Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  For weaving was indeed dancing for the tiny master. He was too small to command the loom seated and it would be too onerous to work the pulleys and levers turn after turn with his misshapen body. Guru Sindhu had instead taught himself to weigh the loom such that he climbed the entire frame and used his weight to move the fabric forward, his arms pushing the shuttle forwards and backwards as if he were strumming a sitar. Up and down the little man moved – fluid, supple fabric the fruit of his motion.

  ‘Now your turn.’ The dwarf bowed to invite his students to take up the challenge of weaving as he had done.

  ‘So, what made your mother change her mind?’ Devika demanded as soon as Guru Sindhu’s footfalls became a soft echo.

  ‘It’s who rather than what . . .’ Nila grunted as she threaded her bobbin through and pushed the lamms backward and forward to tighten the weft of her fabric.

  Early on Sunday morning just as the family had finished their bed teas, Nimal, Mrs Vasha’s young servant boy, had ambushed Vera Mendis in her dressing-gown. ‘Nona, my Madame wants to know if she may visit you this afternoon for tea?’ the boy had yelled from the rain stoop as he scratched his wormy bottom.

  ‘Of course she may,’ Vera replied loudly, all confused. Mrs Vasha usually just asked Vera through the open window of the living room if she could pop over.

  She was certainly taken back that afternoon when Mrs Vasha came a visiting, not through the holey fence at the back of the house, which was her usual practice, but through the front door, with Nimal settling his wriggling rear on the rain stoop like a loyal page.

  ‘Aibuwan, aibuwan, Vera, you are well I assume?’ Mrs Vasha asked very politely as she slipped off her heeled saree slippers and walked into the house. The elderly Burgher lady was dressed in an elegant cream and gold saree with her silver hair up neatly in a precise bun. Her fair skin was dusted with a fine sheen of lavender talcum, not that her fair skin needed any lightening; her Dutch and Portuguese ancestory giving her the fair complexion envied by millions.

  Vera nodded vigorously, suddenly feeling decidedly gauche in her pale green at-home as her mind flashed back to a scene in this very room some thirty years previously, when she had first met Mrs Vasha as a coltish nineteen-year-old bride.

  ‘I have come here today to discuss an undertaking of a serious nature,’ Mrs Vasha said. ‘Nimal, why don’t you go and put your slingshot to good use? I believe Mrs Mendis can’t reach the jumbu on the top branches of her tree and there is some ripe fruit up there.’ As the little boy left the room, she turned to Vera again. ‘If you don’t mind, I shall sit down. I am not as young as I used to be.’

  Vera jumped to clear the settee of the clothes she had been sorting for mending, stuffing Mervan’s torn loincloths in between the husk-filled cushions.

  ‘I won’t object to a cup of tea, my dear,’ Mrs Vasha said. ‘I believe my boy told you I was coming for tea?’

  Vera turned, completely rattled, looking around for Nila or Rupani to order them to do her bidding, only to see both girls rush off to the kitchen.

  ‘Now, as you know, my sister lives in Nuwara Eliya. She is closely acquainted with the Ranasinghes of Bandarawela. You must know of them, of course? Everybody does. They are an old tea family. You came from Bandarawela originally, didn’t you?’

  Vera opened her mouth to respond, but Mrs Vasha cut her off. ‘The particulars don’t matter, I suppose,’ Mrs Vasha drawled condescendingly. ‘It’s just that I received a letter from my sister on Friday asking me if I could board their youngest daughter with me. She’s just received an appointment as a teacher at the convent and this is such an easy distance to the school. But as you know, I am barely managing myself, so I thought it best that I find somewhere else for her to board. She is such a lovely girl, Piyasili Ranasinghe, so well educated and accomplished. Her parents will only let her down to Colombo for the week and they expect her back home each weekend . . .’

  Again, Vera opened her mouth to respond, but Mrs Vasha cut her off again. ‘Did I mention that Piyasili will have her ayah come down to Colombo with her each week? Such a well brought up girl, her parents would never hear of her coming to town all by herself without a chaperone.’

