Soon Nila returned to her task, though a little reluctantly at first. She stretched her mind far and wide seeking inspiration for her theme. Finally she thought of the beautiful waterbirds who lived in the estuary, and she sketched away for about an hour and a half until Raju, who’d taken a break to make them both cups of tea, came back and sat next to her.
‘I’d give up on the waterbirds. I am not giving anything away here when I say a few students are going down this path. In the first week, before things got tense, students were showing each other designs, and I saw at least three or four takes on rathu demalichcha alone.’
‘This is just so frustrating. I had it all pinned down. I knew my design. I cannot believe Punsala would steal my work.’
Raju gave a weary sigh and shook his head. Thunder rolled with an ear-splitting crack as the heavens opened and rain started pouring.
‘Is it always like this?’
‘Unfortunately, yes. A few years ago one student called the police on another and we had a fistfight in the courtyard. Another year all the students put their work under lock and key in their suitcases, but just before designs were due someone found out that you could pick the cheap locks with a kitchen knife. That year we had to restock the kitchen with cutlery.’
‘Why? Why do people behave this way?’
‘Poverty, Nila, it’s poverty. Most of the students who come here are poor. Do you think a rich man would send his child here to learn? Saree weaving is not respected as it once was. We weavers no longer enjoy the status we once had along with healers and blacksmiths.’
‘But how can they be so dishonest?’
‘I sometimes think that it is easy to be honest only when your stomach is not cramping of hunger, or to hold on to your integrity if you don’t have to send your children to work as servants in someone’s kitchen.’
‘I know, I know,’ Nila agreed with a gentle shake of her head. ‘But I thought Punsala was my friend.’ She stood up to gather her design tools. ‘I think I’ll call it a night,’ she said. ‘I’ll go for a walk down the river tomorrow after class and perhaps that will inspire me.’
‘Leave them here – it’ll be much easier,’ Raju said, taking her pencils out of her hands. ‘It’ll save you having to bring it all back tomorrow. And I’ll walk you to the boarding house. I doubt any of the spies are out this late at night,’ he said, unfurling a large black umbrella.
Raju wasn’t quite sure what it was, but when Nila put her little hands on his forearm to stop slipping on the old wooden footbridge, he felt a strange jolt in his heart. The uncomfortable feeling of his pulse accelerating was so unfamiliar to him that he didn’t even realise he’d opened his mouth to say, ‘Nila, wait for me behind the outside shrine tomorrow. I’ll walk with you down the river.’
The relentless rain ceased briefly after lunch but started again and went on right through the afternoon. Nila could hardly see ten feet past her nose, for the monsoonal downpour made everything grey, and a trip scouring the river seemed more and more unlikely.
When classes ended, Raju walked past Nila to mutter, ‘I think you’ll have to give up on your plan to find inspiration down by the river,’ and she nodded – but just after dinner, as the crows started flying towards the mountains to seek their evening refuge, there was a burst of evening sun so bright, so odd for that time of day, that Nila felt obliged to use it for whatever it meant. She hurried out the side door, slinging a light shawl around her shoulders.
She walked past the shrine on the river, going the long way to the river track instead of taking the short cut past the dyeing huts, and pausing briefly to find a dry lamp to light an offering. It had been weeks since anyone would have been able to light an offering here, because of the rain. Nila closed her eyes and recited her prayer to Saraswati.
‘May your grace light my way,’ she finished softly, opening her eyes. Perhaps it was the fading evening light filtering through the treetops above that made her see it, but Nila could have sworn she saw a smile flickering on the goddess’s marble face.
So perhaps it was Saraswati, too, who guided Nila upstream instead of down, past the small rapids and eddies that marked the river’s course as it headed inland. It led her through the dreaded shantytown, though by daylight it didn’t look so bad. Children ran around naked while mothers washed their vegetables at the outdoor well.
Further upstream, past Panadura town proper, Nila kept walking and found a series of market gardens, the reedy vegetables showing stunted growth, for the sun hadn’t really shone in weeks and weeks. Another ten minutes along, Nila came upon a village, bustling with evening activity.
