A Girl & a River

by K R Usha

‘Ajji,’ Kaveri said when the servants had gone, ‘is it wrong to have “English” ways?’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Bhagiratamma said at once and Kaveri sighed with relief and shifted closer to her grandmother’s comforting bulk. Bhagiratamma could always be counted upon to drive away your demons, however big or small. She was cut and dried about things, not like her mother who always prevaricated and gave a clever answer instead of coming to the point. ‘We must take from others what is good about them but hold on to what is ours. No point clinging to our outdated customs or imitating others slavishly either. And what are these “English” ways?’

  ‘Well, to cut your hair … and,’ Kaveri cast about doubtfully for other such dubious ways, ‘and to eat bread!’

  Bhagiratamma burst out and then quickly smothered her laughter, remembering that people were sleeping around them. And then she coaxed the story out of Kaveri.

  ‘Your friends are just jealous of you,’ she shook her head. ‘As for that Narayana Rao, I want to tell him that you can’t walk in shoes of two different sizes. Can you imagine walking with one big shoe and one small, you’ll start dragging your feet. Kole had better watch out. That son of his is up to no good. Those who start off picketing liquor shops may well end up patronizing them.’

  Kaveri smiled, storing it up to throw at Shanta the next day, but would not let it go at that.

  ‘Are the English better than we are?’ she persisted.

  Her grandmother looked thoughtful. ‘Well, in some ways they are and in some ways they’re not,’ she said. ‘They rule over us and they’ve given us good laws … but they don’t really know us. And we have Gandhi.’

  Coming from her grandmother, it was not a satisfying answer, so Kaveri reached for the book that lay next to the night lamp. She looked at the illustration on the cover—Toad strutting about in a yellow coat and a fat Mole lurking about in the weeds in tears. Well, if the English could have written this book, they couldn’t be bad, she decided.

  The day the schools closed for summer, Shivaswamy suggested a picnic. Before anybody could demur, the tongas were at the door, the cooks were ready with their cauldrons and supplies, and he was hurrying everybody up. This was what they liked about Shivaswamy. He took charge and got things done immediately, and though he could not be trusted in other matters, he knew how to take care of people. Everyone in the house was coming along, Shivaswamy said, except Mylaraiah who had to go to work. They were to go to a mango orchard that he owned by the river. It would be cool and the trees were laden with fruit. He has to inspect his orchard, make sure his watchmen are not stealing his mangoes, so he’s taking you along, Mylaraiah told his wife sardonically. Killing two birds with one stone. We don’t mind, Rukmini replied.

  Bhagiratamma was not too keen on being jolted all the way in a tonga on an uneven road, but she had her reasons for going. For though it had been days since his arrival, she hadn’t been able to speak to her nephew alone. The ride to the orchard would be the only private moments she would get with him, she knew, for the children took up all his time otherwise. Despite his mocking manner and affectations of contempt for the whole lot, Shivaswamy visited his relatives whenever he was in their parts and she depended on him for all the family news and gossip. Rukmini too had her reasons for going on the picnic. She hoped that at some point that morning, while the others were preoccupied, she could lead her cousin away and tell him she had thought carefully over both his proposals—and she had to do it when Mylaraiah was not around. Kaveri and Setu alone, it appeared, came with unmixed motives—they were glad school had closed.

  It was a motley collection of guests and inmates that gathered in the verandah at five in the morning, before the sun rose and it grew too hot. Shivaswamy led in the first tonga, with Bhagiratamma alongside and all the supplies. Rukmini followed with Kaveri and Setu, her ‘difficult’ sister-in-law and her two children. In a bullock-cart behind the two tongas came the cauldrons, the servants, the dogs and two ‘cousins’ who were staying with them, and whose relationship to her husband Rukmini had not been able to figure out exactly.

  ‘So Bhagirati,’ Shivaswamy began disarmingly enough as they set off, ‘how are your cows doing?’

