Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  ‘Err . . . let me think about it,’ Mahinda teased. Vannan cuffed him over the head. ‘Of course I’ll be there, you fool! Who else will keep you from shitting in your sarong?’

  He took Vannan in a head hold and they wrestled briefly before collapsing in laughter as the platform creaked, reminding them that they were dangerously high up in the air.

  ‘Let’s catch the bus to Jaffna next weekend,’ Mahinda suggested. ‘If I get a good price for the kurumba this week, we can even take in a film in town.’

  ‘You mean you aren’t sick of watching Sholay? How many times have we seen it?’

  ‘Twenty? Twenty-five?’

  As Mahinda stood to retie his loosened sarong, that was when he saw it, in the dark blue inkiness of the cool morning.

  ‘Machang, what do you think that is?’ he asked, pulling Vannan alongside him. ‘There is something moving there, by the road.’

  Vannan reached out immediately for the large rusty temple bell, its loud ringing reverberating through the peace of the early morning. ‘It is not a thing, it is a boy!’ he yelled as he slid down the rope ladder and ran towards the road.

  Mahinda hit the ground mere seconds after him and followed close behind. They could hear the footfalls of the villagers rushing to join them, carrying lit coconut fronds to light their way.

  ‘Get the vedda!’ shouts rang out, and someone ran off to fetch the village healer.

  ‘Who could it be?’ people were already demanding even before Mahinda and Vannan reached the prone figure.

  Mahinda’s heart nearly stopped as he reached the lad. The leopards wouldn’t have had much of a feast if they had indeed taken him. For the boy was emaciated. Bones stuck out at angles and his feet were covered with open sores, oozing pus.

  Vannan knelt to gently turn the boy over, reaching for the flask of water he carried on the leather belt at his hips to pour some water into the child’s mouth.

  ‘Nimal, is that you?’ Mahinda asked, as the breaking day gave him just enough light to make out the boy’s features.

  ‘I told his mother not to send him to Colombo,’ Mahinda’s amma raged as she paced up and down beside the little shack on the island. The news of Nimal’s return had spread quickly. Once the vedda had taken charge of Nimal and shut the door to his healing hut, the villagers had automatically turned to Vannan and Mahinda to find out what had happened.

  ‘What did Nimal say?’ ‘How did he get from Colombo to the village all by himself?’ ‘What happened to his nona?’ Not that the boys knew any of the answers. Nimal had not said a single word. And judging from the grave concern on the vedda’s face as he had taken Nimal’s pulse, no one might ever know the answers.

  ‘I should have insisted your father him take in,’ Mahinda’s amma kept raging. ‘I knew that Burgher woman could not be trusted. Came up north on holiday and took our boy. She was sweet enough when she promised his mother she would care for him. But all his mother really cared about was the fifty rupees she sent each month.’

  ‘Amma, you can’t blame her. Her husband drinks everything she earns at the market.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ his mother said. ‘I just wish we could do something.’

  ‘I wish that too, Amma, but how? The tobacco crop last year didn’t fetch as much money as we’d hoped and we will need money for the start of school next year . . .’ Mahinda’s voice trailed away.

  ‘Putta, you need to help people even if you have nothing to give,’ his mother said. ‘If you wait till you can afford it, then it is not charity but guilt.’

  Mahinda closed his eyes and promised himself that if Nimal survived, he would find a way to help him.

  ‘So, show me where you are up to,’ his mother demanded, hitching her white cotton saree and sitting on a tree stump.

  ‘We nearly have the twenty pounds we need, but we’re no closer now than we were six weeks ago. The larvae have been munching on anything and everything while I’ve been gone, so their cocoons are all sorts of colours. Look, I picked this lot from Vannan’s tobacco field on my way here and their cocoons are almost all red!’

  ‘You aren’t planning on throwing them out, are you?’

  ‘But they won’t take any dye.’

  ‘Silly boy! You have silk that is already the colour women love! If I were you, I’d spirit a few tobacco plants here and see if you can get a few more of these red cocoons!’

  ‘Amma, you missed your calling as a businesswoman!’ Mahinda teased. ‘Think how much wealthier we’d all be if you ran a shop instead of delivering babies?’

