Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  Nila hesitated. ‘I really don’t feel up to it . . .’

  ‘Come now, don’t be silly.’

  ‘No, thank you. I need to rest before I come down.’

  ‘Don’t be coy. Please come.’

  ‘No, Guru Raju, I can’t.’

  ‘Go and get dressed now! I have two families who’d like to invite you to dress their wives for parties next week! Go!’ Raju commanded fiercely. He’d had enough of Nila’s silly missish ways. It was one of the many things that frustrated him about local girls. They hid behind false modesty that helped no one. And Raju needed to get these rich businessmen on his side to ensure the survival of the mill, and there was no better way to get to them than through their wives.

  Nila stared at him for a moment before padding around to a screened-off corner to drape her saree. The much detested grey voile. Nila had finally learned to drape it on herself, though she was still by no means an expert. She did the best job she could, decided it would pass, and returned no more than ten minutes later.

  Raju looked up and saw red. ‘This! This is what you wear! I’ll be the laughing stock of the whole ball! I spent the whole day listening to you advise women on colour, texture and fabric, and you wear this! You don’t need to try to look ugly!’

  Nila reeled as if she’d been punched. She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t have any other sarees to wear! We give you an allowance so that you can buy at least one saree a month from the mill. What are you doing with that money? Are you selling the sarees on the side? Are you trying to increase your dowry so that someone will marry you?’

  Nila stepped up and slapped him neatly across the face.

  ‘Enough! No, I am not selling my sarees for a dowry. My sister, the one whom you thought so beautiful, took all my sarees. Every single one of them. So that she could come up here and get herself a rich husband,’ Nila cried. ‘She left me this one because it was ugly.’

  ‘But I just saw your sister . . .’

  ‘Yes, she is at the ball. But she and my mother insist that I not speak to her. At all. Apparently my ugly face could scare away her suitors.’

  ‘Nila . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just go away, Guru, please . . .’ Nila cried, turning away to hide the tears pouring down her face.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me . . .’ he whispered. ‘Please forgive me.’ Only Nila would not look at him. After a tense moment, he turned and left.

  Nila collapsed on the narrow bed, sobbing as if her heart would break at all the injustices that had been heaped on her since the birth of her beautiful baby sister. What could she do? She could not change her face.

  When she finally looked up, exhausted, she found Raju sitting across from her on a chair. ‘Surely I can meet these important clients tomorrow?’ Nila asked with a hiccup.

  ‘You can indeed,’ Raju replied softly. ‘I went down to look at our stall . . . You were so good today that there’s hardly any sarees left for me to give you.’

  ‘You don’t need to give me a saree.’

  ‘I will organise for you to have some new sarees as soon as we get back to the mill,’ Raju said, standing up. ‘Don’t argue with me. It’s the least I can do to make up for my rudeness,’ he said, brushing aside Nila’s protests. ‘But now I want you to come downstairs and see how happy your customers are in their new finery. As someone who drapes sarees, I know one of my greatest pleasures is watching my models parade around in them.’

  ‘But I can’t go down looking like this . . .’

  ‘Come with me,’ Raju said holding out his hand. ‘Come. Trust me. No one will see you.’

  He was wrong. As the guru led Nila into the hall outside, they saw a couple skirting away to a deserted part of the hotel. It was Rupani and Sunil.

  Sunil started visibly. ‘Isn’t that your sister?’ Nila heard him say.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Rupani insisted, dragging him away down the corridor.

  ‘I’m sure it is your sister,’ Sunil said.

  ‘Even if she is, that ugly woman is nothing to me!’ Rupani cried.

  Raju looked embarrassed, but Nila dismissed what had happened with a slight shake of her head. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘It’s a secret,’ he said, pulling her along by the hand. Raju and Nila went down the deserted grand staircase, around the corner of the ballroom and up a rickety flight of stairs. ‘I have been coming to this ball since I was a child,’ Raju said. ‘I found this old balcony when I was about six and I spent the whole night watching the party. No one can see us from here,’ he reassured Nila as he pulled her onto the narrow landing overlooking the ballroom.