  Bhagiratamma’s concern for cows was treated by the family with indulgence but she herself was passionate about it. She wrote letters, imperious in tone and full of bombast, to the Pinjrapole Society, to the newspapers, to Gandhi, to the maharaja, to anyone who would care to receive them, about the ‘cow problem’ and would pester her son-in-law’s clerks to take her letters to the post office and get them franked. She had an opinion on everything—right from how much pasture land there should be in the state (she had arrived at one-sixth of the total land area, after much thought), how to conduct a cattle census and the proportion of pinjrapoles or refuges for cows that should exist given the number of cows in the land. Her good opinion of the Mysore maharaja rested solely on the care he gave to his cattle and the fact that he had established a model dairy farm in his land. And the Pinjrapole Society was constituted of good natured stoics surely, for no one else would tolerate the tone she took with them, on the strength of her ‘generous’ annual subscription towards the care of their old cattle.

  Shivaswamy waited as his aunt described the health of her two beloved cows animatedly, and then slipped it in. ‘You’re still in your daughter’s house, I see. No intentions of going home?’

  ‘My son-in-law is a good man,’ Bhagiratamma said simply, robbed of all her defences, ‘He says I should consider this my home.’

  However solicitous Shivaswamy may be, Bhagiratamma reminded herself, a conversation with him was like a boxing match. You always had to be on your guard and he knew your weakest spots. Usually, she gave as good as she got, but that day he had carried off the advantage early.

  ‘Never mind your son-in-law,’ Shivaswamy said, implying that he didn’t necessarily consider Mylaraiah’s hospitable qualities a virtue, ‘what about your son?’

  It had the desired effect. ‘Ah my son!’ Bhagiratamma rasped, winded partly by the movement of the tonga and partly by the thought of her son. It was a sore point with her that her son was so tardy in fetching her back from her visits to her daughter’s house. Moreover, Mylaraiah would not send her home till he came to take her back,. Rukmini and Mylaraiah had often asked her to make this her home, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Though she looked forward to her summer visits to her daughter’s, her right place was in her son’s home. This time six months had gone by and there hadn’t been a word from him, except to tell her that his wife was ill or that he was too busy at the palace to take a few days off.

  ‘He may be a daffedar in the maharaja’s palace but once he comes home, he’s a plain old “duffer” …’ Bhagiratamma bristled, too angry to notice her clever pun. ‘Running in circles round his maharani. I haven’t seen another man who’s so scared of his wife. Oh the spinelessness of our men! Full of talk, such grand talk, but can do nothing! The house is falling on our heads, it leaks so much in the rains and all he asks us to do is wait … wait till the royal maistry comes to repair the roof. When he does come he assures us we’ll have a house as splendid as the maharaja’s palace.’

  Bhagiratamma sighed and looked at her nephew. She had heard that he was given to sharp practices, and that he had made money in the Great War supplying cattle feed, but at least he was resourceful and got things done.

  ‘The trouble with our Mysore men,’ Bhagiratamma continued, unable to take her mind off the subject, ‘is their indecision. And they make such a virtue of it. They confuse it with forbearance.’

  ‘Not taking action is a course of action itself …’

  ‘Don’t quibble,’ Bhagiratamma rapped her nephew sharply, ‘you know what I mean. Others pay the price for it, never the men themselves. Well, you needn’t worry,’ she conceded. ‘No one can accuse you of being indecisive. Your father came from a coastal village, so you carry the sea breeze and the nip of enterprise in your blood …’ she tried to divert hi
m, not wanting him to gossip about this when he next visited her son, for Shivaswamy was a great favourite with her daughter-in-law as well. ‘How this tonga does rattle! I’m too old for such capers, I tell you … Did you see Raji when you were in Bangalore recently?’

  Until they reached, the rest of their extended family was accounted for, ailment by ailment, travail by travail … and quarrels. Shivaswamy reported at least three quarrels in the family, one where blood had almost been shed, and Bhagiratamma was satisfied.

