Saree

by Su Dharmapala

  ‘There aren’t many coming,’ Sarojini told him. ‘Just Kalpana’s mother, father and brothers. Her uncles and aunts have declined the invitation.’

  ‘His family aren’t coming?’

  ‘Of course not. His sister sent a note asking Abhay to check that the baby had three birthmarks on his back. Apparently all baby boys born into their family have them.’

  Rakesh snorted in frustration. ‘She is a nasty one. Always reminds me of a banderi, hissing and spitting! This is a big occasion. It is important that as many people come to celebrate the little one’s birth as possible!’

  Sarojini shrugged. What could she do?

  ‘And I suppose your devadasi sisters aren’t coming either. They won’t celebrate the birth of a male child, will they!’ Rakesh sneered.

  Sarojini looked up curiously at him. Yes, the devadasi never celebrated the birth of a male child. They were perhaps the only people in India who did not light firecrackers and boil fresh cow’s milk at the birth of a boy. Yet there was much fanfare and joy at the birth of a girl. There were celebrations. There were ceremonies. There were official announcements and gifts for the girl’s mother. No devadasi girl child was ever drowned in a bucket or fed to the crocodiles.

  ‘You know a lot about the sisterhood for an army major,’ Sarojini countered, looking Rakesh in the eye.

  ‘That is probably because my devadasi lineage spans five generations. You were made one, but I was born one. My mother was a devadasi.’

  Sarojini saw Kalpana and Abhay surrounded by a veritable bevy of well-wishers before she darted out through the side door of the mess hall. What had been planned as a small celebration had taken on a life of its own. It was supposed to have been a simple get-together for the dozen or so people coming to the temple, but now it was a full-scale social event for everyone who was anyone at the army base. Officers in full military regalia were throwing back tumblers of Red Label Johnnie Walker whisky, while their wives, bedecked in a maharajah’s fortune in gold, passed little Keshto around like a pudding.

  Yes, even Sarojini had to concede that Rakesh was not as mean-spirited as she’d thought him to be. He had organised the function and paid for the party from his own pocket. ‘Keshto is the closest thing I have to a nephew! If I don’t spend for him, who will? And this little boy has all the signs of becoming a great major general! Oh yes you do! Oh yes you do,’ he’d cooed at the little boy.

  Kalpana’s family were also beaming with joy. It was clear that Kalpana was the very epitome of a well-raised, sophisticated and dutiful army wife, smiling sweetly at everyone and ensuring that no one was left out of the conversation, or without a drink. She was finally being treated with the respect and adoration that she’d been born to.

  The other devadasi in attendance blended in. They did not stand out from the crowd of richly dressed army wives. Hovering in the background, they helped Kalpana with the food and behaved like sisters to their dear friend.

  But where was Karuna, Sarojini wondered, looking anxiously around the room. She’d sent him a message that the celebration had shifted to the mess hall. She’d even told Kalpana’s house servant to pass the message on. Maybe Karuna hadn’t received it, she worried, and thought it best to walk down to the guardhouse and leave another message there.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Rakesh demanded as Sarojini darted out of the mess hall. ‘And in this heat?

  ‘To leave a message for my arari down by the guardhouse,’ she replied, looking up at the tall Captain and squinting against the sunlight. In his army regimentals, Sarojini had to admit that he cut a dashing figure. His features were lean and harsh and the broad shoulders that topped his muscular frame made him a favourite among the flirtier army wives.

  ‘The dwarf? Is he coming?’

  Sarojini nodded.

  ‘Come, I’ll take you down to the guardhouse. You’ll get a heat stroke in this sun if you walk down,’ he insisted, pulling out the keys to his jeep.

  Down at the guardhouse, Rakesh instructed the military policeman to contact him directly at the mess hall when Karuna appeared, and gave the specific instruction that the man should be transported to the mess hall directly by one of the many army vehicles nearby.

  When they returned to the mess hall, all the car parks had been taken. ‘Of course, the officers who were on duty last night will have just arrived,’ Rakesh cursed under his breath. He kept driving further and further away in search of a place to park. In the end they found a spot by a clump of trees almost as far away from the mess hall as the guardhouse.