  Vera shifted her weight from foot to foot, desperate to get a word in, but Mrs Vasha continued like the rising tide washing against the port of Colombo.

  ‘The family will be happy to pay handsomely for their daughter to board with a respectable family. They mentioned that they would not even consider paying less than 500 rupees a month.’

  Vera put her hand to her throat – it was almost half of Mervan’s monthly salary.

  ‘There is a small problem, though,’ Mrs Vasha said as Nila came out with the tea things. Her eyes lit up mischievously as they met Nila’s over the steaming brew. ‘I doubt young Miss Ranasinghe is used to sharing. She has a room all of her own at her father’s house, complete with an attached bathroom.’

  Vera’s demeanour changed rapidly, scowling.

  ‘I can see you are not happy about this,’ Mrs Vasha observed, draining her tea rapidly. ‘Clearly I have come to the wrong house. It’s just as well I told Mrs Gamage from across the road that I’d visit this afternoon. She does have room to spare, and, I hear that young Albert Gamage is coming back on holiday in a few weeks. What a lovely thing it would be if they were to, you know . . . meet, and something should happen,’ Mrs Vasha said conspiratorially to Vera. ‘I mean Piyasili Ranasinghe does come with a large dowry. Nearly one lakh, I hear. What a fine thing it would be for our young Albert!’

  Vera grabbed Mrs Vasha by the arm as she turned to go, her look of undiluted horror assuring Mrs Vasha of her victory.

  ‘It is agreed, then. I shall bring Piyasili tomorrow myself and help her get settled here,’ Mrs Vasha announced, the fall of her saree trailing on the ground behind her as she left, Nimal wriggling and squiggling as he followed.

  ‘So, I spent the rest of Sunday cleaning out my room. I was so tired I missed my alarm this morning. My mother would have evicted me yesterday, if I had anywhere to go,’ Nila told Devika dryly as she wound her toile around the beam at the back of the loom.

  ‘It is a pity we cannot share, our dorm room is already full,’ Devika sighed, clasping Nila’s hand.

  ‘I think it is a pity that your mother is letting a stranger into your house,’ Renuka said. ‘Does your family really need the money so badly that they would throw you out in favour of some unknown girl?’

  ‘No one wants to know what you think, Renuka!’ Devika turned with a snarl but Nila caught her arm and jerked her back.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Nila advised.

  Rangana spun around in his seat. ‘Deyo Buddhuhamduwanay – will you girls just shut up? Another word out of any of you and I will report all of you to Miss Gauri! Now look – because of you lot I have mangled my toile.’ Cursing, he leapt to his feet and stomped away.

  One of the many things Nila enjoyed about living at the saree mill was the quiet. For someone who’d grown up in Kotahena amid the constant din from the sailors coming off Port Colombo and the noisy calls of the spice merchant, it was blissful, and she was free for the first time from Vera Mendis’s acid commentary.

  So quite naturally Nila unfurled, learning to meet the world with a steady gaze and happy heart, and the world greeted her with equal felicity. At least two of her male classmates went off to their classes one morning scratching their heads after encountering her at prayer. Her features and figure remained unchanged, but there was something quite different about her.

  The blossoming of her mind and heart were there for all to see in her work – in her luscious colours, vibrant textures and soft, supple cottons and silks. It surprised no one that she was Guru Sindhu’s favourite student or that Guru Sakunthala felt it appropriate to drape an arm around Nila’s shoulders as they discussed lace-making skills. Even Guru Lakshmi went so far as to say that her designs were not stupid.

  So it was to Nila who Punsala turned for help the night b
efore a big design assessment was due. ‘Nila, please, could you help me?’ she begged.

  Together with Devika, Nila was attempting to drape on herself a voile saree. They were on one of the many verandahs encircling the house, working by the light of several kerosene lamps. The saree was a damned difficult one to drape. The floaty fabric was weighed down by poorly designed beading, so instead of flowing fluidly, it acted like a poorly constructed net, pulling here and there. Draping sarees on herself was the only skill Nila was nowhere close to mastering. ‘For someone who can drape another with such dexterity, you are incredibly clumsy when it comes to yourself,’ Raju had told her sarcastically. The harder Nila tried to get the line and fall of her own saree correct, the more frustrated Raju became. ‘It is really not that hard,’ he would growl. ‘Tuck, pleat, drape and pin.’

