As we walked down the dusty path, he would tell me stories of long, long ago. Akbar the Great, the Mogul emperor, had ruled India from 1542 to 1605. My father would tell me tales about Akbar’s encounters with a great man, Birbal, who was common and yet was known for his valuable advice, his wit, and his sense of humor. My favorite story was the one about bananas.
My father never told stories with the same color and enthusiasm that my mother would use; he spoke as though he were a historian relaying facts. Yet his tales fascinated me. He had a low, deep voice, and he spoke softly and slowly. Any normal five-year-old would have fallen asleep on his shoulders, but I clung to my father’s every word.
The Emperor, he said, had once invited Birbal to the court to share a basket of bananas. The Emperor devoured several of the yellow fruit and threw the peels over to Birbal’s side. When all the bananas were eaten, the Emperor laughed at Birbal and said, “Birbal, you are such a greedy person. Look at how many bananas you ate in one sitting!”
Birbal took a minute of silence to gather his thoughts. Then he said, “Maharajah Akbar, unlike you, at least I spared the peels.” And Birbal, with a smirk on his face, lowered his head and stared at the ground.
“What did the Emperor do, Father?”
“Nothing!”
“Why nothing?”
“He probably didn’t know what to do. Birbal had outsmarted him again.”
I wanted to be like Birbal and outsmart the world one day. I would fantasize about this while sitting on top of my father’s shoulders, clutching his chestnut-brown hair and listening to him tell story upon story as the sun slowly rose. Unlike my mother’s tales, Father’s stories would twist my mind in knots, puzzling it. Yet they all made me smile. For this reason, I loved going to the beach with my father in the early-morning hours.
By the waters, sometimes we would encounter the extraordinary. We would glimpse naked Fijians, men and women with light-brown skin and Afro-styled hair, tangled in passionate embraces under the rich coconut trees along the beach. Some would be moving rhythmically, panting and moaning, kissing and biting in a mad frenzy, as the first ray of sunlight flickered off their shiny, tanned skins.
I would feel a strange rush, not describable in ordinary words, possess my immature body. My father would stiffen under my weight as the naked women turned their heads over their shoulders, the small of their backs arched and their hands placed solidly on the ground behind them. They would look directly at us with dark, devilish glints in their eyes and lustful grins spreading across their flushed faces. One woman had a tiny tattoo of a butterfly visible on her naked back. I could not stop staring.
My father would clutch my dangling legs, turn around, and hurriedly walk back home. Yet that same night, as I tried to imitate the Fijians’ strange actions in my bed (to Manjula’s utter amusement), I would hear my father making the same noises with my silent mother in the next room.
5
Mnjula took me to the ocean, too, when the tide was low. She would grab my arm and limp all the way there, both of us barefoot, ignoring the villagers’ stares and even their polite greetings. Manjula never stopped to look at people or even speak to them. “Best to mind your own business,” she would say.
I would squat down on the stone wall and stare stubbornly at her. I did not want to mind my own business. And I definitely did not want to help her catch prawns and spear crabs.
“Come, Kalyana,” she would say impatiently, forcefully gripping me beneath my arms and dropping me down on the sand. Tiny orange crabs, feeling the vibration of our footsteps, scurried towards their holes. In the distance small fishing boats bobbed up and down on the waves. The breeze would feel warm against my bare skin.
Sometimes, if the sun was still high, Manjula would lean her spear against the seawall. Instead of gathering crabs, she would waste time: limping all over the beach, grinning and inspecting seashells, sometimes even shamelessly slipping one in her brassiere. She would find conch shells and hold them to her ear. “Listen, listen,” she would say plastering the shell to my ear, and as though she had made an amazing discovery, a triumphant grin would erupt on her small face.
I would hear the whistle of the winds and the sound of the waves of the ocean trapped in this shell. The sound always filled me with a simple joy. It made me wish that the day with my auntie would not end, that the night would never fall.
