Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  ‘But Amma won’t listen to you, younger brother,’ Albert drawled jovially joining the group. ‘Cause Nila is older than you and deserves respect for at least getting a job. Something you haven’t achieved yet!’

  This elicited muffled giggles from some of the men as Manoj opened his mouth to reply before thinking better of it.

  ‘There is really nothing wrong with working with Tamils,’ Nila persisted. ‘They are no different.’

  Her brother sneered at her and walked away.

  ‘That is entirely correct, nangi,’ Albert agreed. ‘The suddas made achuru wherever they went. Look at the mess India is in. One third calls itself West Pakistan and the other third calls itself East Pakistan, with India stuck in the middle. What a disaster!’

  ‘That is not the fault of the suddas,’ one of the uncles told him. ‘It’s the fault of the blady stupid Tamils. They want to rule the Sinhala and take all the jobs and money and power for themselves!’

  ‘No, Uncle, that’s not true,’ Albert said. ‘Sinhala and Tamil people have lived in harmony together for thousands of years. The suddas created this whole problem by promoting Tamils ahead of Sinhala.’

  Nila had heard these arguments a thousand times, and as the conversation took its predictable route, she glanced out the window into the street to see a feeble-looking Mrs Vasha walking weakly back home. Turning to follow her, she thought she saw someone familiar talking to Manoj on the street.

  Who was he?

  Nila normally didn’t pay much attention to Manoj’s thuggish companions. They were usually of a similar breed – swindlers, hard drinkers and time-wasters. So it was only when Manoj’s companion turned to face the house, doubled over with laughter, that Nila recognised him.

  Why was Manoj talking to the tattooed man from the shantytown?

  It was a very unusual sight that greeted the workers and students that Monday morning: Raju at the gate of the mill. All dressed in white and without one of the suddis who were his habitual companions. As he welcomed both students and workers back from the weekend, they could not help but wonder whether the tables had turned on him and he was waiting for someone to arrive – so much so that a few of the girls who secretly fancied themselves in love with him waited just beyond the central courtyard, watching, plotting and hating. They nearly fainted with relief when it became clear that Raju had been waiting for Nila, automatically taking Nila’s heavy weekend bag from her and walking with her. It was not as if he would fall for that fright.

  ‘Could you come to my bungalow at lunch?’ Raju had urgently asked Nila at the gate. ‘I really need to tell you something important.’

  ‘I have something important to tell you too!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You first!’ Nila insisted.

  ‘No . . . no. What I need to tell you will take time,’ he’d replied in a low tone that barely concealed his excitement.

  ‘I have my lessons to make up with Guru Sakunthala and then I have lessons with you,’ Nila muttered, trying to think of a solution. ‘I can come with you now if it’s really important. Guru Sindhu is not a stickler for time.’

  ‘No, that’s okay. I’ll see you this evening. Try to get away a little early if possible.’

  Nila nodded her agreement as she took her bag back from him and climbed the steps to her room before morning prayers.

  And as the day progressed, Nila was forced to ponder the truism that a day would linger if something exciting is to happen at the end of it.

  First Guru Lakshmi would return the approved designs for the exhibition; but that was not before she caustically critiqued each and every design and the designers who produced them.

  ‘Ingenious Devika, ingenious,’ the lady had drawled handing the large design cartridge over to the beauty. ‘The rocks on your kalamkari had better be smaller than those in your head for this design to work at all. And please don’t go for emerald green; emerald green with milk resin will make the saree look more like an outfit worn by aliens in those American films you see in Colombo.’

  ‘And Nila,’ she’d drawled nastily. ‘You have made some very good designs. But remember it is gift of the Goddess to bring to fruition. Not that you will be able to do it, seeing that you don’t have a drop of Saliya blood in you.’

  Then Miss Gauri came up and handed everyone extra commissions. ‘I am so sorry,’ she apologised. ‘We got three new orders this weekend.’

  ‘When will we have time to weave our pieces for the exhibition?’ several students cried in protest.

