by Adithi Rao
Then there were other matters that Eldest Uncle exercised his authority over. Like whether Murali Anna, our eldest cousin (but not the son of Eldest Uncle), should be allowed to marry his non-Brahmin girlfriend Sumana, our neighbour’s daughter whom he had adored since he was thirteen. Murali found himself married off to Kamakshi, a Brahmin girl of Eldest Uncle’s choice, within the month. This was greatly to Murali Anna’s anguish and the disappointment of his mother, my aunt Radhika Doddamma, who had loved and accepted Sumana as part of her family a long time ago.
Lakshmi Atte took this particularly badly. Where she had once said nothing to save her own marriage, she stood up to her eldest brother with surprising determination as she pleaded Murali and Sumana’s case. It had failed to have the desired effect, however. One of my saddest memories will forever be the sight of my tall, handsome cousin weeping silently through the rituals on his wedding day.
After that, something at the Sheshadri household changed. Suddenly, the aunts and my mother, the wives of the three younger brothers, took the upper hand. They said nothing, but a deep anger seemed to simmer under the surface at all times, communicating itself to their indomitable brother-in-law and intimidating him into silence in a way that raving and ranting could never have done. As we watched Murali Anna struggle though a loveless marriage, Eldest Uncle must certainly have understood the enormity of his blunder. Never one to apologize, he simply acted as if there was nothing more amiss at the mansion than the milk curdling or the paper boy forgetting to deliver the newspaper that day.
But he knew. Of course, he knew. We could see his guilt reflected in Eldest Aunt’s face. In her inability to meet Radhika Doddamma’s eyes for the wrong her husband had done to the other woman’s child.
Within the year, Murali’s father Subbu Doddappa found himself standing in front of his eldest brother in his study.
‘Anna,’ he must have said hesitantly. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, none of us was. But this is how I imagine the conversation to have gone. ‘Anna, Radhika and I were thinking that perhaps we should move into a separate house for a while.’
Eldest Uncle must have looked up then, the eyebrows must have flickered, daring Subbu Doddappa to continue even as he wordlessly intimidated him into silence. Bolstered by the crisis of his son’s marriage and Radhika Doddamma’s fury, Subbu Doddappa must nevertheless have battled on valiantly.
‘Anna, Murali is not doing very well. He and Kamakshi … that is, we are hoping that if we move into a smaller household, with more privacy and a little time, they may develop a better understanding…’
And that must have been it. Those words would have clinched it because there was nothing to be said to counter the truth in his argument. Within a week, Radhika Doddamma found herself in a home of her own with her husband, her two sons, and her daughter-in-law. Within six months, things began to improve between Murali Anna and his wife.
Within the year, the rest of us moved out of the house on Wadiyar Street and into homes of our own.
I was just short of ten then, and the only thing I remember feeling was the tremendous sense of freedom at not having Eldest Uncle every-single-where – in the food we ate, the music we listened to, in the pens and colour pencils our parents bought for us for school. But it was Amma who most benefitted from this shift. She laughed openly now, cooked joyously, and hummed as she went about her work, even though her load had increased now that there were no other women about the house to help her (Lakshmi Atte had remained behind in the main house with Ajji and Eldest Uncle’s family). It didn’t seem to matter to Amma, however. She was happy.
But even after we shifted house and I saw the changes in Amma, I never fully appreciated the depth of her dislike for Eldest Uncle and for life under his roof. It was only when a certain incident took place that I truly awoke to the fact. It started the day Venkatachalam called.
Sharu and I were out in the back garden. I was swinging from the tyre strung up on the guava tree, and Sharu was sitting in its shade, reading a Tinkle comic. The phone rang and I ran inside to pick it up. I know it is not becoming for a ten-year-old to delight in answering phones, but you must understand that telephones in Rudrapura were not common in those days. We had just got ours, and the novelty of answering it had still not worn off. Nobody ever called for me, so the only way I ever got to speak on it was to rush and answer when calls came for Appa. My parents tried very hard to stop me, knowing what a pest I would make of myself to the hapless caller. But in the face of my speed and determination, they rarely succeeded.
