by Sharon Maas
What good fortune, this babysitting for Savitri! For babysitting was the only way to escape the government school, where the standards were low and the teachers indifferent. This job would open doors for him. It was a matter of influence. The Lindsays had influence. Learning with their private English tutor was the best way to get ahead, and Gopal knew he was fortunate indeed.
Of his brothers he was the only one who felt fortunate. Natesan and Narayan couldn't care less about the English, and Mani still boiled with rage at the insult of David's birth, when Mrs Lindsay had stolen his mother. As simply as that, and without a by-your- leave. He had adored his mother, and that Ingresi woman simply said, come, and Amma had obeyed, leaving him, Mani, behind.
Mani, eleven at the time, was the eldest and could reason. Why should the English lady simply say: do this, or come, or go, and Amma obey? And why should the English lady have the power to disrupt a whole family and never even spare a thought for this disruption? A family of four boys, a girl, and a husband, left without a mother and a wife. It was atrocious, and Mani, had been appalled at such imperiousness! But the English were like that; they snapped their fingers and you had to run, and that was it.
That was when Thatha and Patti moved in, who till now had lived with their eldest son in the north. Patti had managed the family well, but she was exhausted after raising thirteen children of her own and burying four, and when Amma, no more needed in the big house, returned to the family, Patti had quietly and simply taken her leave, and died.
Thatha sat on the east verandah where he lived during the summer months, and gathered the girl Savitri into his mind. The time was coming, he knew. The body, this earthly frame, was growing weak and he would have to release it soon.
Thatha wore only a loincloth and a sacred thread, and an upper cloth across his shoulders. His skin was dark and spotted with age, hanging in leathery folds on his brittle frame. His head was shaved at every full moon and at these times was as shiny as a round brass pot. Thatha, permanently fixtured, it seemed, on his ragged mat on the east tinnai, the front verandah, surrounded himself with the objects of his trade: bottles containing strange milky liniments, vessels wrapped in rags containing pieces of bark and roots, seeds and dried leaves, pills and ointments and pungent herbs. None of the bottles, jars and boxes had labels. Thatha knew what each was for, and when someone came with a problem all he had to do was reach out and his hand would find the right remedy.
Not so many people came these days. They preferred the medicines of the English, even if they had to pay huge sums for these. Nobody had faith any more. Only the little girl Savitri, and upon her Thatha fixed his hopes and gathered her into his mind.
His youngest son, who was cook for the sahibs, had long forgotten the trade, though he too had once learned the secrets of healing. He also had once been taught that cooking and healing, food and medicine, are two sides of the same coin; that one cannot cook and nourish the body without understanding the balances of the body and how to correct them when they are out of joint. Thatha himself knew those secrets, handed down through the family for generations; when his father had been cook in the kitchen of the Maharaja of Mysore many had come to him with their ailments, even the Maharani herself, and he had healed them, and Thatha had watched and learned.
Two of his sons, his eldest and his youngest, had become cooks after him, but both had eschewed the other side, the healing; neither had inherited the Gift, and not one of his children carried the Sign. The eldest son now worked in the Hotel Ashok in Bombay, and the youngest son here in Madras. Thatha had worked and raised his family in Madras, then moved to Bombay to live with Madanlal till summoned back to Madras, and now he understood why Destiny had ordained this move. It was because of the girl Savitri.
She was only a girl but she had the Gift. And she had the Sign; the tiny round mole behind her right ear. He, Thatha, had it too, and his father and great-uncle. When it was time Thatha would activate the Gift with his blessing. Now she was receiving instructions, but instructions were not enough. You had to have the Gift. You had to have the Sign. You had to have the Hands. Savitri had them all.
Thatha had one day taken the hands of the girl Savitri in his own and had felt it then: the flow of power — the power to absorb through the one hand, to bestow through the other. To absorb ill, which was nothing but obstruction, coming from the mind, and bestow blessing so the illness could not return and take root again. The girl had it. The flow. The Gift. It lay dormant within her, which meant she could not yet use it consciously. For that she needed Initiation and only he, Thatha, could give that, passing along the Gift just as he himself had received it from his father before him. This time, one generation would be skipped, and it would pass to the female line. But that was of no account. Because the Gift came from the Great Spirit which was neither male nor female, but contained the essence of both.
The girl Savitri would receive the Gift, and pass it on to her own children or grandchildren, and so it would not die out. Never. The Gift would always find a way. It was self-perpetuating. Thatha smiled to himself and belched. That daughter-in-law of his, Iyer's wife, she was a good cook. But what is cooking if you did not have the Gift? Thatha gathered the little girl Savitri into his mind and held her there in silence.
Savitri had been learning with Mr Baldwin for six months when finally the letter came. Iyer took the letter to Mrs Lindsay and humbly begged permission to remove Savitri from schooling.
'Cooky! But no, I cannot allow that! Why, she is making such progress... Mr Baldwin says so, and besides, David would be all alone! Why on earth?'
Savitri said only, 'The mistress begs for an explanation, Appa.'
Iyer played with the paper between his fingers. He handed it to Mrs Lindsay, who only gave it an impatient glance and handed it back, saying, 'It's in Tamil. What is it about?'