  Nila peered through the railing at the magical scene below, hundreds of women dancing in their alluring sarees. ‘Oh, they are so beautiful,’ she whispered as she watched them twirl and whirl under the twinkling lights.

  ‘No, they are not.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘They are not beautiful,’ Raju insisted. ‘Show me a woman you call beautiful.’

  ‘What about her, the one in the cream saree,’ Nia pointed out.

  ‘She has bad teeth. Do you see how she covers her mouth when she laughs?’

  ‘What about her? The one with the large earrings and the diamond necklace?’

  ‘The only reason she looks pretty is because her rich husband can buy her a king’s ransom worth of jewellery. She has a squint in one eye and crooked nose.’

  On and on it went. No sooner had Nila pointed out a beautiful woman had Raju dissected her imperfections. Nila was soon running out of beautiful women to point out when she pointed out Piyasili Ranasinghe to Raju.

  ‘Her beautiful? Truly Nila, can you not see anything? That girl is vicious. Vicious like the rest of her family. Look at the lines around her mouth and the nasty glint in her eyes! No, she is not beautiful at all! Oh Nila, there is so much more to beauty than a symmetrical face and a pleasant figure.’

  In that cramped, dark opera balcony of a bygone era, Nila and Raju finally started to talk. For what seemed like an eternity. About family. About life. About beauty. And by and by, Raju was able to draw out the story of Nila’s life.

  ‘Would you trust your parents to choose the saree you should wear on a night like tonight?’ he asked quietly. Raju had draped his coat over her shoulders to protect her from the cool draught.

  ‘No, of course not! They don’t know the first thing about form or fluidity!’

  ‘Do you trust them to do the best thing by you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then why do you trust them when they say you’re not beautiful, Nila?’

  Nila was silent. As the band struck up the final song, Nila and Raju descended the narrow rickety stairs.

  ‘Oh, Nila! I have been looking everywhere for you! Come quick!’ cried Devika as she came tearing around the corner. ‘Everybody is shouting.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Your sister . . .’

  The narrow street that led to the Mendis household was in many ways typical of all lodging quarters afforded to the families of postal workers in Kotahena: dingy slapped over with a veneer of respectability. Though the latter could not really disguise the former.

  The series of identical houses had been recently whitewashed due to the efforts of the Good Wives Society, but middle-class poverty meant that the single coat of paint was already green with tropical mildew. The houses’ poor wiring sang in the heavy monsoonal downpour, hissing and sparking, and made the simple task of walking across the street a health hazard.

  ‘Does Nila Mendis live here?’ Devika called out to the first lady she found looking out her window that wet and miserable evening.

  ‘Across the road,’ Mrs Gamage called out.

  So Devika strode confidently and knocked on the door of what looked like a deserted house.

  ‘Who is it?’ a distant voice asked from inside.

  ‘My name is Devika. I work at the saree mill with Nila. She hasn
’t been for a few days. Is she well?’

  ‘She is busy,’ the voice called back.

  ‘Will she be returning to the mill?’ Devika asked. When no response was forthcoming, she repeated her question again.

  ‘No,’ the voice came back eventually.

  ‘Madame, this is very silly. Can I come in and see Nila, instead of shouting through the door like this?’

  ‘Please go away.’

  ‘But Nila is a very talented saree maker. She’s got to come back.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Mrs Mendis? Is that you, Mrs Mendis? Please let me in,’ Devika shouted through the slats of the window.

  A few of the neighbourhood ladies were now standing at their doorsteps watching the commotion.

  ‘Mrs Mendis, please let me come in and talk to Nila. Maybe I could even help with Rup—’

  Vera Mendis opened the door with a snarl. ‘Get away from my family now!’ she snarled, broom in hand to shoo away her unwelcome guest.

  ‘But Nila—’

  ‘Nila nothing. This whole situation is entirely Nila’s doing!’

