Cinnamon Gardens

by Shyam Selvadurai

  “Well, I’ll give her a good scolding and confiscate the bicycle,” Louisa said, not wanting to hear a litany of her errors in the way she had brought up her daughters.

  Philomena was not satisfied. It was clear to her that Cousin Louisa did not view this infraction with the seriousness it deserved. The time had come for her to take charge. And she knew just the solution for that Annalukshmi, the remedy that never failed.

  “Listen, cousin,” Philomena said, sitting forward in her chair. “I’ll tell you what we will do. Let’s marry off Annalukshmi. Best thing. Nothing settles a girl like marriage. There are some nice Tamil boys in our congregation and I could easily arrange a match.”

  Louisa was, at first, surprised by the suggestion. Then a sense of relief took hold of her.

  “Do you actually have any one in mind?”

  “Well, there’s that Worthington boy who’s just got a good position in the Postal Services. The Lights are looking for someone for their son and so are the Macintoshes.”

  Louisa clasped her hands together. “How wonderful!”

  Philomena frowned, disconcerted by her enthusiasm.

  Louisa grasped Philomena’s hand tightly. “Now remember your promise, cousin. I wish to see these young men as soon as possible. I shall be very disappointed if I don’t.”

  “I … I shall see what I can do about it.” Philomena stood up. She bid her cousin goodbye and went down the verandah steps to her waiting rickshaw, a little suspicious. Her plan had been too eagerly seized upon.

  Once Philomena had left, Louisa felt tired. She sensed a terrible headache coming on and retired to her room to lie in bed with the blinds rolled down, a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne on her forehead. Though she had every intention of reprimanding Annalukshmi, Louisa could not bring herself to be truly upset about her daughter riding that bicycle. Hadn’t she herself rebelled once, thought she was above societal regulations. Hadn’t she eloped and married Murugasu? Still, she knew that she had to protect her daughter’s reputation. Louisa, all the same, could not help smiling when she thought of the look of horror that must have crossed her cousin’s face when she saw Annalukshmi flying by on her bicycle.

  Louisa’s mind dwelt for a moment on Miss Lawton. While she disapproved of the headmistress’s progressive ideas filling her daughter’s head, she could not help but be flattered and honoured that such an influential, almost legendary, figure like Miss Lawton had bestowed friendship on her daughter, had taken such a personal interest in her. Though Miss Lawton was in her fifties and hence only about ten years older than her, Louisa had to admit she was a little in awe of her. She had been a student at the Colpetty Mission School when Miss Lawton first arrived as assistant headmistress. Even then she had commanded respect from teachers and students alike.

  Murugasu’s photograph was on the bedside table. Louisa picked it up and looked at it. It was one that he had given her while they were courting. There he stood, leaning on a pedestal, one arm on his hip, his left foot crossed over his right. He was wearing a light-coloured suit, a sola topi in hand, his moustache stylishly curled at both ends. He radiated vigour and satisfaction, but also impatience, as if he had been walking along and the photographer had begged him to pose for a moment. His half-smile said he was merely humouring the photographer and he would be off about his business in a moment.

  Louisa thought of the first time she had met him. It had been at the Kuala Lumpur Mission Church, where her late father, Reverend Barnett, had been sent to administer to the needs of the numerous Jaffna Tamil Christians who were employed in the Malaya Civil Service and railways by the British. Jaffna, because of its arid, infertile environment and its proliferation of missionary schools, had provided the necessary recruits to Malaya. Louisa had gone to keep house for her father, as her mother had long been dead.

  Murugasu’s reputation had preceded him, and even before she met him, she knew of him as the man who had beheaded the Gods in his family shrine before coming out to Malaya a Christian convert. While she served tea and biscuits to the parishioners, she had been aware of him staring at her. When she felt he was not looking, she had glanced in his direction too, feeling admiration for the passion with which he had acted. Even then he had been rotund, his stomach pushing out his coat. She could tell he was very uncomfortable in his white cotton suit, that it restricted him, made him sweat constantly. Yet his very lack of comfort, the way he wriggled his shoulders, the damp stains in the armpits of his coat, had caused a pleasant sensation to spread through the back of her neck.

