The Henna Artist

by Alka Joshi

  I smiled and brought my hands together in a namaste. “Have you been using the magnolia oil, Lala?” On my last visit, I had slipped her a bottle of my remedy for calloused soles.

  She hid a smile behind her pallu as she thrust one bare foot forward and twisted it around to show off her smooth heel. “Hahn-ji,” she laughed lightly.

  “Shabash,” I congratulated her. “And how is your niece?” Lala had brought her fifteen-year-old niece to work at the Singh household six months ago.

  The old woman’s brow creased and her smile disappeared. But as she opened her mouth to answer, her mistress called from inside. “Lakshmi, is that you?”

  Quickly, Lala rearranged her features, smiled tightly and indicated with a tilt of her head: she’s fine. Turning toward the kitchen, she left me to find my own way to Parvati’s bedroom, where I had been many times before.

  Parvati was at her rosewood desk. She checked her slim gold wristwatch before returning to the letter she was writing. A stickler for punctuality, she hated tardiness in others. I, however, was used to waiting while she dashed off a note to Nehruji or finished a phone call with a member of the Indo-Soviet League.

  I set down my tiffins and arranged the cushions on Parvati’s cream silk divan while she sealed her letter and called for Lala.

  Instead of the old servant, Lala’s niece appeared. She kept her large, dark eyes on the floor and her hands clasped in front of her.

  Parvati’s eyebrows gathered in a frown. She considered the girl and, after the briefest of pauses, said, “There will be a guest for lunch. Make sure we have boondi raita.”

  The girl blanched and looked as if she might be sick. “There’s no fresh yogurt, MemSahib.”

  “Why not?”

  The girl shifted uneasily. Her eyes searched for an answer in the Turkish carpet, the framed photo of the prime minister, the mirrored cocktail cabinet.

  When Parvati spoke, her words were glass, clear and sharp. “Make sure there is boondi raita for lunch.”

  The girl’s lower lip trembled. She looked imploringly at me.

  I moved to the windows overlooking the back garden. Parvati was my mistress, too, and I could no more help the girl than could the tiger skin mounted on the wall.

  “Today, have Lala bring the tea.” Parvati dismissed the girl and eased herself onto the divan. Now I could begin her henna. I took my customary seat on the other end of the chaise and took her hands in mine.

  Before I came to Jaipur, my ladies relied on women of the Shudra caste to henna their hands and feet. But the low-caste Shudra women painted what their mothers had before them: simple dots, dashes, triangles. Just enough to earn their meager income. My patterns were more intricate; they told stories of the women I served. My henna paste was finer and silkier than the mixture the Shudra women used. I took care to rub a lemon and sugar lotion into my ladies’ skin before applying the henna so the imprint would last for weeks. The darker the henna, the more a woman was loved by her husband—or so my clients believed—and my rich, cinnamon designs never disappointed. Over time, my clients had come to believe that my henna could bring wayward husbands back to their beds or coax a baby from their wombs. Because of this, I could name a price ten times higher than the Shudra women. And receive it.

  Even Parvati credited her younger son’s birth to my henna skills. She had been my first client in Jaipur. When she conceived, I saw the pages of my appointment book fill up with the ladies of her acquaintance—the elite of Jaipur.

  Now, as the henna on her hands was drying and I began drawing on her feet, Parvati bent forward to observe until our heads were almost touching, her breath sweet with the scent of betel nut. Her warm sigh grazed my cheek. “You tell me you’ve never been outside India, but I’ve only seen this fig leaf in Istanbul.”

  My breath caught and, for an instant, the old fear came over me. On Parvati’s feet, I had drawn the leaves of the Turkish fig tree—so different from its Rajasthani cousin, the banyan, the miserly fruit of which was fit only for birds. On her soles, intended for a husband’s eyes alone, I was painting a large fig, plump and sensual, split in half.

  I smiled as I met her eyes and pressed her shoulder back, gently, onto the cushions of the divan. Arching a brow, I said, “Is that what your husband will notice? That the figs are Turkish?”