  In the second tonga, Rukmini was preoccupied with how she was going to break the news to her cousin. As the tonga went past paddy fields and orchards, she wished she had taken her mother into confidence. The trouble was, her mother would have welcomed Shivaswamy’s proposals, at least the one concerning Kaveri. To add to her discomfort, she was quite cramped in the tonga, the children were fidgeting about and her sister-in-law was shifting restlessly, digging her elbow into Rukmini’s side. Every now and then her sister-in-law, who lived in the neighbouring town would feel ‘low’ and her husband would drop her off unceremoniously with their two children at Rukmini’s place, saying—after all, if she can’t rest in her brother’s house where else can she? She had seemed normal enough in the morning and had climbed into the tonga willingly, but now she kept starting nervously every time the tonga jolted her. Her children, both girls, sat subdued by her side and it didn’t help that both Setu and Kaveri were grinding their index fingers against their foreheads, making the ‘screw loose’ sign at them. Rukmini was forced to stop the tonga and send Setu off into the bullock cart at the back, from where he and his sister continued to talk in sign language.

  Once they reached the orchard, she was glad they had come. For Shivaswamy’s orchard made a picturesque sight, right by the river, the soil a rich red, the trees weighed down with fruit, their ripening tang filling the air. His watchmen hurried forward as soon as the tongas stopped, and in no time at all their mats were rolled out under the trees, commanding a view of the bend in the river. The cooks kindled a woodfire and set the cauldron to cook their breakfast, and Timrayee set down the harmonium that they had brought from home and Setu’s mridanga next to it. Rukmini struck up a song, Bhagiratamma followed and soon Shivaswamy’s off-key baritone was joining the chorus in the patriotic songs they sang. Kaveri was next, rendering quite faithfully, all the songs her teacher had taught her, with Setu accompanying her with more vigour than skill on the mridanga. Between them, they managed to divert the restless aunt enough to make her stop fidgeting, sit down on the mat and keep time to the music.

  Once lunch was over, and the children had squished all the ripe mangoes they wanted, they wandered off with the dogs, Bhagiratamma settled down for a nap and Rukmini began racking her brains to see how she would broach the subject with Shivaswamy.

  ‘How is she doing?’ Shivaswamy asked, as they watched the tall, slim figure under the trees, pulling the branches down, holding a low hanging fruit to her face. ‘You can’t tell by looking at her that anything is wrong with her.’

  ‘My sister-in-law? Quite unpredictable …’ Rukmini sighed. ‘I cannot believe this is the girl I brought up myself …’ She had tried to prevent her sister-in-law’s marriage to her uncle, her mother’s brother. But Mylaraiah had insisted that both his sisters marry their uncles, so that they could be entrusted to ‘known’ men and their well-being would never be in doubt. ‘And … well, it cannot be denied … there is a strong streak of ma—,’ Rukmini hesitated, ‘I mean melancholia in their family.’

  ‘Melancholia is big word,’ Shivaswamy said. ‘I can tell that Dr King has been talking to you. Quite your mentor, isn’t she?’

  Rukmini frowned. ‘Well, considering I haven’t had any education so to speak of, except to rely on my common sense, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be guided by those who know better!’ And who could know better, she seemed to imply, than an Englishwoman educated in England, and a doctor too. There were so many things that one accepted blindly in the name of tradition. If Dr King hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have known about marriages between blood relatives and all the facts about them.

  Then in a flash it occurred to Rukmini that she had found a way to refuse Shivaswamy’s proposal and even make it sound reasonable. She braced herself and told her cousin she had nothing against his son Chamu, in fact he was an excellent catch and she envied the family that would get him eventually, but she did not approve of marriage between cousins, all that in-breeding, as Dr King had told her. Yes, they weren’t first cousins, but still. Moreover, Kaveri was far too young and long engagements made no sense. In the same breath she rejected her cousin’s second proposal that Setu be sent to a new residential school being opened by the maharaja, where he would be trained to be an engineer or for a career in the civil services. Her son was talented, she knew, in fact he never scored less than a hundred percent in maths each time, and it was kind of Shivaswamy to use his influence to get him into the exclusive school, but again, Setu was too young to leave home. Rukmini was glad to have got over with it when her husband was not there for he had been half-inclined towards both proposals. Though he did not think much of Shivaswamy, he was willing to slight his own disregard if things were ultimately to his advantage.

