"That Dr. Sharma himself, with all his years and years of experience, couldn't handle the shock of seeing such an amazing baby as you," Appa would tell Uma as she grew up. "Your magnificence made his heart race like the Lone Ranger, pa-ra-rum, pa-ra-rum, pa-ra-rum-tum-tum, and his brain short-circuited, phut-phut-phut-phut just like that, what to do?"
"What, Appa? What did his heart and his brain do again?" Uma would ask over and over, giggling, tugging at his trousers.
"Chhi-chhi," Amma would scold, "don't make fun of the poor man. Like a vegetable he is, no joke no joke. Uma, don't listen to your Appa."
"Phut-phut-phut-phut!" Appa would repeat, rolling his eyes back in his head and flailing his arms. "Phut-phut-phut-phut!" And Amma, excluded from this bond of mirth and mockery, would wander off to her Woman's Day and her toenail polish.
Should Amma have taken heed, learned then that Uma was and would always be her father's daughter, resigned herself to being forever an outsider in her husband's house? Should she have fought for Uma's adulation with tricks of her own? Perhaps. But in those first few years of her childhood, Uma's supernal brilliance held all their attention. They fed her Scott's Emulsion in the morning and barley malt before bed. They bought her Fisher-Price toys and Ladybird clothes. They watched her grow as if she were a hero-child in a folktale; they could not look away.
At two, Uma could ride her red tricycle all the way down the driveway to the wrought-iron gate and back again in two minutes flat.
"Can you believe it?" Mrs. Balakrishnan marveled from her front window, knife in one hand, half-peeled potato in the other. "Now itself she should enter Olympics. That age our children couldn't walk properly also, man! Don't know what-what black magic they do in that house."
At three, Uma swung from the branches of the mango tree, singing Hindi film songs perfectly in tune at the top of her voice:
Mera juta hai japani
Ye pat lun inglishtani
Sar pe lal topi rusi
Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani.
(My shoes are Japanese
These trousers are English
The red hat on my head is Russian
But still my heart is Indian.)
By her fourth birthday she could read the New Straits Times from front page to sports page, and the Ladies Amma invited to her tea parties gasped and gurgled and cooed as she read the headlines out loud for them: "Malay Privilege a Birthright, PM Reminds Nation"; "PM Warns Opposition Against Racial Politics"; "Police Say Chinese Gangs Responsible for Recent Spate of Violent Crimes."
United by their pride in Uma, distracted from their hard lessons or strategies, Appa and Amma wondered if they might now be an almost normal family. For Uma's fifth birthday they decided to celebrate this possibility almost as lavishly as the nation, just turned ten, had feted its impressive progress since independence in 1957. They could not have fireworks on the lawn or a military parade, but Amma put her entertaining experience to good use: she had one hundred and fifty invitations printed at a local press, drew up sample menus for Lourdesmary weeks in advance, and taught Letchumi to fold serviettes into swans and water lilies.
In years to come, Amma and Appa and Uma would remember this period of hopeful arcing towards contentment as if it existed forever in a tiny bubble. On the eve of the party, after Appa and Uma had picked up the pink Cinderella birthday cake from the cake shop, all three of them had stood around the table contemplating it. Appa had taken pictures of it; Uma had leaned against him and inhaled deeply to savor the smell of his bestquality trouser cloth. When she'd reached up and pulled his ironed handkerchief out of his pocket, he'd chuckled and called her the Artful Dodger. And Amma—if they were imagining this, they all imagined exactly the same thing—even Amma had given them a laugh instead of her usual tight smile that stretched the skin thin over her cheekbones.
"We heard your daughter's a genius," the birthday guests said to Appa. "Last year itself could read newspapers, it seems, now she must be reading, what? War and Peace, is it? Moby Dick? Show us, little girl, come on!"
So Uma showed them. In the center of a canapé-munching circle she declaimed Tennyson and Shakespeare, followed this with her four-teen-times tables, and rounded off her performance with an up-to-date listing of African capital cities in alphabetical order.