  I pulled a mirror from my satchel, and held it to the arch of her right foot so she could see the tiny wasp I’d painted next to the fig. “Your husband surely knows that every fig requires a special wasp to fertilize the flower deep inside.”

  Her brows rose in surprise. Her lips, stained a deep plum, parted. She laughed, a lusty roar that shook the divan. Parvati was a handsome woman with shapely eyes and a generous mouth, the top lip plumper than the bottom. Her jewel-colored saris, like the fuchsia silk she wore today, brightened her complexion.

  She wiped the corners of her eyes with the end of her sari. “Shabash, Lakshmi!” she said. “Always on the days you’ve done my henna, Samir can’t stay away from my bed.” Her voice carried the hint of an afternoon spent on cool cotton sheets, her husband’s thighs warm against hers.

  With an effort, I banished the image from my mind. “As it should be,” I murmured before resuming my work on her arch, a sensitive spot on most women. But she was used to my ministrations and managed never to shake my reed.

  She chuckled. “So the Turkish fig leaves remain a mystery, as do your blue eyes and fair skin.”

  In the ten years I’d been serving her, Parvati had not let this matter rest. India was a land of coal-black irises. Blue eyes demanded an explanation. Did I have a sordid past? A European father? Or, even worse, an Anglo-Indian mother? I was thirty years old, born during British rule and used to aspersions being cast on my parentage. I never let Parvati’s comments provoke me.

  I draped a wet cloth over the henna paste and poured some clove oil from a bottle onto my palm. I rubbed my palms together to warm the oil, then reached for her hands to rub off the dried henna paste. “Consider, Ji, that an ancestor of mine might have been seduced by Marco Polo. Or Alexander the Great.” As I massaged her fingers, flakes of dried henna paste fell onto the towel below. The design I’d painted on her hands began to emerge. “Like you, I may have warrior blood running through my veins.”

  “Oh, Lakshmi, be serious!” Her bell-shaped gold-and-pearl earrings danced merrily as she let out another laugh. Parvati and I were both born to the two highest Hindu castes, she a Kshatriya and me a Brahmin. But she could never bring herself to treat me as an equal because I touched the feet of ladies as I painted their henna. Feet were considered unclean, only to be handled by the low-caste Shudras. So even though her caste had relied on mine for centuries to educate their children and perform spiritual rites, in the eyes of Jaipur’s elite, I was now a fallen Brahmin.

  But women like Parvati paid well. I gave no attention to her needling as I removed the last of the paste from her hands. Over time, I had saved a great deal and was so close to getting what I wanted—a house of my own. It would have marble floors to cool my feet after a day of crisscrossing the city on foot. As much running water as I wanted instead of begging my landlady to fill my mutki. A front door to which only I had the key. A house no one could force me to leave. At fifteen, I’d been turned out from my village to marry when my parents could no longer afford to feed me. Now I could afford to feed them, take care of them. They hadn’t responded to any of the letters or gifts of money I’d sent over the years, but surely they would change their minds and come to Jaipur now that I was offering them a bed in my very own home? My parents would finally see that everything had turned out all right. Until we were reunited, I would keep my pride in check. Hadn’t Gandhi-ji said, An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?

  * * *

  The sound of breaking glass startled us. I watched a cricket ball roll across the carpet and come to rest in front of the divan. A mom
ent later, Ravi, Parvati’s older son, walked through the veranda doors, bringing with him the November chill.

  “Bheta! Close that door at once!”

  Ravi grinned. “I pitched a burner and Govind wasn’t ready for it.” He spotted the ball near the divan and scooped it up.

  “He’s so much younger than you are, Ravi.” Parvati was indulgent with her sons, especially with the younger boy, Govind, the child who in her opinion was surely the product of my henna applications (I had done nothing to discourage that notion).

  Since I’d last seen him, Ravi had grown taller and broader across the shoulders. His square chin and jaw, so much like his father’s, were now shadowed. He must have started shaving. With the rosy complexion and long eyelashes he had inherited from his mother, he was almost pretty.

  He tossed the ball in the air, and caught it, with one hand behind his back. “Is there tea?” It could have been his father speaking—so alike was their boarding-school English.

