Deep in the mirror, beyond her own image, Putti could see the enormous, carved rosewood bed that she shared with Ammayya. Its canopy of mosquito netting hovered like a grey cloud above it. They needed a new mosquito net; this one had been patched so many times it looked like a beggar’s shroud. But her mother was obsessed with saving, with holding on. Everything was necessary to her: pieces of thread picked up from the street that she rolled into large balls of multicoloured twine; nails, nuts and bolts collected as she swayed her bulky way to the temple, Dr. Menon’s dispensary or the lending library; scraps of cloth begged from the two tailors down the road, sorted by colour and stored in gunny sacks that had once held rice; discarded bicycle tubes, if she was lucky enough to find them before Karim Mechanic’s assistant-boy did. She refused to let Nirmala throw away Sripathi’s or Arun’s old singlets, cutting them into pieces for Koti to use as dusters or mops. If they were torn only near the bottom, Ammayya lopped off a couple of inches and wore them herself as brassieres. Frayed trousers turned into shopping bags, petticoats became tablecloths, and saris were potential curtains. Yes, Ammayya held on to everything, including—thought Putti bitterly—me.
From the outside, Putti looked as content as a well-milked cow, but within her seethed an ocean of desire that would have shocked her mother. She could feel frustration building inside her like heat in a pressure cooker. She had only recently realized—slowly, unwilling to believe it at first—that her mother meant never to let her marry. Every time Ammayya rejected another of Gowramma’s suggested suitors, she insisted it was only because she wanted the best for her daughter, the very best. Five years ago, for instance, there was a college lecturer who taught political science at Madras University. Putti was thirty-seven then, and he was forty. Putti liked the thought of being a lecturer’s wife, of having students worshipfully approach their door to clear doubts before exams. She was already half in love with his sad eyes trapped behind metal-rimmed glasses, with his narrow, earnest shoulders and his habit of sweeping an uncontrolled wave of hair off his forehead with the curve of his palm. But Ammayya had an awful premonition about him.
“I can see him lying there all bleeding and hurt. Because some of those students threw stones at the poor man. Tchah! Such violence in our world, Rama-Rama!”
“Ammayya, he is a nice man. So why should his students suddenly turn around and attack him?”
“Violence has taken over this country, what to do?” Ammayya had sighed. “Why, only last week I read about a boy who went to an examination class with a foot-long knife, I believe, and stabbed the invigilator who objected to his cheating.”
Then there was the smart young engineer from America, whom Ammayya turned down because she had heard rumours that men from abroad already had white wives and used their Indian ones as maidservants. A doctor from Bangalore was rejected because Ammayya suspected he would die of a disease caught from a patient, leaving Putti a widow. Business men were crooks destined to end up in prison for shady practices. “And the pathologist from Bombay,” Ammayya had said, squashing Putti’s hopes of settling on the opposite coast of India, far from her mother, “that fellow has a harelip under his moustache. Why else would he hide the mouth that God gave him behind a hedge of hair? Do you want to be the mother of a brood of harelipped children?”
Putti’s schooling had been acquired at home from an Anglo-Indian woman named Rose Hicks, the ex-principal of a school that did not exist any more. Private tuition, apart from the exclusive ring it had, was particularly attractive to Ammayya because it was much cheaper than school. No need for a uniform or a big parcel of books. Putti could acquire knowledge dressed in her underwear if she wished. School boards also had the bad habit of delving into parental pockets for replacement chairs and desks, for ceiling fans, for a new wing for the science laboratories—the list was endless. Not to mention the teachers who had to be placated with gifts during Deepavali and Christmas. When Putti did go out, to the neighbourhood Ayurvedic doctor—for the cough she developed every year after the rains, when the damp from the walls and the floors of the house settled into her lungs—or to the temple to send increasingly desperate prayers to Lord Krishna to grant her a husband soonsoonsoon, she was bewildered by the accelerated rate at which things occurred around her. Computers, cars, telephones—all to speed up life. Why did people need to hurry all the time? Where were they going so quickly except to the end of their lives, a destination that was common to all living things? And yet, and yet, there was something exciting about the this new, unstable, hi-tech world swirling like a magical pool just beyond her reach, and she thought wistfully that she might like to dip her fingers in it. Once, frustrated by the constant newness of the world outside their gates and the knowledge that she was always out of step with it, Putti had timidly broached the idea of teaching at the small playschool that had opened two streets away. She had seen an advertisement for part-time personnel in the local paper. They did not ask for any qualifications other than an ability to deal gently with small children.
“No-no, my baby,” Ammayya said. “People will think you are an easy woman—only such types go out and work for a living. You are the daughter of a big man, dead though he is, and come from a respectable home. You do not leave the house to earn money. We will find a nice boy for you soon, Deo volente.”
Putti felt despairingly, sometimes, that she was drowning in her mother’s hungry love, helpless as a fly in thick sugar syrup. And on those nights, for hours after Ammayya had fallen asleep, she would lie awake beside her and stare gloomily at the lumpy rise of the old woman’s left hip, outlined by stray light from a streetlamp struggling through the tightly shut windows, at the wrinkled hand, heavy with rings, resting firmly on the hip as if to stop it from growing. She would wait until her mother’s breathing evolved into snores. Then she would slide a hand down the waist of her petticoat, past her heaving stomach into the waiting thatch of pubic hair, and the smell of her longing would rise gently in the shuttered room where she was born and seemed likely to die.
