Mistress: A Novel

by Anita Nair

  We went back to my father’s house in Shoranur. It was vacation time and we played all day. Sometimes I would catch my father’s eyes on me and would feel a shyness come over me. What did he see, I wondered. In the evening, the tutor would arrive to teach me Malayalam and everything else that would make it easier for me to fit into Raman Menon’s school.

  One day, as the boys and I bathed, I felt them staring at my genitals. ‘What is wrong?’ I asked. ‘It’s not any different from yours!’

  My brothers looked at each other. They did that a lot, swallowing words and exchanging thoughts with conspiratorial glances.

  ‘Is it all there?’ Babu asked. He spoke his mind more easily than Mani did.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, holding up my penis.

  The two of them bent forward to examine my penis. ‘He is right,’ Mani told Babu. ‘It is all there. So what did Amma mean by asking us to find out if the tip was missing?’

  I turned away. A great heaviness settled on me. Who was I? What manner of creature was I to have the tip of my penis missing?

  Then Mani began to tickle me and giggling, I forgot all about missing penis tips.

  School began. I was in the second form when I discovered that, while I would never be brilliant, I was better than average. Achan patted me on the head and said, ‘Very good. But what about arithmetic?’

  I smiled. ‘It’s simple enough,’ I said, happy to be able to please this man who my brothers claimed was seldom pleased.

  He patted my head again. ‘Good. To be able to run a business, you need to conquer numbers.’

  I turned thirteen in November. There was a big lunch to which everyone was invited. ‘It is the first time I’ve celebrated his birthday,’ I heard Achan tell Amma. ‘I am thirteen years late, so we must try and compensate for the missing years. I owe that much to his mother and him.’

  My father asked a jeweller to make me a gold chain, and the tailor brought me new clothes. My tongue was coated with the many flavours of the feast and my heart tripped with joy. My father loved me. My father had loved his wife, my mother.

  The next day, a stone fell into this calm pool of my life. Hassan sat on the bench next to mine. ‘Tomorrow is my brother’s sunnath kalyanam,’ he whispered.

  My ears perked up at the word kalyanam. ‘Isn’t he rather young to be married?’ I asked with a grin.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t a wedding. That is a nikaah! This is his circumcision. True believers of Islam have their foreskins slit. It’s very painful, so they stuff his mouth with pori so he can’t scream through the puffed rice, and then it is done. It hurts awfully, but after that there is to be a biriyani lunch. You must come if your father will let you,’ Hassan said.

  I said nothing. I thought of Mani and Babu peering at my penis. I thought of Amma asking them to examine it. I thought of the servant lady saying, ‘It is a wonder that he picked up our prayers so easily.’

  I had thought that she meant my intonation.

  Everything I had used to shape my existence had suddenly no truth, no validity.

  That night we went to a temple. I had never been to a temple before. At the entrance to the temple was a signboard that said: No Entry for Non-Hindus.

  I felt a vice-like grip on the foot I had put forward. I saw that Amma noticed me hesitate. I felt Achan’s hand at the small of my back, pushing me ahead.

  I remembered suddenly what Mary Patti had once said. My father knew the Bible like no one else did, she said. I had assumed that my father was a Christian, like everyone else in Nazareth. Then I discovered that he wasn’t.

  No one ever spoke of my mother. Nobody seemed to want to. Mary Patti, the doctor, and now Achan. ‘What is there to say?’ they said, when I asked. ‘She was a young girl who died in an accident.’

  Now I know why they were so brief. They hadn’t known what else to say. That my mother was a Muslim. That I had no religion to call my own. That I wasn’t the ‘I’ I knew.

  Which was why I had to be Koman with no tags, tails or suffixes.

  My heart beat faster than the drumbeats that reverberated through the temple grounds.

  I heard my father mutter, ‘What have you been telling him?’

  I saw him glare at Amma. She had an aggrieved expression. ‘Nothing. Don’t blame me! I didn’t say anything.’

  Achan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Quiet!’ His hiss crackled through the air.