That day, the caller was a serious gentleman who asked to speak to my father.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Er … it is personal business. Please give the phone to Mr Parthasarathy.’
‘Who’s speaking?’ I persisted.
‘Venkatachalam,’ he replied curtly.
‘But how will I tell him when I myself can’t say your name?’ I giggled. My enjoyment came to an abrupt end when Appa smacked me sharply on the back and took the phone away. My eyes filled with tears and I tried to reach behind and rub my back, while Appa made the necessary apologies and carried on a conversation.
Had I been less immature, less shocked by that little slap (the first and last my father ever dealt me), I might have noticed how tense he was as he requested for more time from that man and promised to arrange for the money as soon as possible. Amma had come running out of the kitchen to listen anxiously at the doorway. Her eyes were fixed searchingly on my father, trying to make out what little she could from his face and the one-sided conversation.
By now I had got over the reprimand and was rummaging through the fruit bowl on the table. Appa replaced the receiver and kept sitting there until Amma went up to him and asked quietly, ‘How much time has he given us?’
‘Three days.’
Startled out of her composure, she cried, ‘Devare! He may as well have demanded it today! How are we going to arrange for so much in such little time?’
‘Don’t worry about it, Chittu, I’ll take care of it. Don’t get involved in this.’
‘How can I not get involved? In three days’ time we may lose our home, our savings, our children’s future, and…’
Here I picked up my ears in alarm. Lose our home? Why would anybody take our home away from us? I know it wasn’t a particularly nice house, but I did like the rain drain in the back and the guava tree in the yard, the black front gate on which I spent many hours swinging back and forth, making it creak in time to the songs in my head.
When my attention drifted back to the conversation, Amma was saying, ‘There is a way. You know what it is.’
Father stiffened. ‘Chitra, I said let it go.’
‘If we lose this house, where will we go?’ she persisted.
‘Back into the main house.’
Suddenly, Amma turned desperate. Desperate and afraid. ‘We can’t go back there again! Ask him. Ask Anna for the money. You and the others have given away everything to him, this is the least he can do!’
My father froze. Something in his face made me forget the half-eaten banana in my hand.
‘Saaku.’ Enough.
One word, and he didn’t even raise his voice. But his tone carried the impact of a slap.
This was the first time Appa had spoken to Amma that way, and she didn’t seem surprised. It was as if she had expected the reprimand. The fight drained out of her, and there was only bitterness left in her face. She turned and walked back to the kitchen. Moments later, we heard her lighting the gas.
I remained rooted to my corner, shaken without knowing why. The ticking of the hall clock took on a personality of its own in the motionless room. After a while, Appa got up to leave. Then his eyes fell on me and he gave a start, realizing then that I had been in the room all along. Our eyes met and held, mine as big as saucers. Suddenly he reached for me and I ran straight to him, wrapping my skinny arms tightly around his waist.
Outside, Sharu played on tranquilly.
‘Bandidiya?’ she asked distractedly when she saw me. ‘Come and have lunch quickly. We have to go out.’
I was dismayed. ‘I’m not going anywhere! I’m tired and it’s too hot. I want to swing on my tyre.’
Amma hardly seemed to hear me. She took me by the arm and led me firmly to the dining table. There she ladled out rice and sambar and cabbage palya (which I detested) on to a plate. When my indignation threatened to blow the roof off, she gave me a happala to pacify me.
‘Hurry up and eat, and don’t make a fuss now, Janu. I want to be back by the time Sharu comes home from school or she’ll find the front door locked.’ From the look in her eyes I could tell that she was a million miles away.
‘Yes, yes,’ I grumbled. ‘It’s only Sharu, Sharu, Sharu for you. I don’t know why you borned me. Nobody cares about me! I’m kept like a pet in this house, that’s all.’