  Of course, her relatives, the Barnetts, had objected and continued to object long after they were married. Their list of complaints was long. He peppered his English with too much Tamil; refused to take a Christian surname like other converts (since Hindus had only one appellation, it was customary for them to take a Christian surname. Murugasu had chosen instead his grandfather’s name, Kandiah). He had refused to give his daughters Christian names; chewed betel leaves; belched after a meal; did not know how to use cutlery properly; smelt of stale sweat because he didn’t use talcum powder. He was just too newly Christian. The things they disdained – his sweating, his red skin, his smell – Louisa associated with his ardour. For when she had looked at the pinched faces of her cousins, especially the female ones, she had known they had not experienced true passion.

  Louisa recalled Murugasu’s first visit to her house. Her father had left them unchaperoned for a moment. The instant he had gone in, Murugasu rose from his chair and, with absolute confidence, as if he were going to get a biscuit from the table, crossed over, took her startled face in his large hands, and kissed her expertly. If any other man had done that, she would have protested, if only for the sake of conformity. Yet, with him, it seemed squeamish to do so and would have earned his scornful puzzlement.

  Louisa rubbed the side of her arm at the thought of the love and passion they had shared. She looked at the empty space of bed beside her, not even a pillow on it, the bare clothes-horse on his side of the room. She wanted to weep at how desolate her marriage had become. His sister, Parvathy, she blamed her. Yet, even as Louisa said this to herself, she knew it was not really Parvathy’s fault. She had simply been the bearer of bad news.

  Parvathy’s husband had got a job on the Malayan railways and they had come to Kuala Lumpur. After fourteen years, Murugasu met his sister again. Louisa marked that meeting as the beginning of the demise of her marriage. When Murugasu saw his older sister standing there in the doorway of their house, he silently fell to his knees and touched his hand to her feet in a gesture of respect. Parvathy raised him up. She ran her hand over his head and said, “Appa is no longer of this world.” Then Murugasu began to weep. Louisa had run to him, had tried to hold him from behind, but he had twisted out of her grasp and fallen at his sister’s feet again, burying his head in her lap.

  Later, through various conversations with Parvathy, Louisa, in an attempt to understand her changed husband, had come to know of the troubled relationship between Murugasu and his father, which had culminated in his walking into the family shrine room with a wooden stick and mutilating the clay idols. It was a relationship between two people who loved each other deeply but were too similar in temperament to ever exist in peace side by side.

  When the girls returned home for lunch, they found the drawing room deserted. They went to see if their mother was in the kitchen. Their servant, Letchumi, was alone in the kitchen grinding some spices, the oblong rolling stone rumbling as she pushed it back and forth over the flat slab on which the spices lay. Then she scraped the spices off the rolling stone, only to repeat the laborious process many times.

  Letchumi informed them that Louisa was lying down.

  “Is something wrong?” Kumudini asked.

  “Barnett Amma came to visit,” Letchumi said in a tone which implied that was explanation enough.

  The sisters looked at each other nervously.

  “I wonder what the Devil Incarnate wanted,” Annaluk
shmi said.

  The girls went to Louisa’s door. Kumudini opened it quietly and put her head inside. Louisa seemed asleep. She was about to shut the door again when Louisa said, “Come in, girls. I’m awake.”

  Silently they filed in and stood at the foot of the bed. Kumudini took Louisa’s handkerchief off her forehead and checked to make sure that she was not running a temperature.

  “It’s nothing. Just a headache.”

  She waited until Kumudini put the handkerchief back. Then she looked at Annalukshmi. “Aunt Philomena came to visit. She saw you on Green Path.”

  Annalukshmi’s eyes widened in dismay.

  “You deliberately lied to me,” Louisa said, raising her voice. “You went behind my back and did what I forbade.”