  ‘And what about the women and children who would struggle without me?’ she smiled. ‘Besides, it was what I was born to do.’

  ‘What? Ride from house to house in the middle of the night to tend to screaming women?’ he grunted, hefting another load of coconut fronds to the shed and squatting on the sandy ground to strip the leaves from their branches.

  After he’d torn apart a dozen or so branches, he arranged the sturdy but pliable wood in a circle, much like the spokes on a cartwheel, and started to weave. ‘Careful with the edges,’ his mother told him. ‘Coconut fronds can give you nasty cuts.’

  No sooner had she said it than a nasty thorn embedded itself under Mahinda’s nail. ‘Cheek,’ Mahinda grumbled, wincing as he tried to extract it. His mother promptly pulled a safety pin from her saree blouse.

  ‘Come here,’ she said gently, and eased the offending piece of wood out, humming a familiar lullaby.

  ‘I’m not a baby, you know.’

  ‘But you’ll always be my baby. My first baby,’ she smiled as she took her seat again, stretching back in the dappled sunlight to ease her wearied back. Being the midwife for the five villages around Nayaru Lagoon was not an easy job. Not only did she look after all the expectant mothers, but she also looked after the health of the children, at least until they were in grade school. It was to her that they came with their swollen bellies, emaciated and full of worms.

  ‘I’ll sit for another quarter of an hour but then I’ll need to head off,’ his mother told Mahinda as he sat weaving the new enclosure for the silk larvae.

  ‘Can’t you stay a little longer? I hardly ever get to see you.’

  ‘One day I’ll come to live with you and you’ll long to see the back of me!’ she laughed. ‘So how are things going between Vannan and Shivani?’

  ‘How did you find out about that?’ Mahinda said, startled.

  ‘I have my ways.’

  ‘I have promised to go with him to the kovila for his marriage, but I’d much rather not be in the village when his mother finds out.’

  ‘Chelvathy is not that bad . . .’

  ‘Really? My ears haven’t quite recovered from the time she caught Vannan and I trying beedee.’

  ‘I hope your bum hasn’t recovered either! I was so embarrassed. I am the village midwife and my son was caught smoking before he was even eight!’

  Mahinda rolled his eyes as he sat weaving. ‘Amma, can you blame us for trying tobacco? Both our fathers are tobacco farmers.’

  ‘Tobacco farmers! Tobacco farmers? I’ll give you tobacco farmers!’ His mother gave his ears a nasty tug. ‘You know smoking stunts your growth. I don’t mind grown men smoking, but not young boys not old enough to wear long pants!’

  Mahinda laughed. ‘I can’t believe it has been nearly ten years and you still haven’t forgiven me!’

  ‘Some things are just unforgivable,’ his mother said, but he could see she was trying not to smile. ‘That’s good,’ she said, looking at Mahinda’s handiwork.

  Within three-quarters of an hour, he’d woven a proper enclosure for the larvae. There was space at the bottom for shredded mulberry leaves, and a braided strap made from coconut leaves spiralled up the inside walls, creating a ledge on which the caterpillars could weave their cocoons.

  ‘I think this design might just work,’ Mahinda said. ‘This way, I only need to feed them once a day, and because it isn’t too deep, the mulberry leaves won�
��t rot before I get the chance to change them.’

  ‘Just as well, if you’re going to Jaffna with Vannan tomorrow. You’ll be able to leave them for the entire day and not worry about them until you come back.’

  Mahinda cocked a surprised eyebrow at her.

  ‘As I said, I have my ways of finding things out,’ she explained. ‘If I don’t see you before you leave, can you please remind your grandmother to put an extra spoon of milk powder in the younger children’s tea? They shouldn’t be having tea in the first place. And remind your father about Prema’s glasses. They need mending . . . And don’t forget to look in on Nimal before you leave.’

  ‘Yes, Amma,’ Mahinda agreed as he watched her climb on her pushbike again.

  She carefully wrapped her saree fall around her waist and tucked the end in nice and safe. She then hitched her pleats out of the way so that they didn’t get entangled in the chains as she took off for the other side of the lagoon, turning back briefly to wave. The blue and white stripe along the hem of her saree proclaimed her profession from miles away. Farmers were known to set themselves down in ditches as she went past, such was the respect she commanded in the community. She was the one who was there at the start of each life in the village, and more often than not she was the one who dressed bodies for cremation.

