‘Oh my goodness!’ Babitha squealed, coming out to greet her friend. ‘How did you convince your husband to buy that saree for you? It cost 75,000 rupees!’
‘No, Babitha, the nawab and his wife kindly lent it to me for the night,’ Sarojini said, waving to the couple who had just dropped her off. Aisha waved back from the car window as they drove away, her face alight with joy.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Sarojini asked, pirouetting in front of Rakesh. In the shadows she could not quite see his face.
‘Who cares what he thinks?’ Babitha cried. ‘Come, Sarojini! You will be the envy of every woman here tonight!’
And she was. They all wanted to know who in town had draped her saree and stitched her blouse. ‘My goodness – it is a cross between a dancer’s saree drape and a classical nivi,’ Meena Singh said, trying to figure out the folds and pleats of the drape without unravelling Sarojini in front of all the guests at the ball.
‘I say, my dear, I can never lift my arms when I wear a saree jacket! Is this the brassiere cut?’ Mrs Benares even deigned to ask. The wife of the highest-ranking officer at the barracks, she never spoke to the wife of any man below Lieutant Colonel, and Sarojini flushed with pride.
‘You must be very proud, son,’ the Brigadier said, coming up and thumping Rakesh furiously on the back. ‘A beautiful and accomplished woman is an asset to any man!’
Giddy with all the compliments she had received, Sarojini did not think twice when the band struck up but went straight out onto the dance floor. This was her night. She would do it. She would find a way into Rakesh’s heart – a way for him to accept her as she was.
Music and dance came as naturally to her as breathing, and she could keep up with any beat. As she swayed and sashayed to the music, the bandmaster recognised a talented dancer and picked up the pace, urging his musicians on and pushing them to give their all.
After months of unhappiness and uncertainty, Sarojini felt a flood of joy as her body moved to the music’s powerful rhythm. Before long, the entire officer corps and their wives had surrounded Sarojini and were watching her dance, but she barely noticed. Movement made her free – it was how she expressed herself. This was what she had been born to do, what her long years of training had prepared her for. She was truly herself when she danced, and it felt good – very good – to be reminded of who she really was.
When the music stopped, it was not because the bandmaster or audience wanted it to, but because the maître d’ had kept sending nasty glances at the maestro, eventually sending a messenger to say that if they did not get a move on, the first course would be ruined!
Sarojini stopped to applause that shook the crystals on the chandelier above. She struck an artful pose, like one of the statues adorning the walls of the Hindu temples of Karnataka, lifting her arm so that the pallu of her saree cascaded down her back like a waterfall.
There was stunned silence. As she’d danced, no one had really taken notice of the pallu of her saree. But now they could see it. And it was breathtaking. The rubies of the eyes of the peacock flashed fire and a dazzling light reflected off the sapphires in its feathers, making it almost difficult to look at. More than one devout Hindu in the room wondered whether they were perhaps in the presence of divinity.
‘Not even the devadasi of Orissa, Karnataka or Tamil Nadu could dance as well as that,’ the Brigadier roared, clapping approvingly. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’
As the crowd dispersed, Rakesh strode onto the dance floor and dragged her off.
‘I say, I do hope the major is not going to be an idiot and chastise the poor girl,’ the Brigadier observed.
Rakesh pulled her by the arm out onto the verandah, away from the other guests. His face was contorted with rage, but he kept his voice low. ‘I cannot believe you could do that to me! After everything I have done for you and your family!’
‘Tell me, Rakesh, what exactly have I done to hurt you?’ Sarojini asked quietly.
‘How dare you! Is this how you repay my kindness? By ruining me?’
‘Rakesh . . .’
‘Women!’ he cried. ‘You are exactly like my mother! Now everyone will think that you are somehow connected with the devadasi. Only they can dance like that!’
‘Rakesh, I am not connected to the devadasi, I am a devadasi.’
‘Yes, I know!’ he hissed. ‘Nothing more than a common whore!’
