A cooling wind skims the water. The wooden Ganesha, light as river spume, topples onto its back and gazes at the sky. The letter lifts into the air, drops into the water and floats downstream. Cholapatti is the other way.
21. Two Blooms 1920
JUST PRIOR TO THE DEEPAVALI HOLIDAYS, in his second year of college, Vairum is required to attend a wedding. He is the family delegate to such occasions, since his mother is a widow and not invited and his sister, though invited, would be dependent on her husband to bring her. If the wedding is too far away, he can generally make an excuse, but at least three or four times a year it happens that the connection or location is too close for him to avoid it.
In this case, one of those Samanthibakkam cousins closest to him in age is marrying a girl from Thiruchi, so Vairum has no means whatever of wriggling free. He spends such occasions in a contemptuous funk, a quartz isle in what he perceives as a sea of mental poverty and ambitionlessness, and must employ elaborate means to keep himself from slumping into a puttylike pile of boredom. When he was small, he used to say multiplication tables under his breath for the entire time, three or five or, once, seven days running. The longer his attendance at the wedding the larger the final figure. These days, he occupies himself with the formulas of borders and business that will make him a big man.
His entire gang of Samanthibakkam cousins is in attendance, and Vairum vaguely recollects a great enthusiasm and warmth he had for them when he was very young, but age and time have intruded, and a shyness grown. They speak, but they don’t really know what to speak about. He avoids his aunts and uncles, who, on greeting him, all made cracks about the fact that the cousin marrying is his coeval, and isn’t it time Vairum got hitched as well? Sivakami has been asking him about this for the last six months, and he has firmly curtailed her: he is focusing on his studies; he isn’t ready.
He has not talked to her about the extreme anxiety of the prospect of a girl-seeing, given the reaction of most people to his skin condition. He would prefer to put off even thinking about it.
He stands at the back of the hall, fingering the coin at his waist under his new woollen vest. The weather has just recently grown temperate enough for him to show it off. All at once, a hushed reverence falls upon the gathering, from front to back. From the front, a veena’s lambent notes flow forward to occupy the quiet. A young girl plays, looking as if she had been born between the two gourd-resonators, her left hand maintaining the drone with rhythmic strokes while her right hand plucks the melody from the strings.
This is a new trend and the assembly is stunned. Only two kinds of music have ever been heard at weddings. The first is the nadaswaram, a six-foot horn with an obscene, nasal sound, with the thavil, a double-sided drum whose hard surfaces are staccatoed by fingertips encased in strips of cloth hardened with rice paste. Musicians are low caste-Brahmins expect them to be heard but not seen. Detached, uninterested, they play a particular song for each phase of the ceremony, and in crucial moments make a huge tootling din so as to drown out any sneeze. Sneezes are very bad omens at weddings.
The other music appropriate to weddings is religious songs, wheezed at prescribed moments by revered matrons. They know all the words, though their thin voices often disagree on tune and timing.
But now here is Vani, a young Brahmin girl, playing “Vallabha Nayakasya,” the veena’s tones breathed deep with devotion and training. Worthy of Madras concert halls (some think but do not say “brothels”), this Vani sits before them in the midst of a provincial wedding. Vairum hears the scandalized whispers start with the mridangam’s downbeat, as Vani finishes a brief but confident aalapanai like a first few raindrops against glass.
“What is this spectacle-a girl playing a concert at a wedding?”
“I have heard about such things. My son’s wife’s people are from Madras city. They have been doing such… concerts, at weddings, since two years now.”
“Who is this girl?”
“Bride’s mother’s uncle’s daughter’s daughter.”
“Oh, yes, yes, the bride’s family does try to be far too fashionable. I knew it would not be the groom’s side arranging such things…”
“Pandiyoor girl?”
“Yes, pretty, isn’t she? Different, somehow.”
“Very fair, isn’t she?”
“That skin-almost, I don’t know, something different…”
Luminous. Vani’s light draws Vairum as a moth to a cool, white flame.
He goes home to Cholapatti for the Deepavali holidays. Sivakami brings him more snacks, in greater variety, than he would ever want to eat, and begins asking him a thousand questions about the wedding. It’s bad enough, he thinks, that he has to go and represent the family because his mother is a widow and disallowed. Should he also waste his brain-space remembering sari styles and hush-hushed gossip?
He cuts his mother off, rude but not unkind; she should know by now he doesn’t pay attention to those things. Sivakami quickly reins in her only greed, the greed for details. She can understand and almost sympathize with his lack of interest: she herself was far less interested in weddings when she was free to attend them.
But Vairum is speaking.
“… I have completed eighteen years, now, Amma. It’s time for me to marry.”
Sivakami smiles cautiously at what she thinks is a concession. She had said just these words to him on his previous visit, and he had vehemently denied every part of it then, even his age.
He nods and purses his lips, businesslike. “I will marry Vani, daughter of Parthasarathy of Pandiyoor.”
“You will… who?”
“She is the only reason for speaking of this idiotic wedding I attended,” Vairum answers, already heading for the stairs to his upper refuge, picking his college satchel up on the way.
She watches it banging against his bony hip as he disappears into the upper reaches.
“Who is she?” Sivakami calls after him, a note of exasperation in her question such as she rarely employs with him.
“The one I will marry,” he calls from above.
The next time Sivakami sees him-the next meal-she protests in gentle, persistent tones. “Vairum, kanna, a boy’s family never makes the first move. You should be thinking about your studies, now. The time will come soon, and I will initiate some proceedings…”
“Enough, Amma,” he responds, though she has numerous wheedlings still to deploy. “This is my decision.”
“You cannot make such a decision, you are just a boy!”
“Throughout history men have made such decisions,” he informs her. “Nowadays boys wait for their parents to present a girl or two and they say yes I will have her or I like this one better. I have already chosen and I will not have anyone else.”
“I will speak to your uncles,” she responds weakly, because she doesn’t really believe they will make any effort to change his mind. Perhaps, perhaps the girl will be suitable.
“Do what you need to do.” Vairum speaks as though to a minion. “Just make sure I am married to her. Soon.”
When did that awkward little boy gain such confidence, such command? Maybe in his classes, where his performance has been exceptional. Perhaps it is life on his own in the city which has toughened him. Or maybe it was that moment when he, standing before the stage, caught the eye of the beautiful musician and saw her miss a note and smile a little and look away shyly, and glance back.
That night, Sivakami lies awake. This girl, Vani. She might be fine.
Venketu, Sivakami’s second brother, could object. His daughter is seven or eight, and Vairum should be hers, by rights. But Venketu has been cool to Sivakami ever since she left their house. The youngest, Subbu, has been warmer, as if to compensate, but she thinks none of them realize what a bright future Vairum is going to have.