  ‘Ever since he arrived, you’ve been different. What is it? Do you wish she was here? Look at me. I am Devayani. Not Saadiya, or whatever her name was. I am not her. I can’t be her.’

  I walked on. I didn’t want to be sucked into the bones of their quarrel.

  Mani and Babu came running. ‘Come on,’ they urged. ‘The performance will begin any time now.’

  On a raised platform, in the centre, was a huge lamp. The wicks glowed. Two men held a multi-coloured silk cloth. The beat of the drums ground all noise out. The pounding in my chest intensified.

  The singing began. It was a chant. What did it mean?

  ‘What is it?’ I asked Mani.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Mani shrugged.

  I let the singing wash over me. What did it matter whether I understood or not?

  The darkness of the night, the flickering wicks of the lamp, the shadows, the waiting. I wasn’t sure what brought it on, but it swamped me, the sensation of something about to happen.

  I heard the tinkle of bells approaching. What would the dancers look like, I wondered. Suddenly I caught a fleeting glimpse. Behind the curtain were two majestic creatures, their crowns elaborate and their costumes voluminous. As the drumming began, they held the curtain and peered over it. Their hands moved the cloth this way and that in a rhythmic motion.

  I knew anticipation again.

  When the curtain was finally taken away, I saw them, those magnificent beings in their costumes. Beneath the proudly perched crowns, their faces were painted green. Their red-tinted eyes were shaped with thick, black lines and their mouths were an exaggerated red. Along the jaw from one ear to another was a white frame. Every inch of their being resonated with a sheathed-in power. They looked ready to conquer worlds, vanquish enemies and bestow blessings. My heart turned on its axis. Who were they? Men or gods?

  They dwarfed everything around them: the people waiting to see them perform, the singing, and even the deity within the temple.

  ‘Etta, you are hurting me,’ I heard Babu whimper.

  In my excitement I had forgotten that his hand lay in mine and I was squeezing it.

  Then Mani whispered, ‘Etta, Achan says we must go.’

  I turned to where my father stood. ‘Please, a few minutes more,’ I implored with my eyes.

  That night, my mind flitted from one moment to the other. The day had been compounded of many: Hassan. My mother. Amma’s anger. The temple. The drumming. Finally I arrived at the dancers, and there it settled.

  Those glorious men who had pressed out my every uncertainty with the magnificence of their presence. Would I be as magnificent if I was one of them?

  The next day was a Saturday and a school holiday. ‘Let us try something,’ I told Mani and Babu.

  I gathered a turmeric root and charcoal from the kitchen. From the niche in the wall near the bathroom, where soap and other washing things were kept, I took some blue indigo used to whiten the clothes, and some vermilion from the puja room. ‘Bring me a basket, an old white cloth, and that red towel hanging outside,’ I told Mani, who could be trusted with the most complicated of errands. As for Babu, I sent him to find a piece of cardboard.

  My father’s house was new. Its attic held no remnants of the past. It lay vacant and quiet, trapping sun motes and dust. And it was here that I fashioned my destiny.

  I made a paste of the turmeric and indigo to make a passable green. Trying to recreate the faces in my mind, I applied it to my face. I drew the charcoal around my eyes and mixed the vermilion with water to tint around my mouth. I cut a hole in the bottom of the fla
t basket and wedged it around my waist. I draped a cloth around myself and slung the red scarf around my neck. I cut the cardboard in the shape of the frame the dancers had worn around their jaw. I made two holes at either end of the fan-shaped piece, drew two pieces of thread through them and wound them around my ears. Then I peered at myself in the shard of mirror I had. I wasn’t the man-god I had seen yesterday. But I wasn’t the ‘I’ I knew.

  I could be anybody. I could be god or demon. I, Koman, age thirteen, with no tags, tails or suffixes, had a face I could recognize.

  ‘What is happening here?’ Achan said, walking into the attic.

  He stared at me. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. His voice emerged low and hollow, as if the climb had robbed him of all air.

