by Sharon Maas
Ma was still sweeping the yard next morning when Ganesh poked his head around the door. Saroj had never been so happy to see his boyish grin and tousled head in all her life. He bounded to her side with the exuberance of a half-grown puppy, and by the time she could sit up in bed he was all over her. Ganesh was such a very physical boy; he liked to hug and kiss and squeeze and stroke, and that's what he did now. They laughed together and he brushed the hair out of Saroj's eyes.
'Well, at least you haven't forgotten how to laugh! And look what I brought for you!'
From behind his back he brought out a packet wrapped in birthday paper and tied with a bow, big and oblong, and when she took it in her hands, it rattled — the kind of present that was exciting because you couldn't guess what was inside.
'Oh Gan! But what is it?'
'Go on, open it! Your birthday isn't till next week but I grant you permission.'
She tore at the paper like a little girl. Inside it was a box, and inside the box was a radio-cassette recorder. She flung her arms around Ganesh.
'Oh, Gan! I can't believe it! I never dared own one of these before!'
'Well, if you dare to jump from the tower this is just small potatoes!'
'Gan, don't let's talk about that, okay?'
'But that's exactly what I'm here to talk about. I couldn't believe my ears when I came home and heard. I looked in on you but you were sleeping else I'd have come and given you a good telling off. Saroj! It's not that bad, is it?'
'If they marry me off to that boy it is.'
'Look, they're not going to. They postponed the wedding. Ma and Baba were up late last night and I joined them, and Ma and I pleaded and wheedled with Baba not to do it. Ma said a wife needs an education these days. I confirmed it. We persuaded him to postpone the wedding at least till you get your O Levels.'
'Okay, they can postpone it but it's still hanging over me and what use is it getting O Levels if I jump from the tower on my wedding day?'
'You won't. We won't let you.'
'All right, I won't kill myself, but I swear I'll run away.'
'That's a much more sensible idea. I'll even help you. But don't forget, you can't hide for ever. Baba can have you brought back. And where'll you be then?'
'I'm not going to marry any boy Baba chooses for me, Gan. It can't be right, I bet it isn't even legal. Trixie said I should get a lawyer; her mother will help. I'm going to fight, Gan, and I've been thinking. Listen, Gan, when you go to England I want you to send for me. Get me a plane ticket and let me come! Please!'
'Saroj, I'd love to and I will, but don't forget, you're not even fourteen yet! You'll need all sorts of papers and things and parental consent and don't think Baba's going to sign anything!'
'No, but maybe Ma will!'
In the silence that followed those words they heard the faint swish-swish of Ma's broom downstairs, a rhythm and pace that was comforting and inspiring at once, like the steady beat of the earth's inner heart as Ma set her little world in order.
23
Chapter Twenty-three
Savitri
Madras, 1934
After Eton David came home. It was his final holiday before Oxford.
He had not forgotten the little butterfly girl fluttering through the Fairwinds garden. That was the way he held her in his memory: as a skinny ten-year-old tucking a long skirt into her waistband to scramble up a mango tree, her clothes dishevelled and her plaits unravelling, and he was as fond of her as ever. He had not forgotten her as he had not forgotten the peacock dancing and the hibiscus blooming. She was a part of the natural beauty, the unchanging tableau of his perfect childhood, a background he had left and outgrown, still a part of him, yet left behind.
He himself had grown into a tall, limber young man, whose hair, the colour of wheat-straw, refused to stay parted but fell unruly over his forehead, whose blue-grey eyes were flecked with russet gold, and whose generous smile had charmed and captivated many a flippant debutante.
He had woken late that first morning and the house was empty, except, of course, for the servants, the little maids scuttling out of his way as he entered the dining room. His mother had left a note — sorry to have missed him, gone to Adyar — and she'd be back for luncheon. His father was in his study.
David had one overwhelming desire: to bite once again into a juice-dripping mango or a slice of ripe golden papaya. So he entered the kitchen to see what Cooky could offer. He was eager for the old world to fall back into place, to ensure that nothing had changed. And of course it was all the same, the kitchen with its red-tiled floor and the baskets of fruit and vegetables hanging from the rafters, the little brass vessels containing spices on the shelves along the walls, the black-bottomed pots, the clay pitcher containing sweet ice-cold water, all the familiar smells and sounds. It was all the same, but in the corner sitting cross-legged on the floor on a straw mat, her hands rolling chapatti dough into soft little balls — he had requested chapattis for lunch today — her arms white with flour up to the elbows, there was Savitri.
He didn't recognise her at first glance, for her head was bent forward, over her work. And yet some sound must have escaped his lips, or else she sensed him standing there, speechless, for she looked up and gave a cry of delight and sprang to her feet, and ran to him.