  So Nila went over to Punsala promptly, gladly leaving the voile in a heap on the burnished wood floor. She looked over the girl’s drawing thoughtfully.

  ‘Here . . . you need to add a few embellishments to balance the design. And you will also need to tone down the decoration on the potta,’ Nila said to Punsala, taking a pencil and fixing the design herself.

  ‘Oh my goodness, you are so right!’ Punsala said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘I don’t quite know how I managed without you in my life, Nila! You are indeed a treasure!’ Devika teased as Nila returned to the task of draping her saree.

  Punsala tidied away her things and plopped down on the floor to watch them. ‘I’m bored,’ she said. ‘I hate being stuck in here.’

  ‘Soon enough we’ll be proper workers and we’ll be able to come and go as we choose,’ Nila chided.

  ‘But this was not what I expected when I came here. I came to Colombo for adventure and now I am stuck in a temple!’

  On cue, someone started chanting in the shrine room.

  ‘Oh, it is not so bad . . .’ Nila consoled.

  ‘Not so bad? Dosai and sambar, sambar and dosai . . . I swear I am about to turn into turmeric-coloured gruel,’ Punsala complained as her stomach growled audibly. ‘Would you like to go out for some hoppers?’

  Both Nila and Devika shook their heads. The gates at the mill closed at nine pm sharp, and it was just after half seven, so they would be cutting it very close to return in time.

  ‘Oh, please, I am so hungry that I feel faint,’ Punsala begged, standing to theatrically totter and lie down on the settee behind her.

  ‘Oh, okay then,’ Nila relented as she pinned her potta. ‘But let’s be quick.’

  Punsala clapped her hands gleefully and the trio slipped out the side gate.

  ‘Oh, how I love fish curry,’ Punsala said with a dreamy sigh as they ate malu ambul thial straight out of the bowl-shaped hoppers. ‘My mother can’t afford to buy fish for us kids. We usually only ever eat kiri hodi.’

  ‘After my father died my mum sold three of our fields and my brothers survive by working the two that are left. In the months before harvest, we all survive pretty much on miyoka and pol sambol,’ Devika said.

  Nila sat listening to her friends. Vera Mendis never felt they had enough money, but in truth her family was middle class, and so were their problems. She had never known poverty of the kind Punsala and Devika described.

  ‘Well, well, well, I can’t say that I am surprised to find you lot here,’ Renuka observed as her ayah staggered behind her with a large platter of hoppers.

  ‘Why? We need food just like everyone else,’ Devika bit back.

  ‘It’s just that it is the last night of the fair, and I thought that kind of entertainment would appeal to people like you. Filling yourself up before you go, are you?’

  ‘We will be going back to the mill as soon as we’ve finished,’ Nila said.

  ‘A fair with rides, music, dancers and muruku?’ Punsala demanded wide-eyed.

  ‘Apparently there’s a two-headed baby in a bottle,’ Renuka said.

  ‘Two heads? Must be your sister, then!’ Devika said.

  Renuka glared at her but did not reply, muttering, ‘I will not lower myself to your standard.’

  No sooner had Renuka left than Punsala started. ‘Can we please go? Please?’ she begged. ‘If we hurry we can just see the two-headed baby and come back.’

  ‘But the gates close in forty-five minutes,’ Nila worried out loud. ‘It takes fifteen minutes to walk there and fifteen minutes to walk back. We won’t have enough time.’

  ‘Not if we run back,’ Punsala persisted. ‘I am sure the watcher will let us in if we are only a few minutes late.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Nila,’ Devika said. ‘I am dying to see Renuka’s sister.’ In the end Nila had no option but to follow them.

  Once they got to the fair, they had to wait in the interminable human crush and humid heat to see its main exhibit, the two-headed baby in a bottle. Buffeted in the queue by screaming children, sweaty fair-goers and opportunistic pickpockets, Nila wished a million times she’d stayed at the mill instead.