  ‘We’ll be cancelling saree draping lessons from now on. That’ll give you at least an extra ten hours a week,’ Miss Gauri explained.

  It was well after dusk before Nila could escape to Raju’s bungalow. She didn’t even have to knock on the door, for Raju was waiting for her.

  ‘Oh, Nila, you won’t believe it,’ he said, taking her hands in his own. ‘I received a letter from Tambimuttu mama! He has shown one of my paintings to a good friend of his. A famous art teacher in London. And he wants to see more!’ He picked Nila up and swung her around.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Nila laughed. ‘I don’t understand a word you’ve just said. Who is Tambimuttu?’

  ‘Meary James Tambimuttu; he is one of Sri Lanka’s greatest poets and my appa’s friend. Surely you’ve heard of him?

  Nila, who’d been educated entirely in Sinhala, shook her head.

  Raju rolled his eyes. ‘Never mind, then. But he is friends with an art teacher by the name of Lucian Freud in London. Freud is a very famous painter.’

  ‘And this Lucian wants to see some of your work? Have you picked anything to send him yet? And is that why saree draping was cancelled?’

  ‘Yes,’ Raju confirmed. ‘If not, I would have insisted Gauri cancel dyeing. There is only so much you can learn about boiling cloth in vats of colour,’ he said, leading Nila into his living room. ‘I have selected a few works already but I am not happy with any of them.’

  Nila moved to look at the stacks of paintings that Raju pulled aside.

  ‘They just don’t seem quite right,’ he said with frustration. ‘I thought I’d redo them. Use these for sketches.’

  It was clear that he’d already started – the room was pungent with the sharp smell of linseed oil, mixed with the headier aroma of oil paint.

  Nila had seen his paintings before but hadn’t had a chance to study them, too busy chatting with Raju or working on designs herself, but now she looked at them carefully. The sarees Raju had painted his models in had a luminescent beauty, begging the viewer to reach out and caress their soft folds. The women too were beautiful, their limbs draped languorously across his day bed, or posing by the river or down at the beach, and yet . . .

  ‘You can see something isn’t right, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes. It’s as if the sarees and the models don’t suit each other,’ she agreed. ‘It’s strange. You’ve chosen the right saree for the right woman and the drapes are exquisite. But something is not quite right.’

  ‘I have thought of maybe weaving a new saree and finding a model for it, but I know that it is stupid.’

  ‘Have you thought of finding a new model first perhaps? Find a saree to suit the model rather than the other way around?’

  ‘That’s difficult, Nila. I really like to get to know my models when I paint them and that could take up to six weeks. Tambimuttu mama wants my paintings before I head off to India for the exhibition. And that gives me barely three weeks.’

  ‘Have you thought of approaching some of your old models?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Raju said, looking at his paintings.

  ‘Anyway, I’d better start weaving the rest of Rupani’s bridesmaids’ sarees,’ Nila said.

  ‘All done. I even managed to dye the lot yesterday, see.’

  Over by the corner there was a stack of sarees, all soft and sinuous, and in a shade of pale orange that could have been stolen from the evening sun as it set into the inky depths of the Indian ocean
in Panadura.

  ‘How can I ever thank you?’

  ‘Just win at exhibition,’ Raju grinned. ‘The sooner we have a good showing in India and get enough commissions, the sooner I will be able do this all the time!’

  ‘I guess I should get to work, then,’ Nila grinned in return, the thought of telling Raju about the thug from the shantytown completely slipping her mind.

  So as Nila threaded the loom with the complicated pattern for her exhibition piece toile, Raju painted. Chatting, laughing and sometimes stopping to play music on the old gramophone. ‘You’ve never heard jazz?’ Raju demanded. ‘Louis Armstrong? Miles Davis? John Coltrane?’

  ‘Is that an American car? Like the Cadillac?’

  Raju laughed on his way back to his easel. ‘You have much to learn my young friend, much to learn.’

  ‘So how did you do it? Learn so much?’

  ‘I went to school in London before I went to India. My father sent me there to be educated in 1962. A friend and I went to New York by steamship for six weeks.’