Sarojini looked at him for a long moment. The pain of the final realisation was overwhelming. She had almost convinced herself that she loved Rakesh. She’d wanted to believe that someone could love her and she could love him in return, but she could no longer fool herself. The truth had struck her that evening as she’d stood in front of the mirror and seen herself, resplendent in the saree. She looked like a goddess. She was the goddess.
Draping that saree had been almost an ecstatic experience. From the first tuck she’d felt an inexplicable joy. A wonder. A love. As she’d pulled the saree around her waist, she’d thought of her life and all that she had learned, from her early days in the hamlet of stunted coconut trees to her time with Mamaji at Moona Mahal. As she’d pleated the pallu, she remembered the men in her life – Harindra, the young man she’d taken on in the slums, Karuna the dwarf and then Rakesh. And when she draped the second drape around her body she knew. She knew she had control over her life. Unlike the many thousands of women who had no control of their sarees or their lives, Sarojini had control. Indeed that was what the devadasi were famed for. Their ability to control their emotions and to be with their human partners.
As she arranged the pallu artistically over her shoulder, she’d believed it at last. Believed in her heart and soul that an ordinary life was not hers to be had.
Whatever her path might be, she was a true daughter of Yellamma and she would dedicate the rest of her life to the goddess. Rakesh could be a part of that life or choose not to. She had danced, showing him her true self, hoping he would find it in him to accept her as she was – but he could not. Without looking at him, Sarojini turned and started to walk towards the Mermaid Gate.
‘Where are you going?’ Rakesh called out. ‘Come back! Come back right now! You are mine!’
‘How can I be yours when I belong to the goddess?’
‘But I love you!’ Rakesh cried, the reality of what was about to happen nearly crushing him.
‘That may be true, Rakesh, but I love myself more,’ Sarojini said firmly before stepping away.
Walking into the darkness of the night and all the way to the nawab’s home, Sarojini’s heart beat firmly and fiercely. Whatever the future might hold, Sarojini had no fear. Unlike millions of women across the world, Sarojini had a choice.
The Fall
Mumbai, India, and Melbourne, Australia, 1997
Madhav loved India, he was sure, more than his own mother. The soil of Hindustan itself was holy. From the deep brown of the fertile plains of the Punjab to the deserts of Rajasthan and the snowy heights of the Himalayas. Holy. And her rivers. Oh, her rivers! The Ganges, the Mahanadi, the Yamuna and the Saraswati! All heavenly flows that brought grace, intelligence and life. The work of the gods themselves.
Yet Indians were defiling her. Inch by inch. Day by day. They talked on cellular phones – he was sure it was making the holy Indian air impure – and they drove cars, the noise drowning out the sound of the Vedas. Even the cows were not getting the respect they deserved! Why just last week he’d read that some American food chain was being allowed to set up in India. Of course they weren’t going to serve beef, but they did elsewhere!
But soon he could escape the noisy chaos of Mumbai. He just needed to get through the ordination ceremony unscathed and he could go to a temple. A quiet and peaceful temple where he could be at peace and work. He had his heart set on Varanasi, where the mighty Ganges made its way from the western Himalayas down to Bangladesh. There he could spend his days in prayer and contemplation and impart the wisdom of the Vedas to the ignorant masses.
It
was all just a matter of hours away. And everything was going perfectly. The principal of the seminary had ordained Madhav first, ceremonially dragging his five fingers dusted with vibuthi across Madhav’s brow and dotting his forehead with vermilion.
‘Our youngest graduate. Not even twenty-three yet!’ the old pundit announced with pride to the audience filled with parents and siblings. ‘Came to us when he was only seventeen and demanded entry. For four days he slept on the stairs outside my office to prove to me he was ready.’
All the other students rolled their eyes. They’d all heard the story before of course and some could even recite it in their sleep. Some did indeed recite it softy under their breaths.
‘Madhav heard the call of God not when he was teenager or even when he was a boy, but when he was a baby! He’d already memorised half the Puranas before he even came here!’