Because, when the sun began to disappear in the far horizon, drawing the tide in to the shore, Manjula would bring out her spear and stab the shallow waters, aiming for the little claw marks in the sand. My job was to carry the large burlap bag that would hold the live crabs. If the bag became too heavy, I would have to drag it across the wet sands.
Manjula would tell me to pay attention, but I could only stand still and imagine the crabs clawing and climbing their way out of the bag to crawl all over me, nipping me until I was bloody. Until I was dead. “Are you cold? What’s the matter with you, Kalyana?” Manjula would sound frustrated. I could only shake my head, unable to speak, and Manjula would shrug and continue piling crabs on top of each other in the beige sack.
As time stood still, I would picture in the clearest detail my imminent death. When the tide came in, it would surely take my dead body with it to the distant islands. Cannibals must live there, I was certain; my mother had told me stories. When the sea swallowed the sun and darkness wrapped its claws around the tiny island of Fiji, they would emerge from their caves, beating their drums and pounding their feet. They would shout and yell and light blazing fires, illuminating the night as they danced and sang strange, sacred songs until sunrise.
Manjula would go on spearing prawns and crabs and putting them in the burlap bag.
At home I was no longer afraid of the crabs, but still I was rigid. The crabs, piled on top of one another, would shiver and cry in the sack as Manjula boiled a pot of water on the kerosene stove on the floor. She would squat beside the heating water, take the crabs out of the bag one by one, and place them on a wooden board in front of her. The crabs would hurriedly crawl to get away, snapping their claws, but Manjula’s strong hands always reached out and stopped them. She would pull them back and separate their claws from their bodies with a large chopping knife before dropping them in the boiling water. I could see the crabs’ round, black eyes blink and peer at me in horror.
Feeling helpless, I would sit at the kitchen table and watch their affliction, and do nothing. What could I do? I was only a child.
Manjula would curry the crabs and make rice. She would wear her best dress for this occasion, though I was never sure why. My brother and father remained dressed in their khaki shorts and torn white T-shirts, and my mother wore her usual petticoat and kurta, proudly showing off her slender midriff. Guests didn’t line up at the door to celebrate Krishna’s birth or Rama’s successes or Mother Kali’s wrath. There was no such religious ceremony that required Manjula to powder her face, drop kajal in her eyes, and rouge the bones of her cheeks or slip into her brightest and loudest frock.
Yet this did not stop Manjula from marking her catch as a celebrated occasion. She would hobble around the table, eagerly serving our family, urging them to “Eat, eat!” as she passed around the bowls.
I would stare at the lifeless pieces floating in the brown juice in my bowl. Despite my mother’s offer to crack the shells for me, I could only shake my head and continue staring, solemnly remembering how they scuttled freely across the beach, safe and sound beneath their protective shells. Everyone around the table would crack the shells with their teeth and indulge in the soft, white meat, slurping the juices from the claws and making wet noises of which I was sure the goras would disapprove.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I would leave the table and go to my room. Manjula would roll her eyes and shake her head in frustration. She never said anything aloud, but through the transparent white mosquito net that hung from the ceilings above our mat
tress, I could tell what she was thinking through her grunts. You ungrateful, spoiled beast. With an attitude like that, no man will ever marry you, Kalyana. You will never own a last name.
I was to receive my last name much sooner, however. It came through the grace of a balding, fat-bellied headmaster shortly after I had matured to the fine age of six. The headmaster called it a “surname.”
I knew this was an auspicious occasion because of the new shoes. Black, open-toed leather sandals constricted my feet and made my toes feel trapped; the silver buckle on the sides dug into my ankles, and the stiff, unfamiliar leather felt hard against my soft skin. I hated those shoes. I wanted to snatch them off my feet and throw them in the ocean, then spread my toes and let the breeze and dirt rush through them. Yet I stood tall in them, with my hair oiled, parted in the middle, pulled back, and braided in two.
My mother had dressed me in a new lemon-yellow dress that buttoned all the way down the front. It had a pocket on the left breast and the middle was cinched with a thick cloth belt made from a darker shade of the same material.