  ‘I …’ I said. The ‘I’ rolled off my tongue easily. ‘I was seeing if I could be a kathakali dancer.’

  ‘And?’

  Achan looked at me. I had never seen him look as sad as he did just then. ‘You are too young to know.’

  I didn’t offer an answer.

  ‘You might change your mind when you are older,’ he added, filling the attic with the extent of his doubt.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. I touched his elbow and murmured, ‘When I am a veshakaaran, I will know who I am.’

  ‘What is there to know? I can tell you who you are.’ Achan’s voice rose.

  ‘It isn’t that.’ I paused. He knew what I meant, but it was his place to protest.

  For two long years I clung to my dream and denied Achan his right to impose his will.

  There were frequent arguments. One evening, I heard about a performance at a temple nearby. I sneaked out when everyone was asleep and stayed there all night till dawn broke and the performance was over.

  My father was furious. ‘I will not tolerate this. I will not let you grow into a vagabond.’

  ‘But, Achan,’ I protested, ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I just wanted to see the performance.’

  ‘You didn’t think it was necessary to ask my permission?’

  ‘I didn’t think you would let me go,’ I said.

  ‘When you knew that I wouldn’t approve, why did you do it?’ Achan’s fingers pressed into my shoulder.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘When I hear the drum beat, all I know is I want to be there.’

  Another time, he found me practising expressions in the mirror. ‘Why are you making faces?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not making faces,’ I said. ‘I am trying to practise expressions.’

  ‘What do you need to practise expressions for? Are you going to be a clown?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I will be a veshakaaran.’

  My father struck the flat of his palm against his forehead. ‘What am I to do with this boy? Why won’t he see sense?’

  He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me away from the mirror. ‘Go, go to your room and work on your algebra. That is what you need, to do well in life. Not this facility to make faces. Get that idea out of your head. Do you hear me?’

  Raman Menon sent for my father. ‘I can’t help him if he won’t help us. He is clever and has a good mind, but he isn’t interested. What is wrong? I have asked him, as have all his teachers, but all he will say is “My father knows!”

  ‘What is it that he won’t tell us? If we knew, we could do something to help him. You know the proverb: you can take a horse to water but twenty men can’t make it drink. Koman is the horse.’

  Achan looked at my face. He sighed and said, ‘He wants to study kathakali.’

  Raman Menon tried to check his features from contorting into a grimace.

  He turned to me. ‘Very well. Do your matriculation first.’

  ‘It will be too late. I will need to study for at least ten years before I can even think of performing,’ I said.

  When the school year finished, Achan took me across the river and so began my tutelage as a wearer of guises.

  My days followed a pattern. A programme of order in which every nerve and muscle in my body and every sinew of thought had only one purpose: to enable me to transform myself.

  ‘You must withdraw into yourself. Shut your mind to questions and the need to know why. Later there will be time for all that. But for now, you mustn’t let doubts prey on your mind. Do as I say and only as I say,’ Aashaan said on my first morning there.

  Aashaan. His face was all planes and shadows, with its broad forehead, high cheekbones and stern jaw. Aashaan had a face that said it would not tolerate insubordination of any sort. Yet, his eyes gave him away. They were the softest eyes I had ever seen. Luminescent, but soft. Mostly, he narrowed them in displeasure at what we were doing, and then they looked like black ants scuttling over our bodies, determined to seek faults. Aashaan, our teacher, whose voice belied the strength of his palms and the expanse of his chest. Aashaan, who stood six feet tall and whom everyone knew as a veshakaaran who couldn’t be matched but for …

  ‘But for what?’ I asked Gopalan, a second-year student.

  ‘You will find out one of these days,’ he said cryptically.

  What did he mean? I knew Aashaan had a temper that would make even a raging elephant seem like a gambolling lamb. Was it that?

  One morning, during the preliminary exercises, my eyes wandered to a tree outside the kalari. The classroom was open on three sides and there were huge old trees around it. Trees that were home to many birds and squirrels. I thought I saw a streak of blue. Was it a kingfisher? I didn’t realize that my rhythm had faltered.

