After the morning meal, the household naps. After tiffin, while Sita makes murrukku with unusual willingness but no attention at all to shape or symmetry, Janaki is excused to listen to Vani play.
She slips out the back, swings herself up against the mango tree, bracing her toes into near invisible notches on the trunk and standing, then sitting, on a branch about eight feet off the ground. She mastered this about a week ago, practising one Sunday morning when Bharati was not around.
Bharati arrives soon after and climbs up as well. Janaki has taken the better branch-slightly wider and higher up. Bharati takes the second choice-lower and narrower. From above and to their right, Vani commences playing “Akshayalinga Sankarabaranam,” a song for Shiva.
Janaki and Bharati begin to tap out the rhythm-they have just recently deciphered it. It seems to be three and a half beats: a short and a long tap on the back of the hand, two long taps on the front.
And they are humming along. Occasionally, Bharati and Janaki find themselves humming different things, each anticipating a different turn in the song, just as happens with Vani’s stories. But, increasingly, they find that even when they hum different things, neither sounds wrong, because they are both improvising on the raga, though neither will learn its name and formal properties for some years. And they don’t sound bad together. So there they are, tapping and humming, their two pairs of feet dangling from the foliage. They can’t see the back door from the courtyard and so don’t see it open and Sita step out, hot and cranky from completing the coveted chore, blinking oil-smoke tears. She hears the two to her left, though she can’t see them. She says, “Oh, you two songbirds fill our neighbourhood with beauty. We’re so lucky! You must promise me, Bharati, that you will sing at my wedding. And Janaki, you must sing at my funeral. Promise?”
“Sita!” Sivakami’s voice comes from the courtyard. Sita wheels and whacks her elbow on the heavy wood door. “Not one more word like that!”
The songbirds stop their twittering. Sita slinks back inside like a mean pet cat in a family of dog lovers.
It is shortly after midnight by the time the preparations are complete. The moon has waxed full and burns candle-bright, so Vani does, too. Janaki listens to the last strains of Vani’s practice as she washes her face and hands, and Kamalam’s, in the moonlight by the well.
Vairum steps off the stairs into the main hall as Janaki and Kamalam lay down their sleeping mats. He speaks to Sivakami with a roughness that has increased with the years.
“Still hasn’t appeared?” It’s not a question. “What will we do if he hasn’t come by morning?”
Sivakami sighs. “We go ahead, even without him. We can use a stand-in, if necessary.”
“Makes sense. He uses a stand-in for every other function of fatherhood-except the original one, pardon me.”
Everyone else likes to sleep in the darker areas of the hall, but Janaki places her reed mat over a cold, striped mat of moonlight. Cold, milky moonlight pours in the window and runs over her face, along the grooves between her nostrils and cheek, collects in her collarbone, between her lips, in her cupped palm and the clench of her fist, and chills her finally to sleep.
The next day, the inauspicious period of raahu kaalam doesn’t end until 10:30, so everyone has plenty of time to rise and bathe and grow hungry-none will be permitted to eat cooked food until after the puja. Thangam and the baby take their first bath since the birth and Thangam applies turmeric paste to her skin. It makes an ordinary woman appear golden, but on Thangam’s arms and countenance it has a dulling effect. The baby is gently massaged with sesame oil, with special attention to shaping the features of his face.
From today, he will be called Krishnan, since he is the eighth child and a boy, just like the hero-child of myth. The name certainly fits, coo his sisters: just see his lusty yells, his kicking and writhing, his handsome face. He has all the strength and charm and mischief of the god. Clearly, he is more than equal to multi-headed sea serpents and poison-nippled wet nurses. Without doubt, he could steal butter and charm any village lady into forgiving him.
But just in case-and especially if all the admiration to which he will be subjected makes him vulnerable to the evil eye-baby Krishnan will receive today a black cord to be tied below his belly. On the cord, among a few other tiny trinkets, will hang a cup containing a snippet of his umbilical cord, and a bit of Laddu’s, the older brother who lived, sealed in with gold. Sivakami stubbornly overrode suggestions that the cup include a pinch of Thangam’s gold dust. She can’t believe that others persist in seeing Thangam’s dust as auspicious: to her it seems quite clear that Thangam sheds when she is at her lowest, that in some way, the dust is her essence, her promise, her vitality draining from her. It’s no wonder it has healing properties-she has no doubt about that-but it is not indicative of fulfillment or joy.
The puja is to commence in about ten minutes. Priest, mother and child are assembled, along with Rukmini and Murthy, Gayatri and Minister and their children, and assorted other neighbours. Even neighbours not present for the ceremony will attend the feast-it’s mostly of the feast that even those assembled are thinking. Fortunately, this ceremony is not a long one. The question, as always, is how to plug the conspicuous Goli-shaped hole. Thangam is releasing dust in volumes as though the stuff might fill the void, or, failing this, mask it. Rukmini, clumsy and helpful, gathers it into a dish. Vairum, looking disgusted, finally clears his throat with a snort and looks at Sivakami as though challenging her to make a decision. She takes a breath and turns to the priest, wondering what she will say.
She is spared. There is a commotion in the street, then the front door swings open and their hopes and fears are confirmed: Goli has finally arrived. Sita runs gleefully to greet him. “Appa, Appa, a new little brother!”
He speaks over the little girl’s head. “Hello, folks, hello!” His high, handsome brow and ruddy features shine as though he could make the sun sweat. “What’s all this?”
Sita trails behind him, a weak smile at the ready in case he should turn and see her.
“The eleventh day,” Sivakami responds. “The eleventh day after the birth…”
“What? Oh, I thought it was the… Wait until you-look what I brought! Son, you!” He is waving in Laddu’s general direction. “You come, help me.”
Laddu runs out willingly and they struggle back in with a large crate leaking straw. With a creak and tear of wood, Goli removes the top of the crate and digs through the stuffing.
“Catch!” he cries.
Luscious, exotic malgoa mangoes-Goli tosses them one by one by one by one over the austere, pious little hall. Shooting stars. The children run after them. The adults, bewildered, reach and jump on the spot. And starbursts: one, then another, explodes ripely against the clean brick floor. Visalam, eight and a half months pregnant, slips and falls in a mango slick.
A gasp goes up like a lost balloon, three more stars plop from the firmament and Gayatri rushes to aid the fallen girl. Visalam’s face is crumpled, as if she is about-to-sneeze-or-cry-then… “Ha, ha, ha, ha…” She rolls over laughing, and the others, tentatively, do too. Sivakami looks relieved, then severe. Vairum only looks severe. Thangam looks away. The priest has one eye on the hourglass, but he’s as up for a good laugh as anyone.
Now Goli is reaching inside his coat again, and pulling out… what now? Pens. Shiny, new pens, far beyond the reach of every day. These, too, he tosses in the air. “Catch, children, catch!” he cries. The pens turn and glint. Gold like Thangam and straight like arrows, they circle in the late-morning sun that seeps in through chinks.