My mother’s lips twitched with a supressed smile. But whatever it was that had been distracting her began to distract her again, and my hopes for sympathy died. When I had eaten, washed and changed, we made our way down to Arthur Pillegowda bus stop and boarded the 176 for Five Lights. My mother clutched her handbag to her body the entire journey through the crowded streets of Five Lights. We reached Vishnu Talkies and went past the Nameless Shop. Amma ignored me when I asked for an ice cream. Two right turns later, we arrived at the Marwari gold merchant’s shop. Inside, Amma removed a beautiful heirloom necklace from the leather bag – the one that had belonged to her great-grandmother and been given to her at the time of her wedding – and laid it out before the jeweller without a word. He stared down at it for a moment, then glanced at her.
‘Madam, why do you wish to sell this? It is—’ he examined it carefully, then continued in fluent Kannada, ‘at least two hundred years old. Madam, anything else is okay, but please don’t sell this.’
My mother simply stood there looking down at the necklace, not meeting the jeweller’s eyes because her own were swimming with tears.
After several moments of silence, the jeweller finally lifted the necklace, weighed and examined it, made some calculations, then placed it carefully into a velvet box. He counted out and handed Amma a very thick wad of notes. She tucked it into her purse without a word and led me out of the shop. As she hurried me away, I looked back at the man in time to see him shake his head and turn away. Suddenly I realized that my cheeks were wet with tears.
I don’t know what happened after that, or how Appa reacted to what Amma had done. But the outcome was that we remained in our house, Mr Venkatachalam called no more, and life went on as usual.
This whole incident got buried somewhere in my childish memory. It was only later – much later – that I dug it out and re-examined it, and realized how it fit into a jigsaw puzzle of bloodlines and family dynamics, and what decency is all about.
Sharu and I grew up. I studied abroad, she went to Delhi to do her masters in economics, both of us got married and Sharu had a beautiful little daughter. Then, one October, the two of us decided to take a trip up the coast of Karnataka to trace our family roots.
Appa had always spoken lovingly of Murudeshwara, a little fishing town perched on the seacoast of Uttara Kannada district. This was Ajji’s hometown, and her mother and brothers had continued to live there after she married and moved inland to Rudrapura. Consequently, many of Appa’s summer vacations had passed pleasantly in the beautiful old family house at Murudeshwara.
Appa was dead now. Something about his death – the look of quiet weariness on his face as they took his body away – made Sharu and me realize how much we had lost that day.
Appa had been silent about the hardships he had borne. He never grew rich, never complained about how hard he worked, never took out his troubles on us or on anyone else. But as we grew older, the disparity between Eldest Uncle’s lifestyle and his became apparent. Gradually, we recognized that the reason was not effort but the fact that Eldest Uncle had inherited everything that had been our grandfather’s – house, business and social standing.
The day my father died, as the family gathered around his body, Eldest Uncle was ashen with misery and his eyes held something akin to … fear? That day, my mother raised her dry, burning eyes, and for the first time looked directly at Eldest Uncle with unconcealed hatred. But he didn’t seem to notice. He simply stood there, lost in some private hell, looking as if his world was crumbling around his ears. Despite my grief, I wondered at his reaction. He had never shown much affection for my father. All my life I had watched him take respect and love, and give orders in return.
His despair became another of the missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that completed itself the day Sharada and I arrived in Murudeshwara and met Krishnakant Kulkarni…
After Appa’s death, both of us felt the urge to go back to his roots, and we decided to visit all those places that he had travelled to and been happy in – Kundapura, his father’s hometown; Sirsi, where he had walked among waterfalls and jungles; Kumbhasi, where his family deity resided; and Murudeshwara. Most of all, Murudeshwara.
