On an auspicious day, at an auspicious hour, seven little boys gather shivering before dawn, oiled and clean, in new silk dhotis and shoulder cloths. Vairum, a few months short of his sixth birthday, is proudest of all, buddying about with his cousins, giving useless instructions to the confused younger boys. They are all told, by the wise and kindly priest heading the morning’s events, that this is the day of their birth. Anyone can be born from a mother, he tells them, but what sets us apart as Brahmins is this second birth into caste, into knowledge. Each boy huddles beneath a cloth with his parents, who reveal to him the prayer with which, each daybreak, he will petition the sun for illumination. He is given the three intertwined poonal threads that will signal to the world his special status: his right and obligation to knowledge, his right and obligation to poverty (except, not really).
Sivakami is as proud and happy as Vairum is. How nice for him to have a second birth, she thinks, given the circumstances of the first. His birth into learning will be his real birth into life. Vairum turns from the fire and flashes his crooked little smile, his narrow, uneven eyes crinkling. She smiles back shyly, proudly, from behind the kitchen door, and watches as he leans and whispers something to the cousin beside him, who smirks and passes it on, and then all seven are in an uncontrollable fit of giggles and the uncles and fathers get angry with them, but they can’t stop, the ceremony is so solemn and they so gay.
A couple of months later, the school year approaches and the household begins to prepare. There are things to be bought, uniforms, books, tiffin containers, forms to complete and documents to secure. Vairum is of an age to begin first standard and clearly ready in other ways, given his math skills. He has even received his poonal, and so is, in every way, it seems, sanctioned to commence.
Before Sivakami has a chance to ask about how to go about registering him for school, Sambu harrumphs one morning at breakfast, “Vairum is more than ready to begin his education.”
“Yes,” she rejoins. “I was going to say the same.”
“He is a bright child,” Sambu drawls. He takes longer than anyone else to eat his meals. “The math tricks, they prove his intelligence. Did you know the Vedas are highly mathematical? Not that we would know about that, but that aspect will probably hold all kinds of interest for him.”
“Yes,” Sivakami answers, more hesitant now. Do they teach Vedic mathematics in the schools? Maybe it’s an option. “We’d better find out what he needs, especially since he doesn’t have a father to testify for him on those forms.”
Sambu frowns indulgently. “Paadasaalais don’t require forms or fathers. Not much to worry about at all.”
“A paadasaalai?” she repeats. “But he’s not going to a paadasaalai.”
“It’s all fixed, Sivakami,” Venketu breaks in. He is a natural-born salesman and takes every conversation as a challenge to his powers of persuasion. “Don’t argue. He is a very intelligent boy, and if he goes to a secular school, he’ll leave you. Your only son-you don’t want that, surely? A boy educated to some English profession will need to follow his work to cities, but a priest won’t have fancy opportunities to give him ideas. Solid Sanskritic education, because you need him. Anyway, it’s good to have a priest in the family. Father says so. Someone has to respect tradition, with all these boys going the way of the big, bad modern world!”
Venketu shakes with false jollity while she stares at him. Subbu takes his brothers’ side, wheedling, “Who better than the son of Hanumarathnam, who was a one-man repository of tradition, so scholarly, mystical, so famous? Your son will carry on his father’s life work.”
Sivakami is silenced. She has carried with her, her whole life, a faint guilt with regard to her brothers. One of her earliest memories: she was four and Subbu saved her life. She had been about to jump into the family well-out of curiosity and defiance, not despair. She struggled violently against him and when he set her down in front of her mother, she turned and broke his nose. She always felt herself to be stronger than them; she has never, she thinks, fully given any of them the respect and obedience elder brothers deserve to command. Even now, she thinks with resignation, that hasn’t changed. She had no choice in the matter of Thangam’s marriage: a widow has no power to dispute such matters. But she need not let go of her son’s shoulders at this fork in his path. She’s not about to let go unless she absolutely has to.
As it happens, there is a paadasaalai conveniently up the street. It doesn’t have any sort of reputation, but her brothers would consider one paadasaalai much like another, using the same methods and the same curriculum with the same results since the beginning of time. This one is run by charity, so there is no cost. No cost for supplies, no cost for exams, no cost for extra tutoring, no cost for college afterward because Vairum won’t be going to college, that’s for sure. Any costs would have been paid from her money, of course, given to her brothers to manage while she was living in their house. A paadasaalai education would mean no work for them.
And why should they trouble themselves over her son? Any wealth he accumulates is nothing to their family. Even the dowry he will someday attract-certainly more substantial for an engineer than a priest-would only be his, or, at best, Sivakami’s. What use has she or Vairum for wealth? Sivakami wonders if they admit, in the privacy of their own minds, that they are a little jealous of Vairum, of his brains, of the possibility that he might outshine their boys.
She wouldn’t be able to endure seeing her son educated in Sanskrit to waste himself performing occasional ceremonies for the rich, demanding their gifts and gossiping and never leaving the veranda to check on the world without. Priesting is a profession for the poor, the choiceless; Sivakami is not rich, but she is too rich for her son to become a priest. She is a snob, but this is not snobbery. This is cold reason. Firstly, she fears that, because her son has an inheritance, he would grow lazy and corrupt. And then, say he wastes his inheritance and does want for money, the rewards for chanting over fires are no longer sufficient to support a family. The world has changed and shirtless priests, walking the street with nothing but a brass jar, haven’t the opportunities they once had.
Vairum is diamond needle sharp. She fears that if he is not challenged, his intelligence will turn inward and damage him. He must be educated in English to take his place in the new world. Even if he leaves her to fend for herself while he makes his way, even if she will know nothing of his values or career, she must give him this chance. Even if she will lose him by doing so. She didn’t take any such stand on behalf of her daughter because her daughter was not hers to lose. Daughters are born to be the fortunes of other families, but her son’s fortune is hers to find, for him. While she lives with her brothers, however, she cannot take any initiative that is not theirs.