44. Summer Hols 1958

SIVAKAMI CLUTCHES A Letter-holds it out from her bosom to read it again, a terse four or five lines, and then again brings it close: Vairum is bringing his sons.

His letter says he will come during the school holidays and stay a week. She will see her grandsons, not as she first met them, at their birth, when they were Sita’s children, but now as sons of her son, sons of her son… the little boys will play with the crowd of Thangam’s grandchildren, and all will be as she imagined, as it was meant to be. All she had to do was endure.

She is not exactly sure why, but she doesn’t tell Muchami about the letter for several days. Eventually, though, she must, because he needs to get the upstairs room ready to accommodate them. Her great-grandchildren play in that room but no one has slept there in years, and she’s not sure what state it’s in. Her granddaughters and their children sleep either in the main hall or on the roof; the second-storey room is hot, and since none of the husbands stay in the house, there has been no need for private quarters.

After she has gone over the details of routine summer preparation with him, she clears her throat. “There is something else, Muchami.”

“Oh?”

He looks polite and weary. They are both getting old. Since Mari died last year, he has had fewer reasons to make the trek back to his own home at night, and often just sleeps in Sivakami’s courtyard to avoid it. He spends most days there, too, in semi-retirement: Vairum has a full-time agricultural overseer for the lands, and the brightest of Muchami’s nephews now does all his heavy work.

“Yes. Vairum. He is coming with Vani, and bringing the children.” She beams; she can’t help it.

His reaction is as disappointing as she knew it would be: this is why she waited to tell him.

He nods. “Ah. So-I’ll ready the upstairs room.”

“Yes,” she says, and he goes.

She knows what he thinks of Vairum’s behaviour: that his grudges have gone past the point of reason, that his priorities are wrong. This letter is proof of Vairum’s basic good nature, she thinks, but how could she expect Muchami to see that? She doesn’t need to prove it. Let him see, when Vairum comes.

Muchami cleans cobwebs and dust from the upstairs room. Presumably, the little boys, after the first day or two, will sleep below, in the hall, or above, on the roof, with their cousins. He’ll have to check whether they have enough bedding for everyone. Janaki, Saradha and Kamalam usually bring their own. He’ll dispatch a letter this afternoon to make sure they do. They probably won’t leave their homes for a couple of days yet.

He squats, his head in his hand. Why can’t he believe, as Sivakami obviously does, that Vairum has had a change of heart?

In the two years when Mari was taking her treatments, he had had the chance to observe Vairum more closely than he has in the years since, but he has seen nothing to make him believe Vairum has changed his thinking. He came to Cholapatti as recently as a couple of months ago, and was as cold to Sivakami as ever. In all these years, Muchami has never told her more than he felt she needed to know, and he never talks to her of her son: not of the things Vairum says, against caste, against her; not of his own unspoken responses. Muchami has endured his treatment of Sivakami for her sake, but his anger on her behalf is bright and ready.

JANAKI HAS THE SONG GOING THROUGH HER HEAD-the theme from Saraswati, the summer’s big hit movie, starring Bharati, music by Vani. Gopalan’s nephew was singing it as they waited on the train platform this morning; she heard someone humming it as he passed by her on the way to the lavatory at the end of the car.

Yesterday morning she had clipped two more articles to add to her stack of six about the movie. She has nearly a hundred articles about Bharati, collected over the years, clipped and pressed in books, like blooms from a path not taken. Both of yesterday’s repeated the now well-known story of how Bharati grew up listening to “Sri Vani” play, sitting in the mango tree behind Sivakami’s house. The media circulated and recirculated romanticized images of the future star as a child, sitting on a sturdy branch, ankles crossed, eyes closed and hands miming at playing her own veena in time to the notes emanating from the forbidden household, until dusk, or dark, or until a servant maid fetched her firmly home.

Her co-star, an actor rumoured to have political aspirations, was quoted in one of yesterday’s articles.

“This unforgivable and humiliating segregation is the tragic fact even in today’s village Brahmin quarter, all over Tamil Nadu. Sri Vani and her husband, Sri Vairum, are among the very few upper-caste persons willing to welcome their own non-Brahmin neighbours into their homes. How fortunate for all of us that they welcomed Bharati, that little girl hidden like some unspoken shame in the woods behind the house where Sri Vairum himself grew up! Would that the rest of Tamil Nadu’s upper-caste bigots could cast aside their false race pride as Sri Vairum and Sri Vani have done! We must make it clear they have no choice.”

No choice, no choice… The words sing in Janaki’s ears with the rocking of the train, filling her with anger and disgust at politicians and actors-all the same, in her mind. The articles have actually downgraded her caste background, compared with when they first started writing about hers! Fomenting discontent. It’s practically fashionable to be lower-caste these days, she sniffed, mentally. No understanding of the village-of the mutual dependence and respect. Look at Muchami! He has had everything he could want-more than most Brahmins! Would he have had the chance to learn Sanskrit in that actor’s Tamil Nadu? Brahmins are the servants of society. Why is all of India out to get us?

Greed, she thinks, nothing more than that. She lifts an arm around her daughter, reading a novel on the seat beside her, pinches her cheek. “Always reading,” she whispers. “College girl, college girl.”

Thangajothi doesn’t look up but snuggles into her side. Amarnath and Sundar sit on a newspaper on the train floor, playing jacks. Janaki counts the baggage on the rack above them and below their bench. A dozen pieces, same as when they left Pandiyoor. All is in its place and soon they will arrive in Cholapatti, where the fragmented world becomes briefly, yearly, whole again. She sighs and feels her ire dissipating, grudgingly soothed by anticipation.

Kamalam comes to fetch Sivakami. “Amma! Janaki Akka’s here!”

Sivakami, slicing bitter gourd as she squats by a blackened, bubbling rice pot, folds the blade down into its block and, pushing herself to standing, sets it on a high shelf, out of the reach of toddlers. She tries to catch her breath against the pain flexing through her lower back and right leg. While sitting, she can almost believe she is forty again, but this pain plagues her whenever she tries to stand, walk or lie down, so much so that she has been tempted, for a couple of years now, to give up those activities.

Kamalam makes anxious, sympathetic sounds as she waits for Sivakami to recover, but as soon as Sivakami is able, she impatiently shoos Kamalam along to greet her sister. She rejects Kamalam’s hand, held out to help, out of pride, not because she’s madi: she will have to take another bath today because she intends on hugging Janaki and the children.

Thangajothi feels the gossamer folds of Sivakami’s sari flutter against her face, so different from the stiff, coloured silks and cotton blends that her mother wears. Sivakami’s sari could be woven from spider webs, she thinks as her great-grandmother embraces her, seeing her hand through the pallu and inhaling Sivakami’s soft-sour scent of rice and age.