  Parvati rang the silver bell she kept next to the divan. “You and Govind take yours on the lawn. And tell the chowkidar we need a glass-walla to replace the pane.”

  Ravi grinned at us, winking at me on his way out. He closed the door so carelessly another shard of glass fell out. I watched him jog gracefully across the lawn. Three gardeners, their heads wrapped in mufflers, were weeding, watering and trimming hibiscus shrubs and sweet honeysuckle vines in the back garden.

  Ravi’s appearance was the perfect segue to what I’d come here to accomplish. Still, I needed to move forward cautiously.

  “Home from boarding school?”

  “Hahn. I wanted Ravi to help me cut the ribbon on the new gymkhana. You know Nehru-ji—how he wants to modernize India.” She sighed and laid her head against the cushion, as if she were besieged by daily calls from the prime minister. For all I knew, she was.

  Lala entered with a silver tea tray. While I took out the savories I had cooked especially for Parvati from a tiffin, I heard her say to the older woman, “Did I not tell you to send her away?” Her voice was reproachful.

  The servant put her hands together in prayer, touching them to her lips. “My niece has nowhere to go. I am her only family now. Please, Ji. We are at your mercy. Won’t you reconsider?”

  I had never seen Lala so distressed. I turned away, afraid she was about to drop to her knees. A shrine for Lord Ganesh sat on a small table beside the four-poster bed. A garland of gardenias and another of tulsi leaves were draped around the statue, in front of which a diya burned. As modern as she liked to portray herself, Parvati spent every morning praying to the gods. I used to pray to my namesake, Lakshmi, the Goddess of Beauty and Wealth. Maa loved reciting the story of the Brahmin farmer who offered his scythe, his sole possession, to the goddess. In gratitude, she gave the farmer a magic basket that produced food any time he desired. But that was only a story, as true as any other Maa told and, at seventeen, I turned my back on the gods, just as now I turned away from Ganesh’s shrine.

  Parvati was still addressing Lala. “I wouldn’t want to lose you, too, Lala. See that the girl is gone today.” She glared at Lala until the servant dropped her gaze, her shoulders drooping.

  I watched Lala leave the room, She did not look up. I wondered what Lala’s niece had done to make her mistress so angry.

  Parvati reached for her cup and saucer, a signal for me to pick up my own. The tea set was the kind the English loved, depicting women in corseted gowns, men in pantaloons, curly-haired girls in frocks. Before independence, these objects had signified my ladies’ admiration for the British. Now, they signified their scorn. My ladies had changed nothing but the reasons for their pretense. If I had learned anything from them, it was this: only a fool lives in water and remains an enemy of the crocodile.

  I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows. “Your son has grown into a handsome young man.”

  “Unlike the Rao boy who thinks he’s the Rajasthani Devdas.”

  Parvati, like my other ladies, said things to me she would never have said to one of her peers. I was childless and, therefore, a subject of pity, someone to whom my ladies could feel superior. At thirty, I was neither a foolish girl nor a gossipy matron. My ladies had long assumed my husband had abandoned me—an assumption I’d taken no trouble to contradict. I still wore the vermillion bindi on my forehead, announcing to the world that I was married. Without this assortment of credentials, I would never have been allowed into the confidence of my ladies, or into bedrooms like the one I found myself in now, my feet resting on pink Salumbar marble, my mistress seated next to me on a rosewood divan.

  I took another sip of my chai. “Finding a perfect match for such a perfect son! I certainly don’t envy you.”

  “He’s only seventeen. At twelve, I lost him to the Mayo School. A year from now, I’ll lose him once again to Oxford. Losing him to a wife? I can’t bear to think about that now.”

  I adjusted my sari. “That’s smart of you. The Dutts, I fear, may have been in too much of a hurry.”

  I caught the sparkle in her eye.

  “Meaning?”

  “Well,” I continued. “They’ve only just arranged for their son to marry the Kumar girl. You know the one—with the beauty spot on her cheek? Of course, the marriage will be put off until he’s completed his degree.” I looked out the window at her sons in their cricket whites. “The good ones are going like hot jalebis. Once a son is off to Britain or America, parents worry he’ll come home with a wife who doesn’t speak a word of Hindi.”