  When Bhagiratamma roused herself from her fitful doze she found the air between the two cousins quite frosty, and so she told them about the ugly Sheshi whose uncle had been forced to marry her. The uncle had run away on the very day of the wedding, never to be heard of again. For four years Sheshi kept quiet and then one morning, in the wee hours, the household was woken up by what sounded like an animal in distress. Must be the cow in labour they thought hurrying out, and discovered that Sheshi had fallen into the well and was bellowing to be pulled out. She had changed her mind, she said, preferring to live half-a-life than end it in defiance. But to their question, how on earth did you climb into the well Sheshi, she made no answer.

  They could not but laugh. Over by the river, the children played and their voices drifted over, Kaveri’s high-pitched and teasing, followed by Setu’s anxious, bargaining tone. The two had even managed to get their little cousins to run around, picking pebbles from the sand.

  ‘I must say you’ve allowed Kaveri to grow up very naturally,’ Shivaswamy admitted. ‘They’re both very lively and I’ve been happy to be with them. They’re very close to each other, which is a good thing, considering there are only two of them.’

  As always, Shivaswamy’s compliments were double edged swords. So, she ignored the bit about the size of her family—Shivaswamy himself had six children—and said, ‘Of course, the way they quarrel, one wouldn’t think so. They are very fond of you Shivanna, you spoil them so …’

  She said other things, mildly flattering to him and the air between them lay easy again. Rukmini breathed in relief. Her children were safe. Shivaswamy had not taken her refusal hard. Perhaps he had been expecting her reaction. Anyway, he appeared mollified enough to say that he would send her other proposals and horoscopes that came his way, and not of their cousins’ children.

  Further up, closer to the river, Kaveri and Setu and their cousins were playing with their dogs, in perfect amity, or so it seemed to those sitting under the trees. Kaveri seemed to be telling her brother and her cousins a story and from the rapt expression on their faces, it seemed to absorb them completely. They would have to be coaxed when it was time to leave.

  Kaveri, in fact, was telling the others the story of the demoness who lived in the river and who came out each night to feast on the mangoes in the orchard. A woman with long hair and red eyes, who could live both on land and on water like a frog and was very good at maths because she kept exact count of the mangoes. That night when she came out, Kaveri told her open-mouthed audience, she would find the numbers depleted sharply and that would drive her mad with fury and she would come after them. So they had to appease her, Kaveri said, looking meaningfully at her brother.

  Setu was quick to catch on. You must run up to the
river, he told the elder girl, stand in it, say a prayer to the demoness, and run back before she could catch them.

  ‘It’s so easy. All you have to say is Rakshasi, Rakshasi, don’t swallow me up!’

  ‘And cup some of the water in your palm, spit into it and fling it over your right shoulder—’

  ‘No, spit into it and swallow it—’

  They grew bolder, seeing how frightened she was.

  ‘If not remember she’ll come out of the water at night and wrap herself round your neck …’

  ‘Drink your blood …’

  Their cousin, however, just stood still, holding her sister by the hand, grinding her heel into the ground, tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

  ‘I’ll give you a cocoa cap from my cocoa tin collection if you do it,’ Setu relented, for he was kinder than his sister.

  ‘Nothing doing!’ Kaveri said, trying to tug both of them by the hand, ‘and hurry up. The rakshasi can’t wait all day …’

  It was then that it happened. Even as the girls ran off in a sudden show of spirit, with Kaveri and Setu in pursuit, a figure in green streaked past them and plunged into the river.

  ‘It’s Amma!’ one of the girls screamed.

  There was a commotion under the trees as the servants shouted and the dogs barked at the same time and Shivaswamy tried to make himself heard above the din. Bhagiratamma stood up heavily, leaning on Rukmini and even before they could figure out what had happened, Kaveri had jumped into the water. Together, Kaveri and Setu dragged their aunt out and onto the bank where she collapsed.

  ‘Kaveri! Setu! My children! Precious jewels! Blankets Timrayee!’ Bhagiratamma shouted shakily as she reached out for them. ‘Rukmini, look to that madwoman!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Shivaswamy was saying testily, ‘the river doesn’t rise above the ankles here, and anyway its summer, and it’s not even a river, just a stream. She’s lucky she didn’t cut herself on the rocks and stones.’