'It's about my daughter's marriage, madam,' said Savitri.
'Which daughter? You only have one daughter!' Savitri translated these words for her father and he replied respectfully.
'That is correct. I am speaking of my daughter Savitri,' translated Savitri.
Savitri herself was not present at the conversation. Only her body was. She herself had withdrawn from her thought-body so as not to become entangled in the words she spoke. They had nothing to do with her. She spoke words without thinking what she was speaking. When Mrs Lindsay spoke Savitri turned her words to Tamil, and when her father spoke she turned his words to English. She was a mere vessel of translation through which language flowed back and forth.
'You don't mean Savitri's marriage!'
'She is my only daughter, madam.'
'But for heaven's sake, Cooky, she's only seven! She's a child! You can't marry her off yet! And she's so bright in school, you can't ...' Mrs Lindsay launched into a long speech and Iyer and Savitri heard her out, their faces blank, till she had no more words, Savitri faithfully converting all into Tamil. Then Iyer said, and Savitri repeated, in English:
'My brother Madanlal has found a suitable boy for her in Bombay. He is a cook in the Ashok Lodge. My brother says he is very eligible, despite his clubfoot. Savitri is to go to Bombay to live in my brother's household, until she is of marriageable age, and then she will marry the boy.’
'Yes, but if he is a cook he can't be a boy any more! How old is this fellow?'
'He is twenty-two, madam. A very suitable age, for he will be twenty-eight when they marry. When my daughter is fourteen she will become his legally married wife. But for now she will live in my brother's household.'
It was very important to establish this difference: that it was not to be a child wedding, which would be illegal, but a betrothal, an agreement to marry.
'It is only a betrothal. But she shall go to Bombay with my eldest son Mani.'
'If it's only a betrothal why must she go to Bombay now? Why can't she go when she's older, old enough to marry?'
'The boy does not speak English or Tamil. My daughter must go to Bombay s
o that she can learn his languages Marathi and Hindi,' said Savitri earnestly.
'But, Cooky, no. I cannot allow this. And why Bombay, of all places? Surely there are suitable men in Madras?'
'We have tried to find a husband in Madras but without success. The girl has been polluted by your son.' Savitri said this without once blinking, looking up into Mrs Lindsay's eyes as if begging to be excused.
'Polluted? What on earth do you mean?'
'She has been mixing with him, touching him.'
'Oh, but, for heaven's sake, Cooky, they're just children! They play children's games!'
'It is said in Madras the daughter of Iyer the cook has been polluted by the sahib boy. Therefore she must be married away from Madras.' Savitri spoke the words, her own sentence, without the least trace of emotion. They were Appa's words. But her heart understood and was all turmoil, and her thought-body now returned and began to heave and surge in rebellion. And yet she brought forth Appa's arguments as if they were her own, and argued with Mrs Lindsay even while she longed to throw herself at her mistress's feet and beg her for refuge, from Appa, from her brother, her uncle, the clubfoot cook, Bombay, her culture, her land, her people.
That night Savitri came to David's window again, and this time the moon was full.
'They have a husband for me, David! I am to go to Bombay next week!'
'But you promised to marry no-one else but me!'
'But Mani is taking me to Bombay! What can I do?'
'You could run away!'
'Where would I live?'
'With me, of course!'
But Savitri shook her head vigorously and tears stung her eyes, and she wiped them away with her shawl.
'Your mother would not allow it, David. I am only a servant.'
'I'll tell her I'm going to marry you!'
'David! No! Don't tell her that! Promise you won't tell her that!'
'But why not, Sav? If I tell her that then all problems are solved. She always does what I want!'
'David, she won't like that, I just know it. She'll get all red and angry like she did that day when Boy cut down her favourite rose. She'll shout and send me away and then I really will have to leave.'
'It's not true, Sav. Mummy always does what I want. If I say I'm going to marry you she'll tell Cooky and then you can come and live here in our house and when we're grown up we'll marry! Look, I haven't got a ring but keep this! This is my promise to marry you!'
And he slipped a gold chain over his head and handed it to her through the bars, and she took it. She knew what it was: a gift from David's granny back in England, and it had a little golden cross dangling on the end, and Savitri knew that the cross was something from David's religion, it had to do with their God, and it was like Shiva, so she respected it and knew it was the holiest thing David could have given her. She slipped it over her own head.
'Thank you, David,' she said. 'I shall always keep it with me, and I promise to marry you. But still you should not tell your mother, promise me you won't!'
'But then, Sav, what shall we do?'
And the very helplessness of their position struck them into silence. Who were they, after all, but children? Children at the mercy of merciless adults who had the ultimate control to move them around the face of the earth as if they were mere counters on a gameboard, as if this love did not count, this love which was above all and more powerful than all the thought-bodies in the world. And yet it was powerless against the small group of men in Savitri's family who would carry out their plan, and tear them apart.
'It's just not fair!' said David, and stamped his foot, because for the first time he knew that he, too, was helpless, even against the insubordination of the natives who, he had learned from the very start of his life, were subject to his will. Even he, the young master, could not prevent a servant daughter's marriage.