It was a beautiful route, full of hills and temples and green vistas. We made our way from Shivamogga, westwards to the sea, stopping at Sagara, at Jog, then journeying onward. As we approached the temple town, the sun disappeared into the sea, throwing up a riotous blaze of pink and orange in its wake. So noisy was the sky with colours that you could almost hear it. We stopped and stared, transfixed, until the colours had been all but swallowed up by the advancing darkness. The lights in the little town came on and twinkled in the distance. There was a tremendous gold statue of Lord Shiva towering over his temple and his town, lost in meditation. We cried a little then, Sharu and I, because we realized that we had arrived at last. Murudeshwara.
We stayed the night in a nondescript resort located on the sea shore. Early the next morning, we offered prayers at the temple and set out to explore the town. Nothing, not even Appa’s vivid descriptions, had prepared us for the simple beauty of it. Fresh and green, Murudeshwara had white-washed houses with red-tiled roofs and old wooden pillars holding up the verandas. We were in search of the house of Krishnakant Kulkarni, the man to whom Ajji’s brother had sold the ancestral home.
We had no address with us. Subbu Doddappa had told us to ask at the post office for Mr Kulkarni’s house. We followed the road from the temple down to the post office, but the postmaster was on his tea break. He hadn’t bothered to pull down the shutters – it was too genial a town for that sort of thing. We stood around waiting for him to return, until we spotted a group of little boys playing lagori a short distance away. They were dressed in blue-and-white school uniforms, their bags thrown on the side of the road in a disrespectful heap. When they saw us approach, they stopped their game and stared. I beckoned to one boy and he came running up. I expected him to be shy, but he had no reservations at all. He was neither friendly nor reticent. He just was.
‘Krishnakant Kulkarni-aur mane yelli barutte?’ I asked him.
‘We will take you there,’ he replied solemnly. As one, all the boys dropped their bat and ball and followed, as if each one’s presence was indispensable to the finding of the house.
‘Shaalege hogilva?’ Didn’t you go to school, I asked the first boy in a friendly way as we walked along.
‘We’d rather accompany you,’ he replied.
Five minutes down a winding road and two right turns later, we arrived at the home Appa had loved so dearly. We saw the we
ll he had drunk water from, the orchard he had picked fruits in, the yard he had played in as a boy. We simply stood there, the past reaching out and enfolding us in its embrace.
‘The house with four coconut trees. Krishnakant Kulkarni’s house!’ announced the boy. Before we could thank him, he and his mates turned and walked away in a dignified formation. Sharu and I watched them leave, then turned back to the house. We felt nervous and unsure of the reception we would get. Why would anybody want two strange girls coming to their home to ‘look around’ at nine in the morning?
But then, having spotted us from the window, an old lady emerged from the house and put us out of our dilemma.
‘Yaaru? Yaaramma neevu? Eeyn bekittu?’
We told her who we were, and her wrinkled old face broke into a warm smile. She beckoned to us to come in. Inside, she spread a straw mat on the floor and nodded towards it invitingly. Once we were seated, she too lowered herself painfully to the floor and grinned at us.
‘Aah, so you are Kanta Bai’s great-granddaughters,’ she said. ‘We were very close, even before we bought her house. Which of Lalitamma’s sons is your father?’
‘Parthasarathy,’ I replied.
‘Oh, Partha? We were very sorry to hear about his death. He used to come here for the summer vacations when he was a boy. Soon after her marriage, Lalita also used to come here often. But after her first child was born – what was his name … Sheshadri? After that boy was born, she never returned to Murudeshwara again. We always wondered why. Poor Kantakka used to miss her daughter very much. But anyway, we never asked questions. After all, who are we to pry into other people’s affairs? But look at me going on and on without offering you anything to eat. What will you have? Coffee? Milk?’
She dragged herself to her feet over our protests that we had just eaten breakfast.
‘You have come to your great-grandmother’s house for the first time,’ she said affectionately, referring to her home as our ‘muthajji mane’. ‘If you don’t eat something, she will be angry!’