Unsurprisingly, the conventional audience gets by far the greater share that first night. Vairum attends, as he is expected to, with Vani, and feels acutely self-conscious. He thinks at first that this is because those in the audience fawningly make a place for him at the front, expressing gratitude that his mother has done this for them. Perhaps he is uncomfortable because they all know the reason Sivakami has sponsored this: his and Vani’s childlessness. He realizes, however, over the course of the performance, which he finds predictably conventional and uninspiring, that, although he is religious, he has nothing in common with the Brahmins who surround him.
He unconsciously fingers the old silver coin flipped into his waistband as he thinks how he has no friends among the Brahmins here. Since returning, he has made friends mostly among upper-caste non-Brahmins in Kulithalai while his Cholapatti neighbours remain as distasteful to him as ever, in their narrowness and lack of generosity, which he thinks he sees in his mother, also: she will help anyone of the clan, but her goodwill, he thinks, stops at the exit to the Brahmin quarter. He has also heard them complaining about his generosity, of all things, he thinks, getting worked up even as he sits before the decorated stage, his mind far from the action. He has bought a number of their plots of land, which they had let go through their laziness and bad decisions, and turned them around. They got a better price from him than they would from anyone else, but then they complain to one another! Jealousy. And they can’t stand that he is friends with non-Brahmins, and that he hired a non-Brahmin manager for his rice mill: the best applicant, a born leader, even if he is from one of the peasant castes.
Why should I pretend solidarity with my caste? he is fuming, as they sit around him, smelling of holy ash and hair oil, gasping at all the familiar plot points. What have they ever done for me?
He waits out the performance, more for Vani’s sake than anything, but it is a torment.
THE NEXT MORNING, when Muthu Reddiar arrives at the salon entrance, mopping his brow with an outsized kerchief and twirling the ends of his moustaches to guard against wilting, he wheezes, “Bets are being paid out at the club.”
“The people have shown their might!” an unfamiliar voice crows in Tamil behind him. It’s Murthy, his hair oiled and slicked back with care into a kudumi, minus one lock hanging before his ear. His kurta is stained with what might be squash. He occasionally drops in at the salon to tout Brahmin uplift: communal politics have led Brahmins, too, to realize they might claim some unified identity. “Tradition offers reassurance, consolation,” Murthy puffs. “It will always win out over sensationalism. Clearly, the people’s affection for the real Ramayana will triumph over childish stunts.”
Minister always welcomes Murthy (despite the man’s disregard for the English usage rule) as a link to a constituency best cultivated via its zealots. Still, he hates having to think in communal terms and yearns for the times when he had only to fulfill promises to important individuals.
“Bah! The people are scared.” Ranga Chettiar jabs his finger aggressively at Murthy, who looks surprised and pained. “You and your ilk have cowed them for eight thousand years. But someday”-the Chettiar’s voice dives deep into his most profundo basso-“someday, he will break the chains of Aryan domination and come into the full flowering of his Dravidian manhood…”
“So breaking the chains of British domination and coming into our Indian manhood takes no place in your scheme?” Dr. Kittu Iyer’s narrow jowls quiver.
“Now, now.” Minister’s tone is more censorious than he would wish, but the doctor has hit a nerve. “If one is born and comes of age within a united empire, loyalty to it is as loyalty to parents and ancestors. If one renounces one’s heritage, one is nothing.”
Minister catches Vairum’s eye and suddenly feels fiercely annoyed with the younger man for observing all, daily, in silence, never taking a stand. Vairum clearly has no political ambitions-why is he here?
“Isn’t that right, Vairum?” Minister lobs. “Look at what your mother is doing for you-you owe her the world, isn’t it?”
Vairum wags his head noncommittally. Such statements, his gesture might imply, are self-evident and need hardly be spoken.
Vairum goes again that night to the Ramayana Sivakami sponsored but finds himself unable to bear being surrounded by Brahmins. Several of his friends told him that day that they would be attending the other Ramayana because they were interested in supporting its message of non-Brahmin liberation. He is interested in that, too, and thinks, They are my gods. Can I not worship them as well in an atmosphere I find more sympathetic?
He takes Vani home, then goes and joins his friends. He is a little shocked by what he sees: Rama and Lakshmana as comic villains, Sita as a harlot, and Ravana made to seem a hero-as though this story were written on the other side of the world from the one he knows. He isn’t sure how to reconcile this with his daily prayers to the Ramar in his home, except to think that his prayers are private. He has his convictions and can’t escape his heritage. They are the gods of my home and I am obliged to worship them, he thinks, but he is not obliged to worship them in the company of people he cannot like or respect. How can he share their religious feeling if he doesn’t share their caste sentiment?
He decides that the Self-Respect Ramayana is not an act of devotion, but it doesn’t need to be. He prays at home. This is something different.
When Sivakami serves him breakfast the next morning, she asks Vairum to report on the performance, which she will not attend until the last night. His response is predictably disappointing.
“Amma, even weddings are more unique than these Ramayana performances,” he dryly points out. “Why waste breath? Attendance was good.”
Muchami reliably gives a much more satisfying account, taking nearly an hour to describe the costumes and mimic the highlights of the evening. Gayatri, who had attended, claims she is entertained all over again by Muchami’s show, but also assures Sivakami, “It’s first-class performance, Sivakamikka, take it from me.” She repeats, with emphasis, the English phrase that has passed confidently into bourgeois Tamil. “First-class.”
Muchami also, however, brings the unwelcome wisdom that nine-year-old Laddu, who had been given permission to attend, was spotted at the wrong tent. Sivakami mentions this to Vairum, who catches Laddu up by one arm from the corner where he is napping and delivers a brief but thorough thrashing.
“You were given permission to attend the performance your grandmother sponsored. You were not given time and freedom to do whatever you want. As long as you live under this roof, you will abide by what you are told. Clear?”
Laddu drops back onto the floor, sobbing.
The next day, Sivakami doesn’t bother asking Vairum for his report but rather waits for Muchami’s, which he delivers with all the enthusiasm and verve of the days prior, though he omits one detail. Gayatri notes this omission and says nothing: Vairum was seen once more under the canvas roof of the other troupe’s performance tent.
“You all have enjoyed terrific success,” Dr. Kittu Iyer says stiffly, in a rare acknowledgement, that same morning. The night before, that of the third performance, Self-Respect’s audience equalled Sivakami’s. “With the kinds of concessions the Justice Party has achieved for the non-Brahmin sector, one can’t help but see a time when very few Brahmins would want to live in Tamil Nadu,” he mumbles tangentially. “Opportunities are becoming scarce for us.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Ranga Chettiar ejects. “The presidency’s Brahmins have had their rampant nepotism but slightly curtailed. This hardly heralds your starvation, my good fellow!”