Her eyes took in tiny details that would escape most, like the fluttering saree of a new bride as she walked to her in-laws’ house with the evening shopping, and the faded gold of the tattered garment an old beggar woman wore that exactly matched the coat of a scrawny dog loitering nearby.
The unexpected burst of sunlight had given Nila an hour to explore up river, but it faded as suddenly as it had arrived. Shopkeepers rushed about pulling in large bunches of kurumba while yelling at the dawdling customers to hurry up as errant drops of rain started to splatter. Nila turned to hurry downstream, only to find a long paddle sticking out of a coconut-tree-hull canoe barring her way.
‘Something told me I’d find you here,’ Raju said, standing up to offer Nila a hand. ‘Come on, get in, it’ll be faster home this way.’
It would indeed have been a faster trip back home, had Raju not had to stop several times as wave upon wave of heavy rain came upon them. ‘The canopy of trees in this next inlet will give us some shelter,’ Raju called out over the heavy downpour.
And it did give them some respite, sheltering them from the worst of the rain for about a quarter of an hour. ‘Thank you yet again for rescuing me, Raju,’ Nila said. ‘You seem to have made a habit of it. I am in your debt.’
‘Actually, Nila, I am in your debt,’ Raju replied seriously, holding Nila’s eyes in the twilight. ‘I cannot believe the way I spoke to you in Bandarawela. It was impossibly cruel. Think of this as my atonement.’
‘You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, Raju. You weren’t to know about my family situation, and you are quite right, I am not beautiful or even pretty, and what I was wearing didn’t flatter me.’
‘All the same, I said it to hurt you and that was not right.’
Nila smiled to accept his apology. ‘How did you think to find me up the river?’
‘I came looking for you when the sun came out, but Gauri came and wanted to chat with me about something. By the time I got away from her, I walked past the outdoor temple and saw the lamp you’d lit. I figured you were upstream.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Nila replied as Raju pushed off again, guiding the slight craft through the fast eddies and currents of the now rapidly flowing river.
Observing her white knuckles on the sides of the craft, Raju soothed her gently. ‘Relax, Nila. I grew up on this river, remember? I learned to swim in that waterhole,’ he said, pointing to a little pool across one of the banks. ‘And I got the worst hiding of my life for stealing kurumba from that estate!’
Raju pulled into the stream between his house and Guru Sindhu’s and jumped up the embankment to help Nila up, then ushered her into his bungalow. He pulled a few towels out of an armoire, tossing them to Nila along with a soft, old white saree. ‘Sorry, I don’t have anything else you can change into,’ he apologised, showing her the way to one of the smaller bedrooms.
It took Nila no more than a few minutes to wrap her long hair with the towel and change her saree, but when she came out, Raju was on the other side of the small courtyard attending to his evening prayers, lips murmuring his love for the goddess Saraswati as he lit the oil lamp and wafted incense over her figure.
As he bent his head in prayer, Nila was struck by his beauty. His were eyes softly closed and his concentration as he chanted was absolute, his body rocking with a gentle rhythm. This was no disbeliever pa
ying lip service to the Holy Mother – he was her true child.
‘I missed my evening prayers,’ Raju apologised as he returned, lighting the kerosene lamps without much ceremony. And it was then that she saw it, behind some of the canvases of nudes. A painting of the goddess.
‘That is Saraswati Devi, isn’t it?’ Nila asked, pointing to the painting.
‘Yes. It was part of a series I did many years ago.’
‘Why did you always paint her in front of a river?’
‘Because she is the river goddess. Sara means flow and wati means to have. Saraswati is literally she who has flow.’
‘Tell me more,’ she commanded, her heart thumping in her chest. This was what she’d been searching for.
Raju was pleased by her interest, and pulling out some large books on Indian art history, he invited Nila to sit next to him on the divan. Late into the night they talked, about the goddess, about the river and the forces that held the world together.
‘By immersing the fires of ignorance in her waters, she brings wisdom and light. The consort of the Lord Brahma, she was able to tame his wandering mind. She is also the protector of practising Buddhists,’ Raju explained.