When my mother had asked Manjula to sew me the dress, I had immediately been interested. A brand-new frock, especially for me? But then I saw the lemon-yellow color. I was disappointed; I would have preferred pale blue, the color of my favorite piece in the Ludo board game that my mother, Manjula, Raju, and I would play on dull, rainy afternoons. Blue was the color of tranquility, the color of the skies and the ocean waters. It reminded me of my second old woman, a pillar of calm wisdom and insight.
My mother most appropriately chose the red piece. When she played the game, the air around the square board would crackle with her burning desire to land a six or bump her opponents off the squares. My mother would smile as she sent us home to await the roll of six on the black-and-white die while she, like some victorious goddess, led all of her red pieces to the safety of the circle.
Raju always chose green. Perhaps he thought it resembled the color of money and that choosing it would easily make him a winner in the game of Ludo. I think he forgot to factor in luck, for he usually lost all games, to my distinct enjoyment. Yet Raju never gave up, begging and begging for another chance to play. Finally my mother, Manjula, and I would walk away from the board, smirking. Poor Raju would sit there for a long while afterward, staring sullenly at the abandoned pieces.
Yellow was Manjula’s color. I did not want a yellow dress.
I protested silently, sitting on the kitchen mat and refusing to speak. My mother paid me no heed. She matched the hideous yellow material with a similar fabric and smiled. Now Manjula must use her gift and sew the yards of fabric into a high-collared dress, three-quarters of an inch from the knee in length.
Mother and Manjula forced me to stand for measurements. I stretched my arms wide like the wings of an airplane and sullenly watched Manjula measure my chest, waist, hips, and arms. When Manjula measured my mid-section, she shook her head and said, “Too fat.” My mother laughed loudly, frightening the lizards. As they disappeared back into their holes, I thought of the third old woman, the one who burned hotter than the fires of the sun itself. I curled my hands into tight fists, fighting the deep surge of black heat that threatened to burst forth and erupt onto Manjula’s head. I wanted to run, hit, destroy, but the second old woman stroked me gently until my rage subsided. I bit the insides of my cheeks and glowered.
Manjula wrote the measurements on a flimsy sheet of paper. Her fingers flew and scissors flashed as she cut the material in bits and pieces. The designs did not make sense to me at all, but Manjula always knew what she was doing. My mother would intently watch Manjula hard at work, but could not keep herself from commenting. “It’s such a pity,” she would say. “No man notices your skills.” I remained quiet and watched her carefully put together an ugly lemon-yellow dress. She called it a uniform.
I would have hated the dress even more if I had realized what it meant, how my life would now change.
I wore this uniform a week later when my mother brought me before the headmaster. He must be important—the most important man I had seen in my lifetime, other than my father—for he sat behind an enormous desk. Black, red, and silver pens stood arrayed in a golden penholder in front of him. Stacks of papers lay beneath his meaty hands.
And his chair! I had never before seen a chair that could turn around and around like the blue globe sitting on the shelf. Fascinated, I watched as it twisted and moved while its owner shifted his ponderous bulk to reach across the desk for a sheaf of papers. My mother, in her straight-backed chair that did not move, fidgeted. She gazed at the floor as she fingered the edge of her green sari, which was wrapped around her shoulders in modest form. Today her taut belly was carefully covered.
The solemn man informed my mother that a late registration presented no difficulty, even though the school had already been in session for two weeks. The headmaster was an Indian man, but unlike my father he used too many English words in his short and direct speech. Rapidly he fired one question after another, and my mother answered them in order. She kept her eyes on the floor.
“Name of the child?”
“Kalyana, Headmaster ji.”
“Full name?”
“Kalyana Mani, Headmaster ji.”
“Surname?”
“Surname?”
“What is the child’s last name?” My mother raised her face and the headmaster’s cold eyes looked directly into hers. His stern face betrayed no warmth.
“She’s a girl, Headmaster ji. She will not receive her last name until the priest chants the Sanskrit prayers over the open fires and her hand is joined with that of a man.” My mother humbly smiled.