  It was an hour’s walk to the bus stop from the far side of Nayaru Lagoon to the main road to Puttalam. Mahinda and Vannan started early with lunches packed and water bottles filled.

  ‘Nah . . . you have to put a squeeze of lemon into the kurumba to get the best flavour, you just lop the top off the coconut and squeeze a little in,’ Vannan insisted as they skimmed pebbles across the lagoon.

  ‘But you don’t even drink kurumba. You hate the stuff,’ Mahinda replied incredulously.

  ‘That doesn’t stop me from knowing how to best drink it.’

  ‘And you always know how to do things better?’

  ‘Of course I do. Wasn’t it me who taught you how to climb trees better? And didn’t I teach you how to swim, too?’

  ‘Yes, by pushing me out of the oruwa in the middle of the lagoon.’

  ‘It was embarrassing that a boy who’d lived by the beach all his life could not swim.’

  ‘I was eight . . .’ Mahinda pointed out wryly.

  ‘Old enough, I say. You’d spent too much time tied to your mother’s potta anyway.’ Vannan growled. ‘So what’s the plan, machang?’

  ‘I thought we’d go to the market first and take it from there. What time are we meeting your Shivani?’ Mahinda replied, not quite looking Vannan in the eye.

  ‘In the evening. Isn’t that what she said in her letter?’

  ‘How should I know what she said in her letter? She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she?’

  ‘But you got the letter, didn’t you?’ Vannan retorted.

  Vannan and Shivani’s grand love affair was, by necessity, conducted primarily by love letter, with the occasional illicit meeting facilitated by sympathetic friends. Neither set of parents would consent to a match, both convinced of the superiority of their own caste.

  ‘We Karawes are descended from seafaring warriors,’ Shivani’s father would proclaim to anyone who would listen. ‘We don’t grub about with sod-busting Vellalars. Stupid, that is what they are. Dirt for brains.’

  Whereas Vannan’s mother, a devout Hindu and strict vegetarian, cut the local Karawe fishermen a wide berth at the markets, sniffing sanctimoniously. ‘They kill animals, you know. That’s bad karma for seven generations. That’s why they convert to Christianity. They think their new god can wash them of their sins. Not possible. That is why so many of their children are born with missing limbs or are retarded.’

  So it was to Mahinda that Shivani would send missives, smuggled by a youthful network of similarly lovelorn friends.

  ‘But I gave it to you without even reading it! The last time I accidentally read one I was sick for a week!’

  ‘Humph!’ Vannan started running, hearing the bus coming in the distance. Mahinda broke into a run behind him, but drew up suddenly when he spied a familiar figure approaching the bus stop from the other direction.

  ‘Oh no,’ he called, racing to catch up with Vannan. ‘Badayana Bala is running to the halt too! Do you want to miss the bus?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool! We won’t be able to get up there for another three weeks because of the harvest,’ Vannan yelled back, only to slow down himself.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Mrs Subramanium.’

  ‘What? Where?’ Mahinda looked around in horror.

  ‘At the bus halt.’

  And sure enough, she was there – the woman who struck terror in the heart of every boy aged fifteen and up in and around Nayaru. Dressed in her bright blue and green saree, she lit up the country bus halt like a neon light. Mrs Subramanium, the district matchmaker.

  ‘We’ll catch the next bus, then?

  ‘But that’s in another two hours! I won’t risk being late to see Shivani,’ Vannan said, speeding up again.

  ‘Well, we’re not sitting on the bus, then,’ Mahinda insisted.

  So Mahinda and Vannan completed the three-and–a-half-hour journey clinging onto the doorframe of the rusted Ceylon Transport Board bus, though the perilously overcrowded bus was already tipping over to its side.

  ‘So, when are we meeting your lady love?’ Mahinda asked. They had arrived at the central Jaffna bus terminal just after eleven o’clock and were making their way to the dusty park on the other side of the fort.

  ‘A little after six. She is hoping to get away during her second cousin’s wedding.’