  I knew when I felt something strike my shins. The pain was excruciating and I yelped. It was Aashaan’s stick, which he used to beat rhythm on a wood block. I paused. The rest of the class paused as well.

  Aashaan rose from where he was sitting on the ground with a little leap. He came towards me, glowering and snarling. ‘Where was your mind wandering, you fool? If you can’t get your basic taalam right, what kind of a dancer will you be? Rhythm. Don’t forget that, ever. You miss a step and you’ve ruined it all. Do you understand?’

  As if Aashaan couldn’t contain his anger, he reached out and slapped me. ‘I’ve been watching you. Do you think I don’t know what goes on in your mind? You think you love kathakali and that should suffice. No, it doesn’t. You have to work hard at it, or you are just a dilettante playing at being an artist. A true artist is someone who knows that every step has art and craft sculpted into it. That is how you acquire your style. If you can’t work as I expect you to, I don’t want you here. Do you understand?’

  I felt my eyes fill. I was fifteen years old and no one had ever humiliated me so. Aashaan looked at me for a moment and then his attention shifted to a boy in the line behind me.

  ‘Ah, there you are. Sundaran. The handsome one, who thinks a handsome face is enough to become a handsome dancer. I suppose you really think that is true and so you needn’t abide by the rules of practice,’ he said, moving towards Sundaran. ‘I saw you playing the fool this morning at the kannusadhakam. The eye-practice session is for you to strengthen your eye muscles. If you prefer to bat your eyelids like a sixteen-year-old girl, you might as well give up and join a drama troupe. Or study a woman’s dance. This is kathakali. Kathakali is for men. It needs a man’s strength and conviction. Even when you perform the coy Lalitha or the gentle Damayanti, your eyes will have to remember the rigours of all you have subjected them to and from that tutelage learn to be a woman’s eyes. But first, your eyes have to be trained to do as your mind desires. A widening eye is abhinaya. You are depicting an emotion. A widened eye is merely a static expression. Kathakali has no place for static expressions.’

  I never missed a step again. And despite the humiliation of that day, I didn’t bear Aashaan a grudge or hate him. How could I? He was a veshakaaran who gave his interpretation of each character a dimension no one else could. And yet …The unspoken words emerged when he performed. Aashaan was almost always drunk when he performed.

  He never missed a step. His mudra
s were masterly. His interpretations were the most erudite. His vigour was overwhelming. But he walked a tightrope of control. One more drop and he would be tottering, and each time he performed, his reputation was at stake. ‘When he knows he can ruin everything, why does he do it?’ I asked Gopalan.

  Sundaran and I were watching him as he applied make-up to his face before a performances at the institute. Aashaan was sitting outside, smoking a beedi. He had been drinking all afternoon.

  Gopalan shrugged. He was disinclined to talk. ‘He should know better. That is all I can say.’

  Aashaan knew better than anyone else the sanctity of the stage. That is why it baffled me, his tendency to risk everything.

  Two days later, in class, Aashaan would pretend none of us had seen him in a drunken stupor in the green room after the performance. He would look us in the eye and he would say, ‘On the stage, you are not you. That should be apparent in your rhythm and expression. Don’t think as you perform, or your performance will be a cerebral activity. Let your body speak who you are. You are the brahmin Kuchelan, now. You must be done with your thinking and imagining before you arrive on the stage.

  ‘For now I will teach you how to become Kuchelan. Imagine that you are a pauper. That you have nothing, no hope of anything or anyone. Your sole hope is that Krishna will remember that you were once friends at school. And it is that tenuous link you hope to appeal to. It is with this on your mind that you visit Krishna. You have been told by your wife to ask him to help you. To give you something you may feed your hungry children. So you go to him, but when you see him, you realize that you cannot ask him for anything. All your expectations are in your mind, your eyes, but you dare not speak them. Now think of a similar experience in your life.’