Even the worst of his detractors had to concede that Madhav had something of the divine in him, though. When he chanted the Bhagavad Gita his pronunciation was perfect, his intonation poetic, and if you closed your eyes, you could almost imagine that you were privy to the conversation between the Pandava Prince Arjuna and his guide Krishna before Arjuna started a war with his brother.
But the applause that had greeted Madhav when he received his Brahmin thread was muted. Neither his parents nor siblings were there. ‘Poor orphan boy,’ more than one mother observed, the lonesome look on his face piercing their hearts.
When the ceremony was finished, the other students’ parents swamped Madhav. A pundit of his calibre would be a rich man one day, and the mothers wanted him for their daughters.
‘No, aunty, no . . . I cannot possibly visit Uttar Pradesh,’ Madhav protested, looking over one lady’s shoulder to see her daughter hovering close behind. ‘I do not believe in marriage for myself!’
And then there were the fathers, who would not leave him alone, trying to extract promises from him to visit them in the city later in the week. ‘Come, beta, come. I know many good people who would be interested in a promising young man like you.’
‘No, sir no, I do not attend homes or private businesses. If you want your family or business to succeed, then you must do good karma. Have you done good deeds? Abstained from doing evil?’
‘What a devout pundit,’ more than one parent observed. ‘Rare to find one so pious these days.’
‘He must come from very good stock,’ another added. ‘It is such a pity he is an orphan.’
‘But he is not an orphan,’ one irritable graduate pointed out, as a look of horror dawned on Madhav’s face.
A flashy new Jaguar had just pulled into the temple grounds. As his fellow students and their families looked on, his mother and sisters stumbled out dressed in clothes more suitable for a Bollywood cocktail party than an austere Hindu seminary graduation!
Madhav rushed from the seminary to the principal’s office all in a dither. He should have been the first among the students to receive his posting. Temples from all over India vied for graduates from this seminary – that was why he’d chosen this seminary from the thousands all over India. But his parents and siblings had been impossible to get rid of. ‘Why are you here? How did you find out?’ he’d demanded of his mother in a stern undertone.
‘Vinod told me,’ his mother smiled, before defying Hindu custom to kiss her son fulsomely on his cheeks.
‘Vinod the gardener?’
‘Yes, he saw the notices up on the gates and he told me! We were on our way back to London and we thought we’d drop in. Now introduce me to your friends, beta!’
Pinky Patel was a born networker, and so was her husband.
His father was already working the reception hall. ‘Suresh Patel . . . I am sure you have heard of me . . . realtor to the stars! He shook hands with the other parents western-style, handing his business card over and flashing a megawatt smile.
Meanwhile his sisters were walking around the shrine room, chattering to each other in Hinglish and exclaiming over the little statuettes. ‘How quaint!’ they said to each other.
‘You aren’t supposed to touch them!’ Madhav snapped, following them and smacking their hands away. ‘It is disrespectful!’
The principal, Reverend Srinivasan, overheard him. ‘You speak English?’ he demanded.
‘But of course! He was born in Belsize Park and grew up there, until he got this crackpot idea he wanted to become a pundit!’ his elder sister replied, half in Hindi, half in English.
‘Then Daddy bought his business here, so now we spend half our time here and the other half back in London,’ his younger sister explained.
‘I am so sorry,’ Madhav said as he walked into the principal’s office later.
‘Sorry for what, puttar?’ the ancient principal asked.
‘For my parents . . . for being late.’
‘Your parents are your parents, child. They make you who you are. But I am glad that you were late.’
‘Why, venerable sir? Is there a problem with my posting to Varanasi? I spoke with the trustees of the temple there just last week.’
‘Yes, they were impressed . . .’ the Reverend Srinivasan said. ‘I just finished speaking to them myself. I was glad you were late because I got to speak to them myself finally.’
‘Why did you speak with them, sir?’
‘Well, young man, I needed to get their permission to release you.’
‘Release me from what?’
‘Why, release you from your posting in Varanasi. To send you abroad! When I told them that you spoke fluent English, they agreed entirely with me! See, we have so much trouble finding pundits to tend to the Hindu flocks who live in foreign lands.’