  Annalukshmi swallowed, not knowing what to say. She saw that she had exposed her mother to the scornful gossip of her family, betrayed her to their common enemy. From the time they were very small and pestered their father to repeat over and over again the story of how their parents fell in love, the Barnetts had always been the dragons that guarded the princess. “Ah come on, Amma,” she said after a moment, her voice cracking slightly. “It was just for fun.”

  Louisa thought she was trying to be dismissive of her reprimand. “Fun!” she cried, sitting up in bed, the handkerchief sliding off her forehead. “How dare you …” But then she lay back in bed, her headache coming on again. She waved her hand, dismissing her daughters. “Go and have your lunch.” When they had reached the door, however, Louisa said, “Kumudini, tell the gardener to take that bicycle and lock it in the shed.”

  She glared challengingly at her daughter, and this time Annalukshmi did not protest.

  4

  Of the folly which takes the unreal for real

  Comes the wretchedness of birth.

  – The Tirukkural, verse 351

  During their youth in London, the Mudaliyar Navaratnam and his younger brother had been quite the darlings of the Mayfair set. Their handsome appearance, their willingness to expound on Hinduism, Eastern thought, and, perhaps more important, their introduction of the Kama Sutra to many a Mayfair matron had meant that they never lacked for dinner invitations.

  The Mudaliyar’s brother had married an Englishwoman named Julia Boxton. Their only daughter, Sonia, was Balendran’s wife. Sonia, whose parents had died of smallpox soon after her birth, had been brought up in England by her aunt, Lady Ethel Boxton. It was in London that she and Balendran had met. In high-caste Tamil society, the marrying of cousins who were the children of a sister and a brother was held in esteem. Besides keeping wealth within a family, it also served to ensure that the bride’s husband and in-laws would not be strangers to her. However, the marriage of the children of two brothers or two sisters was considered almost incestuous, and such cousins even referred to each other as “brother” and “sister.” Balendran and Sonia’s alliance had thus raised a murmur of disapproval. Sonia being of half foreign blood and a stranger to Ceylon had, however, somewhat mitigated the objections.

  Balendran’s house was a short drive from Lotus Cottage and Brighton. Unlike the rich neighbours his father had in Cinnamon Gardens, Balendran’s neighbours were middle-class people. He and Sonia had chosen to live in this unfashionable area because they loved being close to the sea, and because of the rustic environment around them. Their road, named Seaside Place, was not even tarred and there were only three houses on it, his being the last before the railway line and the sea beyond. His property, which he had named Sevena, from the Sinhalese word for shade or shelter, was vast and included all the land between his house and the sea. Except for a small, cultivated garden, the rest of the land had been kept in its natural state, with coconut trees and cacti of various types.

  At lunch, Balendran said to Sonia, “I had an interesting talk with Appa this morning.”

  “Ah, yes. I was wondering what all that was about.”

  “It seems that a friend of mine, a certain Richard Howland, might be travelling with the commission to Ceylon. As Dr. Shiels’ right-hand man.”

  Sonia stopped eating. “Appa wants you to get Mr. Howland to influence Dr. Shiels,” she said indignantly. “You’re not going to, obviously.”

  Balendran did not reply. For the first time, the reality of what his father was asking was before him – that he set aside his own opinions on the commission and persuade Richard to see things his father’s way. He had been too arrested by the thought of Richard’s arrival to really comprehend this.

  “Bala! Tell me you’re not going to.”

  Balendran glanced down at his plate, disconcerted. “I … I don’t know. Appa has asked me to –”

  “For God’s sake, Bala, be serious. Are you going to tell this Mr. Howland that you believe universal franchise is the worst thing for Ceylon? Especially female franchise, for women are needed for – what is it – ah, yes, ‘the quiet discharge of important duties at home.’ ”

  Balendran was taken aback by the extent of her anger.

  “And what about self-government?” Sonia continued. “Will you tell him you believe none of the powers of the governor should be altered? That he should continue to be a despot? It’s a betrayal of all we believe in. After all we’ve discussed and hoped for, how can you turn around and do this?”