‘So she is herself the river yet she has no fear of fire?’
‘Her power and grace is more omniscient than the fires that fan ignorance and hate.’
With that Nila started to design, into the wee hours of the morning as Raju weaved. Her creative process was punctuated by cups of tea strengthened with Horlicks and snacks of salty Maliban biscuits that Raju brought her. ‘Designing on an empty stomach leads to weak line and form,’ he teased. And when Nila showed him the final designs before he walked her across to the boarding house, he knew. He knew that he’d finally met a kindred soul who understood beauty; its elusive and transient nature and how it could make the spirit soar or crush it with equal efficiency.
‘Oh Nila,’ he said as they walked across the bridge. ‘I can’t wait to see you weave this. Magic doesn’t come from the loom. It comes from the heart.’
Perhaps it was because his own heart and mind were so full that Raju didn’t hear the sound of a branch breaking in the mango tree just beyond the courtyard. Maybe he could be forgiven, for mango trees were wont to shed their limbs in the heavy monsoonal rains, but had he lifted his kerosene lamp a little higher than was required to light his slippery path, he would have seen him, even in the pouring rain. Hiding in the shrubs below the mango tree.
The tattooed thug from the shantytown. The thug who’d spent the last six weeks in jail, thanks to Raju tipping the police off. The tattooed thug who’d followed Raju and Nila all the way along the river and had watched them work together throughout the night.
It was barely past four in the morning when the shrill alarm went off. It was difficult for Nila to drag herself out of bed, for she hadn’t lain down in it until well past midnight. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and shook the sleep from her head.
She knocked at Manoj’s bedroom door and went in, holding her nose against the sour stench of soiled clothes. ‘Wake up, Manoj, we have so much to do,’ Nila pleaded, shaking him. ‘It’s quarter past four and Rupani’s engagement guests will be here in a few hours.’ He rolled over and snored.
Giving up after a few minutes, Nila made her way down to the well by herself and sighed. ‘How did Amma get all these?’ she asked herself softly, spying the shadows of the forty or so urns that would need to be filled with water for the guests. She slipped on her rubber slippers and splashed the pail into the well.
Nila had been drawing water for close to an hour when Nimal, Mrs Vasha’s servant boy, came through the holey fence with several breakfast rotis. ‘Do we have to organise those chairs that the lorry just dropped off as well?’ the little boy asked, his voice worried.
‘Yes,’ Nila replied with a sigh as she heard the noisy clanging of a deliveryman dragging foldaway chairs through the garden. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do the lifting – you just move them around,’ she assured the boy, who was the size of a six-year old despite being at least fourteen. No matter how well he was fed at Mrs Vasha’s house, his early years of malnutrition could never be overcome.
The rest of the morning flew, with Nimal and Nila working together to set everything to rights for the engagement. It was only after they had shifted the four-tier engagement cake into place that she turned to the task of getting herself ready. Not that she had any space for it! Quite literally no space for her to stretch her arms to pleat her saree!
For Rupani and her eight chattering bridesmaids were getting ready in the bedroom, allowing no one else in front of the mirror – and when one of the girls tried to make a sliver of space for Nila before the narrow polished glass, Rupani growled at her. ‘Don’t worry about it! It’s not as if anyone will be looking at her.’
When Rupani emerged before the assembled guests she looked beautiful, her pretty face and figure flattered by the saree Nila had bought for her. There were many admiring comments and whispered compliments. But the guests’ admiration soon turned to disgust and indignation at Rupani’s behaviour. When Albert slipped the ring on her finger after the reading of the banns, looking as if he would burst with happiness, she shrugged his tender hand away. Family, friends and neighbours looked away, embarrassed and appalled by her abominable gesture. They were even more horrified at the way she spoke to her elderly mother-in-law to be afterwards, rudely ordering her around.
‘Someone should give that girl a good thrashing,’ more than one guest muttered.
‘That girl does not need to get married. She needs to learn some manners,’ others harrumphed.