  The disappointment was all the more acute when they reached the exhibit to find that it contained a photo of the two-headed baby, a clay model and a description of how it had been killed by villagers in central Russia where it’d been born.

  ‘I cannot believe we wasted our evening for that,’ Nila grumbled as they hurried back to the mill.

  ‘I knew Renuka was setting us up,’ Devika huffed.

  To add to their woes, the intense humidity turned into a sprinkling of rain that heralded an oncoming downpour. The monsoon had started.

  ‘Follow me,’ Punsala called. ‘I know a short cut along the beach road.’

  Nila and Devika scurried after her with no question. They really didn’t relish spending the night out in the rain or being forced to knock at the chettie’s house to face a grumpy Miss Gauri in her nightie.

  So they crossed the railway tracks and hurried along the beach, where tourists were crowded into huts, singing and drinking beer despite the drizzle. But as the beach road turned towards the river, skirting near the estuary, everything changed.

  By day the shanties looked innocent enough, with industrious fishermen mending their nets and wives tending their numerous offspring, but when darkness fell, the fishermen started drinking. Unlike the merry-making tourists a mere half a mile away, these men drank with the single-minded objective of obliterating their minds.

  ‘I think we should go back through town,’ Nila said as they skirted a string of poorly built mud huts.

  ‘It’s only another few minutes,’ Punsala assured them, but they huddled together tightly as they picked their way through the village.

  They were fast approaching the edge of the shanty when they heard male voices shouting, violent scuffling and a sudden uproar. Punsala instinctively turned to look for the source of the noise and froze.

  ‘We need to keep going,’ Nila insisted, trying to pull the girl along, but she was motionless, transfixed by what was happening just past Nila’s shoulder in the clearing.

  ‘Rangana,’ Devika called out as she followed Punsala’s line of sight. ‘Is that you?’ She went tearing into the clearing.

  Indeed it was their classmate Rangana. And he was being pummelled into mush by a wiry tattooed man while others jostled and pushed around them.

  ‘What are you doing to him?’ Devika demanded.

  ‘What does it look like we’re doing to him?’ the tattooed man growled, punching Rangana hard in the stomach. Rangana doubled over, unable to stop a grunt of pain escaping his lips.

  ‘Let him go!’ Nila cried. ‘He’s our friend! Let him go!’

  ‘I’ll let him go all right,’ the man said sweetly, ‘once you have paid his debts . . .’

  ‘You have debts?’ Nila hissed at Rangana, but the tattooed man punched his mouth before he could answer.

  ‘You can’t drink ra for free.’

  ‘You drink?’ Devika demanded.

  ‘But we have no money,’ Punsala interjected,
fear making her voice quiver. ‘We can’t pay you.’

  ‘Then he’ll just have to shed more blood. He’s quite well used to pain,’ the man said, punctuating his words with a series of heavy blows.

  ‘We could bring some money tomorrow . . .’ Nila said, then turned away, unable to watch anymore. ‘I have some put away.’

  That got the man’s attention. He dropped Rangana into a heap and padded up. Nila would struggle later to recall exactly what happened next – she remembered only that it happened very quickly. One moment the three girls were standing there in the muddy lane and the next they were surrounded by men.

  ‘I want the tall one,’ the tattooed man goaded, looking slyly at Devika and flicking his switchblade open with a casual skill.

  ‘Let the girls go – this is between us!’ Rangana yelled, standing up with difficulty.

  ‘No!’ the man roared as he lunged.

  Quick-thinking Nila, who was standing closest to the man, swung around with her saree fall, the beading on the fabric making it act like a net, flinging the blade out of his hand. She had bought them a moment, but if the situation had been tense before, now it was deadly, for the man pulled a gun out from under his shirt. ‘Balli! You’ll be the first to go!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Guru Raju drawled, cocking a shotgun.

  Nila looked up to see the draping master.

  ‘Demala, there is nothing for you to do here,’ the tattooed man said. ‘This is none of your concern. Take your thosai face and get back to the sewer where you belong with all your mother-fucking kind.’