  ‘You have seen so much,’ Nila sighed wistfully. ‘I haven’t been any further north than Anuradhapura. I am sure you’ll become a famous painter one day.’

  ‘I don’t know about famous but I’d like to be good though. I’d love for the world to see what I see. The beauty comes in all different shapes, forms and how we define it.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you, Raju, for sharing so much with me.’

  Together they worked. Her weaving and him painting as the monsoon rains intensified. Their friendship borne initially out of Raju’s guilt for his cruel words in Bandarawela turning into companionship of the minds. In Nila, Raju found a friend without pretense and in Raju, Nila found an intellect she wanted to explore.

  ‘I knew it, I knew you’d like Amaradeva,’ Nila teased. ‘His music is boring. My father loves it. But the sitar makes my head hurt.’

  ‘I guess you are a fan of Rukmani Devi then. All gloss no substance,’ he teased back though he did go and put a vinyl record on for Nila to sing along to.

  By the end of the week, Nila had made great progress with her piece, while Raju was still struggling.

  ‘What am I doing wrong?’ he demanded as she brought him a cup of tea. ‘Inspiration comes so naturally to you!’ he complained, pointing to Nila’s toile – though to call the two-by-two tapestry a toile would be a great injustice, for it was a study in poetry.

  In its creation, Nila had broken almost all standard conventions in saree making. While she had reinforced the plain end of the toile, she’d left the bottom threads loose and unwoven, which was where her genius shone through, as she tatted the repeating pattern freehand. The potta had a peacock feather design, threaded through with tiny beads of steel, which Nila hoped to finish that evening. She would start the embroidery the following day, using iridescent blue silk dyed using indigo and silver. It would be a masterpiece.

  Nila stood next to Raju and critically assessed the paintings he was working on. There was energy there, yet something was lacking.

  ‘What’s inspiring you, Raju? I know what’s inspiring my saree. It is the goddess Saraswati. I feel her in everything I do. I see her everywhere. I feel her.’

  ‘Light, I love light.’

  ‘Then show light, Raju. All I am seeing here is the saree you’ve painted on her.’

  ‘I love sarees. I love how a saree flows. How it shapes and how it caresses. I also love how a person can define themselves in it. You make a saree into what it is. The most beautiful saree in the hands of an unskilled person is useless. Likewise, the prettiest woman may wear the prettiest saree and still be ugly. It’s what’s inside that matters.’

  Nila stared at him for a moment.

  ‘I adore women,’ Raju confessed. ‘I like the shape of their breasts and I love the way sarees mould their rears.’

  ‘Perhaps then you need to focus on women. I see the sarees you’ve draped but you haven’t spent much time on the women themselves.’

  ‘I need to paint from life. I need a muse – a new model. Someone who can help me break this,’ Raju said. ‘You have good taste, Nila. Come down to the beach with me. Help me find a model.’

  Nila shook her head. ‘I’m busy. I have to finish my toile.’

  ‘You’ve made good progress. Just quickly. We’ll go down for hoppers by the beach tomorrow and come back as soon as I’ve found a model.’

  ‘Oh, Raju, I haven’t even started the embroidery!’

  ‘Come on. I’ll buy you a faluda. I’ll even get them to put an umbrella in it for you,’ he pleaded. The sickly sweet milk concoction with rose essence and caraway seeds was Nila’s favourite, and he knew it. ‘Please? I really need your help.’

  And how could she say no, after all he’d done for her?

  The hopper hut Raju took Nila to was very different to any other Nila had ever been to. The cleanliness alone was enough to mark it as the province of foreigners. There were no dead cockroaches crushed under the huge pots of boiling curry and there was electricity – a single light bulb providing illumination for the deft hopper makers as they churned out crisp bowl-shaped pancakes one after the other. There was even a guitarist playing soft music on a raised platform that acted as a stage.

  ‘Here, let’s sit here.’ Raju pointed to a table on the edge of the beach area, where they could see everyone. Quite a few of the tourists were sprawled around on chairs, sucking on cigarettes.