  “Quite. The happiest marriages are when parents choose the girl. Just look at Samir and me.”

  I could have said something, but I didn’t. Instead, I made a show of blowing on my tea. “I also heard the Akbar girl has been promised to Muhammad Ismail’s boy. One of Ravi’s classmates, isn’t he?”

  I took another sip while holding Parvati’s gaze.

  She sat a little straighter and looked out the window. On the lawn, Lala’s niece was serving the boys their tea. Ravi spoke to the girl and tapped her nose once, playfully, which brought a fit of giggles from her.

  Parvati frowned. Without taking her eyes off the scene outside, she leaned toward me, slowly, like a baby bird, a sign for me to feed her. I placed a namkeen in her mouth, the one I’d made this morning, seasoned with parsley. Like all my ladies, she never suspected that the ingredients in my treats, combined with what I drew on her hands and feet, fueled her desire and her husband’s lust.

  After a moment, she turned from the window and set her teacup delicately on the table.

  “If I wanted a match—and I’m not saying I do...” She dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Would you have anyone in mind?”

  “There are many eligible girls in Jaipur, as you know.” I smiled at her over the rim of my cup. “But Ravi is not just any boy.”

  When she turned to look at her sons again, Lala’s niece was gone. Parvati’s face relaxed. “When I ask him to, Ravi always comes down from school. What’s the good of sending him away, Samir says.” She laughed lightly. “But I miss him. Govind misses him, too. He was only three when Ravi went to boarding school.”

  She lifted the teapot and poured herself another cup of chai. “Have you heard anything of Rai Singh’s daughter? They say she’s quite striking.”

  “Pity. Only yesterday she was snatched up for Mrs. Rathore’s son.” I let out a sigh. It was delicate, this conversation we were having, one where neither Parvati nor I could tip our hand.

  She searched my face with narrowed eyes. “Something tells me you have a girl in mind.”

  “Oh, I fear you’ll think my choice unsuitable.”

  “How so?”

  “Well...unconventional, perhaps.”

  “Unconventional? You know me better than that, Lakshmi. I went not once, but twice, to the Soviet Union last year. Nehru-ji insisted I go with the Indo-Soviet League. C
ome now, let’s hear it.”

  “Well...” I pretended to tuck a strand of hair back into my bun. “The girl’s not Rajput.”

  She raised one tweezed brow, but would not look away. I held her gaze. “She’s Brahmin.”

  Parvati blinked. She may have thought herself a woman of the times, but the possibility of Ravi marrying outside his caste was something she hadn’t entertained. For centuries, each of the four Hindu castes—even the merchant and laborer castes—married largely within their own group.

  I fed Parvati another snack.

  “I can’t imagine a better match for the Singh family,” I continued. “The girl is beautiful. Fair. Well-educated. High-spirited. The sort Ravi would appreciate. And her family’s well connected. Oh, has your tea gone cold? I fear mine has.”

  “Do we know the girl?”

  “Since she was a child, in fact. Shall I call for more?” I set my cup down and reached for the silver bell, but Parvati caught me by the forearm.

  “Forget the tea, Lakshmi! Tell me about the girl or I’ll wipe my feet on this towel and ruin the last hour’s work.”

  Instead of meeting her eyes, I tapped the henna on her feet to test for dryness. “The girl’s name is Sheela Sharma. Mr. V. M. Sharma’s daughter.”

  Parvati knew the Sharmas, of course. The two families often moved in the same business circles. Mr. Sharma’s construction company, the largest in Rajasthan, had just won the contract to remodel the maharaja’s Rambagh Palace. Parvati’s husband owned an architectural firm that designed many of the residential and commercial buildings in the city. It would be an unexpected union of two prominent families. If I could pull it off, Jaipur’s elite would be clamoring for my services as a matchmaker, a far more lucrative prospect than being a henna artist.

  She cocked her head. “But...Sheela’s still a child.”