The headmaster looked at the papers on his desk, then at us. A glimmer of disgust played around his nostrils. “Mrs. Seth, every child, boy or girl, admitted to the school needs to have a surname. British rules. A middle name won’t suffice.”
Admitted! The word tumbled around in my brain, twisting and turning like the swivel chair on which the fat headmaster’s plump buttocks rested. Admitted! A bubble of anxiety rose from the pit of my belly. I struggled to take in life-giving oxygen as I grasped my mother’s sari. My palms felt sweaty. I was gasping for breath.
The headmaster threw me a confused glance. My mother patted the top of my head. I clutched her sari still more tightly, pulling it taut around her shoulder and wrapping the edges around my wrist as though to anchor me to safety.
“She’s always stricken with worry, Headmaster ji.” My mother tilted her head to one side, making an apologetic gesture. “What to do?”
The headmaster rose from his chair and strode to the corner of the room. He picked up the blue globe and set it on the desk in front of us. With his index finger he flicked it into motion, and I almost forgot my fear as it spun wildly, madly, like a ball affixed to a spindle. Then with great suddenness, the headmaster thumped his large hand on one rounded side of the globe. The globe obeyed its owner’s command and stopped mid-twirl.
The headmaster took his finger and pointed to a small speck on the globe. “See this, child,” he said officiously. “This is Fiji. It sits right above Australia and right below the equator. See here.” He pointed to another speck on the globe. “This is Tonga, our nearest neighbor.”
I stared at the dots on the globe, wide-eyed. The distraction did not ease my anxiety.
The headmaster stood tall behind his desk, fastening his gaze onto me. “Do you know why Fiji is marked on the globe with a tiny dot?” he asked, pointing to the small speck in the vastness of blue. The blue seemed to be everywhere. I had never given thought to the greatness of the oceans.
I shook my head, unable to speak.
“The legends tell that Fiji is so large that they couldn’t put it on the map. So the mapmakers marked it with a tiny dot.” Throwing his head back, he laughed loudly at his own joke. Then he eyed me from my head to my toes. “Seth,
” he said firmly. “From now on your surname is Seth.”
He sat back down in his swivel chair and filled out the forms. At the top of the first page, in block letters and in ink, he wrote KALYANA MANI SETH. I knew how to read this much; my mother had taught me how to write my name when she taught my father how to write his. Now Father would no longer have to press his thumb on the ink pad, she said. He could write like a man. I remembered seeing the pen in his fingers, inscribing the words “Rajdev Seth.” Now the plump fingers of the headmaster were joining my name with my father’s name. Kalyana Seth.
The headmaster stopped writing and looked up. “Now it’s official,” he said.
My mother got up to leave. I tried to follow her out of the office, still desperately gripping the end of her sari. The headmaster reached out his large arm and grabbed the corner of my lemon-yellow dress. I turned around in horror, staring at the large hand grasping the end of my new frock.
My mother tried to break the grip of my hand on her sari, but the fabric was tightly wrapped around my wrist. Her sari began to unravel from her shoulders, exposing the soft skin under her blouse. She gasped and pulled her sari back around her. The headmaster tugged harder.
The headmaster was on one side, my mother on the other, and I, Kalyana Mani, who now had the official last name Seth, stood in the middle, shaking with terror. In the midst of my panic I realized a desperate need to find a place to urinate. I started to scream as tears welled up in my eyes and dropped to the concrete floor.
“Let go!” insisted the headmaster.
I wailed louder. The four old women stood silently, one in each corner of the room, wringing their hands, brows furrowed. They looked worried.
“Now, Kalyana,” pleaded my mother.
My wails increased in frequency and pitch. My howls were louder than any conch shell blown by an ancient sage. My breath came in gasps, while the pit of my stomach churned in circles. Without a doubt, I knew that I was being “admitted.” Now, more than ever, was I certain of the meaning of this evil word.
Kalyana Page 4