings, about his disdain for the way most of Sivakami’s grandchildren live, in fulfillment of her legacy of orthodoxy.
She also feels a bit weak at the prospect of seeing Vani at the baby’s naming ceremony. The last time she saw them was in Pandiyoor, two months after Visalam’s passing, six months after Vani’s mother’s own death. Vani had looked drawn and greyish, a little worse each time Janaki saw her. She still played beautifully but otherwise appeared listless, not even chattering much at mealtimes, though she occasionally mumbled something Janaki couldn’t catch, something that might have been the fragment of a story. Janaki could only think of one explanation, Vani’s despair at her barrenness.
From within the birth room, she hears them arrive at the front, greeted by Murthy, Baskaran, Minister and Gayatri, Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan. Kamalam is staying with her in the birth room to help her and peers out, squinting against the sunlight from the open front door. Vairum bounds into the main hall and does a full-length obeisance for the Ramar, leaps up and calls to Vani, “Come! Come!”
Vani enters more shyly and does the same, and then stands beside Vairum as he beckons the family and neighbours to enter and calls out to his mother. “Amma! Come here.”
Janaki and Kamalam are supposed to stay in the birth room, but they are too curious and know no one will notice if they peer around the door at Sivakami, who has inched up to the pantry door but refuses to come any farther in front of Murthy and Minister.
“Oh, Amma. You are going to have adjust your village ways if…” Vairum pauses dramatically and looks at everyone, “you are to come and visit us in Madras.”
He enjoys everyone’s bemusement for a moment: how will Sivakami get away, with all her responsibilities? Why would Vairum even think up such a scheme? The children wonder if they are going, too.
Janaki looks at Vani, who seems happy and peacefuclass="underline" still thin, but untroubled. What is happening?
“It will be an extended stay, Amma, because we are very happy to tell you-” Vairum pauses again and breathes deeply-“that Vani is expecting.”
Sivakami is staggered. Forgetting herself, she takes a step forward and holds out her arms. Vairum and Vani step into her light and unfamiliar embrace.