  They walked in silence for a bit before curiosity overcame Sarojini. ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘No. She died of syphilis when I was about twelve.’

  ‘Oh. Who looked after you?’

  ‘I lived in and out of a few orphanages. I always did well at school, so I chose to join the army when I was seventeen and entered Dehradun,’ he replied flatly. ‘Because my father was a highborn Kshatriya, the recruiting officer did not bother asking me who my mother was.’

  ‘Your father didn’t support you? He didn’t see you as a child?’

  ‘No. He had a wife and two children. But he came with me to my army recruitment interview. Which was really a lot more than I could have asked for.’

  ‘Was she a dancer?’ Sarojini asked. ‘Your mother?’

  ‘She was the greatest Odissi dancer in Orissa. Her body was more fluid than the Mahanadi that flowed through Cuttack. Looking at her tribhanga pose you’d think you were in front of the goddess herself.’

  ‘Ah, Sarojini, there you are!’ Karuna called from the door of the mess hall. He’d just arrived, bouncing happily along in an army jeep. ‘I was detained in Kanchipuram, my dear. I am so sorry for being late.’

  The rest of the afternoon passed along in a blur. Apart from helping Kalpana look after her guests, Sarojini was called upon by Aunty Pimmi to sing. ‘Come, child, come. Please sing us a song or two.’

  And she did, starting with a simple lullaby telling Keshto that no one would love him more than his own mother. That his parents would lay their lives down for him. That he was more important to them than India, than God and the very universe. That he was their universe now. Sarojini sang with no accompaniment. There was no sitar nor tabla. She didn’t need it. Sarojini sang from her heart and every note was pure and perfect.

  She sang one more song, then two. The guests had asked for more and more, and would not let her stop. By the time she’d finished, she’d sung for an hour and a half straight.

  ‘You are wonderful,’ Karuna whispered to her, coming close. ‘You are a delight to see and a treasure to possess.’

  Everyone came up to congratulate her on her performance.

  ‘We have Captain Rakesh to thank for this. He insisted that the entire officer corps come to this event. And had we been relaxing in our bungalows as we normally do on a Sunday, we would never have heard your beautiful voice,’ the brigadier of the base boomed, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘My mother used to sing me that lullaby. There is indeed no greater love than that of a mother!’

  The exodus started not long after. People made sure to take leave of both the family and Sarojini as they left, and Karuna joined the throng. ‘My dear Saro, I am afraid I have to go back to Kanchipuram,’ he explained.

  ‘But you just got here!’ Sarojini protested.

  ‘Yes, but Raju is having problems and I must help him. He has started a saree mill like the one he had in Sri Lanka and the other saree merchants are up in arms that he is paying Saliyas too much for their work.’

  ‘But Saliyas are some of the poorest people. Not much better off than us Shudras!’

  ‘Exactly, my dear, exactly! A man may spend a lifetime weaving silk but never be able to afford to give his wife a silk saree,’ he said. ‘But now I really must go.’ Handing over a gift to Abhay and Kalpana, he left, rushing back into Mysore to catch the late train east.

  Sarojini started to help Aunty Pimmi tidy up, placing
the bottles of whisky in a large bin. ‘Aunty Pimmi,’ Sarojini said, noting the lines of exhaustion on the older lady’s face, ‘why don’t you take Uncle Rai home. I can finish up. I am spending the night here with Kalpana.’

  ‘Are you sure, child? You have helped us a great deal already today.’

  ‘I am quite sure, Aunty Pimmi. Please go. It is a long drive back to Mysore and you have more grandchildren to tend to at home.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear, thank you,’ she said, but before she left she pressed into Sarojini’s hand two hundred rupees that Sarojini tried desperately to return.

  ‘I sang because I wanted to sing for Keshto,’ she insisted.

  ‘No, dear, you take it. I understand how you girls need to earn your money. If you save enough money from your singing and dancing, you can finally leave that awful dwarf!’

  ‘But he’s not awful!’ Sarojini cried.