The party was an unqualified success (according to all but Lourdesmary, who the following morning had to wash six crystal punch bowls and a great quantity of fine china, scrub out the cake icing crusted on the Persian carpet, and take the thirty empty champagne bottles out to the rubbish bin), yet its afterglow, just like the nation's, was short-lived. Uma was growing up: each week she laughed a little harder at Appa's jokes and yawned a little more at the entertainments Amma offered her. But I don't want to make paper dolls, she would say. I'm tired of playing masak-masak and beauty saloon. Why do we have to play these silly games just because we're girls? Why can't we make up more interesting stories?
"She may take after you in her looks, Vasanthi," said Paati one day later that year, after Uma had rattled off the Gettysburg Address at the tea table, "but up here"—she tapped a finger on her temple—"up here she's all Raju, isn't it? Too bad for us poor duds. Already she's left us in the dust."
Thus flayed, the truth squirmed before Amma's eyes. Her daughter, her five-year-old daughter, intimidated her. Already she could answer few of Uma's questions: she didn't know what a bare bodkin was, or how to find the Seychelles on Appa's globe. "Amma," Uma blurted out in frustration one day, upon catching her reading her horoscope while Uma recited "The Lobster Quadrille" for her, "you don't care about anything. You don't know anything and you don't read any interesting books."
For a little while, Amma stood around drawing patterns in this dust in which she'd been left behind. Then, blowing it out of her eyes, she moved on. The garden parties and coffee mornings were still there. The jumble sales, the hotel high teas.
And if silk sarees and custom-made jewelry could not ensure true gratitude, Appa was now willing to settle for its appearance. He was hardly home these days. The Party, thrashing like a speared tiger after the secession of Singapore in 1965, devoured everything he had. They had to marshal their resources; they had to keep fighting. Malaysia for all Malaysians: the Party would not rest until it could do for Malaysia what Lee Kuan Yew would do for that single pearl he'd yanked off the string.
Alone at home (not counting the servants—but then, in those days, who counted servants?), Paati and Uma amused and edified each other. Paati taught Uma English proverbs and Tamil poems; Uma threaded Paati's needles for her. Paati washed Uma's hair; Uma massaged Paati's pre-arthritic legs. Uma wove soaring fictions for Paati; Paati fed Uma peeled facts.
"Why Appa got no time to eat also?" Uma asked one evening when Appa, showered and changed, rushed past the dinner table and out the door.
"Your Appa has a big brain and a big heart," Paati said, "and people like that always have big-big dreams to match. Your Appa wants to make the world a better place for everyone else, but he forgets to think of himself. What to do?"
"Does Amma also forget to think of herself?"
"No," said Paati, "your Amma is having dinner at the club, after her cocktail hour."
"What's a cocktail hour?"
"It's just something for people to do when they're bored."
"But why is Amma bored? We're not bored. We can read books and sew dolls and make funny hairstyles and—"
"You see," said Paati, "people who are boring get bored very easily. Inside their own head they got nothing to look at and nothing to think about. They can't come up with their own games and stories, so they must go out to clubs-shubs all to hear other people's stories."
One evening Appa did not come home at all. In the darkness before dawn, Uma's eyes sprang open. The streetlamps' pale blue light poured in her open window, along with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and the songs of crickets. But none of these had woken her up. There'd been something else, a voice, voices—yes, the
re they were. Voices in Appa and Amma's bedroom: short words bouncing off the walls like drops of water on a hot griddle, long sentences that draped themselves over that fury like fox furs, flashy and arrogant. Then something heavier than a word hit the wall and fell with a metal clatter.
Uma got up, tiptoed across the corridor to Paati's room, and opened her door without knocking.
"Paati!" she whispered.
"Come, come and sleep in Paati's bed tonight."
"Paati, why are Appa and Amma shouting?"
"Don't worry about all that. I'll take care of you."