  ‘It wasn’t Nila’s fault! How could it be?’ Devika protested, only to be pushed off the doorstep. ‘Just tell Nila that the theme for the exhibition is the river,’ she said. ‘The river!’ she then shouted into the house, for she was sure that she saw Nila peering at her through the shadows, two dark orbs at an odd angle to each other, glistening with tears.

  ‘Get away with you now!’ Vera shouted at Devika, running at her as if she were a demon.

  ‘So you’ve decided to join us, have you, Miss Mendis?’ Guru Lakshmi said snidely as Nila slipped into her seat in the design class. It was Tuesday morning, two weeks after the Harvest Ball in Bandarawela, and the first time that Nila had returned to the mill.

  ‘I had understood you were too ashamed to show your face in public,’ the guru said as Nila shoved her bag under her seat. ‘And that all my efforts at teaching you were to be a complete waste.’

  ‘No, guru. It was just that . . .’

  ‘Everyone knows what happened at the harvest ball. I am so glad it was your sister and not you, or I would have had words with Gauri. We would have had to dismiss you. Such a shameless girl your sister must be!’

  ‘I heard she lured him . . .’ Renuka whispered to the girl next to her, just loud enough to be heard.

  ‘That was not how it happened!’ Devika said sharply. ‘I was there.’

  ‘Do you think we are going to believe the words of a nothing girl like you against those of Sunil Ranasinghe? He is a respectable man from a respectable family!’ Renuka said.

  ‘You don’t even know the Ranasinghes!’ Nila pointed out.

  ‘Of course I know the Ranasinghes. They are a famous up-country family.’

  ‘Men will be men. And if your sister were a decent woman, she would have known better,’ Guru Lakshmi pointed out. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to catch up with two weeks’ worth of missed lessons and your share of commissions. You’ve been lucky that Devika has been kind enough to carry some of your load.’

  ‘Oh, I am so glad to see you, Nila,’ Devika squealed as soon as they left the class. ‘I honestly thought your parents would never let you come back.’

  ‘And how can your mother blame you for anything?’ Punsala chimed in as Nila looked up and down the corridors in wonder.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked, pointing to the looms set up along the length of what used to be a deserted corridor, each of them covered over with a large dust cloth.

  ‘We’re all working on our exhibition pieces,’ Devika explained. ‘We’ve set up these looms to work on them and use the other looms to work on real commissions.’

  ‘But why are they covered up?

  Before Devika could explain, Guru Sindhu came bustling up. ‘Ah yes, the watcher told me you were back. Good. Very good. Now, Nila, I need you to come with me. Since your most excellent work at the harvest ball in Bandarawela, we’ve been swamped with commissions. Two hundred sarees have been ordered by a modalali in Nuwara Eliya alone,’ the man said with a joyous little skip to his step as he pulled Nila along.

  ‘This of course has meant that all the looms have been taken up for real work and we’ve had to pull out some old looms for the students to work on for their exhibition pieces.’

  ‘Is there a loom for me?’ Nila asked with a worried frown.

  ‘No, but when the watcher told me you’d come back, I went searching for one,’ the dwarf said as he went into the old wood storage hut near the kitchens. ‘You were quite lucky the cooks hadn’t got to this yet for firewood. It’s an old loom – or rather two old looms. The frame on this one is broken but the bed on the other isn’t. So if we put them together, we’ll get a working one,’ he explained as he and Nila pulled the old decrepit looms into the tiniest of spaces left in the corridors.

  After several hours of fiddling, they managed to get the thing assembled, though the bed kept falling off and the lamms were so brittle that Nila could crumble the aged wood in her hands. ‘Thank you,’ Nila said to the weaving master as he looked on worriedly.

  Soon, though, it would be Nila’s turn to worry. As she hurried to the dyeing hut she was accosted by both Miss Gauri and Guru Sakunthala. ‘You have no idea how happy Raju will be to see you. We’ve had ten bookings for you to dress brides. Here are some pictures of the brides and samples of their sarees – you’ll need to study them before the weddings and the first one is tonight!’ Miss Gauri said, piling a box of photographs and swatches into Nila’s arms.