Nila overheard these comments as she slipped in the room to stand behind her mother and felt ashamed for her younger sister.
‘Is that Nila?’ an aunt who had travelled from Badulla asked. ‘Has she done something to her hair? She looks so different.’
‘Nila Mendis certainly has the figure for a saree,’ a male friend of the family commented slyly.
‘Who knew she was hiding those curves beneath those frocks,’ his companion replied, only to earn a scowl from his wife.
Nila had not changed at all in any real sense, but the months spent at the mill had given her confidence. She knew her worth now, which lent a calm confidence to her natural kindness and warmth. So it was she who was the true host of the festivities, ensuring all guests were graciously welcomed and properly attended to, and in return they positively showered her with praise and attention.
‘Child, come and sit down next to me and tell me where you got that saree from,’ aunty after aunty begged. Vera’s sister from Badulla insisted that she spend at least half an hour by her side. ‘I am stuck in Badulla with ten children,’ the woman pleaded. ‘Tell me the latest fashion for sarees or I will go insane!’
Nila was dressed in a silk saree of cream and lilac that glowed next to her dark skin. It was one of the half a dozen or so sarees that had appeared miraculously on Nila’s bed the day after she’d returned to the mill. She and Devika had several blissful hours in their dorm room as she finally learned the skill of draping a saree on herself properly – how could one not, when gifted with such yards of beautiful silk that begged to be worn close to the skin?
‘Oh, could you teach me how to drape my saree like yours?’ the younger female cousins implored Nila at every turn, for she’d draped her six-yard silk dream in the Orissa style, with the potta wrapped around her bust before it was brought over one shoulder. It was an uncommon drape that created the illusion of length, drawing attention away from Nila’s dumpy waist.
‘How are you doing at the saree mill?’ uncles asked as they sidled up to speak with her. ‘What’s the name of the place, duwa?’
‘Nair & Sons.’
‘Tamil?’
‘Yes, Uncle.’
‘Do they treat you well?’ a short balding gent demanded. He was dressed in a suit that reeked of mothballs.
‘They treat me very well,’ Nila insisted. �
��I want for nothing.’
‘Shah, your parents must be so proud of you, Nila. It’s not easy to get a job at the moment. Both my sons have finished their senior exams and neither one can get a job,’ another uncle scoffed, pointing out two dejected-looking men skulking in the corner.
‘It’s jolly good of these Tamil fellows to offer you a job,’ the man in the mothball suit said. ‘They usually only ever employ their own kind.’
‘Uncle, I could not agree more,’ Manoj said, butting rudely into the conversation. ‘Every time I apply for a job it gets given to a Tamil bugger. Someday someone is going to have to tell the blady bastards that this is our country!’
‘But, Manoj, you know that is not fair,’ Nila chided gently. ‘Murali Senerathnam got the job at the cement company ahead of you because he passed four GCE O-Levels instead of two. And George Dhanapalan has worked at his father’s warehouses, so it made sense that he be offered a job at the mercantile.’
‘But what about our father?’ Manoj fired back. ‘He has been passed over for promotion so many times that it is a joke. They keep giving all the top posts to Tamils.’
‘Yes, they treat us like second-class citizens in our own country!’ the gentleman with the unemployed sons said.
‘There are an equal number of Sinhala and Tamil workers at the mill,’ Nila protested, though she knew there were tensions between the two groups. Some of the younger Tamil workers had maps on display in their dormitories depicting the northern half of Sri Lanka being towed by gunship to Tamil Nadu. Though the older Tamil workers growled at them, they seemed to be fired by an inexplicable zeal to split the island apart. Guru Lakshmi loved to play favourites, too, pitting her Sinhalese students against Tamils, firing jealousies and stoking hate. But Nila had always put that down to the guru being an unpleasant person – it had nothing to do with her being Tamil.
‘See, Uncle, give a woman a job and she develops a smart mouth. Careful you don’t get ahead of yourself, Nila, or I’ll stop Amma from letting you go to that job at all,’ he threatened, earning a chorus of approval from his audience.
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