  ‘Oh, my dear, he is. He truly is!’ Aunty Pimmi insisted, adding another twenty rupees as she left. ‘Save your money and start a little business. Become a singing teacher.’

  ‘She does not understand, does she,’ Rakesh observed, coming in as Aunty Pimmi went out. He’d been stacking some chairs away in a little anteroom and had probably overheard the whole conversation.

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘That you love being a devadasi,’ Rakesh said bitterly. He had been so kind and considerate that evening that it had been almost enough to make her change her mind about him, but it seemed she had been right after all.

  ‘I am not your mother!’ she said. ‘Don’t take your anger out on me!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your hatred of your mother has nothing to do with me, even if I am a devadasi too.’

  ‘You silly little fool! I love you!’ Rakesh declared. ‘Abhay spent his entire time in Kashmir looking at that stupid folded photo of Kalpana. Sitting across from him, I spent the entire time looking at you! I fell in love with you and came to Mysore for you, Sarojini. No one but you!’

  ‘Never talk to him about work,’ the wife of the lieutenant colonel advised. Although she was a busy mother of three, Mrs Meena Singh was the official hostess to all the new incoming officers’ wives at the barracks, serving tea and dispensing advice and vicious gossip all in the same breath.

  ‘So what do you and your husband talk about?’ Sunila, the wife of an up-and-coming captain, asked.

  ‘After twelve years of marriage? We talk about how we are going to pay the bills!’ Meena Singh laughed. ‘Enjoy your newlywed days. They don’t last for long. Especially not in the army!’ She turned to Sarojini. ‘So, young lady, how are you settling in?’

  ‘It’s a bit cold,’ Sarojini confessed with a shiver. It had been several months since she and Rakesh moved to Lucknow, yet this was only the second or third officers’ wives’ function she’d attended.

  ‘You’ll get used to it – and by the time you get used to it, it’ll be time to move again!’ the lady laughed. ‘We were once stationed in Rajasthan, and I had just got the hang of sweeping the floors to get the sand out of the house when we were moved to Kashmir! From the deserts to the snow!’

  Sarojini smiled, helping herself to a sweet biscuit. She was happy. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined her life would have turned out like this. Hot on the heels of Rakesh’s surprise declaration of love had come his transfer to Lucknow.

  ‘Come with me,’ he’d pleaded. ‘We’ll start our life in a new city. New city. New life.’

  ‘But my family – how will I support my family if I don’t work?’

  ‘Silly girl! I’ll support them, of course! I don’t have any family of my own so it would be my pleasure to share what I have with them. We won’t be any poorer for giving them a thousand rupees a month.’

  So they had gone to Gokak on their way to Lucknow, catching the train there and spending a few hours with Sarojini’s awestruck family. They had never seen an army man and Rakesh had all the debonair charm of a Bollywood film star as he came in and cheerily handed over gifts of money and food.

  But now it was Sarojini who felt uncomfortable, at the little afternoon get-together of army wives. Not because she was less well dressed than the others, less educated than them or even because she was a lower caste than them, but because she had to constantly bite her tongue.

  As at any gathering of young newly married women, the conversation invariably turned towards their husbands.

  There was Babitha only a girl of eighteen, who was married to a major twice her age and desolate with homesickness.

  ‘Army wives just have to bear up!’ Meena Singh told her, in a voice not too dissimilar to that of a drill sergeant. ‘Our husbands put their lives at risk for our Mother India, and all you can do is cry! Shame on you, girl!’

  All Sarojini wanted to do was to enclose the young girl in her arms and comfort her, to tell her that the pain would subside soon, that she would find new friends and interests, and if nothing else, having a family of her own would somehow cure the ache.

  Then there was Sukitha, who was a mess after her third miscarriage in as many months. ‘Just keep trying!’ the older lady advised. ‘Bear up and your next pregnancy will be fine!’

  Sarojini had had to take a rather large sip of her scalding tea to stop herself from blurting out that perhaps it were best if the young woman took a pippalyadi yoga and japa concoction for a few months before trying again. To let her body recover.

