The groom is from the last house on Sivakami’s street in Cholapatti, one of the grandest families on the Brahmin quarter. His father, Chinnarathnam, comes almost daily to exchange the news of the world with Hanumarathnam. The son, at thirteen, has already earned an English nickname, “Minister,” owing to his anglophilia and oft-declared political ambitions. Sivakami has met the boy often, since Minister accompanies his father whenever possible, interrupting pompously with opinions his father affectionately challenges him to refine. Sivakami has the impression that Chinnarathnam is more intelligent than his son, but skeptical in his essence and so unmotivated to join public life. Hanumarathnam also prefers the father but doesn’t hesitate to say it is Minister who will be remembered.
The bride is seven. Sivakami’s first glimpse of her is in the bride-and-groom games, keepaway coconut, which she wins, and the one in which the couple are put on a swing and sung songs with teasing, sometimes even lewd, lyrics. The little girl shouts to her mother from the swing, a question about a word she doesn’t understand. She elbows her groom until he looks cowed, half hanging off the end of the swing. Sivakami recalls her own marriage, so long ago already. She defensively feigned uninterest in Hanumarathnam-at least, she thinks she was pretending. She had enjoyed the games and new clothes, but when, on the second day, she told her mother she had had enough and tried to ignore the priest’s instructions, she was reprimanded sharply by a half a dozen people she didn’t know.
Chinnarathnam greets Sivakami, one eye straying to look for Hanumarathnam. Unlike the many other people who have asked after him, Chinnarathnam is tactful enough not to confirm what he knows. Sivakami cannot guess whether he is offended by Hanumarathnam’s absence, though she feels it must be a serious gaffe.
This, the second day of the celebration, is the most important. The couple will be made to walk seven steps together in imitation of their future life, with the fire as witness. They will swear eternal fidelity on the unwavering pole star. They will exchange garlands like exiled royalty in myths, those who have no family but the forest to help bind their fates. The bride will be collared with the saffron-threaded thirumangalyam, the emblem of her new state: two graven gold pendants that tell the world, in symbols neither she nor anyone else can decipher, whose family she has married. Vermilion is rubbed into the parting of her hair and the gold medals hung at her throat, so she becomes warm colour and wealth-everything good to look on.
Any of these ceremonies is individually sufficient to declare a man and woman one. But then the whole thing would be over so quickly, and how to choose among them? Bride and groom are jostled upon the shoulders of maternal uncles for the exchange of garlands; they feed each other bananas in sweetened milk; they pray, together and individually.
Three times a day, roughly corresponding to the ending of each ceremony, the gathering is fed. This does not include the many-early, late or simply hungry-who are fed in between. But three times daily, talk goes up a decibel as the gathering seats itself at rows of banana leaves laid out on the floor of the dining hall with the narrow end to the left. Each diner sprinkles the leaf with water, wipes it off with a hand, waits. The servers-hired help mixed with relatives-begin with a dollop of a gooey sweet onto the lower right corner of the leaf. The eaters lick this up: the first flavour to touch celebrants’ tongues must be sweet. Then along the half of the leaf above the bisecting vein, in order from left to right, are dished vegetables in dry and wet curries, pacchadis of yogourt and cucumber, of sun-cured mango with palm sugar or, in more fashionable homes, of shredded beet flavoured with essence of rose. The arrangement ends with vadai, deep-fried patties of lentil and chili, and a spicy pickle, say of lemon or baby mango, in the top right corner. Some sweet in the form of a square or ball goes on the lower left side of the leaf, along with pappadum to offset the mushy main item: rice, lower centre, without which this is not a real meal.
The first course is rice mixed with sambar, a thick lentil sauce; the second is rice with rasam, and thin lentil broth, which the diner must chase continually until it is eaten to keep it from running off the leaf. Next, another helping of the first sweet, warm and runny or sticky. Last, more rice, with home-brewed yogourt: “Scrubs the teeth and tongue!” Sivakami always overhears some pompous uncle saying to an uninterested youngster. “And aids the stomach in digestion!”
Flavours and textures and the order of a meal are arranged according to the Shastras that proclaim that if a meal is taken as prescribed, it will settle happily. Those who violate the prescriptions take their stomachs into their own hands.
In the afternoons, the corners of the hall, the small rooms adjacent to it, even the veranda, are heaped with sated, sleeping guests.
For days, it will continue: a ceremony peaking every few hours, every chant and gesture worn smooth as pebbles on the Kaveri riverbed by repeated practice since the Aryans first entered the south, bringing with them new gods and myths, pushing into the forests the fierce deities they found the darker natives worshipping; bringing with them a system for dividing people according to function, which the Portuguese, thousands of years later, would call caste. In halls such as these, they gather, the Brahmins, hardly newcomers now, yet slightly apart from this place where they have lived for millennia. The marriage fire forges another link in the chainmail of caste; every sound, sight and smell is a celebration of the clan.
When Sivakami and the others return from the wedding, Hanumarathnam still is not back. The next night, she lies awake, angry, though unsure whether she will say so. She has already wrapped packets of food to send the siddhas on their way, the third night she has done this, just in case they return. She doesn’t like their audacity and she doesn’t like their taking her husband, but she is never sure how to put that, or to whom. She hears him at the front, hurries to unlock the doors and fetches the food.
He has followed her, takes up the packets and goes back outside. Sivakami hears a musical voice mutter, “Where is the golden child? The transformation of your seed, your soul-breath?”
Hanumarathnam laughs a little and answers ruefully, “Yes, the only alchemy I have ever effected.”
“No less miraculous, brother. And she will grow, flesh upon bone, to face the trials of this well-worn cycle.”
“You are kind.”
“Blessings on her, and the next, and on your home,” replies the voice.
Her husband enters their house once more and locks the locks against the night and the moon’s glow, and all is as it should be. From deep down the Brahmin-quarter path, the cry floats back at them, “Here is a body, feed it!”
Hanumarathnam chuckles.
Sivakami’s objections are at a standstill. From anyone else, she would have had suspicions of dhrishti, evil eye, from such a compliment. Still, she goes and waves a fistful of salt over her daughter; it doesn’t hurt to take precautions. Siddhas don’t want family or home, so why would he put the evil eye on them? It’s not logical, not likely. She doesn’t let Hanumarathnam see her with the salt-he has no patience with superstition. She flushes the salt along the drain out the back of the courtyard and feels cleaner than she has for days.
Sivakami is much more mobile than she was with her first pregnancy, and keeps a closer eye on the hired help. The servants are a little resentful but do not take her too seriously.
Every pregnancy has its peculiar discomforts, though. This time, Sivakami finds it hardest when the baby kicks or she squats. His swimming within her is like being prodded with an iddikki, an iron pot-tongs, all angles and edges.