PART THREE

12. Muchami Gets Married 1908

ANGAMMA, MUCHAMI’S MOTHER, stands in front of the little roadside temple, her fingers clamped around his wrist, waiting for a lizard to chirp. It has to come first from the left, next the right-the other way around would be a bad omen and would put her to a great deal of trouble, coming up with good omens to counter the bad until she felt satisfied the wedding could proceed.

Men of Muchami’s caste generally marry in late adolescence, but there has been in his case a delay. The elder of his two younger sisters took overlong to marry, owing, so people said, to her buckteeth and pointed tongue. His plump, malleable younger sister was snapped up in no time at all, liberating Muchami of his obligation to wait, but then she divorced and all was thrown into confusion. Fortunately, she remarried with equal haste and now Angamma is hustling to get him settled before anything else changes.

At least there was, in his case, almost no question of whom he would marry: the second of his mother’s five brothers has a girl of thirteen. Muchami probably would have married the girl cousin just elder to him, had his sisters not taken so long (his caste permits boys to marry older girls, though he would have had to do something to compensate, like swallowing a coin or gifting a coconut for each year of the age difference); he might have married the girl just elder to his now-intended, but she was bundled off with someone else in that brief period of uncertainty and lowered family reputation when his younger sister returned home.

Even this alliance is not without matters to be resolved, though. The birth order is not ideal, for example: both Muchami and this girl, Mari, are the eldest children in their families and Muchami’s mother forebodingly quoted the proverb that says, “The contact of two heads of family is like the clashing together of two hills.”

Mari’s father, Rasu, claimed that this was just another minor and obscure objection Angamma thought she could use as a bargaining chip. He actually accused her of inventing superstitions and conditions, which was silly because she clearly was not capable. Everyone, including him, knew Rasu would be crazy not to take Muchami as a groom-a sister’s son, employed, of sound mind and body, and appropriate height and colour. The only real question was when.

And, of course, the verdict of the omenistic lizards. “At least everyone knows we have to do this,” Angamma huffs as they wait. The lizard chirps. Muchami looks to the right of the little shrine, but his mother looks left. They look back at each other. “So far, so good,” Angamma says, and Muchami shakes his head and looks as though he’s about to say something, but his mother raises a hand to stop him.

“Chirp.”

Angamma looks to the right though he looks left. “That’s settled then!” she says and raises his hand in triumph as though this was his prize fight. He resists ineffectually. “We can choose a date. Now we just have to get that cheapskate bustard to settle on the terms.” Angamma never swears but often says things that sound close.

Mari, Muchami’s bride, is an irritating girl in many ways. Everyone agrees that her pretensions make her a perfect match for Muchami, as do her looks, which are similar to his, perhaps owing to the fact that they are cousins. She is skinnier than is considered attractive, with a wilful set to her protruding lower jaw. Her eyes, though, are quick and dark, and she cuts an energetic figure. Muchami’s mother finds Mari unbearable, but, in the lead-up to the wedding, feels more kindly toward the girl than she ever does again.

Muchami’s caste, almost without exception, pays bride-prices. Angamma had been forced to return most of what she received for her younger daughter’s first marriage because her daughter was at fault and she couldn’t pretend otherwise, though she indignantly did not pay the interest the other side implied was due.

But Mari’s fondest aspiration is to practise Brahminhood even though she can never belong to any caste other than the one into which she was born. Individuals can be robbed of caste-temporarily, by means of such brief pollutions as haircuts or funerals, or permanently, by transgressions. Or they can be exalted within their caste-as much as Mari can hope for. She is laughingly referred to as “more Brahmin than the Brahmins,” and most of her affectations involve imitating the higher caste.

Owing to her convictions, she forbids her father to accept a bride-price for her-she tells him he has to pay a dowry. There is no reason he should listen to her, and his brothers say he’s setting a bad precedent when he gives in. But there is a growing fashion these days for claiming that one’s caste is higher in the hierarchy than others think, and one way of substantiating such claims is by adopting higher caste practices. His wife is also in favour: she thinks they would gain more status from paying a token dowry than from receiving a fat fee.

Brother and sister still jockey for form’s sake. (Until movies arrive, there’s little in any village or small town that’s as much fun as fighting.) They settle on a dowry of three chickens and a sixteenth-harvest each of millet, rice and peanuts-a list more typical of a bride-price than a Brahmin dowry, but why would they give things they don’t have and don’t want? This is theatre-they get the gesture right, and the negotiations conclude to everyone’s secret satisfaction.

On the eve of his marriage, Muchami does his rounds of the fields in the morning and comes back to Angamma’s hut to eat. Late in the afternoon he goes out again. His mother calls after him, “Home early-got that? None of this gadding-about-late-night-seeing-your-friends. You have to wake up in the very early morning. All the women will be arriving to help by three o’clock and you must get dressed up…”

Her voice fades behind him as he walks away, waving his hand in what could be farewell but looks more like he wants to be left alone.

Angamma lies down at eight-thirty. She lies on her side on the mud floor, her arm tucked under her head, muttering her to-do list, along with increasingly strong, partially accurate, imprecations at her son. She gets up, lies down, gets up, rearranges clothes, jewels, betel-nut coconuts, switching them from one tray to another.

She has never asked her son where he goes when he goes out at night. She thinks it’s risky, but Muchami knows the fields better than anyone and she finds it difficult to restrain him. Too, there are in her vocabulary rude words, sexual insults, that she fears may apply to her son. No one has ever said anything like this to her, and this is one of the reasons she has never asked about his friends. But this night, of all nights, she would have thought he’d have the respect to stay home.

Eventually, she dozes, but even in sleep she mutters and twitches, and when the Kanyakumari train runs along the nearby tracks, her eyelids flip open. She leaps to the doorway and checks the time by the position of the moon. Midnight.

She fumes curses against her son. She starts to cry a little, with hurt and helplessness. Promptly at three, five women arrive to help. Angamma normally would bluff, but she feels weak. She knows a couple of these women are jealous of her: Muchami gives his mother most of his salary. He doesn’t drink. Really, he has been the ideal son before this, the women remind her, affectionately or with gloating tones. He will come soon, they say, he will come.

She accepts their reassurances, though they do nothing to assuage her nervousness. Dark drains into a hostile-looking day, and the hour arrives when she must step across to her brother’s. Angamma looks even worse than usual. She has fair skin, in contrast with her brothers, and though she is not heavy, her face is always puffy, with purple half-moons under the eyes, as though she were once prey to some terrible vice, which she never was. Today, her eyes are swollen with crying and sleep loss; her hair and clothing stick out in odd directions.