  Sonia began to eat again, angrily clinking her cutlery against her plate.

  Balendran had to admit that his wife was right. It was indeed a betrayal of everything that not just he, but Sonia also, believed in. Still, he had already promised his father that he would speak to Richard. Balendran sighed.

  Sonia heard his sigh, but she read it as impatience with her charges. She shook her head. The greatest dispute between her husband and herself was over his blind obedience to his father and her constant irritation and annoyance at it. It made little sense to Sonia, like a man of science believing in goblins. Balendran, she knew, was not an ineffectual man. After he had taken over running the family estate and temple, they had flourished in a way they had never done under his father. Intellectually, he was his father’s superior and was thoroughly knowledgeable on all aspects of Tamil culture and religion. In fact, she had often told him he should put his knowledge down in a book. He always demurred, and she could not help but feel that it was in deference to that atrocious book the Mudaliyar had written, entitled The Splendours of the Glorious Tamil Tradition. She thought of how the Mudaliyar had been invited to America because of the book and passed himself off as a great Hindu sage; how those gullible Americans had flocked to his classes to learn meditation from a man who had not gone much further in meditation than any woman who did her daily pooja at the family shrine. Renunciation was the first step to true meditation, something her uncle knew nothing about. He had become even more indulged since he returned with that foolish Miss Adamson and her master-this and master-that.

  The Mudaliyar was a son, a first son at that. Sonia knew, from various conversations she had heard, that he had been hopelessly indulged. From the time he was a child, he had been taught to feel his superiority, his right never to be thwarted. He was free to interrupt his mother’s conversation with his childish pipings, sure that he would be greeted with a fond “Ah, Sinna-Rajah is speaking.” When he wished, for his amusement, to horrify his elders, he would attempt a household chore. Then he would be sure to be greeted with appalled cries of “Sinna-Rajah is touching a broom!” “Sinna-Rajah is lifting a pot!” “Sinna-Rajah is cleaning his shoes!”

  Such a child, once he became a man, was like a blunt knife, unsharpened on the hard stone of adversity. In the twenty years of her marriage, Sonia had once or twice been forced to battle the Mudaliyar, and she had found that her uncle, when faced with the assertion of another’s will over his own, often reacted excessively out of a fear at his authority being questioned, a sense of the world falling away from him.

  Balendran and Sonia had finished eating and the houseboy began to remove their plates. Sonia glanced at her husband. A letter from their son
in England had arrived this morning, but she did not wish to tell Balendran the news when such conflict hung between them. It would stain his joy in receiving the letter.

  “Who is Richard Howland?” she asked as a gesture of reconciliation. “Haven’t heard you mention him before.”

  “An old school friend,” Balendran said, glad of the change of subject and her conciliatory tone. “We used to share a flat in London for a short while.”

  Sonia nodded and waited for him to continue, but Balendran, as always, did not elaborate on his London days and she dropped the subject.

  “By the way,” she said as they began to eat dessert. “We got a letter from Lukshman this morning.”

  “A letter!” Balendran cried in delight, putting down his spoon. “How is he? No, don’t tell me. I want to read for myself.”

  She smiled at his happiness and felt, as they did in anything to do with their son, a sudden closeness between them.

  Once they had retired to the drawing room for coffee, Sonia gave him the letter and then sat down across from Balendran. He opened it and began to read. When he smiled and laughed out loud, she cried, “What? Which part are you reading?”

  “The part where your Aunt Ethel descended on his digs, declared them unfit, and had him removed to her house.”

  Sonia laughed. “Poor Lukshman,” she said.

  “Poor Aunt Ethel.”

  When Balendran finished reading the letter, he put it down on his lap and stared ahead of him. Sonia could tell he was filled with the same melancholy she had felt after reading it.

  Balendran sighed and shook his head. “We shouldn’t have let him go.”

  “We had to, Bala. He needed to further his education. We parents are simply the bows. Our children the arrows we shoot into the future,” she said, citing the thought from the philosopher Khalil Gibran that she had often used to comfort them.