  ‘Nila, you have to have lunch with me in my office today and the rest of the week,’ Guru Sakunthala said as soon as Miss Gauri walked off. ‘You haven’t learned how to pearl bead a saree and you certainly don’t know how to do cutwork. You may need these skills for your exhibition saree.’

  ‘Here, you’ll need to finish these three dyeing commissions by Monday next,’ Guru Hirantha said distractedly as Nila walked into the dyeing hut. ‘We’ve been so behind on work since you went away.’

  As Nila set down the box of samples on the ground and picked up the heavy dyeing frames to heft out to the river, she felt a sudden urge. An urge to swim out to the middle of the river’s fast flowing emerald heart and never come back.

  How could she catch up with everything here at the mill and still do all the work that needed to be done for Rupani’s grand wedding?

  Nila had no time to do any design work or even think about her exhibition saree for Guru Raju collected her as soon as she’d finished tea, to go and dress a bride whose auspicious time for marriage had been set for eight in the evening. ‘I was going to come over to your house today and speak to your parents if you hadn’t returned,’ he said as soon as they were on the road. ‘How are you?’

  Nila shrugged. How could she explain all that had happened without exposing the ugliness of her own family?

  ‘And if it is not too bold of me, how is your poor sister?’

  ‘Engaged.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Raju started. ‘Was your father able to bring Sunil Ranasinghe to heel?

  ‘No, my father could not bring Sunil to heel. He came home with a swollen face and bruised ribs for all his efforts to bring young Master Ranasinghe to account for his misdeeds.’

  ‘Who is Rupani marrying?’

  ‘Our neighbour Albert.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  So she explained the events of the past two weeks, telling the guru what she could and leaving out the rest.

  ‘After Father came home from Bandarawela announcing that he could not make Sunil marry Rupani, she became quite hysterical. She blamed me, as did my mother.’ Nila’s bruises had healed now and she did not want to confess how badly her mother had beaten her.

  ‘How? Why?’ Raju asked, outraged. ‘Didn’t both your mother and Rupani insist that you not speak to her the whole weekend?’

  ‘That was indeed the problem. I spoke to her and interfered.’

  ‘I am ve
ry confused. Of course you spoke with her – she was hysterical . . .’ Raju’s voice trailed off as he remembered the unpleasant events of the night.

  They had found a dishevelled Rupani screaming and clinging onto Sunil in front of a crowd of amused onlookers. ‘You said you’d marry me!’ she had cried. ‘Don’t do this to me! You have ruined me!’

  Sunil had pushed her away and she had landed in an ungainly heap, bruising her head against a windowsill.

  ‘Marry a slut like you? I don’t deal in damaged goods!’

  Sunil and his cronies had hooted with laughter.

  Together with Devika, Nila had taken Rupani back upstairs and tidied the girl up while Raju called for a doctor to come and administer a sedative. Rupani had slept all the way back to Colombo in her sister’s arms.

  Nila sighed. ‘Rupani told my mother that if I hadn’t interfered Sunil would have married her and that the fuss I created was what drove him away.’

  Raju snorted with disgust. ‘Your mother must be mad. I would not want a daughter of mine to marry a womaniser like Sunil.’

  Nila gave him an arch look and smiled.

  ‘It’s not what you think, and I certainly don’t take advantage of innocent girls. So how did this engagement to Alvin come about?’

  ‘Albert. He’s our neighbour and has been in love with Rupani since she was a child. So when she took ill with hysteria, his mother offered to take my mother up to Kandy to visit the Temple of the Tooth to save her life.’

  Rupani had been crying and wailing in bed for days on end, lying listlessly facing the wall, but no sooner had the invitation been issued than she had miraculously mended. ‘I think a trip to Kandy is exactly what I need to lift me out of the doldrums,’ she had declared, drying her eyes.

  So what had started out as a quiet pilgrimage had rapidly developed into a royal tour, when Albert had generously offered to hire a car for the trip and to foot the expenses at the guesthouse. And as generous as Albert was, Rupani was just as committed to taking advantage of his kindness. She’d insisted on stopping three times during the trip for tea and treats.