"But why are they so angry?"
"Tsk, your Amma cannot understand anything, that's all. But it's also your Appa's fault."
"Why?"
"It's his own fault for marrying the wrong woman. This is what happens when people marry beneath themselves."
"What you mean beneath themselves?"
"I just mean, when people get married to those who are not as clever as them, not as educated, not as classy, not as wise."
"Not wise like how?"
"Aiyo, Uma, Uma, at four o'clock in the morning you're asking me all these questions. Just look at your Amma's father and mother only and you know they're not people like us. Yes or not? One as cheap and crude as a bottle-shop man, the other one gone bonkers with her praying. That's what your Amma came from, so what did your Appa expect when he married her? He made a mistake, that's all."
"But what are we going to do now if Appa made a mistake? What will happen to me?"
"Nothing will happen to you, maa. Paati is here for you. Promise me you'll sleep quietly until morning and tomorrow I'll ask Lourdesmary to make laddoos for tea."
So Uma screwed her whole face shut, burrowed into Paati, and tried not to think of poor Appa's unsolvable problem, or of almost-as-poor Amma, who didn't have any games and stories of her own to occupy herself when Appa had to work all night. In the dark, Paati was a soft bundle of smells: Yardley English Lavender talcum powder, starched cotton, Tiger Balm. Even if Appa and Amma broke everything in their room and shouted until morning, she would be safe behind Paati's door, and tomorrow there would be laddoos for tea.
"Okay I promise," she said. But not ten seconds later she had another question. "Paati?"
"What, Uma?"
"Will you always, always take care of me? You promise or not?"
"Promise, promise. And you also promise you'll take care of me?"
Uma's giggles at this truncated bedtime game—now she was the Paati, and Paati was the baby!—were muffled by the crisp cotton of Paati's nightgown, but her reply was still audible: "Okay I promise, Paati."
That night Uma dreamt she was eating laddoos under a ceiling fan, in a nest she'd built herself of indigo-washed bedsheets and gingham pillows.
7. POWER STRUGGLES
ON A MAY MORNING in 1969, Amma, eight months pregnant, feet swollen as large as loaves of bread, announced her intention to visit her sister Valli in Kuala Lumpur.
"But you hardly went to see Valli when she lived next door," said Appa. "I didn't know you were all that close."
"That's no concern of yours," said Amma. "She asked me to go and help. She's finding it very difficult to manage with the baby. It's her first child, after all."
"But in your condition—"
"Oh, for heaven's sake. Suddenly so worried about my condition, is it? Then where have you been for the past eight months? The Party this, the Party that—"
"Vasanthi, there are elections next week. General elections. Do you realize what these elections mean for our country? This might be the last chance we have to challenge the bloody supremacists. You want our children growing up in a Malaysia just for the Malays? Is that it?"
Amma flared her nostrils at this and took three quick sips of her tea before replying: "Well, if that's the case, don't you want to be left in peace to work on your all-important elections? You can eat and bathe and sleep at the Party headquarters, no need to worry about anything. I'll take Uma with me also."
"Don't be ridiculous. Eight months pregnant and you're going to take care of yourself and your sister and Uma?"
"I'll do what I want," said Amma. "You do what you want, so why shouldn't I?"
When Paati learned of Amma's plan, she laughed and bobbed her head. "Of course," she said. "Doesn't surprise me one bit. Anything stupid to make you feel bad, she'll do. Perfect timing also. She waits until the most hectic period for you, and then suddenly her sister needs help it seems. Anyway, you tell her she can't take Uma. Nothing doing. If she wants to do stupid-stupid things, that's fine, but she won't be using my granddaughter just to seek attention for herself."
Would Uma go or stay? The conflict sucked up all the air in the Big House and hung, hot and bloated, over the vacuum it had left. Appa slicked back his hair, tied his necktie, and dashed off to the Party headquarters, leaving the women to settle the matter.
"Well," said Paati, smiling patiently at Amma, "why don't we just ask Uma what she wants to do?"