  She had almost had to leave the room and make excuses for an early exit when Nagina, a young Punjabi girl, confessed that she was finding marital relations with her husband terribly painful and unpleasant.

  ‘It is not supposed to be pleasant!’ Meena snapped. ‘It is supposed to be for making children and nothing more!’

  ‘So you don’t enjoy it either?’ Nagina asked.

  Sarojini looked around and there was a sea of nodding faces.

  ‘How can anyone enjoy anything so painful? It is disgusting!’ Babitha cried. ‘And he has to do it every night. Every night without fail. Even if I am feeling sick he does it!’

  ‘He even does it when I have my period,’ Nagina confessed. ‘While I am bleeding and in pain.’

  ‘Bear up, girls! Bear up!’ Meena commanded, unpinning her saree fall and flinging it determinedly over her shoulder. ‘I haven’t had a break from it in fifteen years, but you don’t hear me complaining. We are army wives. We are the backbone of India’s defence force. We can put up with a little discomfort for the protection of India.’

  Sarojini wanted to tell them they were wrong. So wrong. How could these girls take advice from a woman who’d only ever slept with one man?

  Marital relations did not have to be something to be ‘put up’ with. As a devadasi Sarojini had learned to enjoy sex. Mamaji had taken great pains to instil in them that what happened between a man and a woman was supposed to be pleasurable.

  ‘A woman who has never felt joy in bed is a half-woman. She knows not what it is to feel loved. Truly loved,’ Mamaji had insisted. ‘Sex is a high blessing, child. It is the greatest ecstacy your body can feel.’

  Still, as Sarojini walked along the busy army laneway to the little quarters that she and Rakesh shared, she could not help but be thankful. Thankful for never having to fear poverty again. For not having to work for a living, not dancing until her feet and back hurt and certainly not singing until her throat was sore.

  Sarojini let herself into her little house and sat in silence in the evening light for a moment. Darkness came earlier to Lucknow than it did to Mysore. It was just gone five in the afternoon, but she could already hear the crows crying as they finished the last of their daylight meal and headed to the hills. Pranay the cat was softly snoring in the corner.

  They lived in one of a string of prefabricated huts that offered little privacy. Nagina had not needed to reveal that she had intercourse with her husband every night. Living two doors down, Rakesh and Sarojini heard the young girl’s pro
tests, and her husband shouting and swearing as he forced himself on her. There were no plants or pretty wall hangings to cover the bare walls and muffle the noise, either. Rakesh was a military man and had no time for such frippery. ‘Shouldn’t we save that money and send it to your family? And what’s the point, we’ll be moving soon to somewhere else anyway.’

  But Sarojini could not or would not dwell on the uncomfortable feeling in her heart. She had achieved the dream. She wasn’t quite sure if she was in love with Rakesh, but he was in love with her. And for someone who had never experienced love, that was enough.

  Rakesh liked his food plain. ‘I am a simple man,’ he insisted. ‘Just plain roti and a single curry. No need to waste money on too many vegetables. Just put the vegetables in with the meat and make a mulligatawny out of it. We need to save money to send to your family,’ he’d remind her.

  Not that Sarojini ate much anyway. She only had the idali or rice left over from dinner for breakfast, made do with tea at lunch and shared something with Rakesh at dinner. ‘Careful, darling, you aren’t dancing anymore,’ Rakesh advised. ‘I see so many new army wives stack it on. All you girls ever do is go from house to house having tea parties!’

  Sarojini had not said anything. Rakesh had just come back from doing a gruelling week-long patrol along the Nepalese border, finding Maoist rebels and ousting them. She could see from his face that he was exhausted. He’d come home and fallen asleep in his fatigues for six hours before waking up just a few minutes before.

  ‘So, are you excited about the Brigadier’s ball?’ Rakesh asked, sitting down heavily. He looked expectantly towards the kitchen, so Sarojini jumped up to make him a cup of chai.

  ‘Yes, all the wives are going into town next week to buy sarees and shoes!’ she called from the kitchen. ‘I’m rather looking forward to it. I thought that maybe I could go in and visit the Hanuman temple in Aliganj and do a pooja for you before you go out on your next patrol.’