She stood up abruptly, unable to stand the mirror and the musty room another minute, and ran out, past Ammayya, who called after her in alarm. She barely noticed Sripathi enter the house and almost pushed him aside to reach the stairs. These she took two at a time until she arrived, panting heavily, on the large terrace on top of the house. She leaned over the low parapet wall and gulped the fresh air greedily. Below her lay the messy back garden, with its small forest of brownish-green bushes huddled together like shaggy dwarfs, trees weighed down by the burden of rotting fruit, and jasmine creepers clambering unchecked over everything, their flowers filling the day with a heady fragrance. That fragrance set loose a yearning in Putti. Her head buzzed with ideas and thoughts that she longed to shout aloud. She ached to add her voice to the noisy air.
Ammayya leaned back in the chair and fanned herself vigorously with the rolled up magazine that she had been reading. The power had failed, as it usually did by this time, and even inside the house it was clammy and unbearable. The old woman hitched up her sari as far as was decently possible and fanned between her legs. She had stopped wearing panties a long time ago, and while the newspaper created a pleasant draft in the area of her crotch, it also released a faint odour of urine. She was surprised and hurt by Putti’s behaviour. What was wrong with the girl? she wondered uneasily. Was she so upset by Maya’s death? True, Putti had been fond of her niece, treating her like a little sister, waiting eagerly for those letters that she wrote to Nirmala, full of details of a life so exotic in its foreignness. But no, there was something else that was affecting the girl. Ammayya was filled with a sudden fear. Putti was the one who sneaked little treats for her when she was overcome with a craving for something sweet, who sat and listened to her rambling stories of relatives dead and alive, who made Ammayya feel that she still existed.
“Oh Ammayya,” the girl would say patiently. “Tell me again about Kunjoor Mohana’s stolen pearls. Or, “My darling mother, do you remember t
hat story you used to tell about the ghost in Kashinatha’s house? Can you tell me again? So funny it was!”
Toothless and ancient I may be, thought Ammayya grimly, but not yet a corpse. And as long as I have my wits about me, my daughter will be mine. She rose out of her chair, her large hips squeezing up like dough from a tight tin, and roamed slowly around the bedroom, gazing up at the enormous photographs of her late husband that adorned all the walls.
“Have you noticed,” she murmured to her favourite one of Narasimha as a young man, dashing in a suit, “how she refuses to look me in the eye? Something she is hiding, I know. My mother’s heart tells me.”
Ammayya chatted often with her husband’s faded images. She talked more to him after his death than she had in the twenty-six years of their marriage. She asked him questions and answered them herself, arguing now and then to make it authentic. She complained to him about Sripathi and how disappointing he was as a son. She told him, gleefully, about Maya’s betrayal. “Serves Sripathi right,” she remarked. “He spoilt her. That’s what comes of giving your children too much freedom. Look at our Putti, what a nice child she is. My darling will always look after me, I know that.” She grumbled about Arun, who sneered at her caste rules and insisted on climbing the wrought-iron stairway that curled up the rear wall of the house to the upstairs bathroom and that was to be used only by the toilet cleaner, Rojamma. And she fretted about her own health, worrying that one day she might end up too helpless to raise herself off her bed.
“I have some bad news for you,” she said now to the photograph in which Narasimha Rao was shaking hands with Jawaharlal Nehru. “Maya is dead. It was an accident, I was told. Why these girls have to drive cars, God only knows. Her child is coming here. What will we do with a small child?” The old lady sat on the edge of her bed, exhausted by the effort of hobbling around the room.
Her eyes, still sharp in age, fell on a photograph of herself as a bride, standing behind Narasimha, who sat stiff and tall in a chair. The photographer had arranged them in the traditional pose against a background picture of a waterfall. The bride wore her sari pallu, with its elaborate gold threadwork visible even in that yellowing picture, covering both shoulders. She had numerous chains around her thin neck, nose pins on both sides of a tiny nose, a wide gem-encrusted gold band around a narrow, virginal waist and jewels in her hair. Her eyes looked frightened. Ammayya remembered that she was only thirteen in that photograph. Narasimha had been twenty-three. She remembered the day he had come to her father’s house in Coimbatore, and how she had thrown a tantrum at the thought of getting married instead of continuing school. Her father had laughed indulgently at her, his only child, and told her to get dressed. Her mother had wrapped her in a silk sari so heavy with gold that her sapling body had drooped under the weight. And when she saw the enormous, dark man whom she was to marry, she had refused to show herself to him. She had escaped from her exasperated mother and hidden behind one of the pillars on the verandah. Later, after their wedding, as Narasimha eagerly fumbled with her clothes, he told her that he had almost decided to refuse her, to say no to her father. Then he had noticed her foot peeping out from behind the pillar. A delicate, beautifully arched foot, pale as sandalwood, the ankle circled by a filigree of silver. Such a lovely foot, Narasimha Rao had told himself, must surely belong to an apsara—a heavenly nymph. And so, overcome with a feverish need to possess the owner of that foot, he had insisted on marrying her.