  ‘My father worked for a sudda before Independence and said that all he ever ate was roasted meat and boiled vegetables. No spices, no pepper, no nothing. Do you think that is why suddu people are so skinny?’ Nila asked, glancing at several white people who were ravenously munching away on the bowl-shaped breads, tucking into the chicken or fish curry as if they’d never seen food before.

  ‘Remind me to tell you all about the munchies,’ Raju smiled as the waiter brought them two tall glasses of faluda.

  A few of Raju’s friends came to talk, looking curiously at Nila as they greeted him in languages she didn’t understand before lapsing into English. Although Nila understood English and spoke it well, she struggled with the Scottish brogue or the nasally vowels of South California, especially when they were slurred by the effects of LSD.

  Though it may have been just as well, for Raju’s friends’ comments were very suggestive. She was looking quite well, fashionably dressed in a bottle-green paisley print saree, and when Raju explained that she was his student, not his girlfriend, a few expressed an interest in her themselves, to his evident horror. Eventually they were left in peace, though, and began a careful survey of the women on the beach.

  ‘What about that one?’ Nila asked. ‘The one in that white dress by the coconut tree.’

  ‘I painted her two months ago. She is the one draped in that blue saree.’

  ‘Really? She looks different with her clothes on,’ Nila stated, tilting her head to look at the girl again. ‘Well then, what about her? The one with the beautiful hair?’

  ‘No, not her,’ Raju said wrinkling his nose. ‘I went out with a girl who looked just like that when I was living in the UK, and her father ran me off with a shotgun from her room.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I am Tamil and she was an English rose.’

  ‘What about her, then?’ Nila pointed to another woman. This one was quite a beauty, with pale blue eyes and long blonde hair. She was dressed in a wraparound skirt made of a saree with a crocheted halter-neck top. She was lying on a hammock strung between two coconut trees, one long leg hanging over the edge as she swung to the music.

  Raju took a long look at her before shaking his head slowly. ‘Too beautiful.’

  Nila rolled her eyes. ‘Excuse me, but don’t you want to paint beautiful women?’

  ‘No, I want to paint real women. Women who have worked. Women who are passionate. Women doing what they need to do to get on in the world. Women dressed in beautiful sarees.’

  ‘Okay, what about her, then?’ N
ila said dryly, pointing to an older woman who was not dressed like a hippie and had something quite schoolmarmish about her, primly eating her hoppers.

  The guitar music had finally given way to a more upbeat tempo. Someone had brought out a set of drums and a bass guitar, and an impromptu jamming session began. The vocalists were at best mediocre and the quantities of marijuana the other musicians had smoked meant that poor improvisation was the order of the day.

  ‘So, are you going to ask her?’

  ‘She wouldn’t take her clothes off for me, I’m quite sure of it,’ Raju said.

  ‘What about her, then?’ Nila asked. ‘Or her?’ Girl after girl. But no sooner had she pointed a woman out than Raju would find something wrong with her or worried about the saree he’d drape her in. Finally she convinced him to ask a girl or two, but they were all heading down to the beaches further south that weekend.

  ‘Oh, Raju, I give up, I really do. Why don’t you find a saree that you want to drape on your model and then we’ll find the model,’ Nila sighed.

  The fact that it was Poya, the full-moon holiday, two weekends before the exhibition threw almost all the students into a panic. There were those who were panicking because they genuinely needed the extra time. Then there were those whose exhibition pieces were well advanced and could afford the four-day weekend, but who would lose the chance to spy on the work done by others. And then there were those who were just panicking because they could.

  Which was why Miss Gauri found it difficult to get anyone to help her that Friday afternoon. Packing and labelling two hundred sarees was a large task and Nila was the only one who volunteered. ‘I could not have done this without you,’ Gauri sighed thankfully as she and Nila folded the last heavy silk saree and packed it into a display box.

  ‘No problem at all.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind catching the late train? Won’t your family be worried about you?’