'No matter what, Savitri, do you promise to marry me? Do you promise? No matter what? Say, do you promise?'
'Yes, David, of course! I love you with all my heart and I promise to marry you.'
Exasperated by the stubborn logic and insubordination of her cook, Mrs Lindsay lay tossing in her bed. She could dismiss him, of course, but that wouldn't change anything for Savitri. Or she could threaten to dismiss him, if he continued with this plan. Or threaten to turn him in to the authorities for trying to circumvent the law against child marriage — for what was this, in effect, but a child marriage, even if it should be consummated at a later date?
She simply could not allow it. Here in Fairwinds she was mistress, and not Iyer! How dare he go against her will, even if Savitri was his daughter! She, after all, knew better. And Savitri must finish her education, or at least continue it a little longer. Cooky was being too, too ridiculous. Pollution, indeed! If anyone was being polluted it was David, from mixing with a servant's child — (but no, it was wrong to think along those lines. We are all equal.) Any other father — any English father — would be happy for his daughter to receive such an excellent education. And such a bright girl, too. And what about David? Who would he play with, if Savitri left? This thought struck Mrs Lindsay as no other. David would be devastated. He would have not a single friend in Oleander Gardens — it was too late to make new friends now, and he'd be all alone, isolated, and it was years until he could be sent to school in England — four at least. For David's sake, she must do something.
And that was when Mrs Lindsay remembered her vow to 'do something' for the girl, so many months ago, before they'd gone to Ooty, before she'd started lessons with Mr Baldwin. And knowledge hit her like a snap of lightning. She knew exactly what she would do.
She would write to her solicitor.
She would make arrangements to have some money set aside in some sort of trust fund for Savitri. She was vague about such things but her solicitor would surely know. Yes; money, a dowry... Mrs Lindsay's mind ticked out a plan. The money should be promised now, under contract, and handed over when Savitri was eighteen — on the condition that she was not yet married. On the condition that she continued her education at least until she was fourteen. On the condition that she lived in her father's house till then, and was not shipped to Bombay or anywhere else to wait for marriage.
Mrs Lindsay was so excited she sat up in bed. Brilliant!
She got out of bed and padded to the window, her mind hard at work. The moon was full and the garden was cast in a silvery light, as though enchanted — the fragrances of rose and jasmine, even the very subtle strain of frangipani, met her nostrils and she breathed deeply. Ah ... wonderful. Fragrances carried far in the thin Indian atmosphere. Fragrances — and sounds. The breeze, whispering among the bougainvillea and the roses — whispering, as if human. As if human ... Mrs Lindsay listened, her senses sharpened by the underlying magic of the garden, and it was then she realised that the whispering was human, that it came from the next window, David's. And peering through the moonlight Mrs Lindsay saw a small shadowy form which could only be Savitri's, and though it was too late to hear the entire conversation, she did hear the last desperate words spoken by the children, their voices raised now in the forgetfulness of their fervour, and as clear as bells:
'No matter what, Savitri, do you promise to marry me? Do you promise? No matter what? Say, do you promise?'
'Yes, David, of course! I love you with all my heart and I promise to marry you.'
15
Chapter Fifteen
Nat
A Village in Madras State, 1950-1957
Nat, the villagers believed, always brought good luck. They noticed that when he played cricket with his friends his team always won, and so they said he had a Golden Hand, and they adopted him as their lucky mascot. When a house was to be built, they asked Nat to lay the first brick, and when it was finished, they asked him to be the first to enter it, leading in the cow with the garland around her neck and her horns painted yellow and red, and hung with bells. When the weeding season started in the fields they asked him to pull the first we
ed, and at weddings they asked him to touch the statue of Ganesh at the beginning of the ceremony, for Ganesh removes obstacles. But the best part of being a good luck mascot was the eating of sweets. Whenever condiments were prepared for any special occasion the mother of the house sent for Nat to eat the very first one, after the Blessing, and to pass his hand over all the rest. These things his father allowed.
'If I can take the first sweet, why can't I be the first to get milk from Kanairam's cow?' Nat asked Doctor. And Doctor had answered, 'Because sometimes Kanairam's cow does not have enough milk for everybody and they need the milk more than you. So I want you to go last, and then buy two cups, if he has so much. And if Kanairam's cow does not have enough milk then you can come home without and you can have Amul Spray powdered milk, but the villagers cannot do that. So I want you to be the last to buy milk, so that everybody gets milk, and Kanairam sells all his milk.'
Doctor did not believe that Nat brought good luck. He said the villagers only thought Nat brought good luck because his skin was so light, and they thought if Nat touched them or their things their babies would be born light-skinned too, and this was the real reason, and Doctor told Nat that the villagers believed light skin was better than dark skin, but it was not true. Nat thought much about these things, about what the villagers believed and what Doctor told him. He knew his father always told the truth, but he also knew it was true that the team he was on would win, even though he wasn't the best bowler — that was Gopal; or the best batter — that was Gautam; or the fastest — that was Ravi, Anand's son.
And yet Nat's team always won, and the villagers put Nat first in all they did, to bring them luck.