She, in her turn, was frightened of Narasimha, even though he flattered her with his frantic desire and spoiled her with saris and jewellery every day. She was filled with loathing when his furry body fell on her own delicate one and when the smell of their sex filled her fastidious nostrils. And after he had detached himself from her, leaving a sticky residue between her quivering thighs, she would curl up miserably, trying to ignore the deep pain that filled her. It took her a year to understand that this painful invasion was somehow responsible for making her body swell like a balloon; that after several months of vomiting, sleeplessness and discomfort, when all her relatives made much of her—coyly pinching her chin and congratulating her on her fecundity—she would be delivered of a child. It happened to her six times, and each time a stillborn infant slipped out, or a sickly one that seemed to wither and die as soon as the air touched its wrinkled skin. People began to whisper that Yama-raja, the death lord, had set up an altar to himself in the echoing darkness of the girl’s womb.
After the birth of her sixth child, Ammayya noticed that Narasimha did not come to her bed as often. She discovered he had taken a mistress. When she ran to her mother’s house, weeping and furious, she was told that she ought to be proud that her husband could afford two women. “Why should I be proud?” she had begged her mother. “How can he abandon me like this?” And her mother had told her to grow up, to stop behaving like a child. “How has he abandoned you?” she had scolded. “You are treated like a queen. So many clothes, so much jewellery, a big house.”
Ammayya felt violated. Now, every Tuesday, the day he had allotted to lay his thick body on hers, she was nauseated at the thought that he had lain the same way with another woman. After he had rolled away, she would rush to the bathroom and strip away the old cotton sari and loose blouse that she wore to bed, and that her husband hadn’t bothered to remove. She would pour mug after mug of cold water over her shivering self, scrub furiously between her legs with soap and a coarse dried gourd that scratched and tore her skin. But on the other six nights of the week, she thought miserably that if she was the perfect wife, Narasimha might decide never to go to his mistress. And to be the perfect wife, she would have to bear him a living child.
Ammayya began to pray unfailingly three times a day. She observed the many rituals prescribed by the Shastras for a good wife. She fasted twice a week and, after her sixth pregnancy, increased that to three times a week. No longer was she a flighty, playful young girl but a fanatic who terrified the servants with her demands for cleanliness, for purity in the house where everything had started to smell of Narasimha’s sex. Ammayya’s virtue was tyrannical. Even Shantamma, who had lost all fear, was wary of her daughter-in-law’s steely righteousness.
When Sripathi was born, Ammayya was only twenty-three. She waited for love to overcome her but found that she felt nothing in her heart for the tiny infant with the large nose and enormous ears. Amazed that he survived his first year, and then another, and another, she began to watch him like a hawk, followed him around to make sure that he was safe. She didn’t want him to go to school, but Narasimha overrode her desires. A servant was appointed to accompany Sripathi everywhere, like a second shadow. Although she did not feel anything for him other than a fear that he would die, she dreamed elaborate dreams for him, for he would be the one to sustain her in her age. He would be a famous heart surgeon, a Supreme Court Justice, or a diplomat in the foreign service. She participated eagerly in Narasimha’s efforts to make Sripathi swallow the Encyclopaedia Britannica whole, although she cringed every time he invited his father’s wrath by not being able to answer a question. She feared for him not because she loved him but because she was afraid that Narasimha’s hard slaps would hurt the boy’s brain and turn him into a vegetable. Love was an extravagance that she could ill afford. If she spent it on the boy, she would have none left for herself, none to use as ointment on the wounds that Narasimha inflicted on her. Besides, the boy would grow into a man and feed on her emotions the way he had already sucked on her body and, when he was done would discard her like an orange peel. Men always took too much and gave too little in return.
After Sripathi’s birth, when Ammayya watched her husband shift his silk shalya to his right shoulder before he departed for his mistress’s home in the evening, she did not feel quite as wretched and angry. as before. She did not, however, abandon her rigorous Brahminical ways. If anything, in order to make sure that the gods watched over Sripathi and kept him alive and well, she prayed more intensely and became more rigid abou
t the rituals of purity.
A few months before Narasimha died, Ammayya found out from a relative who was a trustee of the Toturpuram Bank that the money he spent so lavishly was all borrowed. In addition to maintaining his whore, she learned that he visited the race course in Bangalore once a month, when she thought he was away on business. At about the same time, she discovered that she was pregnant again. She locked up all her jewellery and hid it in a trunk, deep beneath the enormous four-poster bed that she shared with her husband on rare occasions. Just four months before Putti was born, Narasimha Rao was killed by a mad bull that raged down Andaal Street and made straight for him. It shredded his liver and a kidney and left him bleeding in the gutter a few yards from his mistress’s house.
A few months later, when her daughter arrived in the world, Ammayya marked the twin gifts of life and death that she had received by lighting a silver lamp at the Krishna Temple every month—her one indulgence in an otherwise miserly life.
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