So Uma was summoned, and the various wonders she would encounter on this adventure were enumerated for her. "You'll get to go on the train with me," Amma said. "You've never been on the train. And you can see K.L. Such a big, busy town, not like Ipoh. We can go shopping in air-conditioned emporiums and have lunch at A&W Root beer, hamburgers all they have. And your Valli Chinnamma will be so happy to see you, you know or not?"
"Is Appa also coming?" asked Uma.
"No," said Amma. "Appa has to stay and do his politics."
"And Paati? Is Paati coming?"
"No, maa," said Paati, "I'm afraid I can't sit on the train for so long with my arthritis and all."
Uma looked from Paati to Amma and back again. She thought of the trains she'd seen in books, of air conditioning and root beer and new dresses and shoes. Then she contemplated experiencing all these with Amma, and the longer she considered this prospect, the lonelier she felt. Lonely and hollow and tired. Tired and wrong and out of place. Inside her head she couldn't wait to go home, already, even before she'd left. And all that time, while she drank root beer and ate restaurant chicken chops with Amma, Paati would be all alone, squinting to thread her own needles, ineffectually massaging her own aching legs.
"I don't want to go," Uma said. "I want to stay at home with Paati."
But now Amma, surprising herself—for what did she care, really? She wasn't among those mothers who lived for their spoiled brats, and wasn't half the reason for the trip to get away from all this, Uma included?—turned into a cheater, a liar, a no-fair playground crook. She'd agreed that Uma's word should resolve the conflict, but now she said: "No, I don't think so. Paati can't look after you all by herself. You come with me."
"For me it's no problem looking after Uma," Paati said. "Uma is not the type who needs looking after and constant attention. I've always said she takes after her father. She'll happily find a book and sit by herself. She'll play her own games quietly. And she's a big help to me, isn't it, Uma? Aren't you a big help?"
Chewing on her lip, Uma nodded very slightly, for though she'd understood the words of Paati's question, she felt quite certain that a small but significant part of it swung beyond her grasp. She loved Paati, wanted nothing more than to be on her side, to defend her in this obscure battle. But what were the rules? What would the winner get? Much as she desired Paati's victory, it seemed cruel to gang up on Amma, who wasn't as clever as Appa, who didn't know how to make up her own games and stories, who, despite all her pretty clothes and expensive necklaces, cried like a small child in the night when no one was supposed to be listening.
Amma saw this seed of doubt, seized it, and held it up in triumph. "She's just saying what you want her to say," she said to Paati. "Of course she wants to come to K.L. I'll buy you your own little suitcase, Uma. We'll go and choose it today."
When Paati exercised her motherly right of appeal to Appa, he shook his head over and over like a wet dog and said, "You women can fight this one out. I haven't even
had the time to eat or sleep or shit in the last two weeks. If you ask me, the easiest thing would be to just let Vasanthi have her way. It's not like she's taking Uma into the jungle." And so Paati surrendered, though only to herself. To everyone else, she feigned a gracious yielding to an inferior. "All right then," she said, "if such a small thing is sooo important to Vasanthi. If that's the only way she can make herself feel important." If Paati felt her feet slipping on her rung of the household hierarchy, if she saw herself languishing, in years to come, in an out-of-the-way corner under her daughter-in-law's ineffective reign, she said nothing of it to anyone.
On a Saturday morning, Mat Din drove Amma and Uma to the railway station and unloaded their bags on the pavement. They were an hour early for the train, though Amma had scolded Uma and twisted her ear for dawdling over her breakfast. "Don't you do that," Paati had growled, wagging a finger. "Don't you bully the child just because you're angry about Other Things." Uma had worried, yet again, about the many injustices Amma might perpetrate on this trip, far from Paati's watchful eye.
But now that they'd left the Big House behind, Amma's mood had lifted perceptibly. "Come," she said, taking Uma by the hand, "come we go and have a soft drink or something."
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