The name Savitri was forever connected in his mind with wild, bare-footed skylarking; how could he simply detach it, and reconnect it with this… this… woman! In the seconds it took her to run to him he took in every change: gone, the flapping shawl and the fluttering skirts, the skittish leaps and bounds. She wore a sari, originally cobalt blue but faded to pastel. She wore it with the end crossed over her hips and tucked into her waistband for freedom of movement in the way of peasant women. It had one long rip across her thigh, torn where she'd caught it on a rose-bush, and rudimentarily repaired with white thread, not to hide the rip but to prevent it ripping further. It was of the cheapest cotton but she wore it as if it were of the finest, costliest silk; it covered her form only to reveal all the more its grace and sleekness, for soft and fluid it flowed into her curves and followed her every movement.
As she crossed the floor he saw her as if in slow motion, growing into herself before his eyes, into that name Savitri, and the love he had known for the little girl grew to fit the woman. The shock of knowing that it was, indeed, her, overwhelmed him, and his knees almost gave way. He clutched the door-jamb so as not to fall. She did not notice. Ignoring the horrified reprimand of her father she flung herself at him and her floury arms around him, and then his arms were around her too and he was lifting her up, and spinning her around; she was almost crying with joy.
'David, oh David!' she said. And he replied, 'Savitri! It's you!'
But his voice was muffled because of the lump in his throat.
She leaned into his hands on the small of her back and looked up at him in silence, and he down at her, and saw her face so eloquent with unveiled delight and so radiant with beauty and grace, his eyes misted over. Her own eyes were the same melting-chocolate brown but larger now than ever, wiser, calmer, the eyes of a woman: without guile, and without greed, simple and clear. Her lips smiled, but her eyes spoke and told him there had never been a time without loving, because loving was her very being. Her face was framed by thick, full hair pulled loosely back so that it waved gently around her face, and tied at the nape of her neck, where it was clasped by a bunch of purple and white flowers, and fell down her back to cover his hands in springy curls of black silk. He drew her to himself.
They clung to each other wordlessly till a furious Iyer pulled them apart. Men and women may not touch in public but both had forgotten and neither cared, for they were together again and all that remained was to breathe in and absorb the other, to make up for the years they had been apart.
Savitri drew away, looked at him again, and her silence too was full. And he, unbelieving in the light of her beauty and the sweetness of her love, could do nothing but gaze back
and smile until his cheeks hurt, for his heart was too full for words and all words which had ever been spoken and ever been invented were inadequate, and could never match what he felt. She was exquisite.
David had seen many beautiful women in England. In fact, his silence towards Savitri during the previous years was the result of a distracted, adolescent mind growing into an awareness of female charms.
Savitri, though, was more than a beautiful body, more than mere symmetry of features. Her body seemed to him to be a vessel containing the very essence of beauty itself. That beauty poured from her every cell, from her eyes and her smile and her every gesture, it radiated from her in a warmth as enrapturing as the fragrance of an exquisite rose, folding him into itself.
Her beauty was more even than that inner warmth. He had seen it in the fleeting moment when she had sprung to her feet and run to him. It was the smoothness of her movements, her grace and suppleness acquired through years of carrying heavy water-vessels on her head, balancing them even without hands; it was the sum all of these things that had made of the fluttering butterfly of then the sleek gazelle of now; whose fluid buoyancy of being radiated from inside to transfix him into stillness.
Iyer, horrified at their indiscretion, pushed David out of the kitchen door and slammed it — a serious transgression of a servant towards the young master, but Iyer, as a wronged father, could be forgiven. Besides, David did not even notice. He leaned against the kitchen door in a daze, eyes shut, smiling like an idiot. He saw stars — literally, he saw stars. It had all been too sudden. He was in shock. But even in shock, he knew.
He had never stopped loving her.
Iyer lambasted Savitri for her indecorum and sent her home. And when the memsahib came back and the family had been served lunch and his duties for the morning were over he went home and lambasted Savitri again, and complained to her mother that she had raised her daughter badly, that she was completely spoiled and without morals.
Savitri sweetly apologised. 'He is my milk-brother,' she explained. 'I have not seen him for so long, Appa. You must forgive me but I was so full of joy.
And because he too was under the spell of his daughter and because he could not resist her contrite smile he only grunted and turned away.
'You must not see him again,' he said in final reprimand.
Savitri replied, 'Appa, but how can I avoid seeing him? I must help you in the kitchen, must I not, and don't you want me to serve the family when they sit to eat? I have always done so and it would not be fitting for you to serve them yourself. And I have always discussed the meals with the mistress, have I not, and the young master will surely want to eat this and that, he has been away for so long without eating proper food. I am sure he will want to discuss meals with me, and you cannot do so because you speak no English! So please, Appa, do not forbid me to speak to him for it would be most inconvenient!'
Iyer saw the sense of her argument so only grunted again. He then turned back to her and said: 'Very well, then, but remember you are an unmarried young woman and you may not speak to a young man alone and you must never touch him again. Remember you are betrothed, and what would your bridegroom say, if he heard you are associating with another young man, even if the young man is your master? Your reputation has been ruined once by your lack of discretion when you were a child and now that you are grown up you may not behave as you did then. You must attend to the proprieties. You and the young master are no longer children and you do not know of the dangers of young men and women mixing. You must discuss nothing but meals with the young master. Think of your bridegroom.'