  ‘And where are we meeting her?’ Mahinda asked, feeling alarmed. They sat down on a derelict park bench under a large twiggy kikar tree to have an early lunch. Vannan didn’t answer, looking away as he unwrapped the banana leaf from around his parcel of food.

  ‘Tell me we are not meeting her at the temple again?’

  Again Vannan didn’t answer.

  ‘Oh man! No! I am not doing it again. I am not going skulk out the back of that Hindu temple so you can make eyes at Miss Shivani! There are elephants there and I stank of their dung for a week.’

  ‘Relax. You don’t normally smell much different,’ Vannan muttered.

  ‘Well, I’m not going, then. You go and see your princess all by yourself!’

  ‘Oh, come on, machang! You know we can’t get caught. I need you there!’

  ‘Why? I stand there next to a hill of elephant turds while you sing silly love songs to your girl from around a tree! Why do you need me there?’

  ‘Because while you are standing next to the dung heap, you can keep a lookout for Shivani’s brothers!’ Vannan said. Not that they were afraid of Shivani’s brothers in any way – not if it’d be a clean fight. But born and raised the scions of a prominent family in Jaffna, they could rally the entire town behind them if they wished to.

  ‘Then promise me you won’t sing to her.’

  ‘I make no such promises. She says it is my voice she’s in love with.’

  ‘Well, it certainly can’t be your personality!’

  ‘How about if I buy you some muruku before we go to see the film?’ Vannan pleaded.

  Now was Mahinda’s turn to avoid his friend’s eyes.

  Vannan doubled his offer. ‘Okay, I will even buy you an Aaliya brand ice-cream.’ Mahinda still looked away. ‘What’s wrong, machang? Are you feeling sick? I knew I should have forced you to sit on your girly backside in the bus!’

  ‘I’m not sick, you fool! It’s just that . . .’

  ‘It’s just what?’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t have money to see the film. I have 300 rupees for the spinning wheel but nothing more. And I’m not even quite sure that’s enough.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t have money? I know you sold at least ten bunches of kurumba to the modalali yesterday. So what did you do with it?’

  Again Mahinda looked away, concentrating on
his lunch.

  ‘You gave it away, didn’t you? You gave it to the vedda! I knew it! I knew he’d pull you in, like pulling in the minnows from the lagoon!’

  ‘What was I supposed to do? He came around and said that Nimal’s mother couldn’t pay for the herbs he needed.’

  ‘Do what I do – offer to find the herbs for him!’

  ‘Well, it’s too late now, so there.’

  ‘So what are we going to do? We can’t spend the next six hours at the markets, especially if we don’t have any money,’ Vannan grumbled.

  ‘You’re so smart, why don’t you come up with an idea?’

  ‘Okay then, I’ll find a way to get us into the cinema if you promise to come with me to see Shivani.’

  ‘How? I know you don’t have any money – your father hasn’t finished his harvest yet. Mahinda looked down at both their food parcels, which contained no more than the bare minimum to save them from starvation – just boiled manioc with pol sambol.

  ‘I have my ways.’

  ‘Nothing that will get us into trouble, I hope. I cannot go to university if I have a police record,’ Mahinda pointed out.

  ‘Nothing illegal.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll come with you to see Shivani, then. Just tell me how you’re going to get us into the cinema.’

  ‘My mum gave me fifty rupees to do a pooja for you. I reckon we go to the back of the market and buy an old pooja offering for twenty-five rupees and use the rest to see the film.’

  Mahinda felt embarrassed that Vannan’s poor parents would rather petition the gods for him to go to university than spend their hard-earned money on food, but Vannan was adamant.

  ‘Finish your manioc quick, machang. We don’t want to miss the start!’

  Not that they would have missed much had they been late anyway. The Jaffna Odeon across the way from the fort had been showing the same film for the past six years at a quarter past midday every day – Sholay, the story of two criminals hired to catch a ruthless bandit. Mahinda and Vannan knew the dialogue by heart, though neither could speak nor understand Hindi.

  ‘They don’t make them like they used to,’ Vannan sighed contentedly several hours later as they left the smoke-filled cinema. Out in the fresh air, he rolled yet another cigarette with the finest tobacco from his father’s farm.