Madhav felt faint. He was being sent back to gloomy England he felt sure! There he’d have to do poojas and chant Vedas for a bunch of young Anglo-Indian kids who rocked up to temple half-stoned or straight from the pub.
‘So is it to be the temple in Willesden, East Ham or Merton?’ he asked.
‘Ferntree Gully,’ Reverend Srinivasan replied, pronouncing the English words with a great deal of difficulty.
‘Ferntree Gully? I can’t remember a Ferntree Gully anywhere in England,’ Madhav replied, feeling very puzzled.
‘No, silly boy. It is in Australia. In Melbourne, to be precise. We have a sizeable Indian population there now and they are crying out for pundit!’
The flight to Australia was awful. It took him five hours to fly from Mumbai to Singapore and then six hours from there to Melbourne. It took five hours just to fly from the top of Australia to the bottom of it! You could almost fly from London to Mumbai during that time if you had a good tailwind!
Madhav spent the whole time with his nose glued to the window, looking at the landscape below. The scenery was singularly uninspiring – a relentless mass of pale brown earth with not a river or range of mountains to break the monotony. He saw the odd lake or waterhole, but there was nothing, nothing, to compare to the mighty rivers of India.
He was picked up from the airport by a young man named Kumar, but he pronounced his name ‘Kuma’, without any ‘r’ at the end. Apparently these Australians did not pronounce the ‘r’ at the end of words– and sometimes they didn’t pronounce the end of a word at all. A television was called a ‘telly’ and university was called ‘uni’. Kumar told him all about it on the long drive from the airport in Tullamarine in the west to Ferntree Gully in the east.
Madhav could barely understand one in three words the friendly young man said. Once they’d got off the freeway and onto the surface roads, he’d felt a jolt of familiarity at the names of suburbs – Brunswick, Fitzroy and even Bayswater – but soon he realised there was something quite wrong.
‘Where are the people?’ he asked of the jolly Kumar.
‘Yeah . . . you’ll get used to it,’ the young man told him, taking his eyes briefly off the road to look at the tired pundit.
‘Used to what exactly?’ Madhav asked worriedly.
He could see suburb a
fter suburb of tidy houses but no people on the streets. In India, the streets were positively crawling with people. People going to get their groceries, people going to work, people going to each other’s houses, people, people, people. And cows. And dogs. And everything in between. London had been similarly busy, though perhaps without the cows.
‘Australians don’t get out and about much,’ Kumar told him. ‘Especially not around here. In the inner city you’d see bikes and trams, but out here in the sticks people just get in their cars to go to the shops. It must seem a bit strange to you – I know it freaks me out whenever I go to India and see all those people.’
‘But I’ve come to Melbourne, correct? The second largest city in Australia?’
‘Yeah,’ Kumar replied. ‘But the population of Melbourne is only about four million.’
Madhav gasped. ‘So much space for so few people?’ He thought about London, with its population of twelve million, so much smaller than the city they were crossing now, and Mumbai, which was even smaller, with over twelve million people.
‘Yes, as I said, you’ll get used to it. I struggle whenever I go home to India now – it’s like everyone is living on top of each other!’ But as Madhav looked out at the deserted streets, he doubted very much he would ever get used to it.
The leaves on the gum trees that surrounded the temple were a drab green and the dry earth below them a dull brown. It was as if a veil of colourlessness had been thrown over the Australian landscape, dimming and muting everything in sight. Sure the Dandenong Ranges were pretty enough; but compared to the majesty of the World Heritage listed Western Ghats that surrounded Mumbai, they seemed like little mounds of dirt.
And the temple itself, Sri Ganapathi Vinayaka temple, was uninspiring. Only a single spire of statues over the doorway! Why even the temples in London made more of an effort!
He went to sleep in his little room in the rectory of the Hindu temple feeling very miserable that night. Not only had he had to leave his beloved India, he’d come to a country bereft of people, colour and life.
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