Savitri's face clouded over.
'Very well, Appa.' This last was a command she could easily promise to keep, because her betrothal to Ramsurat Shankar was constantly in her thoughts, though not in the way her father meant. Ramsurat Shankar was perfect for her. He was a teacher in the technical college with an excellent salary, and his previous wife had died in childbirth, and the child too, and his two elder children were already living with his younger brother's family and he did not expect to take them back into his household when he remarried. It was only thanks to the generosity of the Lindsays that such a good suitor could have been found for Savitri—who was so far above marriageable age—and they were all delighted, except for Savitri.
It was not that she did not like Ramsurat Shankar. She had seen a photograph of him, for he was a modern man and had insisted on an exchange of photographs before the wedding. He was quite a handsome man of thirty-one and she knew he was an excellent match. If there had been no David it would have been a happy marriage. But there was David.
'You must honour and respect your bridegroom,' Iyer added, and Savitri nodded sadly. That was nothing new. But to do so would be effort. Whereas to honour and respect David was joy, and to love him yet more so.
She disobeyed her father twice before the day was over. She met David in their old tree-house that afternoon. He was waiting for her when she came, and leaned over to give her a hand up as he had never needed to do when she was a child. She didn't need the hand now but took it nevertheless, laughing up at him. She had met him alone, and they touched, and in these two things she disobeyed her father.
She had never disobeyed her father before, except when she knew obedience was in conflict with obedience to that within her which was Truth, and wiser than her father. Thus she had touched the dogs and prayed with the Muslims and loved the Harijans. Always. Because these were important things and it was more important to obey the Truth within her than to obey her father's words, which were not words of Truth, but words of ignorance. For if he could have known that the muezzins' call was truly the call of God, and that God lived in the dogs and the Harijans, he would not have given her those orders. And if he could have known that God lived in her love for David, he would not have given her that order either. These things were Truth. But it was the tragedy of her life that not Truth, but ignorance should be given authority over her, in the form of her father.
This tragedy was in her eyes now, as she turned them to David. She laughed, because not even such tragedy could completely stain the joy she felt at being with him. But she could not hide the sadness, and David, who felt her soul as intimately as if it were his own, and could read every flicker of feeling in her eyes, touched her cheek softly and said, 'What's the matter, Say? You're sad.'
She told him then of her betrothal. She told him of Ramsurat Shankar, whom she would have to marry when she was eighteen.
'You can't, Sav. You're going to marry me . . . you promised! Do you still have the cross I gave you?'
She smiled then.
'Of course! But I don't wear it. I've got it hidden in a safe place. And I've got your Swallow Book of Verse and your Bible.'
'You'll have to break the engagement. I'll speak to your father if you like.'
'Oh David, you don't understand! I'll never be able to marry you!'
'Why not? Maybe not yet; I’ll be at Oxford for a few years, but when I come down, when I'm finished. Why can't you just go on working with your father, or better yet, go back to school…
Savitri chuckled ruefully. 'Go back to school! That's over, David.'
'I don't see why. You were always the cleverest of us all!'
'Oh David, David. You don't understand. That's just not our way.'
'But you're different; you've always been different. You grew up with us and that makes you different. And not just that — you are different. Inside, you're different. My mother always said you were special, you know. That you had gifts, secret powers. Do you still have them?'
She laughed again, and looked at the palms of her hands, spreading her fingers. 'Who knows? I certainly haven't been trying them out. Remember the Colonel’s carbuncles? I suppose she was disappointed. I never thought about it. I never did anything special at all. Things just happened.'
'Maybe she was right, you know. If you'd developed them the way she wanted maybe you'd have been rich and famous by now. Instead of…�
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She looked at him fiercely.
'Instead of a poor little nobody?'
'I didn't mean that. But you'd have been independent, you'd have had your own money to do what you want, and nobody could have ordered you about. You wouldn't have to mind other people's children or cook in other people's houses or prune other people's roses. Or marry someone you don't want to.'
'If I do have the gift of healing, David, then it's just that. A gift. You don't sell gifts.'
'It can't be a bad thing to have your own money!'
'Spoken like an Englishman!'
Her eyes softened. She turned to him, eager to explain. 'Not everything of value is for sale, David. Some things are more precious than money. And if you put a price tag on them they disappear.'
'Like the gift of healing?'
'Yes. If I tried to use it, to enrich myself through it, it wouldn't be what it is.'
'What's the point of having a gift, then?'
Savitri smiled and shook her head, as if marvelling at his thick-headedness.
'It came to me for free. I didn't ask for it, I didn't do anything to deserve it. I can't say it's mine; it isn't. It's just there. It doesn't come from me; it flows through me. It goes where it wants to.'
'And where does it want to go?'
She shrugged. 'To those who need it. There are so many millions who have no doctor, David! Who cannot afford one! I think I was given my gift in order to serve.'
He looked at her fondly, stroked her arm.
'You've been thinking about this, haven't you? It's not true, that you don't care!'